Facebook, as with other social marketing websites, targets its users for certain kinds of advertisements—this is smart and makes good business sense. I keep seeing this ad come up on my page titled “Make Him Fall for You.” Seeing that this is obviously meant to be a hook, and its tone already annoyed me, I finally decided to look at the site to see what it’s selling.
What I found is a list of unrealistic promises a relationship coach is making in order to manipulate women into being less of who they are and working to fit into some formula woman that any man (read heterosexual man) will want. Under the title “Learn Secrets to Making Him Fall Deeply in Love Forever,” the website claims it will teach women “Specific words and body language that will make him listen and feel more attracted,” and “What a man really wants from a woman.” The entire approach is wildly insulting to both men and women who would like to find appealing mates, dates or companions. This manipulative, quick-fix approach is also tremendously limiting for our own self-growth, since intimate relationships are where we work on our Master’s degree in growth and development. And like higher education, some of us really put in the work, others scrape by, skidding around the real work of intimacy just pretending to make it work, and still others drop out before they have any kind of thesis or have done the work to merit the reward. Not to mention, no one can promise you “forever”, but it’s the romantic myth and we keep falling into deep states of disappointment when we don’t get it.
This approach assumes that all women and all men (again, assumed to be heterosexual) will want the same thing and can be manipulated into dating any person if they just say the right things, use the right body language and pretend to be someone they are not. It also makes it sound like we can just fix what’s broken in relationships like we are switching out car parts. But human beings with sometimes erratic and unexplained feelings and whole lifetimes of experience do not operate that way. There is no quick fix for relationships. As Abdi Assadi claims in his book Shadows on the Path, “quick fixes are for junkies. The addict part of us wants to bypass the work and even thinks its possible to get there without delving, digging and clearing.” That’s why the divorce rate is so high…most people leave long-term relationships before they get to the gold that is buried deep within the hardened lava—we all have erupted and hardened, been hurt and built protection for ourselves. It requires lots of time, energy, a big chisel, and a whole other level of commitment to work through those layers to discover the gold. It is the work of a lifetime.
Maybe I’m way off base. Maybe lots of people actually do want the kind of relationship perpetuated on this website. I tend to assume more of people. I think many people are in unhappy relationships and don’t know why they are so unhappy, and maybe don’t know where to turn to do the work. A promise to learn “How to fix your relationship quickly and easily – no matter what the relationship is like right now” might pinch a nerve for some of them. But really, are we so naïve as to think that any relationship with real issues can be “fixed” quickly and easily?
I think if you are with anyone long enough you will need to go to couples therapy at some point to do the work of figuring out how two wounded people can deeply love and effectively support each other and break the patterns they have learned in their upbringing and past relationships. We all have wounds and we repeat these patterns over and over. So if you want it to stop being groundhog day, at some point you’ve got to stop and really look at your stuff and how its co-mingling with your partner’s stuff and find solutions as you do your healing. This is not easy work. But it is tremendously important and gratifying. Where else will you have the comfort of someone who knows you so well and the safety of longevity and commitment to do such deep work on yourself? It’s a missed opportunity if you decide to just leave rather than do the work, and inevitably a new person will show up with a different face and different name, with the same patterns and issues to challenge you yet again to get it. Change is hard and uncomfortable. It requires a lot of us.
So maybe the copy should read:
- Deeply explore your own psyche and your learned behaviors that prevent you from having what you want in relationship
- Deepen your ability to have intimacy by healing your core wounds and learning not to hide who you are
- Discover what YOU really want, how to communicate it, and how to stop settling for less
That might be a good starting point. How many of you would sign up for that? Maybe it wouldn’t sell as well as “make him fall for you” and “draw him to you like a magnet.” In relationships, as with anything, be willing to put in the work and get out of it what you put into it. Because the quick fix will be just that. And then what?
