3239 Happy?

Monday, January 24, 2011

“Red flags when you’re dating don’t disappear after the wedding.”
-- Shelley at thehormonezone.blogspot.com --

----------------------------------------------------

The green quotes up there are random, just the next one in my list, and seldom have anything to do with any post topic. But today, it almost applies.

I've been thinking about an old friend whom I haven't seen in a few years. He was one of my doctors in the '80s, and we became friends. At one point, he decided he wanted to get married, and married the first woman who said yes. Some men do that. They seem to suddenly decide it's time, and they'll fall madly in love with the first woman who'll have them.

They had two kids right away, and then ....

He confided in me that he was unhappy, because she seemed to make no effort anymore to make him happy. Stuff like he was on a strict macrobiotic diet (she and the kids weren't), so when he got home from the office every day, she had cooked dinner for herself and the kids, and had eaten, but had made nothing for him. And she'd make plans with her friends, and if it was something he didn't want to do, or people he didn't like, she'd just go without him.

I listened sympathetically and kept my mouth shut for a long time, until I'd about had it with his whines and complaints that "She doesn't make me happy."

I sat him down one day and told him, "Your happiness is not her responsibility! Not her job. Your happiness is your own job. Either you are happy in yourself, or you're not. Another person can increase your happiness, but they can't create it. So if you're not happy, it's because you're looking for someone to give it to you instead of making it yourself. And no, I can't tell you how to do that. You need to figure that out yourself. What I do know is that people like to share happiness, and to increase happiness that's already there. If you're happy in yourself, maybe she will be more willing to share it with you. You were happy yourself back when you first met, and happy when you were dating, and the two of you had a lot of fun, but then you, like, handed over the happiness generating job to her. It's not a job she signed up for."

He thought about it a long time. He found a few things that made him happy, got more involved with the kids and some external activities, some work on the house that made him proud. He did seem happier and more content. But eventually they divorced anyway. They really weren't suited from the beginning, had been dating less than a year when they married, and any of us watching could have told him that they had too little in common except that he wanted a wife and she wanted a husband, but, when a guy's in the "wanna get married" fever, nothing else matters.

I last saw him about five years ago. At that time he'd been dating a woman for a long time, maybe five or eight years. The ex had taken everything, including the house and a large chunk of support. He was living in the semi-finished basement of his chiropractic office and had the kids every weekend and most of the summer, and he seemed happier and more contented than ever.
.