Question: Why am I so bad at choosing men?
‘ I am a woman of 28. I am attractive and intelligent. I think I am basically a nice person; I have a good job. Everything in my life works well other than the relationship side. I never seem to ‘go for’ the right man and if I do find someone who seems right, something always seems to go wrong. Relationships are always so painful for me. Can you offer me some advice as to why I seem to be so bad in choosing men?

Serge’s advice
As I do not know you personally and thus can have no insight into what your specific issues are, all I can offer you are some general comments which may be of help. The first thing to ‘get’, is that with most of us, the agendas that make us be attracted to one person and not another - for example, why a woman may like ‘rogues’ or older men or cold men or ‘mummy’s boys’ or violent or very wounded men – tends to be pretty unconscious. Rather like an iceberg which only shows a small percentage of its overall size above water (95% of its mass is submerged) most of us are relatively unaware as to why we choose the partners that we do and why we ‘act out’ the relationship dynamics that we do. I recently read a case history of a very beautiful and intelligent young woman who had the world at her feet, yet who went and married a man who not only was disfigured, but also was impoverished and cruel, and who badly mistreated her. How could this have been?

It transpired that she had been an orphan and her husband’s name was very similar to that of her real father whom she had never known. What it did was trigger deep unconscious yearnings in her for that paternal love which she never got and which consequently became transferred lock, stock and barrel onto him. She never saw the ‘real him’, only her image of him. It reminds me of what that character in Childhood’s End, the Martian, said, when asked what he thought about human love. ‘It seems to be a projection from the lens of the mind onto whatever object most approximates one’s fantasy!’ Perhaps this is what you do! If so, try to understand your fantasy and what might underlie it.

It is also important to ask yourself if your parents’ relationship worked, and if not, are you in some way, mimicking it! Did you feel ‘good’ around your father and mother? How is your self-esteem? How do you feel about yourself in relationship?

It may be, for example, that underneath your ‘good personality’ and attractiveness and surface confidence, lies a little girl, who, secretly, may not value herself sufficiently, may not feel she is ‘really loveable’, may not believe she deserves to be loved by a ‘good man’, even if consciously you know that this is not the case. It may be that you are unconsciously creating a dysfunctional pattern reminiscent of something in your childhood, and hence are ‘choosing’ or ‘being drawn towards,’ partners with a dysfunction ‘compatible’ with your own, in order that the two of you can ‘enact out’ a particular neurotic scenario together. Perhaps, secretly, you are scared of intimacy and so ‘play safe’ either by ‘choosing’ someone whom you don’t really want to be close with, and so can discard, or someone who is himself incapable of intimacy with you, as he is so Narcissistically wounded, and therefore can discard you. (I mention Narcissism as this wound is so prevalent in our society today, and lies behind so much of our hurt in relationship.) It may be too, that you are not especially skilled at working at relationships, or that you give up when you hit a bumpy patch!

Let’s face it: relationships are extremely challenging and require a lot of work. And often, when we open our hearts up to another, it brings up our deepest fears. For instance, our hearts may hold memories of abuse or betrayal in the name of love. These wounds may not just relate to events in our current life, but we may sometimes be suffering from some kind of ‘carry over’ or unresolved memory from a prior incarnation, where being in love, say, led to pain or even death. If this is the case, and I have often uncovered such scenarios with couples I have worked with, then there is a real, unconscious, ‘vested interest’ to see that our relationships don’t work out!

Could this be the case, perhaps, with you?

If you want to enjoy happier relationships, it is important that you do some serious digging and explore what really lies behind your difficulties and what you can do to heal yourself. And there is a lot. One of the best ways to do this is to go into Psychotherapy. You can also attend relationship workshops and read books about relationship to deepen your understanding (everything by John Wellwood I highly recommend). As you learn, gradually, to recognise the nature of your wounding, you may come to realise that it is possible, gradually, to work at changing your internal dynamics. As this begins to occur, your external reality will also shift and you may one day find yourself being attracted to a different kind of man - one who ‘fits’ the changed, healthier pattern. In other words, as you become more conscious of your old ‘pain games’ and work at releasing them, a new space may open up in you enabling you to ‘play’ a deeper and more fulfilling kind of ‘relationship game’. Instead of sturm und drang, you can instead draw someone into your life with whom you can enjoy harmony and happiness.

Lastly, I would suggest that you see your relationship issues not just as problems to battle with and hold you back, but rather as challenges to help you grow into your deeper humanity. Sometimes the pain experienced in our relationships can act as an important spur to explore ourselves more deeply, resulting in benefits that may accrue to many other areas of our lives as well. I wish you luck.

 Question: How am I off beam?
I have begun being seriously on my spiritual path and a lot of the time I find myself in a lot of pain often around having to face some not-very-nice things about myself. This isn’t quite what I had expected. I had hoped to come face to face with a more radiant me and to experience a lot of spiritual light. I am not encountering any of this despite meditating regularily and doing my best to live a disciplined spiritual life. Consequently, I am becoming a bit disillusioned. How am I off beam? Any advice?

Serge’s advice
Well, well well, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to have a bit of a naïve or romantic idea about what the spiritual path involves, which is certainly not just about sitting on mountaintops basking in radiant light. The aim, I remind you, is not to get ‘high’or to try to feel good (although en route we may experience both). Rather, the aim is to be free, to discover who we really are; the aim is about our trying to return to our source where we can experience our true Self, which is one with all that is. That is the aim. It is about finding our truth.

And this can often be tough, because en route, we need to encounter our untruth, that is, we need to have a clearer idea of the false us, of the ‘pretend’ or the ‘socialised’ us which includes seeing the parts of us that may be arrogant, selfish, inauthentic, etc. And we all have these parts! It follows that unless we can see these aspects of ourselves more clearly, we cannot work transformationally with them. Indeed, this is one of the things that spiritual light, when it comes, often does for us; it illuminates or ‘lights up’ what is untruthful about how we live; it reveals our obstacles or what stands in the way of our being spiritual. From what you say, it appears that this is currently happening with you. If so, it isn’t ‘bad’.

On the contrary. The fact that you seem to be confronting your ‘dark side’ big time, seems to be evidence of your meditation and endeavours towards spiritual discipline paying off. In other words, you seem to be pretty on track. What your problem is, is that you have a rather one-dimensional perspective of what you perceive the spiritual life to be about!

Let me remind you how the late Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche described being on the path. He saw it as being akin to ‘Licking honey off the razor’s edge’. Carl Jung also reminded us that ‘We don’t become enlightened by sitting in the light, but by going into our darkness.’ And just as light will illumine it for us, so by going deeply into our dark side, we discover more light.

So my advice to you is to accept what is happening and don’t see it as being the result of some mistake, or you doing something wrong, but on the contrary, as evidence of you doing a lot right, and of you being strong enough to face your dark side. I am sorry if you are currently undergoing suffering, but it really is, at times, a very integral part of the whole purificational process. I recommend you read that great little spiritual classic, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ by St. John of the Cross. It may offer you comfort as well as give you some important insights. Also, don’t forget that darkness does give way to light. It is always when night is at its very blackest that the first slivers of dawn begin appearing in the sky. I trust that very soon this will be happening for you.