Article for January 2003: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
This is the single most often asked question that we
get from family law clients. Why did my relationship fail and why does he or she
hate me so much? You may even wonder why I would even bother to post such a
question on this site. The answer to that question is easy. If I can get
one person who reads this article to understand what they are doing to
themselves, then maybe I can help them stop making mistakes that they will
regret for the rest of their lives. I believe that each of us already know why
our relationships fail we just don't like to admit it to ourselves.
Failed
relationships begin with bad matches made by the people involved. I think these bad
matches are caused by people who simply do not understand the purpose of dating.
You should think of dating as an extended job interview. You
are each interviewing the other for the job of potential spouse. It doesn't have anything
to do with her having a cute behind, big breasts or with him having 6 pack
abs. Those are sexual signals that are the least reliable indicator of the
person's ability to be your life partner. Behinds will spread out, breasts
will sag and 6 pack abs will degrade into a beer belly from drinking too many
six packs of beer. So you have to use something else besides looks to determine
if the other party is right for you. You need to use your heart, your
loins, and your head.
Over the years the one constant
refrain that I have heard from clients describing the other party is
"he or she wasn't that way when I met them." I
respectfully disagree. They were that way, you just didn't take the time and
make the effort to really get to know them. I know this is true because I
have had many women tell me that they were abused for the first time when they
were dating their abuser. They knew what he was like and married him anyway.
That kind of thinking is insane. When you see the handwriting on the wall,
it's time to move on.
Why does this happen so often? The answer is
complicated and has to do with several factors. One is the expectation of each
party and the other is a failure to see beyond the wedding. I once heard a
comedian describe the difference between the way men and women view each other
in reference to a potential partner as follows. A woman views a man as raw
material to be molded and shaped into the form they desire. In other words they
want to change him from what he really is into something that he is not. Men on
the other hand view women as a finished product. They never want them to change
in any way, shape or form. Notice that neither view is realistic. In each
example one party objectifies the other person instead of seeing
them as a real person.
The second part is more of a female
problem. Many women only date to find someone to marry. So what's wrong
with that you ask? Nothing. It's just that the view is too narrow.
The wedding becomes the focus instead of ascertaining if your intended really will
make you a good "life" partner.
After they become engaged, the entire
process becomes bridesmaids, maids of honor, flowers, ministers,
reception halls, photographers, video recorders, D.J.'S, music, dancing,
drinking, eating, buying the dress, hair, nails, and etc., etc. The only thing
the man does is rent a tux, go to a bachelor party and get drunk. After that all he has to
do is show up and say "I Do." What is conspicuously
missing in all this is clamor to get married, is any idea of what are you going
to do the day "after" the wedding. The purpose of getting married is to live
together as man and wife. It is not just about the wedding.
Most of the couple's mental,
physical, and financial efforts go into a single
event that is going to last just a few hours, yet very little thought or
effort goes into the preparation of spending the rest of their lives together. So
is it any wonder why someone would later exclaim that
"he or she wasn't that way when I met them." The reality
is that the most important part of the purpose for getting married is given the
least amount of time and effort. If people put as much time, effort and money in
planning for life together as they do for the wedding and reception, they would
probably have better results with their marriages. You have to have a plan for
married life together. That plan must include realistic mutual goals and
beliefs. Thinking that you can change someone after the wedding is wrong.
So is playing games. Many authors write books advocating
that you play games when you date, such as pretending that you have someone else
that he must compete with. You are suppose to keep him guessing and off balance.
In essence, you are suppose to play stupid mind games. Is it any wonder
why so many people complain that dating is superficial and meaningless. With
advice like that, dating "is" meaningless and superficial.
How will he really know who you are either?
The good news is that the internet
has brought into view a new way to date. People meet each other on-line and have
no idea what the other looks like. Sometimes they are too far away, so you cannot just hop
into bed with them before you get to know them. It forces people to actually talk to each
other and get to know each other. No more meaningless meetings
in bars and quick meaningless sexual encounters that go nowhere. It's really
very interesting. The internet has brought back talking to each other as a means
of dating.
What an exciting concept and
yet many pundits put it down as if to say someone who has to go on-line is a
loser. Given the choice between meeting someone in a bar and meeting them
on-line, I'll vote for on-line dating every time. Now I don't want people to think
that there are no problems with on-line dating because there can be. Just as in
every other form of human endeavor there is a certain risk factor. Just as
many people that get ripped off through conventional dating, get ripped off
on-line, so you have to be careful.
I would never advocate chucking your marriage and going to another
state or country to be with someone that you hardly know. But if you think about
it, what's the difference if you move in with someone that you only met two
weeks earlier or fly across the country to meet them. Either way it is a risk
that you should probably give a lot of thought to before you actually do it.
Especially if you already have children.
Another scenario
that is destined for failure, is when the two people are from different
religions. During the dating part of the relationship, you need to really
assess just how important religion is in your life. If you are Catholic, Mormon,
Jewish or whatever, and that is important to you, then date Catholic, Mormon or
Jewish men. If you are Jewish, dating a Mormon man makes no sense, especially if
you want a Jewish home and any children to be raised as a Jew. You cannot leave it
undecided and say that "we'll work it out later,"
because you won't.
You cannot resolve
this issue by trying to raise a child in two separate religions either. It
won't work. Either one of you converts, or you marry someone else of your
religion. It's that simple. There is no other way to resolve this issue
and the Court will not get involved in this issue. If you ignore me, then I hope
you enjoy fighting over this issue for the next eighteen years. Because you
will.
While we are on
the subject of religion, you should be aware that this problem doesn't usually
come up until after a child is born. That is when the magic happens and the issue of
which religion the child should be raised in comes up. If you want to have
your home feel like Northern Ireland, just ignore what I am saying and you will
have it. I don't care if you are a Pagan, Wicken, or Hindu, if the other person
is of a different belief system than you, there will be strife. You can count on
it.
When you are dating you should act like you were arranging a
marriage for someone else. In the past, families arranged marriages
because it was in their self interests to do so. Stable relationships
benefited families by assuring the transfer of wealth from generation to
generation. You had consistency of religion, belief systems, wealth,
family assistance and community interaction. Children benefited and families
accumulated wealth. You didn't end up with children from several different
fathers and the confusion that all that causes.
Don't get me wrong
I am not advocating going back to a system like that. What I am suggesting is
that you view relationships differently. Instead of only focusing on the love
and romance part of marriage, you also pay attention to the financial aspects of
marriage. The reason for this is simple, divorce is a huge waste of wealth. Families
that arranged marriages knew this. Divorce prevented the
smooth transition of wealth from one generation to the next. Make no mistake
about it, a family didn't want to see the product of the hard work of many
generations go to someone outside the family. In order to combat this problem
wealthy Victorians arranged marriages between families so as to be mutually
beneficial.
Not very exciting
is it? Sounds like something invented by a bean counter. But it is
literally the truth. As a society we waste a great deal of wealth on failed
relationships and divorces. The statistics are abysmal. Within the first five
years of marriage, 50 percent of the marriages will fail. The failure rate of
second marriages is even worse. Two failed marriages could totally financially wipe you out.
Unless you were extremely wealthy, you would probably never recover.
So pay attention
to how your beloved treats his or her ex, if he or she treats their ex like
crap, then you have a perfect view of their character. It also should give you
an idea of how they will treat you when your relationship is over. Pay
attention if he
doesn't pay child or spousal support, this shows a complete lack of
responsibility and commitment. If she won't let her ex see his kids, you should understand that
this is how she will view you having visitation. People are consistent, so don't
make excuses for inexcusable behavior. It doesn't mean that you are special, it
means that you could be next. Move on.
Not marrying is not much better. If you have two or
more minor children under the age of ten, you probably won't have enough of your
paycheck left to live on either. If you have three or more children, you are
beyond hope, unless you are Donald Trump. I have several men clients who
had live in relationships with women who turned out to be less than savory
characters. Typically they may have been married one or more times, or had
several relationships that yielded children. Sort of a collect the whole set
type of thing. She may be on welfare, workfare or working at a low paying
job supplemented with child and/or spousal support. Visitation with the fathers
of the other children may be spotty at best.
She claims to love
you and rushes into a sexual relationship. Puts demands on you to buy her
things, gifts, pay her rent, utilities and etc. Eventually you get her pregnant
and so you move in with her. More demands emerge for a new car to drive your
child around in and a better house for your child to live in. Soon a
second child arrives. More demands. Eventually you stop complying
with her demands. She cuts you off sexually. Arguments ensue.
Next thing you
know you are on the outside looking in, courtesy of a civil restraining order.
You are called manipulative and controlling or worse, abusive in her court
papers. Next you
hear tales about yourself that you would never believe. She accuses you of
abusing your child. Next you are receiving a letter from the District Attorney's
office regarding child support. Yet you are not even seeing your own children.
It's a horror show, that you will be staring in for the next eighteen years.
The time to think about this is before you make babies with her and not
afterwards.
In the flip side
of this story she says "sure I'll have his kids, but I
would never marry him." What are you thinking? That is not a
career plan ladies. That is a recipe for disaster. Children are not pets or
toys. If you are lonely and need to mother something go to the pound and rescue
a dog or cat. Although I am not sure that you should even do that, because
the dog or cat will probably suffer too. Let me make it perfectly clear,
"this is a dumb idea."
If you are really selfish enough to have a child without the unwelcome
interference from the sperm donor, then go to the local sperm bank and have
yourself artificially impregnated. Because either way, your child is going to end up
without a dad and that is not in your child's best interest. Real fathers play a
very important role in the proper development of a child into adulthood.
It is axiomatic
that where there is no father in the home, the family unit usually doesn't
function properly. There are certain gender specific things that a parent cannot
teach an offspring. For example, a woman cannot teach a boy to be a man,
no more than a man can teach a girl to become a woman. Girls learn how to
interact with men by watching their father interact with their mother. The
same goes for boys learning about interacting with girls. It's not just about
being able to pee standing up.
Children really
need both parents to be a whole person. If one parent is absent, there is a
missing component that a child will not have access to. Nor can you substitute a
grandfather, uncle or boyfriend into the role of father. You may have a male
role model, but not a father. The reason for this is simple, it takes both
parents to successfully raise a child. It is the blended combination of
both parents and not just one that give the child the values that they need.
While children
benefit from a father, that is not to say that you should stay with an
abusive father, for the sake of the children. Because that is also insane. The
point that I am making is that having children is not an isolated act, that one
should do alone. Children are meant to be part of a unit called a family. You
need to have a fully thought out plan. You do things in the proper order. First you date, then you
get engaged, then you get married and then you have children. The point is that
whenever possible, you shouldn't be having children unless you are in a
committed relationship, preferably a marriage. Don't have children with losers.
I don't think that anything makes me madder than
someone who financially uses the other for their own financial gain. In the old
days women who engaged in this type of activity were called gold diggers and men
were called gigolos. Either way it was frowned upon. Unfortunately this
practice is still alive and well today. Sometimes this scenario begins as an
affair. The sex is fabulous, nasty and lusty. You are really getting even
with that person who did you wrong or so you think. Eventually it hits you that
you are not really getting even, because your spouse doesn't know and you cannot
afford for them to find out. So the getting even scenario is really a fraud.
Taken to an
extreme, you or your lover or both leave the previous relationship and get
together. The main reason for this move is really to replace the income stream that you
lost when you moved out on your ex. You looked around and discovered that there
was no one beating down your door, so once again you settled on your lover.
What's wrong with this picture. First, there is no trust. Both of you were
cheating on your previous spouses. You both know this and somewhere in the back
of your pea brains a little voice says that "they may cheat on you
too." What a concept.
But then fidelity
is not what you are looking for. You need an additional income stream. So
you overlook the obvious fidelity issues, after all you are no better. Right?
Don't tell me you overlooked that too? Oh dear, that is a problem isn't it? He's
probably thinking the same things about you that you are thinking about him.
This isn't any good.
For a while, you
might make it work. You can use what you always used to control him: sex. He will use
what he always used to control you: money. It's almost a symbiotic relationship.
From the relationships like this that I have seen, the first thing to go is the
pretense of any civility towards each other. Each party begins to bicker
and fight over everything. Evidently each party forgets their role. He forgets
that he is a wallet and she forgets that she is his sex object. They soon tire
of each other. It is not unusual to see them both cheating with someone else.
Typically these relationships last from two to three years before the parties
get tired and move on to greener pastures. Once again the children suffer
another loss of a parent figure. Oh well.
Although in a few cases, these parties share a mutual
dysfunctional personality that allows them to overlook these problems and
actually work well together for some common goal, usually making obscene amounts
of money. When you see these people at work it is unbelievable. Individually
they are dysfunctional, but together they make a third personality that is
extremely strong and focused. If they were not so one dimensional, they
would be a force to be reckoned with.
Because these
couples start out as lovers cheating on previous spouses, they usually have one
or both previous spouses to focus their hate on. Another interesting thing
that I have noticed is that these folks usually profess an exaggerated
attachment to religion. They really don't believe in God, they just
use it to give themselves the appearance of legitimacy. So it comes as no
surprise that they will want their children to attend church school. Not
to mention that they will bad mouth their ex's to death for not being godly.
Just try and get them to part with a dollar for child support and you will
quickly learn how phony they really are.
These examples are
not intended to be exhaustive in their depiction of dysfunctional couples,
rather they are meant to be examples to allow you to gauge your own relationship
against. If you see some of the signs that we have depicted here in your
own relationship, then I would suggest that you be afraid, in fact be very
afraid. I would also suggest that you get counseling and try and learn why you
do what you do. If you stay, then you are really cheating yourself out of
an opportunity to meet someone who could truly be your soulmate. And
that is the real tragedy.
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