Question. I think I’ve found Mr. Right. He treats me well and calls me princess …We think alike, we complete each others sentences and say exactly the same thing at the same time. He is very romantic and protective of me. He is my knight. The one I was searching for. He has already asked me to marry him and I said “YES”. I feel we were meant to be. What do you think?
A. It must be a great feeling to be in love, especially when it makes you feel really excited at the thought of seeing that person and sharing things together. Well done! But you have to be aware of signs of incompatibility, no matter how in-love you feel because they are always there at the beginning. It is just that love blinds us to them, often until it is too late.
People tend to be most incompatible in six areas of a relationship. Listed in order of their propensity to damage the union, and these are:
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I set eyes on my ex husband at an event and knew that the attraction was mutual immediately I saw him with his friend and spoke to him. We lasted 25 years and were still in love by the finish, except that we had diverged so much in our values and expectations, we could not sustain the relationship on love alone because too much resentment and anger had crept in.
On another occasion, I knew I had fallen in love instantly with someone when our eyes met across a room, seeing him for the first time. It was amazing because it was so unexpected with him not being the type I would have expected to even be friendly with. That was before my marriage but circumstances just weren’t right at the time to follow through. Thirty years later he proposed, but I was a different person by then and wanted something new with my life.
Falling in love is really down to our beliefs. If we believe that anyone can engage us in an instant, because we are expressive enough to allow it to happen, it will always happen for us. If we are the cynical type who question every potential relationship and are worried about its outcome, it won’t get a chance to flourish because we will kill it with our negative expectations.
People who don’t believe in falling in love at first sight are seldom likely to experience it for that very reason: they cannot have something positive materialising out of their negative beliefs, and fear of its consequences will keep such an experience from happening. Even if it got up and smacked them in the face, they are likely to attribute it to something else.
Yet love at first sight is magical when it works because, with its element of surprise, it carries with it the potential for something truly exciting and enjoyable.
Q. We fight all the time and at the core of the fighting is the fact that I’m hurt that he is so unsure. It’s had a downward spiral effect on the relationship. His family doesn’t like me anymore because of the fighting which have just gotten more and more hurtful. What started out so wonderful is now a mess, but I love him and he loves me. He just can’t commit to a future the way we are now, and I can’t go any Ionger with no commitment.
A. A rather sad story in view of the fact that the fight is about actually progressing your love! If you fight all the time, that is not a good basis for a marriage, anyway, and being married won’t make it better. Constant fights, for whatever reason, is a sign of being unsuitable for each other; that your values are not in tune and your relationship is not going anywhere. In fact, I think after two years together you both sense that the relationship is dying, and fear that eventuality, so you think being married will make things better while he perhaps believe that it won’t.
It is his right not to commit to a future, if he doesn’t want to, and he is entitled to have that accepted. However, it is also your right to find someone else who will commit to you and share your values of emotional security. It is not your place to badger him into any kind of commitment. Such commitment must be mutual, and voluntary, to work. As things stand now, your chief value is not being fulfilled because he won’t commit, and his value is not being fulfilled, either, because you are badgering him to commit. Not very good. Either give him some space to actually miss you enough to reconsider his position, or leave him alone altogether and find someone whom you really love and who loves you enough to commit to you. It seems that you might love him, but he doesn’t love you as much, because when we truly love we would wish to commit to that person in some way. We wouldn’t be working against them.
As you said, your fights have become more and more hurtful. That’s not the basis for a loving relationship. It will just keep getting worse until the relationship dies. Time to follow your instincts and let it be; to find someone who matches you a little more in what you seek than to grow increasingly resentful, bitter, aggressive and unattractive with someone who doesn’t really value you to the same extent.
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Q. I’m an 18 year old guy who shouldn’t be feeling like this. Plus I hang out with friends who always get in fights and they sometimes drag me in it. Can I avoid the constant drama?
A. Sounds like you are easily influenced because of your need for approval. You can only be stronger by building your own confidence. You obviously have a lot of fear in your life through a lack of affirmation and value from those you care about. Yet only learning to love and value yourself will give you the gradual strength you need to face the world.
The first thing you could do is to change your friends. Friends who are always fighting or dragging you into it, especially when you don’t really want to, will do nothing for you. Strength isn’t about fighting. That merely shows a lack of coping skills that is replaced by aggression. Strength is about confidence, high self-esteem, personal appreciation and living to your own values.
You feel weak because you really don’t want to fight and are living against your values. You need the confidence to stick by your own principles, not just follow what others do in a blind, accepting kind of way. You will feel much better for it, too, when you start hanging out with people who share your aspirations, beliefs and principles, as you will feel reinforced and affirmed as a person.
In answer to your question, you are afraid of drama because that is against your nature, yet you are hanging out with people who are only interested in drama. That would create continual dissonance for you: always making you feel stressed and inadequate because you are not being affirmed in your beliefs and whom you wish to be. Time to change your crowd and find people who share your world and hopes. You will start to feel much better about who you are and what you care about.
We all have a feeling of wanting to BELONG, to be included and valued by others. Your wish to belong is drawing you towards the wrong kind of people for you which does nothing for your self- esteem because they don’t reflect how you really feel. I think once you change your friends – perhaps by joining clubs and societies that you like – you are likely to find that you feel much better within yourself and far less troubled about your life.
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Both are important in any successful relationship. However, while having a lot in common helps to keep the parties together in mutual activities, what really underpin any relationship, and control its direction, are the shared values between the couple.
No matter what is happening superficially – differences with looks, beauty, personality, activities etc. – people will stay connected only if their basic values are in tandem. Real opposites represent conflict from the beginning because there would be little alignment in needs and objectives. This would keep the parties going in different directions. For example, it is unlikely that someone with criminal tendencies will have a successful relationship with someone who believes in honesty and integrity, no matter how much both might like playing golf or attending the same events. There would be too much conflict in reconciling their values.
For example, you don’t get greater difference than an Indian guy in a turban from Kenya and a devout Catholic woman from the West Indies! Totally different upbringing, cultures and perspectives about life. I met a Sikh when I was 19, and married, to much opposition, across the racial and cultural divide. No one, least of all his parents who tried everything at the beginning to break us up, expected the marriage to last more than a couple years, at best. We went on for over 30 years and when we parted, we still had very strong feelings for each other. At the end, though the love was there to a large extent, our direction and values had clearly changed in what we sought in our lives.
At the beginning, my ex-husband and I complemented each other in many ways, because we believed in the same things when we met. We were both rebels in our communities; we both loved reggae and Bob Marley, and we both had the same outlook on maintaining a home and raising children. Without realising it then, I also sought a kind of protector, being young and naive in England, and, being very clever and more secure, he wanted someone to protect. Bingo for our expectations!
When I began to feel more independent and to value other things in life, like my own creativity and freedom to act in ways I enjoyed, the dynamics began to shift and our values gradually differed, especially as he grew more conservative and controlling in approach. In fact, we became opposites in our needs over such a long time and stopped connecting, appreciating and communicating with each other.
So, having lots in common do help for better enjoyment in a relationship, but the individual perspectives and beliefs that form our values have to mutually align to keep a couple together.
Yes, it has certainly worked for me. I set eyes on my ex husband at an event and knew that the attraction was mutual immediately I saw him with his friend and spoke to him. We lasted over 30 years and were still in love by the finish, except that we had diverged so much in our values and expectations, we could not sustain the relationship on love alone because too much resentment and anger had crept in.
On another occasion, I knew I had fallen in love instantly with someone when our eyes met across a room, seeing him for the first time. It was amazing because it was so unexpected with him not being the type I would have expected to even be friendly with. That was before my marriage but circumstances just weren’t right at the time to follow through. Thirty-five years later he proposed, but I was a different person by then and wanted something new with my life.
Falling in love is really down to our beliefs. If we believe that anyone can engage us in an instant, because we are expressive enough to allow it to happen, it will always happen for us. If we are the cynical type who questions every potential relationship and are worried about its outcome, it won’t get a chance to flourish because we will kill it with our negative expectations.
People who don’t believe in falling in love at first sight are seldom likely to experience it for that very reason: they cannot have something positive materialising out of their negative beliefs, and fear of its consequences will keep such an experience from happening. Even if it got up and smacked them in the face, they would always attribute it to something else.
But love at first sight is magical when it works because, with its element of surprise, it carries with it the potential for something truly exciting and enjoyable.
So, what do YOU think? Do you believe in love at first sight, and have you ever experienced it?
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