Are You the One for Me?. Barbara Angelis De
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pressure on me to find someone so I didn’t look like I was alone. Breaking up with him was painful, because there was double pressure—all my friends and family had already been asking, “When’s the wedding?”, and now I had to disappoint them as well as Sandy.’
RoseAnn is a perfect example of someone who got involved with a partner to lessen the pressure, not because she was really in love.
PRESSURE FROM FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Some people are very susceptible to the opinions of their family and friends and allow themselves to be pressured to get into or stay in relationships that aren’t making them happy. If you don’t have a strong sense of yourself, or if you are very enmeshed with your family members, you could end up having a relationship because everyone else thinks you should, not because you truly want to be with that person.
HOW LENNY LET HIMSELF BE PRESSURED INTO MARRIAGE
Lenny sat with his head in his hands. ‘I’ve let everyone down,’ he said with a moan. ‘What am I going to do?’ Lenny, forty-four, and his wife, Krista, forty-three, had known each other since grade school. Their families belonged to the same church and were good friends, so when Lenny and Krista began dating in junior high, their parents were delighted. ‘I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t just assumed that Krista and I would get married one day. Everyone talked about it like it had already happened—Mom would make comments like, “When you and Krista get older, Grandma’s china will be passed down to you,” or Dad would say to Krista’s father, “You know, Samuel, I always did feel like you were family, and hopefully one day, you will be.” And Krista had been trying out my last name with hers for years.
‘When I graduated from high school, I went into the Navy, again because my dad thought it would be good experience for me. Everyone seemed to think that when I got out, I’d ask Krista to marry me, and I did. If I look back now, I don’t remember deciding to do it. It was just the thing I was supposed to do. You can imagine how happy they all were. That’s when I started going numb. It’s not that I didn’t love Krista; I did, in a certain way. But I wasn’t ready to marry her, or anyone.
‘It’s been almost twenty years, three kids, and four affairs later, and I just can’t handle it anymore. I’m so lost, I’m hurting my wife and children, and letting everyone I love down.’
I watched Lenny weep like a frightened little boy, and felt so much empathy for this man who had been under pressure for so long to live up to everyone else’s expectations of how his life was supposed to be. The truth was that Lenny had been letting himself down for years by not listening to his own heart, by making decisions others thought were best, not because he thought they were. In doing what his friends and family thought he should, Lenny had robbed himself of a chance to experience true love and happiness.
When you make a decision to be with someone because of the pressure you feel (from yourself or others) rather than because the person seems right for you, you are giving your power away and ensuring an unhappy end to your love story. If you have been in this position often, or are in it now, ask yourself what you want and need, and give that first priority over what anyone else thinks.
Wrong Reason 2
Loneliness and Desperation
We can all relate to these stories, because we have all experienced loneliness, periods in our lives when we felt so emotionally empty that we were desperate for someone, anyone to love. But unfortunately, what starts out as a lonely act of reaching out to another human being can end in a very complicated and hurtful relationship.
Take the woman in the first story above. She’ll call up her ex-boyfriend and tell him she is lonely. He’ll decide to come over and ‘cheer her up,’ and they’ll end up in bed. Suddenly they’re involved again—except he neglected to tell her he’s seeing someone else. She’ll go through months of ‘back and forth’ with him until they finally break up, this time for good. All of that pain from one desperate night of loneliness.
The woman in the second story will end up going out with the guy she’s not really interested in. Six months later, when they’re still involved, she’ll meet someone she really cares for. Now she has to hurt the first man, whom she was really only using, and tell him she doesn’t want to see him anymore because she has met a man she loves more.
The man in the third story may think he is in for a simple one-night stand, but this girl may have other things in mind. By always being there for him, making it easy for him to be in the relationship, she may indeed end up getting him to marry her. One day he’ll wake up and finally admit he isn’t in love with his wife, break her heart, upset their families, and feel like a heel.
These three people didn’t just end up in these unfortunate circumstances because of bad luck; they got involved with people for the wrong reasons, and doomed their relationships to unhappy endings.
WHEN YOU ARE FEELING LONELY OR DESPERATE, YOU ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO MAKE POOR LOVE CHOICES AND END UP IN UNFULFILLING RELATIONSHIPS.
HOW RHONDA’S LONELINESS ALMOST KILLED HER
The story of Rhonda is a sad example of the pain we can create for ourselves and others when we choose love out of desperation. Rhonda, thirty-five, had been overweight as a child. While her friends were dating in junior high school, Rhonda stayed home and absorbed herself in her schoolwork. Because of her tremendous scholastic achievements, Rhonda won a scholarship to a private university in the Northeast. She arrived at college never having been on a date in her life.
In her first year of school, Rhonda lost fifty pounds (she says it was getting away from her mother’s cooking). She could hardly believe what she saw when she looked in the mirror: she actually looked attractive. And when young men began to ask her out, Rhonda knew her transformation was real. She went out on one or two dates before she met Karl.
Karl was a senior in college and from a very wealthy family. He was athletic, good-looking, and very domineering. When he asked Rhonda out, she was sure he’d made a mistake. She never expected anyone that handsome to be interested in her. In fact, Rhonda had no idea what to expect in a relationship. She’d never been in one. So as the months passed, and they began dating exclusively, Rhonda was so overjoyed she didn’t pay much attention to some of