Verwandte Artikel zu Is He Mr. Right?

Is He Mr. Right? - Hardcover

Kirshenbaum, Mira

 
9780307336736: Is He Mr. Right?
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307336735 ISBN 13: 9780307336736
Verlag: Harmony Books, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Furnishes honest and clear guidelines for those women trying to decide if they should commit to a relationship, drawing on the feedback and experiences of hundreds of women. By the author of The Weekend Marriage. 20,000 first printing.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mira Kirshenbaum is clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston and has an international reputation as an award-winning, bestselling authority on relationships. She is the author of nine previous books, including the influential Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay; Parent-Teen Breakthrough; Everything Happens for a Reason; and The Weekend Marriage. She has appeared on 20/20, Today, and CBS Early Show, and has been featured as an expert in O, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour, and Good Housekeeping. Visit her at mirakirshenbaum.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Essentials



Looking into Your Future

At any point between your first date and your wedding night, your heart can be gripped by the question, Is this guy my dreamboat or my Titanic? The man I was always meant to be with or a big fat waste of time? A keeper or a loser?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could look into a crystal ball and know, like, today, “Will this guy make me happy? Is this love that will last? Or, if I keep going forward with him, am I just settling? Is there someone else out there who’s even better for me—I wouldn’t want to miss out on the love of my life! Or is this guy Mr. Right?”

There are two possibilities:

1.He might have great qualities and love you, but he’s just not the one. He won’t make you happy. If you commit to him, things will turn out badly. So you’ve got to say good-bye, shed a tear, and move on to someone better.

2.Even if your guy is a gap-toothed goofball, he’s your gap-toothed goofball. Somehow his being the way he is and your being the way you are feels right and works well. He will make you happy. And if you commit, you will have a great future together. So—you’ve got to move forward with him.

But which is true for you?

Figuring this out can easily make the smartest woman feel stupid. Your guy, of course, is a mixed bag. As far as you can tell, he’s not Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong. He’s Mr. Maybe. They say you can’t compare apples and oranges—well, he’s Carmen Miranda’s whole hat, and how do you add up a hatful of different fruit?

Kelly, 31, said, “Okay, let’s see. In favor of his being Mr. Right is the fact that we both like barbecues, baseball, and big dogs. We both hate to get up in the morning or go to sleep at night. We both went to John F. Kennedy Middle School, although in different cities! In favor of his being Mr. Wrong is the fact that we fight a lot over stupid things. I want three kids; he’s not sure he wants one. We rarely want to make love at the same time. We get on each other’s nerves when we’re both in the kitchen.”

Sigh. . . . If only relationships weren’t so confusing. And the early stages are the most confusing. Fears are churning. Hopes are peeping through like crocuses through the snow. Worst of all, solid information is hard to get. When friends ask how we feel about him, we respond with a stir-fry of contradictory feelings. All we know is that we’re searching for certainty, but we’re not sure how to find it. There’s so little to go on. He seems nice, but is he really Hannibal Lecter in sheep’s clothing? He seems distant—is he cold or is he just shy?

Even when you do grab hold of a clue, it can be hard to know what it means. Let’s say you’re a real beach bunny. Then you discover that your guy hates the beach. What do you do? Your friends have opinions (“But he makes so much money!” “But you live for the beach!”). Will he come around? you wonder. Will you get tired of the beach? (Never!) Will you find a way to work around this? Will it drive a wedge between you?

The Fork in the Road

Almost any woman in a developing relationship is hungry for certainty these days. Take Laura, 33. She’d been sitting next to me while we were waiting to board a plane. They’d announced a delay. Since we were going to be there for God knows how long, we started chatting.

She said she was at that stage where it was starting to feel like she and her boyfriend, Jack, should talk about making some kind of commitment. Maybe to move in together. “But I’m afraid Jack isn’t right for me,” Laura said with a queasy look I’ve seen thousands of times, a look you see on the faces of first-time skydivers. “We’ve gone out for five months and had lots of those phone calls where you talk for hours about everything and nothing. That’s the good part.”

Laura leaned toward me. “But I’m not nuts about Jack. I care about him, but shouldn’t I be feeling I’m crazy about him at this point? Something’s missing—I just don’t know what. Magic or something. But what am I, a teenager? Do you need magic and bells and birds singing? I’m afraid I have unrealistic expectations. He’s good. We’re good together. He got me a promise ring.” Laura was silent for a minute. “But what if this is something I’m just telling myself because, let’s face it, I want to get married? I’m at a real fork in the road. If Jack and I aren’t right for each other, I’d get out now if I were smart. Right?

“Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to just not care about the guy until he was totally in love with you and you’d totally checked him out? But women don’t work that way, do we? We put our heart on the line and . . . I don’t know—the whole thing makes you so vulnerable and I hate that. I mean, I really like falling in love, but I don’t like the feeling that the whole thing is so iffy.”

The Search for Certainty

Developing relationships are confusing, but we do our best. It gets frustrating when the things we do to gain certainty only make us more confused.

We’ve tried asking ourselves, “Do I love him?” After all, shouldn’t you just know? And if you do know, shouldn’t it make a difference? But after you roll this around in your head for a while . . . it’s so complicated. Sure, you love him, but the more you think about it, the less clear you are about what the word love even means. That you’re hot for him? That you have “feelings” for him? That you think about him a lot? That you miss the good things about him when he’s not around? (And what good does that do, if when he is around he drives you crazy?)

Let’s face it, thinking about love can be a very confusing way to figure out if he’s Mr. Right. Just think about some of the losers you’ve loved in the past.

Another thing we’ve tried is endlessly analyzing every detail about him and about the relationship. What’s up with his staring at you the way he does when you kiss or make love? What’s that whistling sound in his left nostril, and will it make you want to kill him one day? Why is it that every time the two of you get really close you end up having a fight?

It’s like trying to read tea leaves, except you’re looking for that one tiny tea leaf that tells all. But so far all you’ve gotten is a soggy mess of confusion.

The guy speaks: “I hate it when a woman goes on and on analyzing every detail of our relationship. It’s so discouraging, and honestly it makes me feel she doesn’t like me. I just keep feeling, if we were happy together, if we were meant to be, would we need to do all this overanalyzing?”*

*From time to time you’ll get comments from the guy’s point of view. These are taken from what the men I interviewed told me.

We’ve also tried endlessly analyzing our own motives. Why do you want to be with him? Is it low self-esteem? Pressure from family and friends? Fear you can’t do better? The problem is that if you lift up the top of your head, you find a whole jungle of motives in there, and how do you sort them out?

And of course we’ve tried searching for compatibility. You know, if you like dogs, it would be nice to be with someone who also likes dogs....

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Harmony Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307336735
ISBN 13 
9780307336736
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Crown Archetype
https://www.canadianclassics.it/en-ot/

Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY, 14-1
NEW YORK
NY
10019
USA
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar