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Example: If I love my partner enough, it won’t matter that:
Here are the consequences of believing in Love Myth #1:
1 You avoid facing your relationship problems, or seeking solutions to those problems, by telling yourself, ‘If we love each other enough, none of these conflicts or personality differences will matter.’
Dennis, thirty-seven, called me on my radio talk show one day and explained that he was Jewish and his fiancée, Alice, thirty-five, was Catholic. They had been dating for two years, and although they talked about their difference in religion, they never really resolved their feelings about it. ‘I always worried that one day it would be a problem,’ Dennis confessed, ‘but we got along so well in so many other ways, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Then Alice and I started to talk about marriage. When I thought about my future, and about having children, I realized that I wanted my kids to be brought up in the Jewish faith, and that there were things about Alice not being Jewish that I also missed but had never told her. I asked her to convert, but she refused. She is a pretty strict Catholic, and says she wants to be married in the Church by a priest, which means she couldn’t marry a practicing Jew. I keep feeling like our love should conquer these differences, but they don’t seem to go away.’
The love Alice and Dennis felt for one another was not enough to overcome their lack of religious compatibility. Although many couples can make interfaith marriages work, Alice and Dennis were each too deeply entrenched in their own religions to compromise. No matter how much they cared about one another, they could not be happy and true to their own beliefs by staying together. But they had put off facing these problems by telling themselves, ‘If we really love one another, our differences won’t matter.’ They kept trying to love and accept each other more, never facing the obvious until the very end.
2. You stay in unloving and unfulfilling relationships even when they are not working by telling yourself, ‘If I just love him more, he will change.’
Kimberly, twenty-eight, and her husband David, thirty, came to me in hopes of saving their marriage. They had been together for six years but couldn’t seem to get along without constant arguing. ‘I love David so much,’ Kimberly explained with tears in her eyes, ‘but I am constantly criticizing him. It’s driving him crazy, and I hate myself for doing it.’ I asked Kimberly to list her complaints about her husband. ‘David is a quiet type of guy. He’s pretty introspective, and not much for socializing with a lot of people. I’m totally the opposite—very outgoing and talkative, and I love having fun, being with friends, and living life passionately. I hate to say this, but I feel bored a lot of the time with him. It seems like we don’t have anything to talk about, and I feel like I’m always pulling him out of his shell.’
‘I’ve told Kim that this is the way I am,’ David responded tensely. ‘I want to make her happy, but I feel like she is asking me to be someone I am not. I’ve always been low-key, and I really don’t want to change.’
As we talked more, I learned that Kimberly married David because she was looking for stability after having been cheated by a college boyfriend. She was so concerned with making sure he was a nice guy that she never asked herself whether they would be compatible together. Kimberly and David had so many differences in life-style, temperament, and personality that living together harmoniously was next to impossible. They loved one another very much, but it was not enough to make their relationship work.
But Kimberly believed Love Myth #1, that true love conquers all, and continued to stay with David, hoping that if she just loved him more, he would change. She never considered the possibility that David wasn’t changing because David didn’t want to change. She just kept trying to be the perfect wife, believing her love would transform David from the man he was into the man she wanted him to be.
Sadly, belief in this Love Myth can cause you heartache, pain, and even physical harm because it convinces you to stay in relationships that are not healthy. People with very low self-esteem or a childhood history of neglect or abuse often set themselves up in toxic relationships they find difficult to leave, convincing themselves that if they just loved their partner more, his/her harmful behavior would disappear and be replaced with love and affection. This is a trap. Your partner’s dysfunctional behavior is determined by forces that have nothing to do with how loving you are.
3. You beat yourself up emotionally when a relationship doesn’t work, telling yourself, ‘If I had only loved him/her more, I know I could have saved it.’
Eileen, fifty-four, was married to Raoul, sixty, for thirty-one years. Raoul was an alcoholic whose rages and irresponsibility had tortured Eileen and her three children throughout their lives. After pleading with her husband to get some help, and facing his total denial of the problem, Eileen found the courage to leave. Two