RELATIONSHIP WOES – THE MONEY PROBLEM

Several days ago I met a friend of mine for a cup of coffee and a casual “what’s-new” talk, which occurs every other week. Andrew belongs to this young and successful townie type: stylish, good-looking, witty. He works for a good company and in his twenty-something he is already an executive director. Apart from this professional achievement he went through two serious long term relationships.

Usually we talk about business, common first fight in relationship friends, cinema, love, although we never went into details as for our personal relationship experience. All I knew was that both Andrew’s exes were 5-7 years older than him but he never told why things hadn’t worked out. After the second cup of coffee our conversation switched to breaking-up matters, it turned out that Andrew was the one who ended both relationships. Why? You would never guess! It was not about cheating, bad habits or whatever, no! At first, the explanation he gave seemed to be unreal: he broke up with his girlfriends just because everything went TOO SMOOTHLY.

He said that both girls were great and in both cases they had good relationships but THAT was the exact reason why he took off. No rows, no fights, not a single argument for months – sounds like a line from a fairy tale, but in reality this very perfection ruined everything. Andrew said that this smoothness became a routine which he could not take any longer. Absence of emotional splashes in relationships made them so plain and colorless that he couldn’t but leave … What a funny thing!

My first long term relationships that lasted two years and a half were full of scandals and fights, sometimes we could argue several times a day. I thought all these rows were awful and that they proved that we were not meant for each other. Quarrelling was totally unacceptable in my vision of life-time ideal relationships. Mainly I blamed myself for blowing everything, for being too demanding, too tough, too stubborn. I thought that it was a lesson to learn. In my later relationships I did a good job on controlling my emotions – I became more patient, more forgiving, more understanding.

Many girlfriends of mine that already had some experience stuck to the same policy: they fought for building harmonic relationships, tried to make them as positive as possible without any fights or misunderstandings. They didn’t ask silly “women’s questions” that men can’t stand, they accepted their partners as they were – no nagging, no faultfinding, no scenes over trifles. But it turns out that this new attitude is not what men REALLY WANT!