Boot Camp for Women – more info

When I started working with couples in marriage counseling, I noticedan odd but consistent pattern. People hated their spouses for the verything that once attracted them. It took a while to figure out what wasgoing on, but soon I was able to explain to each spouse how they pickedtheir poison, pardon the expression.

Let us suppose Harry is a completely disorganized chap with ahappy-go-lucky attitude. He smiles all the time and enjoys lifethoroughly. He has a job that is nowhere near as challenging as hecould handle with his natural talents, but the salary is perfect forhis lifestyle and he doesn’t need the ulcers. One day he meets Alice.

Alice is superwoman. She organizes her garbage, outperforms everyone inher firm, has meetings on the train to work and she’s so scheduled thatshe hasn’t got time for a second scoop of ice cream.

They meet in an elevator, where obviously neither would look twice atthe other, but then the elevator jams and they are stuck for a good 45minutes. After a while, Alice is charmed at how Harry is at peace withthe whole incident. She wishes she could enjoy life like that. Harry,on the other hand, is blown over by how many meetings Alice has tocancel and how her whole week is thrown off by this delay. He thinks tohimself, “I wish I could get so much done.”

They start talking. Lunch is next, then dating, marriage … then, of course, marriage counseling.

They are both very clear about what they love in the other. Harry helpsAlice enjoy life while Alice helps harry by focusing on their future.They are both similarly clear on what they hate. “He’s always late, andI can never find anything in the house,” Alice exclaims. “Shemicro-manages everything, and everything leads to everything,” Harrysays. “We haven’t enjoyed a weekend without plans in two years.”

This is what I call “Iceberg Love.” They only love the tip of theiceberg and hate the other 90 percent. But without that 90 percent,they wouldn’t get the tip.

What Alice and Harry love they also hate. He wants to be like her, andvice versa, but neither understands how to do it.  So, they marriedwhat they didn’t understand, hoping that somehow, through osmosis, theother’s virtues would rub off.

It’s clear for us to see that the qualities that make Harry who he isare the qualities that Alice does not understand – and therefore hates– and the same is true with Harry. If they understood, they would lovemore.

A student who took my seminar wrote to me after the Iceberg Love segment:

    KF

I like to joke that soon after Tiger Woods got married, he was in marriage counseling. (Ed. note: I wrote this a long time ago) The counselor asked, “So, what seems to be the problem?” Mrs. Woods answered first: “He’s a lovely person, and I was attracted to how successful he is and how he’s such an overachiever, but he’s now driving me crazy. All he does, all the time, is play golf. He lives, breathes and eats the stuff! Everything in the house has a golf theme, even the door knobs are shaped like golf clubs and he orders everything in quantities of 18.”

Of course, that’s what makes him Tiger Woods. Those qualities are what attracted him to her in the first place, and her lack of understanding of these traits are precisely why she is Mrs. Tiger Woods, not Mr. Tiger Woods.

We aren’t the people we admire because we don’t truly understand their virtues. We don’t understand the hidden part of the iceberg. In fact, it’s not uncommon to actually hate that hidden part.

However, once we understand it’s that part that makes the tip work, the whole relationship changes. If we would appreciate what it takes to be the people we respect, and further, if we understood it like they do, then we would understand them, and maybe even be like them.

I hope you will join us for our “Boot Camp for Women” to learn the other keys for turning your husband into the man of your dreams.

 

 

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