Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Tired of Intimacy? Try Jealousy—

• Dear Dell: My color is scarlet, honey! With me it's Valentine's Day all year long.

Your Saturday article is true. I'm in my late thirties. I'm incredibly attractive. I make six figures as a consultant in D.C. But I still know all about being a woman. No man ever goes hungry with me.

I'm a catch!

Every man I've ever dated has cheated. My ex husbands cheated. It's not because of me. It's the way men are. Maybe there are some who don't, but they are boring, like your client said.

My advice to your women readers is that you have to manage your man. You have to keep him off guard. Like, borrow his coat outside, then "notice" that it smells like another woman. Or you can plant a lipstick in one of the pockets and then confront him with it because it's not yours. This makes him hold off on chasing other skirts, because he already thinks I'm onto him.

No man had a reason to cheat on me. I always give 110% to my relationships. Meow! But the fact is that all men are players. So with my proven strategies, I am able to keep them under control a lot longer before the inevitable [affair].

• Dear Scarlet: If I'm reading your second paragraph correctly, it sounds like you're a good cook.

More importantly, let me start off where you conclude. No man does have any reason to cheat on you. Nor is any woman ever justified in cheating on her partner.

My February 5 Divorce Balance was intended to speak more to personality than character. You might appreciate Dr. Judy Kuriansky's advice on "getting together," titled (seriously), The Complete Idiot's Guide to A Healthy Relationship. Take a particularly close look at Chapter 22, "Betrayal: When One of You Has an Affair."

The quizzes, pointed questions, and detailed checklists are worth the price of the book.

Beyond this, Scarlet, it seems to me like you want to put your relationships into some sort of geosynchronous orbit outside your otherwise well-rounded life: "Come this close, but no closer."

The arguably unimpeachable label I hear a lot for this in my post-divorce work is the call for "boundaries." But relationships expert H. Norman Wright warns: "Some people are so structured, so cautious, so compartmentalized, that you'd think they invented boundaries! Their concerns may appear so legitimate that you're unaware that it's actually a fear of involvement."

As a successful businesswoman, you already know that the measure of "proven strategies," will flow from outcomes. That said, we can never both love our partners and at the same time "keep them under control."

"When you trust, you're vulnerable."

What some call "strategies," others might call "games."

I'm talking science, not high school. If you take a look at research on this subject by the late Eric Berne, M.D., you'll see that "games" are the antithesis of intimacy. And you may be surprised to see any number of familiar dynamics under "game" titles such as "Now I've got you...," "Courtroom," and "Uproar."

Is it truly "inevitable" that no man can be faithful to you? Or do the jealousy setups you design actually create, rather than uncover, intimacy challenges?

Marianne Williamson shares the following context.

"The reason intimacy is so important is that it does force us to surrender our sense of separateness, not in a neurotic way but in an enlightened way. I understand why women had to completely renegotiate our terms of partnership, after centuries of institutionalized subjugation, but at a certain point we have to show up enough to at least give men a chance to do it right."

Let me leave you with this. In your eMail to me, you seemed to feel that three words were so important to your story that you gave them their own, dedicated paragraph. You closed that sentence with an exclamation point. Important stuff; pay attention.

"I'm a catch!"

For what it's worth, I agree. Now my encouragement would be to treat yourself that way.

Happy Valentine's Day, Scarlet.

—posted by Dell Deaton @2:39 PM EST 2/9/2005 [675]

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