A man called me one day, heartbroken that his marriage was falling apart. “For years I’ve given her everything she wanted—literally everything—and now she says she’s just not happy anymore, and I don’t know what to do.”
Then he told me the almost stereotypical story of how they met, fell in passionate love, and enjoyed a sensitive, intellectually stimulating, and spiritual year or so together. Gradually, this began to change until it reached the condition where neither of them wanted to be with the other at all.
“So nothing you do,” I said, “makes her happy anymore.” I already knew from other sources that this was true, and that he was not exaggerating.
“No, and I don’t get it. She didn’t use to be like this. She’s changed—a lot.”
“Describe the earliest occasion you can remember—before you got married—where she indicated that something you had given her was not quite right.”
He thought for a few moments before he said, “One day I used my phone to send her a picture of some wildflowers I’d seen on the side of the road. I thought she’d feel flattered, but she texted back, ‘How come you never buy me flowers?’”
“That was the real her. You didn’t recognize it because you were in love with so many other things about her—how she looked, how she touched you, how she complimented you, and so on. The usual stuff. You were so drunk on what you were getting that you didn’t notice that she has a powerful need to control things, including the way love is delivered to her, and if people don’t comply, she gets pretty irritated.”
“Now she takes my head off if I don’t do things exactly like she wants.”
Falling in love is easy. And blinding. We need to get to know people well before making a commitment to spend a lifetime loving them. Using the book, Real Love in Dating, is a good place to start.
Learn how to be and find the perfect partner.
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