Robin was giving me an anatomy of her divorce. “There were
signs,” she said. “Plenty of them. I just ignored them.”
“The counselor told me to ignore how he treated other people,”
said Manuela, “and concentrate on how he treated me. But one day
I became ‘other people.’”
It’s typical to do this in the early stages of dating and
falling in love because, first of all it’s an exciting and
complex process getting to know someone, and secondly, there are
all those wonderful dreamy chemicals bathing our brains.
It’s also a time when we’re prone to be “optimistic,” to assume
everything’s going to be marvelous. Nobody starts a new
relationship hoping it will be a disaster. We invest a lot of
time and energy into it, and we can begin to see what we want to
see, not what’s really going on.
This, by the way, is one of the catch points about Emotional
Intelligence, and about learned optimism. It’s recommended in
many daily situations, particularly performance situations (like
giving a speech or pitching an account), but it is never
recommended in situations of great consequence. At those times,
we need to take off the rose-colored glasses. Dating is surely
one of those times.
While you’re enjoying the chemical bath coming from the
brain-stem and limbic brains, stay in touch with your neocortex
– the thinking brain – and process just exactly what it is
you’re seeing and experiencing. Working with a coach, BTW, can
help you with clarity.
“No hay casualidades,” say the Spanish. Roughly translated it
means, “nothing happens by accident” or “there are no
coincidences.”
Each of these things happened early on in someone’s dating
career and were ignored:
· We were sitting at the kitchen table at his folks’ house and
heard a mousetrap go off. Edward sprang to his feet, ran over to
the trap, freed the mouse and then beat it to death with a fly
swatter. Somehow I didn’t think that related to anything else
but the mouse, though it made me sick at the time. · Stanton was
a good doctor. He had taken a contract and was working from home
and made plenty of money and that blinded me. Turns out he’d had
a couple of partnerships that had failed because he was so
demanding and impossible to work with. Boy did I find out about
that later. It’s very strange for a doctor to work out of his
home. Somehow that never registered on me. · Leo was always very
relaxed with me, but whenever a waiter came around, or he talked
about someone from his past, he was so critical, it was like he
was examining them with a magnifying glass. Came the day I fell
under the magnifying glass and was found to be ‘wanting’ just
like everyone else, in tiny, little inconsequential, fly-speck
ways. · Eino always called his divorce “leaving home.” I’d never
heard a grown male talk that way, but I ignored the
implications. My friends said he was like a kid, but I just
couldn’t see it until I became the surrogate “mom.” · “You know
how those fraternity parties are,” said Nita, referring to her
college promiscuity as if it were common place. I had no idea
what she meant, but I found out later on. She assumed casual sex
with just about anyway was, ‘well, you know how it is.’ · Though
she was always on her best behavior when we were together,
Dalida referred to her secretary, her maid, and her hairdresser
as “the help,” and demeaned them in front of me. · Our dates
were frugal, because I’m on a budget and Annie seemed to enjoy
them. I missed that all her conversation was about how much
things cost, and how she noted, as people passed by, the Gucci
purse, or the Rolex watch, or the nasty “fake” jewelry.
Hard as it is, try and keep your head about you – that is, don’t
get “flooded” by those wonderful chemicals to the point where
you aren’t paying attention to the little things. That’s all it
is – little things. Watch how they treat all the other people in
their life. The Spanish also say, “What goes around, comes
around.”
You will have learned, or will be learning, that it’s best to
nip things in the bud. Yes, people can change. And yes, at
middle-age we’ve all had our ‘learning experiences.’
Be mindful. Observe. Ask questions. It can save you from looking
up one day and saying, “It was there all the time. Why didn’t I
see it?”
“Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will
come 90% of all your happiness or misery.” ~ H. Jackson Brown,
Jr., “Life’s Little Instruction Book”