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“So, what’d you think of my new girl?” Felix asked as if he were referring to a new convertible sports car he just leased.
“She seems like a wonderful human,” I said.
He was hoping for a more enthusiastic response from me. But I didn’t want to participate in this visual evaluation game with him like we were judges holding scorecards at a dog show.
Felix always had a new modelesque girl on his arm, but these relationships never went far beyond the first few dates.
My friend was a serial dater, and he had all the trappings of a professional player. But what Felix wanted most in his life was to settle down, get married and start a family.
Thus far, love had evaded him, as it had for me many years before.
The Talk
After Felix dropped his date off at her apartment, he swung by my house to have a nightcap of scotch on the front porch. He then laid into me a bit about my lack of excitement for his new girl.
“You gotta admit, she’s hot, right?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s beautiful, Felix, but is “hot” what you’re looking for at your age?”
“I worry you’re picking your dates based on the wrong criteria. I’ve watched you walk down this same path and fall into the same relationship hole a hundred times.”
“You have a pattern!” I said.
“What’s the pattern?” he asked. “Lay it on me because this dating life is burning me out, and I could use good relationship advice right now.”
So, with a belly full of scotch, I sat up in my chair and launched into my dissertation.
The three fences of our neighborhood
“When I was a kid, we lived in a traditional-looking suburban neighborhood where every house had a front yard with either a fence or hedge dividing the property lines.”
“Lucky for us, the two families who lived on either side of our house had kids around the same age as my brother and me. And one of our favorite things to do was see who could run and jump the fastest over the three property line fences that divided our houses. This competition got so eventful that all the kids on the block would challenge each other.”
“The first fence was the most fun to jump over because it was low. The second fence was a bit taller, but as long as you got a good running stride, most kids could get over it.”
“But the hardest hurdle to get over was the third fence.”
“Most of us couldn’t get over that fence, no matter how much we tried. And we’d often bust our asses trying to cross it. It was less of a jumping exercise and more of a police academy climbing drill, which was still fun to watch.”
“Most of the kids had given up on the third fence, declaring it impossible to clear until my older brother showed us that it was achievable. Like an Olympic athlete, my brother had this limber technique of tucking his legs up near his body and throwing his butt over the top of the fence and landing down on the other side still running.”
“It was a sight to behold, and everyone in our tiny block would clap each time he made it over this third fence. When I begged my brother to teach me how to do this, his advice was simple: “Stop telling yourself you can’t get over this fence. Instead, just visualize it happening and, and you’ll make it.” he said.
And he was right.
Eventually, I learned how to get over the third fence myself, which was one of the greatest accomplishments of my cul-de-sac life.”
Felix looked at me puzzled and said, “Well, that’s a great story about fence jumping, Kev. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind next time the cops are chasing me through the neighborhood. But I have no idea how the hell it relates to the date I brought to dinner tonight!”
“Hang on!” I said. “I’m just warming up here.”
The three fences of a relationship
“People often assume that getting over that first fence — let’s call it the ‘attraction fence’ — means the relationship is right for them,” I said. “But that first fence is the easiest part of a new relationship.”
“Attraction fence?” Felix said. “What are you talking about?”
“For two people to have a shot at a relationship, they need to be physically attracted to each other, or it just won’t work,” I said. “And what you find attractive is not what someone else finds attractive. So I’ll admit, there’s some unexplainable magic chemistry to physical attraction.”
“But attraction is only the start of a relationship, not the finish line. Once you clear that attraction hurdle, your next challenge is to see if you can overcome the second fence of the relationship.”
“What’s the second fence called?” Felix asked.
“The second fence that a couple needs to clear is that of ‘personality.’ Even though you might find your date attractive, it doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy being around this person for long stretches.”
“If she’s beautiful, I’ll be OK being around her,” Felix said in his coded, macho manner.
“Well, that’s the problem, Felix. Look at how many beautiful women you’ve dated before? You’re like the Leonardo DeCaprio of our community, except this isn’t the Cannes Film Festival, but just a small town.”
Felix had a big laugh about that comment, and said, “Yes, I’ve been fortunate to date some gorgeous looking women. I know it makes me look shallow, but I’m lonely as hell inside. And I’m frustrated that I haven’t found someone to settle down with like all my friends have.”
“Sometimes, I’ll be at a restaurant or standing in a line at the grocery store, and I’ll see two people in love and realize how much I want what they have.”
“I get it, Felix. I’ve been there myself before— where I envied the love others had and wondered if that’s ever going to happen for me. But the truth is, those couples often have different priorities and criteria about love than you do.”
“You want a swimsuit model first and love second,” I said. “But if you’re going to find true love, you can’t just focus on the first fence — attraction — and think the rest will work out. You need to work on getting over the other two relationship fences.
“Tell me more about the personality fence?” Felix asked.
“You know how much my wife and I love art, music, design, fashion, and photography. This shared passion helped bond us together in the beginning. We were always making music playlists for each other. And our favorite thing to do was driving around and listening to each other’s favorite playlists while photographing the city.”
But in addition to our love of arts, we also found the same things funny. Even after seven years of being together, I can’t tell you how often we make each other laugh to the point of crying. Sometimes we’ll find ourselves laughing so hard in bed at midnight our ribs hurt. And that laughter with her means so much more to me than her beautiful face and physique.”
“However, we have differences in our personality as well. My wife’s a vegan, doesn’t drink alcohol, and is introvert. She derives her energy by spending time alone, working on her art in the studio, eating kale chips, and drinking ginger turmeric juice.”
“But when I met my wife, I was a meat-eating extrovert, and I derived my energy by being around hipsters at crowded dive bars drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon out of a can.”
“Trying to figure out what to do on a Friday or Saturday night, such as where to eat a ‘good meal’ with an introverted non-drinker/non-meat-eater, was quite a complex riddle to solve. But this was just one of the areas where our personalities differed, and it took us several tries to get over that second personality fence.”
“But we stuck with it and found the right arrangement,” I said.
“However, it was the third fence that was the hardest part for us to get over.”
“Most couples don’t make it over this fence. It’s where they give up in defeat. And it’s why you see so many 3–5-year relationships end ‘abruptly’. Despite what they say, it’s not always boredom that kills the relationship, but the lack of will to climb this steep third fence.”
“Sounds terrifying! What the hell do you call this third fence?” Felix asked.
The hardest fence to cross for couples
The third fence to clear is that of personal values. You know, things like money, politics, religion, marriage, family, and kids. Once a couple has been together for a while, they have to make decisions like:
• where to live — house vs. apartment? Downtown vs. suburbia?
• where to vacation — mountains or beaches? Winter vs. summer?
• how to spend the holidays — with family or by themselves?
• how many kids to have — 0 or 4?”
• how to vote—conservative or liberal?
• what to believe in—God or atheism or agnostic?
• and the big issues – what to do about money, sex, and in-laws?
“No matter how attracted you are to each other or how perfect your personalities match, the issue of values — even for the best of couples — is the hardest fence to cross,” I said to Felix.
“Most couples get so battered, bruised, and hurt trying to get over this third fence that they quit in frustration.”
“As much as I loved my wife, it took us several frustrating attempts to get over this values fence. Every time we got close to calling it quits, we both realized our love for each other was greater than our different values. So even though we’d fight about family, money, or whether or not to have kids, we knew our love for each other would help us get over that challenging third fence.”
“But it takes work. And if you’re not emotionally ready and committed to tackling that mountain, you won’t make it across it. Like my brother said, ‘You have to visualize yourself getting across that third fence, to clear it.”
“Sometimes it can be hard to reconcile that beautiful, attractive person you met at the first hurdle or that funny girl you laughed so hard with at the second fence, with the person that you have to climb over the barbed-wire fence of life with—but this the task of lovers. To transcend the individual ego and come together as partners.”
“But it’s so worth it when you make it over the third fence. And like my brother showed me, once you clear that seemingly impossible fence the first time, getting over other future value issues gets so much easier to do.”
“Wow! What a fascinating concept!” Felix said. “I’ll admit I like to stay in the attraction phase. But I bail whenever things get tough — somewhere between the personality and values stage.”
“How can I fix that?” Felix asked.
Flip the fence sequence
“My advice to you is to flip the fence sequence around. Couples often base many of their decisions about the strength of a relationship on the attraction phase, which is the easiest hurdle. And they avoid or postpone thinking about the other two more challenging fences until much later. But I recommend quietly considering those personality and value issues right from the start.
“The attraction phase is intoxicating, as it should be, but I suggest you look for a mate whose values, personalities, and interests intrigue you. You don’t have to align or agree with them on everything. Diversity is a healthy thing in relationships. But you should be fascinated with who they are as a human and how they think. And you need to seriously ask yourself if you’re willing to accept them as they are and go through the hard work to scale those tough hurdles that every relationship faces.”
“If you approach relationships this way, I promise it will save you so much time, pain, and suffering.”
“Did you do that with your wife?” Felix asked.
“Well, that’s where it gets interesting,” I said.
Date the parents
“As you know, I met my wife in the baggage claim area while traveling with her family. But the one detail I didn’t tell you about is that when I asked her to lunch several days later, I told her to bring her mother along.”
“Why’d you’d do that?” Felix asked. “I’d be so nervous about the mother judging me the whole time.”
“I was nervous. But my mother always told me that when you marry the girl (or boy), you marry the family. And she was so right about this. Parents are the ones that install the base layer of values as our core operating system.”
“I was so captivated by my wife the first time I met her that I knew things were going to move fast. So I flipped the fences around and started with the family values first. And I’m so happy I did it that way.”
“Was it awkward for me to have the mother there? Yes, it was! But I learned volumes about my future wife by watching her interact with her mother and listening to their stories. And I could see some of the potential issues we might face down the road. But I liked her so much that I was emotionally ready to climb that third fence with her, even though it was our first date.”
“Alrighty then!” Felix announced. “I’m going to ask my new girlfriend’s mother out to dinner with us next week,”
And with that, we finished off our scotch and called it a night.
A new approach
Much to my amazement, Felix did go on a date with his new girlfriend’s parents. And during that meal, he got a taste of some of the issues they’d face together, particularly around politics and religion.
Unfortunately, that relationship ended not long after, but Felix learned something about himself. He kept falling in love with people based on how he felt in the attraction stage, but he’d dump them as soon things got bumpy.
But Felix flipped the fence sequence around for how he dated. He focused more on the “personality” and “values” fences. And not only did he find someone that makes him laugh in bed late at night, but someone who shared his passions and goals in life.
I’m happy to report that Felix is married to a wonderful lady, and they have two amazing little girls. But there’s no exact formula to finding love and your partner for life.
Love is a mysterious lottery. And relationships are a test of acceptance.
But if you can keep these three fences of the relationship — attraction, personality, and values — in mind, it will help you go deeper into your relationships and get mentally ready for the challenging hurdles that all couples face in merging their lives.
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Photo courtesy Unsplash
Previously published on Medium.