Andrea Gerak: Andrea's Blog

From the previous post How not to choose the right partner? Mistake #3, simply follows

Mistake #4:

when you don't look, only listen. 

This one should be very simple, yet so many times we fall for the trap...

Interesting that I have planned this topic as the next one for my series, and yesterday I bumped into exactly this in two different places. One was a friend's status update on Facebook, the other one was a blog post I read called No More I Love You's, by Wolynski (who has also contributed to my Mistake #3 article with his comment).

Of course, the flowers, whispering I Love You's and sweet nothings, candle light and all that jazz, will fancy your girl and make a romance romance, they are all beautiful, they are the salt & pepper of a relationship - but would you eat salt & pepper by itself, without the meal? And here we are back at Mistake #2 where one should know first what kind of things one wants to share with the loved one, what would be the meal.

And for that, it is not enough to listen, one has to look. To ask for proving it when he or she says "I love you", might be a bit vague, because if your sweetheart doesn't know you enough yet to find out what would you need or want and you don't tell, it might easily result in upset.

But you can listen what he or she says and you can observe what he or she is doing about it. This is actually quite easy and speaks for itself - if one is willing and able to observe.

Let's see how it can go in reality, and when you realize the first such signs, you better turn around and RUN.

Your guy says he will be the bacon bringer for the big family and you can stay home and take care of the house and the many kids - But he doesn't even earn enough for two of you...

The handsome boy is raving about how much he loves dancing and when he was a bit younger, he would spend all his free nights out in the disco, till dawn, yuppie, that's your life! - But it takes him 2 years to take you out dancing, once...

You are a musician girl and your guy says he will be your manager. Wonderful, you know he is a perfectionist and he can do any task to the highest standards - But you soon realize that he doesn't know anything even about the local music scene and in fact, never liked to go to concerts, he prefers to spend his evenings at home on the sofa...

Other artist examples I mentioned in my previous postings. 

Your better half is telling you that you can talk with him about everything, anytime, because he only likes honest and open communication - But as time goes by, you have to see that he simply refuses to talk about certain subjects. Let's say, he is getting into the same kind of trouble at his work over and over again and he is bringing home to you all these problems which obviously will have a bad influence on your relationship, but he is not willing to look at what could he possibly change to take responsibility for the matter and sort it out. No matter how kind and gentle your approach, he would simply close his ears and mind and shut you up.

The absolutely charming boy is telling you how beautiful you are and all those sweet words that make you melt, how much he would love you to be there with him - But besides sighing, he is not making any arrangements, not even plans so that you can be together. One of my most wonderful relationships was with a man I dated for a while through half of Europe, we lived in two far corners of the continent and we met each other in 4 countries, with impossible stories of catching trains and buses and so on. A beautiful memory for my whole life, and this man inspired me to write some of my poems. Unfortunately, what didn't work out between us was what I mentioned in Mistake #2: too different lives.

You see how messy can it get when one makes only one of these mistakes? And many times these four interlace, and #4 was not the last one yet...

Text, photo: Andrea Gerak

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