How You're Keeping Yourself Single and Unhappy

By Mary R. Dittman, M.B.A.

I just wanted him to love me.  But he didn’t.

My mother asked me what I wanted in the relationship and all I could come up with was, I want him to love me. 

I had no concept about what I wanted from a relationship or how I wanted to feel in my own life.  I just wanted a man to love me.  I wanted to get married and have a family. 

But I hadn’t clarified what I was willing to accept and unwilling to accept in a man and in a relationship.  It seemed that the only qualification necessary to date me was that a man act like he might eventually love me.  That was enough for me to hang in there.

That’s how I burned up years on relationships where I was devalued, taken for granted, and left feeling like I’d been used.

In one relationship, I tolerated a man going on and on about his ex-girlfriend and thought it was a compliment when he told me he felt like he could talk to me about anything.  What I didn’t realize w...

And How to Stop Obsessing About It

By Mary R. Dittman, M.B.A.

Have you even wondered why “he” chose “her”? 

This wondering may show up in two scenarios:

(a) you wonder why that man (guy you know, celebrity, athlete) chose the woman he’s with; or,

(b) you wonder why the man you wanted (or were with) chose someone else.

Let’s focus on Scenario B today: “your” guy chose her instead of you.

I was dating someone once, and right after we broke up, he started seeing someone who had a less-than-sterling reputation.

To the outsider, it’s clear that his interesting choice had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his own character.

But when you’re inside the scenario, it’s normal to wonder if there’s something wrong with you.

I think there are two issues here:

1. He doesn’t want to be with you
2. He does want to be with her

They may be correlated, but not causal.  That’s fancy scientific jargon for, “they might both be happening, but one doesn’t necessarily cause the oth...