Avery: male, 46, currently divorcing (divorced) after a four-year marriage, has children

Avery is a high school math teacher.  He’s lived 25 years in the African country of Cameroon, 10 years going to school and teaching in France and the last 10 years teaching in the United States.

He has an 11-year-old daughter he had to leave in Cameroon because he couldn’t make a living in his country.  He never married his baby’s mother, because at the time, he didn’t feel ready for marriage. 

But now he’s 40 and devoted to his Christian religion and “my parents were very concerned that I had attained this ripe old age without ever being married.” His reasoning continued, “She’s a beautiful woman living in the U.S. and I haven’t dated anyone seriously in a long time.”

So after a few months they were married.

She had a few traits that gave him doubts, like her propensity for becoming easily angered, berating waiters (and those less powerful than her), and jumping from job to job.

She’d often spoken about her dreams of getting into law or music, but showed little effort or progress in those directions.

Still, she said she wanted to “change her life and become a good person…a Christian.”  He was going to teach her.  “It would be good for both of us.”  She seemed to be moving in, figuratively and  literally.

But things got worse.  Her angry outbursts became louder and more frequent.  She began verbally and physically abusing and degrading him, even threatening to call the police to have him arrested.

Avery described her as “a fake.”  “She never showed much interest in me or Christianity.  She’d act nice until she got what she wanted, then she’d be rude.”

After five years, he left and is currently going through the divorce process.

Here’s Avery’s essentials list. It clearly illustrates how our past relationships should, and usually do, help form our views on what we need in our life partners.

1.     She must have “Christian values”:  in other words, “to believe in a higher power and respect everyone regardless of their race or wealth.”  When questioned if these were exclusively Christian values, he said he wasn’t sure, but said both were important to him.

2.     She must be authentic:  in other words, be honest about what she really wants.

As you can see, Avery didn’t have much of an essentials list. When I urged him to come up with a few more, he couldn’t; so I offered a some suggestions that I hoped he would have learned from his prior marriage:

1.    Someone who is authentically a nice person.  A truly nice person is kind and generous even to those who can do little for her.  For example, telling himself that helping her become a better Christian (meaning a nice person) would “help us both” was a distortion, and a convenient way of ignoring the alarms in his head that should have been ringing. Someone who is responsible and will pull her weight in the relationship (including financially).

2.    Someone who will make you feel loved and safe, build your self-esteem and not tear it down. 

3.    Someone who is interested in your life is a bare minimum, not a goal to be worked toward.

Avery appears to be smart, warm and hardworking.  He felt pressured to get married by his family, religion, and future wife.  He chose to ignore clear warning signs and, worse yet, allowed her to make the decisions he should make.

His internal essentials list seemed vague and twisted, making it difficult for him to learn his life lessons and to find a partner who would strengthen him while rejecting those that wouldn’t.

He says that he feels ready to get married again, but will probably wait one or two years from the time he meets his new girlfriend (or less if it feels right) especially since “my mom will start pressuring me as soon as the divorce is finalized.”