Be Heart Smart: Avoiding Unhealthy Love Relationships

This is the first part of what I think will be several posts about love relationships.I will start by using the musical "Guys and Dolls" as a good example of what not to do.

There are two main women in the musical Guys and Dolls. They each love a man who is not good for them.

Here's the set up. Adelaide has been engaged to the same man for many, many years. His occupation is setting up illegal crap games. He says they will get married but keeps putting it off.  Adelaide has gone so far as to tell her mother they have been married for years. She even made up fake kids and writes to her mother about them on a regular basis.

Sister Sarah, who works for the Salvation Army, falls for a gambler. Each man is notoriously undependable. I guess they both like bad boys.
Anyway, the song they sing is about marrying these bad boys, with the intention of changing them.

Listen to this.

"Marry the man today, rather than sigh in sorrow, marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow."

Does this sound like a good idea? Of course not! But there are still people who try to do this. What I like to tell my clients is, "Don't marry a fixer-upper." You know how you can buy a house that needs a lot of work to be truly liveable? That's what I call a fixer-upper. Don't get in a relationship with someone who needs a lot of work.

Of course, none of us is perfect. Your partner will always have flaws. I mean that you need to  be careful to avoid potential partners who need a lot of work. Assume that the person you are interested in will always be the way he or she is when you first met them. Heck, you liked them that way, right? If you can live with how they are right now then they are a good choice. If you think, "All will be well if they only change," then you are on a dangerous path. Contrary to what Sister Sarah and Adelaide believe, you cannot change them.



Guys and Dolls DVD
Guys and Dolls [Original Music from the Movie Soundtrack] CD
Guys and Dolls [1992 Broadway Revival Cast] CD