Poisoned Love. Caitlin Rother

which began the day he left for the SOFT conference. Assuming that he’d be feeling a similar sense of loss, she told him she knew what he’d be going through during his week away.

      After speaking with his sister the previous week, she told him she now understood that he had modeled their marriage on his parents’ and his behavior on his father’s. As Nicole saw it, their marriage would be destroyed if he did not come to terms with a few things. Just like his father, Michael seemed unable to commit to his wife. He didn’t know how to be in love over the long term because he was always chasing “the spark of falling in love.” And he didn’t know how to be loyal except to people who fed his self-esteem, such as “the needy women in the background.”

      Nicole said she didn’t feel he was being manipulative or nasty, it was just learned behavior, and bad behavior at that. But if he didn’t deal with these issues, they would haunt him forever. The separation would be difficult for both of them, she said, but she was hopeful their relationship could survive.