The tragedy of marriage is that women think that man will change, but they won’t. Men think the woman won’t change but they do.
I heard this sentence yesterday on Netflix. I immediately had to write it down. Just like I wrote down a previous sentence, that I loved: I fit into that crowd like a fart in a crowded elevator.
So what have the two sentences do with each other? How can they be in the first two paragraphs of an article?
I tell you how.
Relationships
I have been observing friends and their relationships, and from what I see, I desire no part in it, I mean I want NO romantic relationships.
In all my work I “fight” for authenticity, dignity, self-awareness, and relationships are a hot-bed of none of that.
Let’s look at how relationships start:
- women try to figure out what a man wants, and temporarily shape themselves to be like that. Looks, behavior, in and out of bed. The whole thing, for the woman, is a means to an end: to “catch” a guy they can call their own, mold into someone they really want.
In the presence of an agenda, there can be no love.
So women go to marriage with no love, and an agenda.
Now, let’s look at the man:
- the man has an agenda as well: to have this particular female provide them with steady enjoyable sex, the behavior they demonstrated during the courting period, how they were interested, agreeable, good times together.The man wants everything to continue, the woman wants to finally be able to be themselves, eat what they want, wear what they want, do what they want.
It’s not going to work. The two parties want the exact opposite.
The result: unhappy marriages across the globe.
The happiest marriages are the arranged marriages. No pretense there. The second happiest marriages are the ones where the two were doing something at the same place at the same time. For example my older brother married another student who went to the same classes, etc. They prepared for exams together, no time, no room for pretense. They have been married for 46 years.
My younger brother married a girl who was also a dog-fan, and they met on the dog walk hill in Budapest. They didn’t meet outside of that for a long time. They have been married for 35 years.
The problem, if you really look at causality, is women. Women want to change back to who they really are, and want to change the man to someone who matches that.
You see, by teaching authenticity, I may be able to cause some women to be who they are, and attract the man who is a match to that.
if you don’t love yourself, how are you going to love the one who is a match?
But… although you can love the man who is a match to who you are, if you don’t love yourself, don’t value yourself, don’t like yourself, how are you going to love the one who is a match?
So, the first step for a new culture of “love” is to teach you to love yourself. If you don’t like something: you can change it any time. No one is holding you back.
You can change
You can change, not because you have to, not because you should, but because you see that you demonstrate a behavior you don’t like.
When you activate your Witness aspect, the Observer, the one that loves you exactly the way you are, and loves you regardless of what you aren’t, change become easier.
I won’t say “easy”. Change is never easy. But possible.
And now, here is the big bomb… You, the mother, bring the same attitude towards your child. Your child is NEVER the way you want them, never smart enough, never clever enough, never anything enough. So you try to change them…
This is exactly what happened to you! That’s why you don’t love yourself!
And the cycle of abuse continues, uninterrupted… unless… unless YOU fall in love with yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jrKTuIrwzM
A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you … The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man …
I am contemplating a project teaching wives of entrepreneurs to provide a supportive environment.
It is NOT what women do outwardly that paralyzes the husband, it is what they are being inwardly: impatient, distrustful, condemning, etc. They can’t see what isn’t obvious, they can only see what seems to be obvious, that the husband is a never do well, given their behavior observable in daily activities, how they do things. All the little things they do is turned into meaning, a meaning that says to the woman: this guy will never amount to anything, because of how they are.
Simply, judgment prevents them from being able to see a future.
And on a personal note: I recommend that you drop the word “ego” and start addressing attitudes, behaviors exactly, precisely, for what they are: mechanisms, self-protecting mechanisms for survival, for looking good, for making it.
Using the word ego doesn’t say anything, and if your life isn’t already great, you can blame your habit of calling everything ego. It is like blaming the bogie man instead of what the bogie man does.
Take it or leave it. And tell your friend to stop saying that too.
I will add that I don’t think my wife tried to change me a whole lot. Maybe I just didn’t notice. She says she trusted me and I let her down so now she doesn’t think it will work. At first, I didn’t want her to change, but now I need her to get out of ego and embrace a higher consciousness. There are different issues in every marriage and you may not be able to generalize that much. I desire to write a book about my experience.
I read this and immediately forwarded to my wife. We have been together for 36 rocky years but are on the verge of separating. I don’t know why, but I want to stay together because I have some notion that marriage is forever, a learning experience, has its ups an downs…. I still love her and she says she loves me, but we can’t go on behaving the way we used to (ego based). I think you nailed the basic issues in most marriages. I speak from experience.
My husband and I WERE taking the same class, for work! This is a good one, Sophie.
They are too far down the rabbit hole…
yeah, just observation.
I agree
I was widowed young. It was alright with me if I didn’t remarry. I didn’t want to be miserable in a marriage, I observed a lot of that. After 8 yrs, I happened to meet MY idea of a prince. He is European. I enjoy a MUCH different marriage than any of my friends. He does not bother me. (I am not meaning anything about sex in that sentence because I enjoy that) That’s not romantic, but what married woman can say that their husband doesn’t ‘bother’ her? I married him because I knew he would not change. (In 8 yrs, I saw men don’t change.) We are good friends intellectually. It is true; IF you manage to marry the right person 98% of life’s problems are eliminated. I may not know what love is, but I can be who I am, and evolve. For me, that IS love. My single girlfriends embrace him. He has quirks that some call qualities. They still fit for me 24 yrs later. I think it’s rare to not be living a fake marriage. Obviously we are not glamorous.
Ann, you are a rare find. Thank you for sharing.
I wonder if any of the fake marriage women are willing to own up to who they have been. Honestly, I doubt it. Owning up to it would be the first step to grow beyond it… but the price, as always, a mini-death: giving up looking good, smelling like roses.
I understand: heaven — looking good — heaven… I see you choosing looking good every time… Not you Ann, but everybody else.
So very true in all respects. It’s an unfortunate result of the way we have structured our societal “courting rituals”
yes. But I think it is deeper than that