Dear Jenny Lynn:

Yes, I remember now: you compared the pressure that you put on John at the time (pressure on John to commit to you) to the pressure Glenn put on you (to commit to him). Correct? So here is a correction of my earlier post: you compared you to Glenn, the two of you putting pressure on the partner to commit. This makes your comparison even more unrealistic, in hindsight: you and Glenn are very different. If your pressure on John was successful and he committed to you, in my view, he would have been a fortunate man, to have you as his partner in life: a woman who is very intelligent, very reasonable and loving. My goodness, he would have been fortunate!

On the other hand, Glenn was successful enough, and you did commit to him. But that made you an unfortunate woman because Glenn, unlike you, is very unreasonable and when angry, he stays angry. No love.

But I agree with you, of course, putting pressure on a person, a boyfriend, is not a good idea and doesn’t work for the benefit of the one putting on the pressure.

You wrote that there were times when the good outweighed the bad, with Glenn. Well, for as long as he wasn’t angry. But no way any woman can live with Glenn and not experience his anger. And when he is angry, no reasoning with him…  only submission. Not a way to live a good life.

You wrote that you won’t “exude the energy (I have in past) to draw people like that to me”. I read that a lot from people, saying one draws dysfunctional people into their lives. Often it is not so, I believe. It is not that out of a pool of many functional people, we draw the few that aren’t functional. Reality is that… again, the norm is the dysfunction, so out of a majority of dysfunctional people we statistically end up with dysfunctional people.

Better learn who the person is before being too invested, so to  identify the man who although imperfect, is reasonable enough to make a healthy relationship possible…even when angry, especially when angry.

anita