TO LOVE AND LET BE LOVED

Why so many intelligent, successful, attractive women have everything except a happy, loving, lasting marriage (relationship)?

There are several important and many not so important reasons, which combined constitute a mixture that embitters or poisons and kills even the best and potentially truly perfect matches.

What really counts in a good or as happy as can be relationship? Who is your perfect match and how to identify him, recognise him, when you find him? What character features and behavioural actions make this particular man unique, exceptional, perfect for you? And why can't you keep him, why can't it last? The answers to all these questions exist and at least some of them have been known, and ignored, for centuries. Some of the most obvious of them are following:

1. family/parental conditioning (what you believe is good for you)

2. set of adopted values according to present situation (what you would not be seen dead do or be seen with)

3. preferential learning patterns favouring painful and unpleasant (warning) memories over all other experiences

4. low (statistically level of acceptability of Love as the most important part of life

5. fear of being "selfish" if you just want to be happy

WHAT YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU IS GOOD FOR YOU

Whether in good faith or just repeating the same lines for centuries, our mothers told us to look for a "good provider", a solid man you can lean on and depend on, quiet and reliable, devoted to the family and respectable, and so on.

Well, do you really need a "good provider"? You can very well provide for yourself, and are very good at it, happy to be independent and in control, so there gos the fundamental decree of married bliss, as seen in the past. As to the other elements, they will become exposed as a myth further down.

Kathy did exactly as her mother told her and her family expected her to. She married a bank manager, whom she met at work, only a few years older then her, with a house, a set of investments and a serious devotion to his work, where he spent most of his time during their prolonged courtship. The relationship was far from perfect but he had all the necessary "ingredients" for a good husband and she hoped that, once married, her feelings will warm up and the resentments will dissipate, when her feelings of rejection for his reluctance to marry her are gone. Her mother was dying of cancer, so the date for a wedding was set and kept. It was a beautiful wedding.

Kathy's husband is everything she expected and wanted him to be, but she is not happy. Though he is thoroughly devoted to her there is no real love and arguments are bitter and resentments deep, accumulating and overshadowing even good times they have. They are both very successful professionally but happiness is eluding them. What is wrong with this relationship?

YOUR CURRENT SET of VALUES

We are what we believe in, and if you happen to fall in love with a plumber, a beach bum or a waiter and your successful career involves lots of high (or apparently high) social engagements in which partners are included you may seriously consider keeping your passion under covers and enjoying your naughty love more or less in hiding. And of course, marrying him is a completely different ball game. For marriage you still feel you "should" entrust yourself to someone lees lovable and more ambitious. So did Val. She had a passionate loving relationship with a waiter several years younger then her and she has never laughed so much before in her life. With him she was young and beautiful and the silly games they played together reached something soft and sweet that was hiding there forgotten since her childhood. With him she could relax completely for the first time god knows since when, and she was almost happy. Almost, because there were some problems she could not reconcile herself with. He never had a cent, and frequently she had to pick up the checks and pay his bills. He would say he'll be somewhere to meet her and he'd be late or forget to come. He would tell about their very personal matters to perfect strangers at a party or reception and she would be fuming from her ears or sinking with humiliation, not comprehending how such a loving person can do such stupid, thoughtless things. So she married a quiet admirer she had kept on the back burner as a safety net and is as miserable as she had never thought she could be. She had a child hoping to "make things better" since her husband wanted it very much and went through a prolonged post natal depression, often thinking of killing herself and the baby. She is very successful and frequently awarded professional prizes but Val never really laughs any more.

PAINFUL MEMORIES AND FEAR OF MISTAKES

We make mistakes, mistakes do not make us, we know that. Mistakes are there to learn from and to correct. Unfortunately a great majority of us grew up with a notion that mistakes are something bad, imperfect people do and that they are punishable like crime. Instead of a loving, forgiving guidance through the terrifying experiences of youth we have received abuse and hostility for not being perfect at once. This taught us that our parents' love is conditional, available when we meet their expectations. From these experience we form an opinion about love as something to be earned or prone to loss or withdrawal.

Judy had a love - hate relationship with her father. As the first born, she was expected to be a son. Though he "forgave" her for being a girl and loved her waiting for a son to come next time, she was always aware that she had to be as good a son could be, and better. Straight "A"s at school and honours at university were the only way and any slips devastating. She had to a leader soon after joining "Young Liberals", early started her journalistic career and soon became a television rising star. There she met a middle aged producer of third rate soapies and horror movies and desperately fell in love. He was so much like her father. By then she had had a number of failed relationships and was scared nearly to death of another betrayal. He arranged a New Year's eve's party on a chartered boat where she was the only guest. They drank three bottles of Dom Perignon and she almost lost her voice next day. He really seemed to know how to make her feel like a princess. But on other occasions he would be inexplicably stingy, taking her for here birthday to a cheap chinese restaurant, after she virtually landed in his lap a contract worth over a million dollars. He was punctual, dependable and solid like a rock. He could also be quite cold, sarcastic and critical. Yet she would swallow the tears in the dead of the night remembering how he washed her and changed her nighties and fed her soups he cooked for her when she was sick with a terrible flue. "Does he really love me"? Do I really love him? What is love?" she wandered with flashes of desire to tear his heart out without anaesthesia after he belittled and ridiculed her for making mistakes. She pondered over her past failed relationships relieving the old pains and a sense of rejection, swearing never to make the same mistakes again. And the most obvious conclusion she seems to have been coming up with was, that she has to loose a relationship right when she feels she can trust the man and his love for her completely. As if in a Sisiphus' myth, who's stone would slip out of his hands right at the last moment of effort to haul it on top of a mountain. She knew that it is too much of a recurrent pattern to be ignored and decided never to give in to love again, fearing the agonising pain that follows a rejection, not sure she could survive another one. And so Judy still young and not even thirty decided to live without what she considered as true, unselfish, unconditional love, and settled for an imperfect de facto state with her producer, feeling "safe" with her partner's occasional anger and secure in her shell. Judy is afraid to love.

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE?

I have asked that question many times and received a great many answers. But the one that stuck in my mind was given to me by my Mentor. He said: "Love, I think". He was an old man, and though I adored and worshiped him, I did not really believe him, I was young then. However, I never forgot it and it was always sort of present at the back of my mind. Years later I understood what he meant. The meaning of love that I had then was quite immature and shallow at the time. I can't even tell how it happened that I developed an understanding of what Love really is, since it happened gradually, as I have learned more about myself, people and transcendental matters.

One of the strongest fears we are brought up with is the fear of being accused of selfishness. The apprehension is so strong that we end up avoiding at any cost situations in which we could be exposed to committing this terrible crime. It seems like any time we ever wanted to be happy or having good time somebody jumped at us with a scream or sulking that it is awfully selfish of us.

It is a tragedy of our lives that not only we are not educated about love and loving, about cultivating and nurturing tender feelings but we grow up and go through life with misapprehension and fear of the emotions we most need.

Louise was told not to be selfish every day of her life. Her father was not a well man and her mother was working two or three jobs to earn enough to bring up and educate four kids and take care of an ailing husband. She had to take on the virtual charge of the house, mothering her younger siblings, caring for her father and even having to "take care" of her mother's headaches and anger for the raw deal the life had dealt her. She loved poetry and theatre and tried to write some herself. Each time her mother caught her immersed in a book she was told how selfish she was enjoying herself while dinner is not ready for an overworked hungry mother who had a bad day harassed by her boss. Each time she went to see a play she was reproached for spending money to just please herself, money for which her mother has to work so hard. Each time she sat down to watch the old movies on TV she loved she felt she should have been doing housework instead. She dated little, somehow always feeling guilty that she is not doing the chores, letting down her family who depends on her. Louise is in her fifties today, a successful owner of a prosperous restaurant. She seems to be so good at taking care of everybody. Good looking, fun to be with, twice divorced, and now going home to a plush and luxurious but empty house. She was always so afraid of being accused of selfishness that she married a man who, after sweeping her off her feet with adoration and calling her his goddess soon started complaining about the time she spent developing her business and calling her selfish each time she did not manage to have his shirts ironed or she forgot to stock up the fridge with his favourite beer just when the big race was on TV. Louise has many opportunities to have fun and meets a lot of attractive men but is still lonely and seemingly unable to find someone who would love her without demands and conditions. She has never dared to enjoy herself and stand up for what she really wanted to do. She still feels pangs of guilt when she spends a day reading a book or just walking on the beach. Her stomach churns with fear, and her thoughts ring in the ears that she "should" be doing something useful.

Will Louse learn that a walk in the sun is actually "useful"? Will she find a way to relax and accept that as a woman - she does not have to be like a work horse all her life, and only deserve to be fed when she is being "useful"? Unable to let her hair down - will she ever find a relationship full of love? Can she ever find somebody who would be willing to fill every day of her life with love?