Falling in love is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. To be loved by the person you love is truly heaven on earth.
Yet, for some people, even within the first few days/weeks/months of entering into a relationship, they felt something is not right but could not really objectively conclude that something is really wrong. Let me explain what I mean with a true story:
Annie first got to know Cain in a church camp. A few months later, they bump into each other again in church. After a short conversation, they exchanged telephone numbers. Cain called and they started going out for dinners and movies. Shortly after, they kissed and their relationship began.
Their relationship went very well initially. It was the first time Annie went into a serious relationship and she was very happy. So was Cain. Although he was dumped by his ex-girlfriend after a 3-year relationship, Cain seems to be very happy and in love with Annie. The day after they first kissed, he went to look for her. Seeing that she had not returned from work, he waited for hours for her in the carpark (in those days, mobile phones had not been invented).
Every evening, Cain would call her and they would chat for hours. Just one month into the relationship, one night, during one of those lovey dovey phone conversation, Cain suddenly make a statement ” I know you are the kind of girl who can be very unreasonable.” Annie was shocked to hear that. They had a great one month spending time with each other. Everything was so lovely. She had not done anything wrong. Why did Cain say that? What gives Cain that impression?
When Annie asked Cain to explain, he said he learned from her mother. Although Cain had yet to meet Annie’s mother, she thought that her mother had made some remarks to him when she answered the phone. Annie did not confront her mother because she did not want to start a quarrel between her mother and her new boyfriend. Annie did not doubt Cain simply because she was a very simple young girl who trust people very easily. She believed that time would prove him wrong.
A few months later, Cain introduced Annie to his best friend, James. Cain told Annie that as he did not have a brother, he considered James not just as a best friend but also as an elder brother. James was the brother who had helped Cain stood strong when he was dumped by his ex-girlfriend.
One day, Annie bump into James in church. Cain was not there. During the conversation between Annie and James, James made a statement “I know why Cain likes you. It is because you dress well.” This was a very strange statement to Annie. Sure, she was not the type who dress sloppily but neither was she the type who dress to kill. Annie simply could not take that as a complement. Something deep inside her told her that something was not right. Why did James who did not know her well, said a statement that seemed to imply that she had no substance, except for some good clothing? Was that what Cain told James about her since James was Cain’s brother whom he shared a lot with? Was that how Cain felt about her? That she was some unreasonable, no substance girl but was picked by her because she dressed well?
Do you know what happen to Annie and Cain? It was truly a tragedy that Annie kept believing that someday, Cain would think well of her, that time would prove him wrong. They got married and all throughout their relationship, Cain would often stereotype her to be someone lousy even in areas where she clearly was gifted in!
Then, after being together for 15 years, Annie discovered that Cain was a hardcore womaniser. He was literally addicted to prostitutes. She had always believed her husband to be a decent church worship guitarist. She blamed herself for the marriage failure and accepted his allegations that it was all her fault. Annie kept trying to make the marriage work but things got worse. Seeing that Annie did not leave him despite discovering his infidelity and seeing that his lies could no longer be used to get him the freedom to womanise, he had to use the abuse method to get his way. If Annie did not want to let him leave the house at midnight, he would physically hit her till she bleed. He would leave the house and then come home at around 4am. It took Annie 5 years of suffering emotional, mental and physical abuse before she could find the strength to walk out of that lousy 21 years relationship.
Isn’t that a tragedy? Yet it is a true story.
What can we learn from this true story?
1. Some people will never think well of you
First, we must recognise that there are some people who would never think well of us regardless of how good we are or how hard we try. Or perhaps such people never think well of anyone except themselves. The reason why such people do not think well of people is because they are truly evil inside them. Hence they can never believe that other people can be good. They could be a minority, but we could sometimes be so unlucky to meet such a person. It is for these unlucky people that I write these articles to help them see the truth.
2. It’s not all about you
Let’s analyse the story wisely. Look, if Cain’s best friend, who knew him so much more than Annie, spoke something, Annie should not think that there was something wrong with her. Afterall, James knew nothing about Annie. Whatever he said had no foundation and carried no truths.
Instead, she should have realised that, that statement that James made gave an insight into what James knew about Cain. Afterall, James knew Cain very well, much more than what Annie knew about Cain. That statement that James said was effectively telling us that what he knew about Cain was that he could be attracted to a girl simply because she dressed well, not because she was a good and kind hearted person or a girl who has a heart for God. He was not a man who liked people of substance He was in fact a shallow person himself.
You see, most girl would react just like what Annie did — feeling upset that Cain did not think well of her. What she should have done is to realise that, that statement, together with the earlier statement that Cain made, accusing her of being an unreasonable person even before anything ever happened, were pieces of data for her to evaluate objectively if Cain was a right person for her.
3. Objective Evaluation versus Over Thinking
Very often we get advice from people like “Oh, don’t over think things, it is not good for you”.
My daughter, know the difference between using your brain to make well-informed decisions verses over thinking.
Let’s start with over thinking. We are over thinking if we have unfounded fears, anxieties, insecurities, doubts. We are over thinking if we dwell on it repeatedly, become paralyzed by it and unable to make decisions or take further actions. If Cain had never make any statements that accuse Annie for being unreasonable even before any bad things ever happened and Annie become overly obsessive about not letting Cain know her weakness, then that was over thinking. If Annie, for no reason, was fearful that someday Cain would lose interest in her or being very anxious about meeting Cain’s friends, then she was over thinking. If Annie’s mind was constantly bombarded with worries about something bad was going to happen and not knowing why she felt that way, then she was over thinking. However, that was not the situation.
The real situation was that two pieces of information/data was suddenly presented to her. These two pieces of information did not seems right to be said at a time when Annie and Cain’s relationship was still in the initial, passionately in love state. By not giving thoughts to why these clues were presented to her was like a person seeing a corpse hidden in her house and yet decide to ignore it instead of making a police report. It is unwise. It is not using her brains.
What Annie should have done is to sit down, think it through calmly. Evaluate and ask herself if she wants to spend her life with someone who had such low opinion of her. If at this early stage of their relationship, he is not having good opinion of her, she was definitely not his priced possession. She was not his priced possession not because she was not good enough because we that Cain was so happy to have her. She was not his priced possession because in his mind, he did not just want to have her, he wanted to have an infinite number of women.
Are we being too harsh or critical?
Dear reader, as you read this post, you might think “How can we pass judgement base on just two statements? That will make it impossible for any man to pass such standards”. Well, of course, I am not saying we should condemn someone whenever they make some careless statements. Certainly Annie need not make a decision to leave Cain with just that two statements. However, she should at least know that instead of wasting her emotions feeling offended by those statements, she should realise it was not about her.
She should rise above that situation and realise that those statements gave some insights into the character of her boyfriend. It would at least save them some unnecessary quarrels. It may have even helped her discover that while her concept of falling in love with someone means you are in love with only one person, Cain’s concept of falling in love may mean he had just gotten one of the many or many more girls he would like to have in his entire lifetime. By not evaluating, she was simply naive to assume she was the only person he was in love with.
