So, Your Love Life Isn’t What You Thought It Would Be…

We are sold this unrealistic story of what marriage is to be where the deep romance lasts forever along with the desire to constantly be with our significant other. Yet, this is only a fairy tale as we find our oxytocin (the bonding hormone) declining after 18 months to 2 years into the relationship according to John Gray, Ph.D. The aspects of our ‘true love’ that we overlooked in the beginning start to get on our nerves. It is only when we realize that we also have aggravating idiosyncrasies as well for our partner to contend with that we can fall into true love — because it is based on unconditionally loving the person — working with that person to create the future together as you live life together.

Many years ago I was determined to be married before I was too old. I felt that being in my mid-20s was a great time to tie the knot. I met my ex-husband through the Phoenix personal pages — the Phoenix being an arts newspaper in the Boston area during the mid-1980s. He had run an ad that had a typo in it saying he was looking for an SJF (Single Jewish Female) when he was just looking for a single white female at the time. He himself is a non-religious individual so this was of no consequence for him. We dated for a few months and then moved in with one another. I was going through a difficult time not too long after we met as my father had died from a stroke a few months before we met. I was only 23 years old at the time and it was totally unexpected. The loss was setting in on me as the shock of it all was wearing off at the time we met. My ex was wonderfully supportive in so many ways during that very difficult time of mine. However, later in the marriage, there were other issues that came to bear on us, mainly my mental health issues first and then his inability to deal with me as a healed person who wanted to have a career and live a full life — something that was very hard to do in my previous condition.

There were a couple of interesting aspects to this marriage that I realized after it was over — meaning before we separated and later divorced at his request.

1. I realized that I did not particularly like the fact that my ex seemed to need me to be depressed and nearly non-functional to feel ‘needed’ for the colder half of the year when I went into a depressed state. He hated it when I got into hypomania in the spring unable to cope with my increased activity, etc. I would guess that I wouldn’t be able to deal with that part of myself either at this time, not particularly wanting to be around hypomanic people myself currently.
2. When I started to make a really great living doing hypnosis, he felt that I didn’t ‘need’ him. And, he was correct. I would never want to be in a relationship where I ‘needed’ anyone. Rather, I wanted to be in a relationship with someone who ‘wanted’ me for what I could add to his life in a positive way.
3. It bothered me a lot that most of our activities were around his love of art and his need to be photographing or filming whenever we did something, while he had no interest at all in my career path of hypnotism. This even though he was the one who really wanted me to find my ‘right work.’ To be honest it was a very long time to figure it out. Without his support, I most likely never would have found it. So, I am forever grateful to him for that gift.

An excellent relationship with any other person and especially one’s significant other needs to be based on mutual respect and a sharing of some interests, along with similar values.

Communication is a huge part of any healthy relationship, and to be honest this is a place where I fell down miserably. I was full of words (during my hypomanic states in particular), and my ex was rightfully overwhelmed by all of them. I also did not realize that it would have been better to use kinesthetic terms such as ‘feeling’ and ‘touched by‘ instead of the visual terms that I use much of the time such as ‘clear’ and ‘see.’ So, even though he is a visual artist, his primary learning style is that of a kinesthetic so it was as if we were speaking two different languages even though they were both in American English.

Communication also has much to do with the tone of voice and non-verbals as well. Non-verbals really do make up about 57% of the communication and the tone of voice 33% so if either of these is off, well, forget communicating easily with the other person. Given that we both had our issues the tone of voice and non-verbals were not very good between us.

So, there were many learnings to be gained from this experience of over 20 years of marriage to my ex. Yet, I want to make it very clear that even though we did not make it as a married couple we still do very much love one another — and when we communicate now we pick up where we left off and do so in a very respectful and fun manner. Because the truth of the matter is that we very much grew up together. He is currently 61 and I will be 60 in September, so we have known each other for the majority of our lives at this point.

So, what makes it work now where it didn’t work before? Well, from my point of view we have come to realize what was special in each of us and to share that with each other. We don’t see each other often as I have moved out of the US and he is still living very close to where we once lived together in Massachusetts. When we do speak on the phone it is done in a respectful manner where we are each allowing the one to finish what was being said before jumping in to make a point. And, there is mutual respect for what we have come to be vs where we came from.

But, there is something even deeper than the above that needs to be understood and that would be a deep respect and love for one’s self before ever getting involved in a relationship with a significant other. I was a mess when we met after the death of my dad. Later when the manic depression showed up, I was even more of a mess. To my ex’s credit, he helped me through all of that time — the first few years without either of us knowing what was going on with me. When I was free of the manic depression and no longer had the mood swings, I became a different person and that was something that my ex had a hard time dealing with. He was used to the sick, dependent Suzanne — a person that no longer existed. And, thus the marriage necessarily died. I realized that my growth was not something that he could deal with because our dynamic totally changed — well, to be honest, he told me that this was one of the issues. The other was simply that he had never dated anyone before me and that he was ready to go experience other women. My feeling was that if he didn’t want me, I certainly was not going to force him to be with me.

It takes a certain maturity and dedication to be with one person through the decades. It also takes the ability to realize that to attract a person who is a great fit means that we need to know who we are, what we desire in life, and to find a match for those aspects of ourselves. To realize that love does not hurt — it is supportive and kind. Yet, this is something that needs to come from ourselves to ourselves before we can bring it to another — something that I did not have at the time of my marriage — though I would not be able to realize it till a few years later.

So, it takes two people who are willing to be present and capable of changing with the growth and development of each other to make it work over the long term in a happy and healthy way. This must be a rather difficult thing to do or we wouldn’t have 51% divorce rate and 70% of all marriages being unhappy.

We need to be much more thoughtful when we enter into long-term relationships and especially marriages where we are bringing children into the world. The children deserve parents who are able to be there for one another creating a safe and happy environment for the children to grow up in. We never had any children so this was not a concern with us, so it made dissolving the marriage a lot easier to do.

If you are a person who is struggling to find love — and you know that there is some work to be done — do contact me so we can talk about what we may be able to do to help you out. I have helped many individuals and couples over the years to enter healthier relationships and heal those relationships that needed it where both partners were willing to do the work. You can contact me at:

Contact Suzanne

Sometimes we just have to work on communication and sometimes we need to heal the deeper wounds from childhood. In either case, it is great to know that there are methods to heal this stuff.