RELATIONSHIP TRAINING FROM ONE BAD DATE TO THE NEXT

Relationship training should happen before any long term relationships to avoid the question, “What is wrong with you?”

This goes out to the guys in the audience: You will eventually run out of prospects for a Saturday night out if you don’t learn the ropes.

Even married people get shut down if they don’t know when to shut up.

Relationship training isn’t some JC class, or community education seminar. And it’s not marriage counseling. It’s learning what’s expected of you.

Once you know what’s expected, you can then proceed. If not, everything comes at you unexpected.

Where does one get this training, you ask? Please proceed.

I had the good fortune of meeting mentors in my youthful days.

I was a twenty year old private in the Army when I met a retired colonel. He came to the clinic for his annual check-up. I was the medic on duty in South Philadelphia.

Colonel Jones was a tall gangly man, but he’d worked the gangle out in West Point, WWII, and Korea. Now he was a healthcare administrator living on The Main Line, instead of a combat commander.

We took a shine to each other. He knew the Army depended on guys like me; I knew the Army was full of tinpot hard-asses. We proved each other wrong.

At the time, I was a young man with a bright future. He understood the hurdles I had in front of me.

Relationship Training From A Master Matchmaker

“More important than what school you attend, your career, or where you live, is who you share your life with,” the Colonel said.

Share my life? That was new to me.

“Who shares a life?” I asked.

“We all do. Once you know that, things get easier,” he said.

He and his wife had adult children who lived thousands of miles away. The first time I met her she sized me up with, “You’ll be just right.”

They had a plan, which explained why their kids lived so far away.

While the Main Line is a place of great wealth, it’s also a place where blood and familial ties mean everything. Only the members of the most prominent Philadelphia families and their guests are invited. Unlike other notably wealthy enclaves around the country, no amount of money could buy entrance to this esteemed social registry, as proven by Grace Kelly, Philadelphia’s very own princess.

The Colonel’s wife had a plan. She would show me what it meant to live on The Main Line. The classes would take place at dinners they hosted with their friends daughters. My job was to be presentable.

Before anything started she tutored me in Main Line manners, how to navigate the dinner table, and what to talk about later in the evening. That was the plan.

After five first dates with five Main Line college girls, we had to call it quits.

The project was doomed to fail from the start.

I Want To Do Right, But Not Right Now

No first date led to a second, and Mrs. Jones didn’t anticipate the phone calls from parents asking why. They were helicopter parents before helicopter parents were popular.

They were nice girls, nice enough to agree on a date set up by their parents. That sort of nice.

We all made it through proper introductions and dinner. It was the private conversations that proved to be a problem.

The girls were all socially conditioned to fall in line with custom and tradition, which explained their willingness for blind dates suggested by their parents’ friends.

When we were alone it went like this:

“Thanks for coming out tonight. Does this happen often?” I asked.

“Every time I come home from college,” was the consistent answer.

“Your parents want to know that you’ve absorbed their teaching,” I said.

“And I have.”

“Yes, you have. You’ve been the best so far,” I said. I said that every time.

“Have your parents taught you well?”

“Yes. Where I come from, we grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, retire, and then,” I said.

“And then what?”

“And then? I don’t know what happens next.”

“Is that what you want to do, too?”

“I’m a college dropout who joined the Army. Have you dated anyone like that before?”

“No one remotely like that.”

“I didn’t think so. What I’ve got ahead of me is a lot of uncertainty. Stay in the Army, go back to school, find a girl. That’s not a plan for a Main Line girl.”

“We grow up, go to a private college, attend mixers, graduate, then audition future husbands.”

“Your future husband is waiting. You’ll know them by the way they behave around your parents. The right one will make you feel like an extension of your family.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Depends on how you see yourself. Do you stand alone, or stand in line?”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“Parental approval is what keeps kids between the lines. If your parents approve of you, and who you spend time with, whose life are you living?”

“My parents are good people.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because here you are, and you’re good people. That’s not an accident.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“You’ll meet a guy in an unusual place, somewhere beyond your parents, and you’ll finds more in common with them than you’ve ever felt with anyone. That’s how it works.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Or, you’ll accept someone they choose for you and find the sort of happiness that comes with the territory. But you’ll always wonder about the other sort of life, the one where you make the decisions.”

“I make my own decisions now.”

“Good. What do you want to do now?”

And this was where effective relationship training kicked in.