Marilyn called me and said, “My friend told me I should talk to you. I’m thirty-five years old, and I’ve had so many failed relationships that I can’t even count them anymore. I just finished one last week. Ended badly, like all the rest. I do not understand it. They seem to begin well enough, but then they unravel and die.”
“It’s not about the relationships,” I said. “It’s about YOU. No criticism at all here, just a statement that obviously something is missing in you that’s essential to a healthy relationship. As long as you don’t have it, every relationship will keep failing.”
“What am I missing?”
“Love.”
“But I know how to love,” she said. “I’m great at loving. Many boyfriends have told me that, in fact, but somehow that’s just not enough.”
“Let’s suppose that you tell me you know how to make a dress. You claim to be a seamstress. I test this hypothesis by asking you to make a dress. You make a dress. It looks good, even when it’s worn, but as soon as we wash it, it falls apart completely. You try again, but again it falls apart the instant it’s washed. Are you a real seamstress? Obviously not, since your dresses look good only until they’re washed once. Something is wrong, either with the materials you choose or with your skills. Do you agree?"
“I suppose so.”
“And so it is with you and relationships. It SEEMS like you know how to love, but you really don’t. You don’t know what Real Love is. In the beginning your relationships are fun—like a dress that looks good for a few minutes—but as soon as they’re stressed at all, they fall apart, just like a dress that disintegrates in the washer. Your performance for the past 15-20 years proves that you do not know how to have a healthy relationship.”
Oh, how we want to believe that we know what we’re doing, but our behavior and our relationships prove otherwise. What we must do is acknowledge that we DON’T know what we’re doing, at which point it becomes possible for us to begin the process of learning what we need and how to find it.
