Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What's Wrong with Me?

A couple of years ago, a very distressed friend called me up on the phone and told me that he needed a friend he could talk to. Naturally, I told him that I had the time available for that, and he said that he'd come over within a few minutes.

When he arrived, he sat down in a chair, let out a deep sigh, and asked me one question: "What's wrong with me?"

Talk about your loaded questions!

No, seriously, he went on to explain that a girl he had been dating had just broken up with him, in spite of all of his efforts to make their relationship work. After analyzing things in his mind, that was the conclusion he had come to - that there must be something "wrong" with him that made her not like him back the way he hoped she would. I honestly do not remember how I answered my friend's question, but I do remember that we had a good discussion about dating and women - you know, two of the greatest mysteries of the universe.


I've thought of that experience a number of times since and whenever I've had to face a breakup of my own. My friend asked me a question that, I'm sure, many of us have asked ourselves after being rejected by someone. I don't think there are any easy answers to it - if there is even a good answer at all. "The heart wants what it wants," as the saying goes, and sometimes the heart wants really odd things or things that aren't good for it in the long run. The heart can plumb loco at times.

John Bytheway gave an excellent talk on CD, one that I refer to often when it comes to matters of the opposite sex and dating, in which he discussed the issue of likability. He said that an audience member from one of his firesides came up to him once and asked the question, "How do I make people like me?" The answer, he said, is that you honestly can't make people like you. There's that whole free agency thing, you know, that we all fought for in the preexistence, after all. Nevertheless, though we can't make others like us, what we can do is make ourselves likable. And there's plenty of good advice given in the scriptures on that subject, given in the form of possessing such qualities as kindness, charity, love unfeigned, humility, patience, etc.

In retrospect, another answer I might give my friend would not be an answer to his question at all but to ask a different question in its place: "What's wrong with this girl that she doesn't like my friend and see what a great person he is?"

Whatever the appropriate question(s)/answer(s) may turn out to be, I believe that self-improvement - i.e. making ourselves likable - is always a good idea. It's also a good idea not to give up trying to find that someone who will like us, warts and all - or there is the potential that opportunities will be missed. (Believe me, I know many people of my same age and in my same situation who, for all intents and purposes, have given up completely or at least appear to have done so.) When we find that someone, the rejections and the disappointments will fade into obscurity, while the "likability" can grow into love and other, greater things. If we do the very best we can, we have the promise that it can last for quite a long, long time, to boot.

Well, that's how I see it. Unless movies and TV have lied to me, it will also come with a swelling of music and a sparkly vampire with bad hair and makeup and little-to-no acting skills.

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