Falling In Love: Why We Choose The Lovers We Choose Part 15

She and Jill would talk about it at great length. Because of their financial difficulties, Jill and her parents lived in a one-bedroom apartment, enclosed in their own little world.

The most traumatic experience of Jill's childhood was a temporary sense of abandonment when she was about four years old. Jill and her parents drove to visit relatives many miles away.

After the long and exhausting drive, Jill's father carried his fast-asleep daughter from the car to the relatives' guest room in their home. Convinced that Jill would never wake up in her state of exhaustion, her parents went out with their relatives to a nearby cafe. When they returned after about an hour, they found Jill in the middle of the living room screaming, almost paralyzed with fear and exhaustion.

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Other experiences, that could have been traumatic, such as falling off a swing and breaking her arm, cutting her forehead, or having one of her many severe ear infections, were not that traumatic for Jill because her mother was always there, nurturing, a.s.suring, and comforting. When she was sick, her parents let her stay home; her mother would make soup and let her watch television. One time, when Jill was humiliated in school and was certain she would never be able to show her face there again, her mother a.s.sured her that by the next day no one would remember.

And she was right! Jill thought that was amazing-how did her mother know?

While Jill is very aware of the many benefits she had as an only child in terms of the respect she received from her parents as well as the love and attention showered on her, she is also aware of the price she paid. The price was being alone a lot and having to grow up too fast. She thinks it would have been wonderful if she had had a brother or a sister. As an only child Jill had to deal with adults and adult issues when she felt she was still supposed to be a child and behave like a child. Since her parents couldn't afford baby sitters they took her with them everywhere they went. She saw the games adults play, their dishonesties, and it made her cynical about them.

When she was young, Jill was sure she was very different from her parents, but every day as a young adult, she notices more of the similarities between herself and them. "We are so similar,"

she says, "I am half my father and half my mother. There's no doubt about that."

What kind of a romantic relations.h.i.+p is a young woman who was the apple of her parents' eyes likely to develop? Well, Jill is married and describes herself as very close to her husband. "He's definitely my best friend. I've never been that close to someone. It sounds so corny, but it's true. I never have a feeling with him that I can't say something. He always knows how I mean something and I know exactly what he means. We argue sometimes, but we are really in sync. We know what the other person thinks before he even says it."

(This last comment is a sign of a symbiotic relations.h.i.+p.) When they first met, Jill thought her husband was "a jerk". The second time they actually talked, she thought she'd like to go out with him, but didn't think it was going to last because, since he came from a small town, she thought he wanted to play around and be wild. But she discovered that she was wrong. When asked what attracted her she says, "Physically I was attracted to him. He had sort 194 of a carefree att.i.tude. He was fresh, not jaded." When they first started spending time together, they would apologize: "Is it okay if I come over?" Then it avalanched into spending every moment together. In the last two years they have been "inseparable."

Jill describes her marriage as close, secure, loving, inspirational, and constantly growing. "I am not worrying about what I'm saying," she explains. "This aspect of my life is totally taken care of, so I can take care of other aspects of my life without worrying about it. We love each other very much and we show it often. Through being together, being able to have this support system, we can be more creative and explore other aspects. It gives more options. I feel able to try new things, and to change, and to grow spiritually, s.e.xually, mentally."

Despite the obvious similarity between the close, secure, and loving relations.h.i.+p Jill has with her husband and the close, secure and loving childhood relations.h.i.+p she had with her parents, when she is asked about it, she doesn't see the similarity. "I don't know.... We understand each other much more and he is more interested in understanding me. [Like father?] He doesn't disapprove or approve, whereas they do. He doesn't let me get away with as much as they do. I have a tendency to like to have things my way. They would indulge me. He confronts me on this. [Like mother?]" As for similarity, Jill notes "being close and being incredibly honest with each other.

We agree on the basic things. We have the same values."

What are likely to be the areas of conflict in the marriage of a woman who thought that her father was "useless as a breadwinner"? The answer, "He's not as ambitious as I am, and I don't understand this. So we made this deal. I go to school full-time and he works, and after I graduate, he goes to school and I support him. We argue about that a lot. We have an argument and then go into a pep talk. I hate it. I hate arguing. But I think it's healthy." It is clear that not only the content of the fights Jill has with her husband-why aren't you ambitious?-but their pattern- first fight, then reconcile through talking-is similar to the fights between Jill's parents and her fights with her mother.

And what is the approach to separation of a woman who was "very close" to her mother, who had a difficult time being away from her even for a very short time, and for whom a one-hour "abandonment" was the most traumatic childhood experience? It turns out that Jill and her husband have never been apart for longer than a day since they got married. "If we were, I'm sure we'd be on the phone all the time. For short periods it's okay because we are both very busy, but we have withdrawal symptoms."

Jill is an example of a secure attachment style. In her highly intimate, somewhat symbiotic, relations.h.i.+p with her husband, Jill FOUR STORIES 195.

reenacts her childhood highly intimate, somewhat symbiotic relations.h.i.+p with her mother. The equality, security, respect, and total openness of her marital relations.h.i.+p is also similar to her childhood relations.h.i.+ps with her parents. In addition to replicating the emotional tone of her relations.h.i.+p with her parents, Jill replicates their unresolved issue-a dominant, explosive, woman and a loving non-ambitious man.

AN a.n.a.lYSIS OF JILL'S ROMANTIC RELATIONs.h.i.+P Dating frequency: 4 (average number of dates) Number of significant intimate relations.h.i.+ps: 1 (the relations.h.i.+p with the husband) Length of this relations.h.i.+p: 30 months Commitment to the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (happily married) Sense of security in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (very high, feels totally secure) Ability to be oneself in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (definitely yes, can be totally herself) Intimacy in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (very high, symbiosis, know what each other thinks) Power in the relations.h.i.+p: 4 (both partners have equal power) Pursuer/Distancer: 4 (both partners have equal involvement in the relations.h.i.+p) Physical attraction to partner: 5 (physical attraction mentioned) Friends.h.i.+p before romance: 3 (knew each other a little beforehand) Stereotyped s.e.x roles: 2 (s.e.x role stereotypes are not mentioned and are not an issue) Frequency of conflicts: 4 (fighting some times) Ability to deal with conflicts: 6 (talking about everything and trying to resolve) How are conflicts resolved: talking Ability to stand separation: 3 (suffers withdrawal symptoms) Jealousy is a problem in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) Jealousy is a personal problem: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) Arousal played a role in the initial attraction: no Propinquity played a role in the initial attraction: no 196 Similarity played a role in the initial attraction: yes Partner's attraction played a role in the initial attraction: no Physical attraction played a role in the initial attraction: yes Personality traits of the partner played a role in the initial attraction: yes Status of partner played a role in the initial attraction: no Is/was partner satisfying an important need? yes Is the partner described as the "best friend"? yes Was it love at first sight? no Is the interviewee showing psychological understanding? yes Is partner similar to father? yes Is partner similar to mother? yes Is partner different from father? yes Is partner different from mother: yes Are the relations.h.i.+ps with partner and parents similar? yes, both are close and honest Number of children: none s.e.xual preference: heteros.e.xual Abuse in the relations.h.i.+p: definitely not STEVE.

Steve was also an only child. His parents divorced when he was a baby and he hardly ever saw his father. His mother had different boyfriends throughout his childhood; some of them lived with her. But neither she nor they were adequate as parents, so Steve spent most of his time at his grandparents' house. As a child he thought his mother was his sister. She would come for visits, stay for a while, and then leave. It was only when he started going to school that Steve moved in with her. He discovered that she could be demanding, moody, cruel, and had a very unconventional circle of friends, some of them drug dealers, who were involved in crazy and scary things. Steve was sure that his mother never did things the way other people did them. She always tried to evade the system even if it meant cheating and lying. She didn't like working and preferred to stay at home and do nothing. She seemed incapable of taking care of things. Often she was out of the house, leaving Steve alone, miserable, and terrified. Knowing how cruel and vindictive she could be, he was terrified of being caught in the crossfire between some of the shady characters she knew.

In comparison to the difficult and complex relations.h.i.+p Steve had with his mother, his relations.h.i.+p with his grandparents was FOUR STORIES 197.

wonderful. In their house he had a taste of normal life. His grandfather took him fis.h.i.+ng and took him to amus.e.m.e.nt parks and bowling. After he moved to his mother's place, Steve would often wake himself before sunrise, get dressed, and sneak out of the house. He wanted to get to his grandparents' house, have breakfast with them, and see his grandfather work.

While Steve's father abandoned him, and his mother's boyfriends terrified him, his grandfather was a positive and significant masculine figure in Steve's life. He was wise and knowledgeable, caring and strong. No one would ever tell him what to do except grandmother. He once got a loud obnoxious person to shut up just by going over and asking him very calmly to please be quiet. His size had a lot to do with it. Steve's grandfather was a very big man, big hands, big arms. Even people who were eager to get into a fight calmed down quickly when they saw him approach.

Steve's grandfather was always doing something, always busy with some project. He loved repairing things, building things with his hands. And he was a very caring person. He took care of his own mother even though she was never much of a mother to him. Probably identifying with Steve's plight, his grandfather took good care of Steve as a child. He gave Steve everything he wanted: an electric train, bicycles, trips. Christ-mas was wonderful because Steve would get a ton of gifts. He loved sitting and watching sport programs with his grandfather. At night Steve would sneak out of bed and get into bed with his grandfather and grandmother.

Grandmother was the one who took care of the kind of things his mother ignored. She took care of Steve's needs, cooked for him, cleaned, took him to the doctor. She was always asking what he was doing, what was troubling him, how he was managing.

He loved her dearly and felt very close to her, but he felt closer to his grandfather. Even as a young adult he described himself as feeling very close to his grandparents. "Everything they ask of me I do, if I only can," he says.

What kind of intimate relations.h.i.+ps is a man like Steve likely to have? A man who had such a complex and non-nurturing relations.h.i.+p with his mother? A man who hardly knew his father, and whose most stable, deep, and significant male bonding was with his grandfather? Whose most significant nurturing figure was his grandmother? In response to the question of whether he is currently in an intimate relations.h.i.+p, Steve says, "no." Has he ever been in a romantic relations.h.i.+p? "No, not really." "It's tough, cause I can be 198 guessing wrong. When you finally meet someone you want to go out with, they don't always want to go out with you."

Steve was in love once. "One of the only women I really fell in love with is this girl I was going out with a year ago. I knew her a lot of years. She hung around the group that I hung around. I'd always see her around, and one night we were at the same club and started looking at each other. Then we talked and stuff. She had just broken up with a boyfriend. We [I?] liked each other but we [I?] were waiting to make a move. She's a big girl, about six-foot. From the moment I saw her, I liked her, red hair, good family, and she's interesting, very independent. I liked everything about her. She was at the center, everybody knew her. Many of the women in our group found themselves a boyfriend and adjusted themselves to his pattern. She didn't do it.

I sent her flowers every Friday. I would arrive at her door with wine and cheese, the whole routine. She was special and I wanted to make it special. I gave her a lot of s.p.a.ce. I didn't call her every night.

I didn't tell her 'I love you' the way boys love girls. That's one of the problems. I'm one of these guys who don't say what they feel, and it's hard. Because maybe I'm guessing wrong. Once, on her birthday, she had a date with me. Then she changed it to a breakfast, and then to a lunch, and then she gave me a talk on how she's not ready for a relations.h.i.+p. So I moved back. I don't think I'm ready for the kind of relations.h.i.+p she wanted. I have a bad problem with the physical aspect of the relations.h.i.+p, the whole boy-girl thing. She was comfortable with the physical part in her relations.h.i.+p with other men. But with me she could see that it was more than that. I saw her regularly and tried to spend time with her for four months. She was very busy, all the time."

Steve found the relations.h.i.+p exciting, enjoyable, and fascinating, but also scary. "I liked to talk to her about stuff. I was amazed at the things that she was doing. Just being around her was pleasurable. I liked giving her things, just thinking about places that I could take her to. I was awfully happy but also scared, not knowing the game of relations.h.i.+ps. I didn't know what she wants. It scared the h.e.l.l out of me, a lot of feelings I wasn't used to feeling. It's tough to deal with someone when you feel like that. There was nothing that she could do wrong. I put her on a pedestal."

In response to the question about possible similarity to his mother, Steve says: "I'm trying not to see a similarity, but I could see similarities. I can easily do it, but it would spoil the picture in my brain of what I wanted her to be. She was definitely a woman of the 90's, very sure of herself. She ran her life, knew how to be on top.

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She would tell me to do stuff in a similar way to the way my mother told me to do things. I wanted someone to dominate over me." It is significant that the woman Steve chose to fall in love with is similar to his mother and not to his grandparents.

Steve is an example of an anxious-ambivalent attachment style.

After the relations.h.i.+p ended, Steve went out with only two other women. One seemed interested in him, but he wasn't sure he was interested in her (probably because of her obvious interest in him).

Actually, Steve is not sure what he wants. It seems that what he wants, consciously or unconsciously, is yet another strong and dominant woman with whom he can re-enact his frustrating, painful childhood experience with his mother.

AN a.n.a.lYSIS OF STEVE'S ROMANTIC RELATIONs.h.i.+P Dating frequency: 3 (very small number of dates) Number of significant intimate relations.h.i.+ps: 1 (the relations.h.i.+p was significant but not intimate) Length of this relations.h.i.+p: 4 months Commitment to the relations.h.i.+p: 2 ("actually, nothing really happened") Sense of security in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (very low, "I felt scared.") Ability to be oneself in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (not really) Intimacy in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (very low, "I don't know the dating game.") Power in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (partner had most of the power, "I wanted to be controlled") Pursuer/Distances: 2 (interviewee is the pursuer in the relations.h.i.+p) Physical attraction to partner: 5 (physical attraction mentioned) Friends.h.i.+p before romance: 3 (knew each other a little before the romance started) Stereotyped s.e.x roles: 5 (s.e.x roles mentioned: "She's a woman of the 90s.") Frequency of conflicts: 3 (low frequency, didn't dare to object) Ability to deal with conflicts: 2 (issues don't get discussed and are not resolved) How are conflicts resolved: escaping Ability to stand separation: 3 (suffers) Jealousy is a problem in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) 200.

Jealousy is a personal problem: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) Arousal played a role in the initial attraction: yes Propinquity played a role in the initial attraction: yes Similarity played a role in the initial attraction: no Partner's attraction played a role in the initial attraction: no Physical attraction played a role in the initial attraction: yes Personality traits of the partner played a role in the initial attraction: yes Status of partner played a role in the initial attraction: yes Is/was partner satisfying an important need? yes Is the partner described as the "best friend"? no Was it love at first sight? no Is the interviewee showing psychological understanding? no Is partner similar to father: not clear Is partner similar to mother: yes Is partner different from father: not clear Is partner different from mother: not clear Are the relations.h.i.+ps with partner and the parent similar? yes s.e.xual preference: heteros.e.xual Number of children: none Abuse in the relations.h.i.+p: possibly (emotional abuse in the form of rejection) MARY.

Like Steve's parents, Mary's parents separated when she was a young girl. Her father remarried, but her mother did not. Her father was a successful businessman, her mother was a housewife, and Mary, too, hardly saw her father even before her parents broke up. He would leave for work very early in the morning and come back very late at night. He was often away on business, at times for months. After the divorce there was a period in which he took his children out for dinner often, and they thought it was weird; when he lived with them they never saw him eat.

Mary was the second of four children. She spent more time with her siblings than with her mother. The mother's way of teaching them to cope was to let them take care of things on their own. Mary felt that other children were much closer to their mothers than she was. When she would have a fight with FOUR STORIES 201.

one of her siblings, her mother refused to hear about it and told them to figure it out on their own. Knowing that this was going to be her answer, her children avoided approaching her. Mary remembers her mother's favorite saying: "Take care of number one." She didn't understand what it meant. Mary's mother was non-judgmental of other people but very critical of her own children. For example, she criticized Mary's sister because she got a B in a cla.s.s, and unjustly a.s.sumed that she hadn't worked hard enough. She was also critical of Mary's appearance. One time, when Mary was a young girl sitting on her mother's lap, her mother told her she could lose some weight. It made Mary feel very bad.

As an adult recounting this event, Mary noted that she should not have been bothered by weight at that age. Her mother used to look at Mary's hair and tell her she needed a hair cut or that her hair was too thin. They often had fights about how much Mary weighed and how she looked. But the most painful incident happened when Mary sat on her mother's lap and told her that she loved her. Her mother's cool response was to correct her and say that Mary didn't love her but needed her, and, as a child, was dependent on her. Years later, Mary still remembered painfully how hurt and rejected she had felt.

Mary's father was a very closed and emotionally distant man and his children never understood him. Before the divorce, he bought himself a car. The family had a family car that was quite adequate, and all of a sudden there was another car parked next to the house. At first, the children a.s.sumed that it belonged to a neighbor. Then one day they saw their father drive it and thought it was very strange. When they asked him about it, he said, "I decided that we need another car." Then, saying that he needed a place to work because his desk stood in a corner in the living room, he showed them an apartment that he had rented. All this seemed reasonable, but, of course, was the way he chose to gradually introduce the children to the idea that he was leaving the house. And they didn't get it. It was Mary's mother who told them about the divorce. Long before that Mary had felt that something bad was happening, but didn't know what.

Mary never felt close to her father. She describes her relations.h.i.+p with him as distant and "heavy." A big part of her father's relations.h.i.+p with his children involved his bringing gifts and their receiving them. When he came back from business trips he would bring them all sorts of gifts. The children liked the gifts but it didn't seem to them like the normal relations.h.i.+p most children had with their fathers.

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Father would do nice things such as take them to an amus.e.m.e.nt park, something their mother refused to do, but would never go on rides. He would stand on the side taking pictures. When the children came off the rides, they often couldn't find him anywhere.

They would run around looking for him. It didn't seem normal.

He would do nice things but he himself wasn't there. His heart wasn't in it.

Mary's father didn't like children in general and was uncomfortable around them. He was patient with his own children, and always seemed happy to help them with their school work. He hated pets and found it difficult that his kids had pets.

He had little in common with his children, but made an effort.

Mary felt closer to her mother only because she was around more.

When Mary was hurt or sick, mother was the one who took care of her. Father simply "wasn't there."

What effect does a father have if he doesn't like children and maintains a relations.h.i.+p with his own children that is "distant" and "heavy"?

What effect does a mother have if her children experience her as uninvolved, critical, and, at least on one occasion, rejecting? When asked about romantic relations.h.i.+ps, Mary says "Well, I'm single and I don't have a boyfriend and I haven't had a boyfriend. I would say I have never had a boyfriend.

"I never dated in High School. When I went to college I dated some. In five years I probably went out with about ten people. That's not very much. And most of those people I didn't see ever again.

Since I've been in college, here's my terrible bias, I have even more of a distrust for guys at that age. I feel like it's a heartache for a lot of people. Other people are more excited about just being with someone than being with someone in particular. I had a few good male friends, well, two, but as far as a romantic relations.h.i.+p goes, I just was not ready emotionally for it. I was just not used to it. Most people were moving faster than I was and I just wasn't very comfortable, so I would get out of the romantic relations.h.i.+p. For a while that really bothered me, especially in the first and second years. I thought, what's wrong with me? Then I decided that if it takes me longer, it takes me longer, and that's okay."

Even with the two men she dated several times, "There was always a sense that the relations.h.i.+p wasn't my idea. I have no problem being friends with men, but it's sort of a struggle getting into a romantic thing...something about it just didn't feel right to me. Often I didn't even feel like I had a chance to become attracted to someone. At least with two, two I liked, I could see that I could become FOUR STORIES 203.

romantically attracted to them, but they just moved so fast that I suddenly felt like I was uncomfortable. The whole idea just scared me and so it ended for me, and so it ended that way.

"I kind of felt bad about it though. I don't know why I should have.

I guess there were just a lot of unsaid a.s.sumed things. I a.s.sumed that it was going to be a friends.h.i.+p longer, and I was amazed that it wasn't, so that was the problem I had. A lot of my female friends had boyfriends or had a steady boyfriend or they just dated a lot. And so, in comparison, I felt like I was doing something wrong, but it didn't outweigh how uncomfortable I felt. So I decided, well, I guess I'm just different.

"I remember with one person, I knew he had a girlfriend so I just thought we were friends and I was kind of attracted to him, but we were just friends. When he made a move to be more than that, I kind of lost respect for him. The next day I saw him. He was kind of mad, but I don't think he was mad because of anything that didn't happen. I think his pride was hurt. I have a hard time seeing men mistreat their girlfriends.

"Another guy was in one of my cla.s.ses and he said 'Do you want to meet after cla.s.s and talk?' I thought that was weird but I said okay.

I guess I knew him as a friend for about a week and then he showed this romantic interest that I didn't think was there. I didn't even feel like I knew him well enough to be attracted to him yet. I just said look, things are going too fast. I'm not used to this. He didn't like me after that."

When a.n.a.lyzing her experiences with men, Mary says, "I think it may have been partly my fault. I don't trust a guy until I really know him, and if he shows too much interest and just gets physical, then I'm not the right person for him to be with. I have a lot of friends who like to go to parties and when a guy would show interest it would just be a one-night thing, and they would never see him again. I didn't want to deal with that at all, so I just kind of said no. I'm sure that I could have made it work, if I really wanted to work at the relations.h.i.+p. But I know I do get scared real fast.

"I think that someday I would like to get married and have kids, but I really would like it to start with a friends.h.i.+p first." When asked what kind of a person she imagines getting involved with Mary says: "Someone who, I was just going to say someone who likes kids. I don't know why. I don't have this great need to have children, but for some reason, a man who likes children and animals appeals to me, someone who cares about living things, aside from any s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p, and someone who is smart.

"I don't think I could live with anyone who was terribly clingy.

I'm probably too standoffish right now, so I know I would have to work at being less so. But I still think that I'm going to need someone 204 who doesn't have to do everything together.... For some reason I just keep thinking it is going to be scary, but it shouldn't be. It should be just friends, so what does it matter if it's tomorrow or ten years from now? I don't think it would be in the immediate future.

I have to take everything slow and I can't work fast. I just feel that the slower the better."

Mary doesn't know why she wants a romantic partner who likes kids and animals. But we do; we know that her father disliked children and hated pets. The anxiety aroused in Mary at the mere thought of an intimate relations.h.i.+p suggests an avoidant attachment style. Mary was pushed to be independent too early, before she achieved a sense of security in her early love relations.h.i.+p with her parents, especially her mother. Mary has no model of a warm and loving intimate relations.h.i.+p, and she has no faith in her own lovability because she did not feel loved and cherished as a child.

AN a.n.a.lYSIS OF MARY'S ROMANTIC RELATIONs.h.i.+P Dating frequency: 1 (very low number of dates) Number of significant intimate relations.h.i.+ps: 0 Commitment to a relations.h.i.+p: 1 (has never been in an intimate relations.h.i.+p) All questions about the intimate relations.h.i.+p: not relevant.

All questions about the initial attraction: not relevant.

All questions about partner's similarity/dissimilarity to parents: not relevant Is the interviewee showing psychological understanding?

Not clear Number of children: none s.e.xual preference: heteros.e.xual JACK.

Like Jill, Jack was a beloved only child. He grew up in a small college town. His father taught at the college and his mother was a housewife. Jack's relations.h.i.+p with his parents was always very warm, and he can't remember ever having bad feelings towards them. He was often hugged and held in his parents' arms as a child. The three of them often did things together such as eat in FOUR STORIES 205.

restaurants or go on trips related to his father's work. His parents treated him as an equal from a very young age. They raised him the way they wished they had been raised. Jack had no brothers or sisters, and aunts and uncles lived far away. Yet his father and mother were always there for him. When Jack wanted to do some father-son thing with his father, such as play baseball, his father always found the time, despite being a very busy man. While Jack's father was strict and demanding, his mother was sweet and understanding. She was the one who said "it's okay." She was always around the house, doing all the "motherly" things like putting on a Band-Aid when Jack hurt himself, cooking, and taking care of the family, the house, and the dog. She was always busy and seemed happy and contented.

Jack's father was the disciplinarian. He would punish Jack by withholding his pocket money, which worked very well. His mother removed herself from it. Father would get very angry when Jack's grades weren't what he expected or when Jack did things he wasn't supposed to do, such as taking a short-cut through the yard and stepping on plants. He was very strict about things like that. Jack's father was an imposing man with a strong personality, who expressed his opinion in a forceful way. Jack always knew that his father really loved him and was concerned about him, that when he got angry and punished him, it was for a good reason.

Jack's father seemed scary, but was not really. He was the kind of teacher students are scared to go to, but after they do, say to themselves, "Why didn't I do this earlier?" Jack always tried to please his father. Father was his role model and Jack wanted to be like him. Jack's father was very busy with his work, but was always doing things with Jack, or his mother, or the dog, and on weekends, he worked in the yard.

Despite his admiration of his father, Jack felt closer to his mother because they spent much more time together. As a young child, Jack was always with his mother, rather than in child-care. When his father came home, they were a family. On weekends they would do things together as a family.

Jack never felt rejected by his parents; if anything, he says, it was the opposite. Their love and their concern for him were almost too much. His parents were very protective and always wanted to know where he was. They were also very strict and did not allow Jack to do some of the things he loved doing, which, sometimes, he did anyway.

What kind of a romantic relations.h.i.+p is a man likely to have if he was so close to his mother and his father during his childhood? The answer, according to Jack is, "a wonderful relations.h.i.+p."

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"We've been going out, officially, just us, for four years. But we went out for a year before that, so it's five years. It's pretty serious.

We'll probably get married in a couple of years. It depends on our jobs and such things. If we knew everything, we'd get married tomorrow.

"We met at the beginning of school in my soph.o.m.ore year when she was a freshman. I used to hang out with a friend that lived right next to her and we started to hang out together. It's really funny, because I had the wrong idea about her. First it was this blond who is living next to my friend Bob. I had the image that she was a party girl, which is totally wrong. When I got to know her I realized that that's not her. I helped her with her Italian, and I found out later that she didn't need any help with her Italian at all! The relations.h.i.+p kind of happened. We started going out, going to movies and hanging out.

"She's really cute. That's the first thing. And she's fun to be with.

She's funny. She has this naive streak that is amusing some times. We got along really well together. We asked each other advice on writing papers and things like that. We used to correct each other's papers.

When we had problems with friends we talked about it with each other. We are at the point now that we'd rather be together than with anybody else. Both of us know that we are there for each other.

"She knows how I work and I know how she works, so we can always tell how the other one is feeling. And there's always warmth there. When I'm with her, I'm always happy. Stuff that I'm doing with her, even if just watching TV, is more fun with her than with other friends or when I'm alone. Even doing stupid things, like was.h.i.+ng dishes with her, is so much better. Things are never boring.

We never do the same old thing. There's always something that is different. Little things that change it from being a lull."

When asked about similarity between his romantic relations.h.i.+p and his relations.h.i.+p with his parents Jack says: "I know she loves me and I know that my parents love me. They all care for me and that's that. And I care for all of them, so there's that kind of similarity. She's kind of similar to my dad in that she's stubborn as h.e.l.l. But she's a genuinely nice person, and in that she's like my Mom. I'm really stubborn too. We both make compromises, but we both want it our way and we're both stubborn." As for differences: "certain things that she hasn't experienced that I've experienced and that then we've experienced together, like experimenting with things such as cooking, which we did a lot when I was growing up. She didn't grow up that way. It's neat to see her try new things that are not her way. My parents who are older have experienced everything that I've experienced. So it's neat to be close to someone who hasn't experienced everything and being able to re-experience things with them."

FOUR STORIES.

207.

Separations are difficult for Jack. "I get really sad. I try to immerse myself in doing things. I miss her a lot. We talk a lot on the phone, at least half an hour every day, sometimes more than once a day.

Something is missing. I can't explain it."

Conflicts in the relations.h.i.+p are few. "We've had some discussions, but not blatant screaming and yelling type of thing. Both of us are stubborn. But there is nothing we fight over. Recently both of us have been stressed out, so both of us felt a little left out. I felt that she wasn't giving me much attention and she felt that I wasn't giving her much attention, so there was that kind of tension. But both of us realized what was going on. We talked about it. We sit down and talk everything out. We're close so we bring everything out right away."

Jack's description of his relations.h.i.+p suggests a secure attachment style.

AN a.n.a.lYSIS OF JACK'S ROMANTIC RELATIONs.h.i.+P Dating frequency: 4 (average number of dates) Number of significant intimate relations.h.i.+ps: 2 Length of this relations.h.i.+p: 48 months Commitment to the relations.h.i.+p: 6 (very good relations.h.i.+p with marriage plans) Sense of security in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (very high, feels totally secure) Ability to be oneself in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (definitely yes, can be totally himself) Intimacy in the relations.h.i.+p: 7 (very high, symbiosis, know what each other feels) Power in the relations.h.i.+p: 4 (both partners have equal power) Pursuer/Distances: 4 (both partners have equal involvement in the relations.h.i.+p) Physical attraction to partner: 5 (physical attraction mentioned) Friends.h.i.+p before romance: 4 (were friends before the romance started) Strereotyped s.e.x roles: 2 (s.e.x role stereotypes are not mentioned and are not Frequency of conflicts: 3 (low frequency) Ability to deal with conflicts: 6 (talking about everything, trying to resolve things) How are conflicts resolved: talking Ability to stand separation: 3 (feels very sad) 208 Jealousy is a problem in the relations.h.i.+p: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) Jealousy is a personal problem: 2 (jealousy was not mentioned at all) Arousal played a role in the initial attraction: no Propinquity played a role in the initial attraction: yes Similarity played a role in the initial attraction: yes Partner's attraction played a role in the initial attraction: no Physical attraction played a role in the initial attraction: yes Personality traits of the partner played a role in the initial attraction: yes Status of partner played a role in the initial attraction: no Is partner satisfying an important need? yes Is the partner described as the "best friend"? yes Was it love at first sight? no Is the interviewee showing psychological understanding? yes Are there signs of abuse in the relations.h.i.+p? no Is partner similar to father: yes Is partner similar to mother: yes Is partner different from rather: yes Is partner different from mother: yes Are the relations.h.i.+ps with partner and parents similar? yes s.e.xual preference: heteros.e.xual Number of children: none IN SUMMARY.