My Relationship Doesn’t Feel Right & I Question Her Character

Some things to consider if your relationship feels off & you question her character.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer is on his fifth read of 3% Man. He’s been with his girlfriend since last fall. However, something feels off and he wonders if he could do better. She comes from a broken home and often makes absurd requests for him to fund her lifestyle.

He wonders if maybe he’s just too picky. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is from a viewer who is on his fifth read on 3% Man. So I assume he’s relatively new here. I guess prior to finding my work, he’s been with his girlfriend since last fall, so I guess probably between six to eight months. So he says something kind of feels off though. He’s a young guy, he’s 25 and there’s a lot of great things he likes about her, but he says she comes from a broken home, she often makes these absurd requests that basically he should fund her lifestyle or buy expensive things, but he also is thinking, “Well, maybe I’m just too picky.” So as the old saying goes, “You got to trust your gut and your intuition.” As Steve Jobs so well said, “You got to trust your heart, your curiosity and your intuition because they somehow already know what you want to become.” So with that in mind, let’s see what’s going on here.

When I read emails like this, this reminds me of exactly this age, because when I was 25, I was going through these same feelings and emotions. I was looking to move to Orlando. Eventually, I ended up obviously, for those of you that have read Mastering Yourself, got a job with Syntex Rooney working on the Coronado Springs Resort at Disney World, so it’s going to work on a big 160, I think actually probably ended up being around a $170 million project, 2,000 hotel rooms, 300,000 square foot convention center on Disney property. At the time, it was the biggest resort that they had ever built, and you’re getting to work with the best construction materials, Italian marble stuff from like literally all over the world. So it was a really great gift, and it was a great capstone to my construction management experience to have been a part of that.

At the time getting ready to move up to Orlando, I remember my girlfriend saying that, “Well, the only way she would move up is if we got engaged,” and I naively thought, “OK well, if we get engaged, we don’t have to get married right away.” Plus, I was young. It was my first real long-term relationship, but I didn’t want to get married. I wasn’t ready to start a family. It didn’t feel right, but all my friends were getting married. Everybody I went to high school with was getting married, and we were like, on the weekends, sometimes we’re going to two different weddings. There’d be a wedding on a Saturday, there’d be one on a Sunday, and it’s like, “Well, when are you guys getting married? When are you going to put a ring on that?”

So you get a lot of peer pressure, and I obviously didn’t have a good example at home or in my family that I looked to and said, “Yeah, that’s the kind of relationship I want to have.” It just didn’t feel right, but it was my first long-term relationship, and any girl that I had really been super into prior to that, I got to date maybe three weeks, then I got the friend-zoned or I’d get the, “There’s something missing. I think of you as a friend,” and I could never get a straight explanation of why that was. It was incredibly frustrating. I thought, “Well, this is as good as it’s going to get. I might as well just marry her,” but again, I was thinking, “Oh, we’ll get engaged. We’ll be engaged for years, and then I can later decide what I really want to do.” As soon as we got engaged, her mother put the hammer down and six months later we had a wedding, and I was just like, “Well…” But it never felt right.

So like, when I read these kind of emails, especially this guy being exactly the same age I was when I was having these feelings and looking back on it, I mean, to go through the marriage and then later a divorce and all the expense, and then having to explain to all your friends and family why you guys are splitting up, it sucks and I don’t wish that on anybody. It was one of the hardest, at least at that point in time, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do, is to tell my wife that I was leaving. I mean, she was a good wife, but it never felt right. I didn’t really want to be married. She was trying to get pregnant, and I wasn’t ready to be a dad at that point. I was still trying to figure myself out in my life.

So let’s go through his email.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach, 

I’ve been following your work for a few months and am on my fifth read of 3% Man. I’m 25, haven’t had much relationship experience, but I’m at a point where I’m seeing a lot of success and hitting my stride. I met my current girlfriend in the fall after first finding your work, which I wish I found sooner.

OK, so I guess you found or you attracted her after you found my work. I was thinking it was the other way around.

Things were great, but cracks started to show as time went on.

Well, this is part of the vetting process. You got to vet for character. Character is destiny. Is she loyal? Is she faithful? Does she love her dad? Does she have a good relationship with her dad? Does her dad set a good example? Just because a girl loves her dad, doesn’t mean she necessarily respects him. If he’s a beta male and she can just walk all over him and blow smoke sunshine up his butt, and he’ll just go along with everything because he’s a people-pleaser, that’s not really a good, healthy relationship, because if she doesn’t respect her father and she’s able to nag her dad, the mom nags the dad, the other sisters nag the dad and dad just gives in, that’s not a healthy masculine archetype. What they learn is that they can pretty much get away with anything, and if you annoy and you nag your man enough, eventually he’ll just cave because he doesn’t want to deal with it.

It’s mostly smaller things, but they’re concerning when added together. Death by a thousand cuts, if you will. For example, she has a good father, but comes from a broken home and has immediate family that I know nothing about and have never met.

Well, that’s kind of unusual.

She proudly claims she’s high maintenance…

Sounds like a little boss-girl energy there.

…And sometimes gives me very slight gold digger vibes when trying to make me fund pieces of her lifestyle. 

Again, a man who provides a stable household is going to teach his kids the value of money. Then if you want something, you can work for it. You can get a job and earn it. If she’s spoiled, if she cries and whines and dad caves and buys her whatever toys she wanted when she was little, he overextended himself to get her a really nice car when she was a teenager because she did waterworks or whatever happens to be.

She can also be immature and sensitive…

She grows to expect these things. So you have to look at how her father actually is. Again, just because she loves her dad, doesn’t mean he’s a good man. He’s a good person and raised her right.

…And seems to be anxiously attached.

So she’s a little screwed up.

Given my lack of experience, I’m not sure if I’m just being too picky or if my gut feeling is right.

Well, what I’ve learned in my own marriage, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to get married. I allowed everybody around me to talk me into it because they were just telling me, “Oh Corey, you just got cold feet. That’s going to pass,” but I was like, “Doesn’t feel right. It’s not really what I want.” So I went along with it because I didn’t have enough experience, and I didn’t have enough people in my life that I could look up to and ask these kind of questions about. So I thought, “Well, I might as well. I don’t want to lose her. Don’t want to be single, but I’m not ready to get married.” At the end of the day, my opinion, once I put her engagement ring on her finger, it’s like I was along for the ride. Even though it didn’t feel right, I didn’t speak up until a year after we were married. It was only once I ran into this girl that I had this huge crush on in high school, we had this long talk that I realized something was missing, and I needed to know what it was like to be with somebody that I felt like I clicked with on that kind of a level.

Ever since then, you guys read the book. I mean, I’ve had a lot of great memories, a lot of great love stories, and had a lot of fun things I would have never experienced if I’d have stayed married. If I’d have stayed in that marriage, I’d probably be obese, I’d probably be unhappy, and who knows where I’d be now. I certainly wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. You know, everything happens for a reason in life, and that chance meeting, if you will, with this girl from high school that I always liked, she always had a boyfriend and we were friends, but I lost touch with her after high school. Then I see her a decade later and I’m still questioning going, “You know, my wife’s trying to get pregnant.” We’re down at another friend’s wedding. A year later, I was just like, “It just doesn’t feel right.” After that, and I had a few subsequent conversations with her, it’s like I made up my mind because my gut was telling me this is not right, dude. Even though it was really hard, I made the decision to leave.

I’ve just found that when you ignore your gut, when something doesn’t feel right and you do it anyway, usually the results are not very good, but when everything feels right and it lights you up in the inside, then that’s the right path. So it’s like the feelings are the language of the soul. It’s how our higher self speaks to us. So if I were you, I would trust that, because the more you trust that and the more you act upon that, you will notice that things turn out pretty good.

I’ve felt unsure for quite a while. Sometimes I wonder if I’m settling and can do better, but don’t want to give up something good. Despite the issues, there still are things I like about her. She is very loyal, feminine, caring, and ambitious, though also has little relationship experience which is a double-edged sword.

So my ex-wife, her dad was the man of the household. He was a type-A dude, very successful, and he ruled the roost when he decided something was going to be a certain way. That was it. She respected him and respected his authority. Therefore, she respected mine, even though I didn’t know what the hell I was doing back then. So even though I didn’t stay with her, she was a really good woman, and I lucked out. If I hadn’t met her and had that experience, I’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere. I wouldn’t be sitting here making these videos. So she literally saved my life and taught me what love was, and she loved me unconditionally. I didn’t really have to do anything. I just showed up and she just thought I was the best thing since sliced bread, but again, deep down it didn’t feel right, and because of my own weakness, I ended up hurting her more by going through with a marriage that deep down didn’t feel right, and then having to go through a divorce. Obviously both of us had to go and explain that to everybody.

We parted on good terms and we were friends for a lot of years after that. She dated a really good buddy of mine from high school for a couple of years, and the last time I saw her was with my friend and her when they were dating. This is like going back, I think it was 2001, 2002. So as many years ago, 24, 25 years ago, and her, myself, and my other really close friends went to Solid Gold, which was a titty bar in Fort Lauderdale and hung out. Then later we went to Denny’s afterwards at like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Grilled cheese sandwich with French fries, plenty of ketchup. It was just delicious. So that was a good time. So despite all that, all the heartache and heartbreak, the marriage, the divorce, when you really love somebody, you want them to be happy, even if it’s not with you, and I was really happy that she was dating my good friend and they dated for a few years. They didn’t ultimately stay together, but it was a good experience. It totally shaped and changed my life and enabled me to, even though it was painful to learn a lot and to resolve to figure this stuff out, to resolve why the girls that I had that love at first sight experience with after only three to four weeks, why they would just disappear, why that would happen. I had to understand. I had to figure it out. It was a burning desire and that’s what made me determined to figure it out.

So here I am all these years, years later, teaching the stuff that I learned and helping guys like this not make the same mistakes that I made, because getting married is expensive, getting a divorce is expensive. Especially if you got kids involved, it’s just not a fun process. So you want to avoid it at all costs. If you are going to get married, it’s because you see that person as the mother of your children. You want to have kids with her. You’re ready to have a family with her. You love her family because you’re also going to be involved with her parents, aunts, and uncles, and because they’re going to be aunts, uncles, grandma, and grandpa to your kids. If they come from a broken home, you don’t like how they were raised, well if they’re involved in your kids’ life, well they’re going to be instilling their goals and values into your children, whether you like them or not, just because it’s part of the family. So you have to evaluate all those things. You have to evaluate people based on their character.

I’ve watched many of your videos as well, and hearing your own experiences, I worry about settling or wasting my youth in an unwilling relationship.

My question is, am I being too picky and unreasonable with expecting perfection?

I don’t look at it as expecting perfection, but it doesn’t feel right. You notice that she comes from a broken home. Even though she loves her dad or has a good relationship with him, it sounds like he provided a very chaotic environment. Especially if she’s expecting you to pay for things, that sounds like a girl that was spoiled by her father and she doesn’t understand the value of money.

Or do you think I may be settling, blinded by indecision, and scared of failure when something better may be out there?

Cheers!

Bob

Like I said, if I were you, I would trust your intuition. Your feelings are your truth, man. That’s your soul speaking to you. Doesn’t mean you got to break up with her today. See how it goes. I mean, you’ve only been dating six to eight months. People can hide who they are for about the first 90 days. So you really kind of only three or four months into kind of seeing who she really is at this point. So if you’re not ready yet to pull the plug, keep dating and see where it goes.

One thing you definitely should not do is ask her to marry you if it doesn’t feel right, and not to have her twist your arm to try to pressure you to marry her either. Again, if it’s the right girl and it’s the right time, you’re ready, you’re going to be lit up on the inside. You’re going to be excited about it. You’re going to be content. You’re not going to be looking around going, “Wow, that girl’s hot,” “She’s got a nicer butt,” “She has nicer legs,” “Prettier face,” or “She’s sweeter, nicer,” whatever happens to be. When you know, you know. It’s just like when you choose a great career. You’re excited. You start a business that you’ve always wanted to start. You’re excited. It lights you up on the inside. Your feelings are awesome, you’re elated, and you’re clearly not at a point where you’re going, “Hell yeah, I want to spend the rest of my life with this woman.” You’re going, “I don’t know, maybe there’s better out there.” So learn to listen to that and take your time.

You’re only 25, dude. Don’t do what I did. If it don’t feel right, don’t get married. If maybe after a year of dating, the feeling doesn’t go away, it’s still the same and you don’t see her as the mother of your children, you’re not ready to do that, then the honorable thing to do, the masculine thing to do, is to end the relationship and wish her well so she can go find a guy that would love to have a family with her.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly.

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