The Most Romantic Man In The World
The following is what I read in Dr. Forward's article entitled, Men Who Hate Women And The Women Who Love Them.
The love affair often begins the way Rodgers and Hammerstein would describe it. You see him across a crowded room, your eyes meet and that certain thrill surges through you. Your palms grow damp when he stands near you; your heart beats faster, everything in your body seems to be more alive. This is the dream of happiness , sexual fulfillment and completion. This man will appreciate and be responsive to you. Just being near him is exciting and wonderful. When it happens, it is overpowering. We've come to call it romantic love.
Doctor Forward goes on to explain that: My client Laura's whirlwind courtship started out literally across a crowded room.
At the time, she was a successful account executive for a major cosmetics firm, a very pretty woman with light brown hair, dark almond-shaped eyes and a slender figure. She was thirty-four when she and Bob first met. She was out one evening with a woman friend at a restaurant:
Laura: I had gone to make a phone call, and when I returned to our table, there was this very handsome man sitting there talking to my friend. He had noticed me and was waiting for my return. There was electricity between us from that first moments. I don't think I was ever so attracted to anyone before in my life. He had those flashing eyes that I just can't resist. I was so turned on by him that I couldn't wait to go to bed with him. We got together the next night for our first date. He took me to a lovely little restaurant on the ocean and he took care of the ordering. He's one of those men who knows all about wines and foods and I just love that in a man. He seemed interested in everything about me - what I did, how I felt about things, what I liked. I talked and talked and he just sat there, gazing at me with those electric eyes, absorbing everything I said. After dinner, we went back to my place and listened to music together and then I seduced him. He was too much of a gentleman. I loved that about him. Of course, it was terrific with him sexually and that was it, I felt closer to him than I ever had to any man in my life.
The End Of The Honeymoon The first warning signs that Prince Charming has a dark side usually occurs during a seemingly insignificant incident. What makes it so confusing to the woman is that suddenly her partner's charm has turned to rage and she finds herself subjected to an unreasonable attack on her character. For Laura, the first incident occurred on Christmas Eve, after she and Bob had been living together for four months. As Laura Describes it:
I was wrapping presents late that night, and he said he was going to bed and wanted me to come in with him. I told him I'd be in as soon as I finished and he flew off the handle. He said he wanted me there now. We'd already made love that evening, so I knew he wasn't asking me because of that, but I'd never seen him angry like that. Before I knew it, he was screaming at me, calling me a selfish bitch. Then he slammed the door to the bedroom so hard that the whole apartment shook. I just sat there, totally shaken. I didn't know what to think. I chalked it off to the holidays and pressure and things like that.
Laura was so enthralled with the way Bob made her feel most of the time that she did not want to see his temper tantrum as the danger signal it really was. If she had not been so swept away by her romantic feelings, she might have been able to step back for a moment and realize that Bob had a problem with his anger. This was very important information and it had a tremendous effect on her life. But instead of seeing his explosion as a warning that her lover was capable of childish and intimidating outbursts. Laura explained it away to herself.
Rationalizing His Behavior Raionalization is what we do when we smooth over any insight that interferes with our good feelings. It's a way of making the unacceptable acceptable. By giving good reasons
for what would otherwise distress us, we make sense out of confusing and even frightening situations.
If the misogynist were angry and critical all the time, any woman's relationship would soon wear thin. But between his outbursts he's liable to be as charming and lovable as he was when you first met. Unfortunately, the good times support your mistaken belief that the ugly times are somehow just a bad dream - not the real him.
His loving behavior encourages you to continue hoping that things will be wonderful from now on, but there is no way of knowing how he will react to anything because his reactions are liable to be different each time, I call this Jeky-and-Hydeing. Laura found herself totally at a loss when Bob, soon after his Christmas Eve outburst, began switching back and forth, he could still be charming and ardent, but his Jekyll-and-Hydeing became more of a pattern in their relationship. Blaming Yourself
Once you have accepted Jekyll-and-Hydeing, from attack to apology, from rage to charm, you are setting yourself up for an even more painful phase. The logic goes like this: If he has the capacity to be so wonderful, then it must be something I am doing that's making things go wrong. The misogynist bolsters this belief by reminding you that he would always be nice if only you would stop this or change that or be more of this or a little of that, this is very dangerous thinking. Your new attempt to make sense of the confusion in your relationship represents a giant leap in teh wrong direction, you've gone from recognizing that there are troublesome aspects to your partner's behavior to attempting to justify them or explain them away, to now internalizing and accepting the responsibility for how he acts. The early indications of the misogynist's quick temper are sporadic. The explosions don't become a way of life until some kind of commitment has been made. This can be a verbal commitment, moving in together, an engagement or a marriage. Then, once he's sure he has
her, the situation changes rapidly.
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