Not Good Enough
A middle age man started a new relationship with a woman he met on a blind date. The date was arranged by a friend of both.
After a month or so of increasing closeness, he began to wonder about being “good enough” to date this woman. His fear was that if she discovered all his faults, she would not be interested in him and would end the relationship. As his feelings for her increased, he had more emotional care at stake, of course.
His fear was caused by a number of factors. First, he had a relatively long list of difficulties in his life. Most of his difficulties were typical, some were greater than usual. An objective observer would probably say that the positives about him outweighed the negatives but he did not see things this way.
In addition, he was overly responsible and conscientious–he had and has a strong streak of perfectionism. His perfectionism sometimes paralyzed him at work because he could not move forward while something was imperfect. His perfectionism and a touch of narcissism also made him not see others as capable independent agents–he could not see that others could choose to like/love him or not despite his flaws, like most adults can.
Finally, he had a deeply entrenched fear of abandonment. For this reason, he often anticipated being rejected and was all too eager to provide the other person’s rationale for rejecting him.
Things got considerable better for this man when he started to take better care of himself (this had the effect of helping him see himself more positively). He also improved because he worked hard at visualizing:
- someone caring for him despite his flaws,
- someone being able to decide for themselves about his appeal,
- and someone remaining interested in him for the relatively “long-term”.
At last contact, this man had ended his new relationship amicably. He ended things because the woman had become less available, reportedly because of her work schedule. In the final analysis, he was able to end a relationship without significant trauma for the first time in his adult life.
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