beautiful woman?

[Turboguy]

I hate to say it guys but inner beauty can fade over time too.   Often it only takes two years.    Of course I have to admit that inner uglieness is there forever.

[andrewfi]

I disagree. Your reaction to how a person is may change, but people's personalities do not change. The things you used to find appealing may come to grate, but they are still there. I can understand how it is that many men (and women) get bored with relationships and come to loathe that which they loved. - Or in the case of relationships between people of hugely different age and culture, who do not share a common language, increased knowledge and personal growth in one of the partners may mean that one does not like what one finds, but that is, again, not the person changing, or the beauty going away.

[Turboguy]

Personally I think when people first meet they try to be extra careful to open doors, be nice and considerate, dress well and a lot of other ways.   How many people would let out a big fart on their first date.   After 25 years of marriage if the gasses started to build up a lot of people would just let it rip.

I think there are many women who would be very capable of keeping bad tempers or bad manners in check till they had what they wanted which for some could be a green card then once they have what they want let the real inner self out.   I am not saying this is common or that personalities change as easily as waistlines just that it can happen.    Sometimes the inner beauty we think we see is not real.

[andrewfi]

If you do not share language or culture than you may well be right, but that of course is not because the person changes, as you suggest, but that you did not know the person well enough.

If one does not have the tools to be getting married, then one should not be getting married.

For myself, I do not know anyone, with whom I share language and culture, with whom I have shared a close relationship, who has disappointed me by magically changing. It has happened to me with women with whom I do not share language and culture, but always well before the point at which a long term committment might have been made.

[Turboguy]

Well, you are lucky then.  I was really talking more hypothetically.   I think there are guys who run into a Green Card Girl that show a lot of good qualities and project a wonderful inner beauty and once they have what they want then the real person comes out.   I could site Max as an example but I think in his case the inner beauty did not even last the two years.

In a couple of weeks I will post my own recient experience which was not one of inner beauty that changed buy may help some to avoid the mistakes I made.   In my case I chose to ignore a lot of red flags and that was a mistake.  No matter how much salt, pepper or mustard you put on them eating your own words is never tasty.   I was too much a believer in love and romance and not enough in the rules that are talked about here very often.

[Leslie]

Andrew this is a gem !

"If you do not share language or culture than you may well be right, but that of course is not because the person changes, as you suggest, but that you did not know the person well enough."

In this scene virtually no one puts in the time and effort to really get to know their partner before they get engaged.  90% of guys are meeting a virtual stranger when they pick up their fiance at the airport.

I reckon because guys only spend a few weeks with a woman before they marry that looks tend to predominate.  

There is only time to look at the cover not to read the book....

Intimate knowledge of your partners personality and character is most readily gained by living a regular life together.  Writing letters counts for little.  So does talking on the telephone.  Sharing holidays is not a real situation.  The < 90 days of a fiance visa are not enough ! 

I lived with my wife in Ukraine for 4 months.  We then moved to UK and lived together for another 5 months.  We didn't know each other very well when we married.  A year later we did.  Fortunately we still loved one another ! A year after that she was 20Kg heavier but she had not turned into a "Holoshka" !

All the train wreck stories are written by guys who married a stranger. 



 

 

[Admin]

If you do not share language or culture than you may well be right, but that of course is not because the person changes, as you suggest, but that you did not know the person well enough.

If one does not have the tools to be getting married, then one should not be getting married.

For myself, I do not know anyone, with whom I share language and culture, with whom I have shared a close relationship, who has disappointed me by magically changing. It has happened to me with women with whom I do not share language and culture, but always well before the point at which a long term committment might have been made.

Andrew,

You made a comment that caught my eye. You said; "For myself, I do not know anyone, with whom I share language and culture, with whom I have shared a close relationship, who has disappointed me by magically changing."

I find that a bit odd. Most of us who have been involved in relationships at all, have witnessed the unfortunate circumstance of people behaving VERY differently in the early stages of a relationship, only to reveal their inner selves much later in the relationship.

I am reminded of my ex-wife - with whom it may be said that we shared common language and cultural roots - yet I can think of MANY instances where she became a much different person than the one I married. By way of example:

1) After we were married, she saw fit to divulge the fact that she had "lost count" of the number of her previous lovers, but it was "at least 30." Clearly, she was intentionally presenting a much different person PRIOR to the marriage than she did AFTER the marriage.

2) She was a person who had attained a college level education and even post-graduate studies UNTIL we married. In spite of my many requests and suggestions, she NEVER cracked a book after we were married - not even to learn about the parenting of our children. Something I took VERY seriously, but she was completely disinterested.

3) On a more physical level, she told me recently that the tailored clothing we purchased for her while in Thailand on our honeymoon, the skirt now fits her one thigh (used to fit her waist).

4) Perhaps most significantly, my ex-wife WAS a person who was scrupulous about her belief in telling the truth - even if it meant she would pay some consequence for it. Now, she is so warped that the judge recently found her testimony, "deliberately misleading and deceptive." She also duped a former 'employer' into paying her unemployment compensation - he alleges she stole the signed papers proving she was never more than a contractor and ineligible for unemployment.

5) In fairness, she told me before we were married that several members of her family had suffered serious depression to the point of behaving suicidal. I just never imagined that my ex's manifestation of that malady would result in her hate-filled vindictive campaign directed towards me with an apparent lack of consideration for the deleterious impact it would have upon our children. Perhaps this is a symptom of serious depression - that one becomes so self-absorbed and focused that they blank out those who are, or were, important to them.

There are, of course, a few characteristics that persisted from pre-marriage into post-marriage. Her abject lack of organizational skills, particularly around the home. Her total and complete inability to be introspective and look within to find answers. And her complete and total rejection of the value of psychotherapy - even for one so obviously in need of it.

And yes, I *do* know that all of this to some extent reflects on me and my judgment and selection of a mate. I suppose it has something to do with what LP calls the "Power of the Bush." (If you don't 'get it', drop a note and I will clarify) Fortunately, with Olya, my judgment must have improved a thousand-fold.

- Dan

[Photo Guy]

Olya must be such a breath of fresh air.

[anono]

 How many people would let out a big fart on their first date.

this must explain why i do not get many second dates

 

[andrewfi]

Dan ~ It is a fact that people's personalities do not change much, and only over a lengthy period, it is true though that people are able to 'mask' their personality, albeit at the cost of a degree of stress, the degree of stress being related to the degree of change from the unmasked state.

The reason why it is hard for us to detect the degree of change in a cross cultural relationship is that we do not have the tools for looking behind the mask. It is much easier to detect the signs of masking in a relationship, or situation where we share culture and language.

Many years ago when I used to consult and train in the use of psychometric tools I realised that one could use these tools in a relationship situation, but in practice they were much too intrusive. It was however perfectly possible to use inferential tools to the same purpose. (speech patterns, dress styles, living and work space preferences, motivators and demotivators etc) Perhaps it was that training that stood me in good stead since, but I think not.

The points you made seemed not to be particularly about personality, or at least to be dangerous assumptions to make. That a person chooses not to read much after undertaking higher education is hardly uncommon, but is far from being a personality descriptor, the number of lovers, again likewise and that is something that I have learned never to enquire about - one can never expect to hear the truth about such a thing and thus it is a pointless, yet harmful area of investigation. That she put on weight as she grew older is, again, not really any kind of indicator of personality. It would have been much nore useful to observe what mtivated her, and demotivated her, what kind of societal validation did she seek, what was her preferred work pattern, how did her behaviour change under stress, how did she decorate and maintain her personal spaces - these things, if you knew their import would have tols you much of what you needed to know - at least it would, if you also knew your own personality type, as relationships do not occur in a vacuum, both you and she would have been reacting to each others personality traits and behaviours, thus knowing everything about one party is no use unless you know the same things about the other party.

For more information on the subject you might want to Google on 'William Moulton Marston', psychometrics and PPA. There is much written on the subject of personality that is merely conjecture and parlour psychology, much less that is statistically valid. Marston's work and that of his successors is valid and reflects the real world. I can not help but think that learning to use the inferential tools available to us would be of great assistance inbuilding successful relationships, with people from our own national culture and others.

[KenC]

Andrew,

I have read you say "people just don't change" before.  I think that you are mostly correct, but also slightly incorrect.  I don't think people change much.  I do think people grow and evolve over time.  The more time, then the bigger the growth or evolution.  But here's the rub on this: a person may grow or evolve at a different pace or even in a different direction then their partner over time.  The movement doesn't have to be significant for there to be a huge difference over a long period of time.  Or as I asked my friend during my divorce:  "How did things get so phucked up?"  His answer was classic: "It didn't happen overnight.  It happened a little bit at a time and over a 20+ year period, you end up 180 degrees from where you started".

KenC

[Photo Guy]

Ken,
So how will you deal with it? In other words, how will that past experience of growing apart affect your present marriage? Is it something that just happens, without control or direction, and the chips fall where they may? How will your awareness affect your behavior or outcome?

[andrewfi]

Ken ~ I actually wrote, as I usually do, the following: 'It is a fact that people's personalities do not change much, and only over a lengthy period'

To use the terminology associated with personality profiling, a normal person will not change from a 'Low D' to a 'High D', meaning that a person who is by nature conservative, low-keyed, undemanding modest and peaceful will never become, by nature, demanding, forceful and egocentric. It just will not happen! At most, they may become a little less conservative, a little less modest, a little less peaceable. If somebody is pretending to be that which they are not then the stress incurred by that person is too great to sustain for any great period of time (a few years in the work environment, months in a personal relationship). Of course the example I gave here is not a full description, it is just a small part of the description of the general charateristics of one of the four dimensions of personality recognised by Moulton Marston.

Given that marriage was never designed to last as long as we make it these days, it is unreasonable to expect a marriage to last a modern lifetime. The scale of time by which significant changes in personality occur is decades, not months or years. Until recently, a marriage might be reasonably expected to last 25-30 years, now we expect it to last 50. It seems to me that as normal people, most can sustain a relationship for 20 odd years, if they chose well at the outset, but that the insurmountable problems arise at the point in time at which, until the 20th century, one of the partners would have been dead...

[Bruno]

it is just a small part of the description of the general charateristics of one of the four dimensions of personality recognised by Moulton Marston.

Moulton Marston

A feminist theorist, who have study psychologie, who was mainly know for be the creator of the comic book "Wonder Woman"... and not so much know for have invent a early form of lie detector...

He have life from 1893 to 1947... since these time, psychologie have evolued and his theory become a little old...

When someone wrote :

Code: [Select]

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power... The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman
i don't give a lot of credit to his theories... he was wishing superwoman, he have create "wonder woman"  ... and our modern wonder world have create the "super b!tch" :? ...


EDIT : When you speak over low D and high D, do you refert to the DISC system ?

http://www.discprofile.com/whatisdisc.htm

If yes, you can see that "environment" is one of the two main factor... these environment is our daily life, who can change a lot in a few time...

[andrewfi]

Bruno ~ Probably in your home you have an electric light bulb, most of us do! They were commercialised by Thomas Alva Edison in the late 19th century. I guess that because they were invented so long ago they are outdated? Huh?

Before you go on about things about which you know nothing, other than what Google tells you, do some reading, learn something. Do not just spit back irrelevant factoids that do not justify your initial, incorrect, premise.

In order to assist you, you could look at the validation studies for DISC systems, Jungian tools, Cattell 16 etc. When you have read through those, read something like 'Emotions of Normal People'  ISBN 0415210763, to understand the basis of the concepts and then done the training and work that I have, then, come back and have a discourse.

You will note that I do not comment upon gardening, it is not my metier.

[BC]

I always figured we basically are what we are by the time we hit late teens. Thereafter only minor modifications in tone based on experiences in the field.

For me the challenge of living with a partner is being able to accept and be accepted as we are without requiring changes that will never really 'be'.

If there is some trait with your prospective partner that you cannot accept blindly without requiring change then don't even think about talking yourself into a relationship. 'Trading' or rationalizing one good quality (such as beauty) against another normally unacceptable quality is not very wise and rarely works out long term IMHE.

The fading inner beauty that Turbo mentions is not truly fading but deterioration of the facade we all initially wear in budding relationships.

[andrewfi]

BC ~ You are about right. There are differing schools of thought in respect of personality development. Some suggest that personality develops with time and changes according to external pressures and with age. Others argue that personality is largely a matter of heredity and that as the Jesuits said, 'give me a boy until he is 6 and I will show you the man', for these thinkers, external environments test but do not change personality.

It is likely that the latter group is more right than the first. The evidence is striking. Firstly, identical twins tend to have very similar personalities, even when raised seperately; secondly, when longitudinal studies are made, personalities remain very constant over long periods of time and also, that personality profiling instruments can be validated over periods of time, with repeat applications, suggests very strongly that personality does not change much. If personality was environmental, then twins would be more different than they are, analysis tools would not be valid and longitudinal surverys would have different results.

That pepole think that personality changes with time comes, in large part, from our lack of skill in assessing those around us. In my previous life, where we were training managers and HR staff to use DISC systems as management tools, we had a simplistic (and possibly badly remembered) mantra:

A normal interiewer (man on the street) can conduct an interview and will get about 40% accuracy about an interviewee's personality - But he will not be able to identify which points are accurate!

A trained and skilled interviewer will be able to accurately inventory about 60% of a person's personality and may have some idea of the weak areas of his inventory.

A person trained in the use of a validated DISC tool will be able to identify, accurately, about 80% of a person's personality and can be pretty sure about what he does not know. IE, he can identify the weak areas in his analysis.

What that means for ordinary guys is that we get surprised by facets of personality, reactions to situations and behaviours, not because they are new, but because we did not know about them. In the short term, we may find that a person changes displayed behaviour becasue they can not keep up pretences, the stress is too great. IMHO in the MOB situation, that is where the relationships end, because the man, woman or both could no longer keep up the act - leading the women go home before the end of the K1 90 days. I doubt an ordinary person can keep up the mask of deceit for more than 90 days without showing the stresses in a very visible manner.

 

 

[KenC]

Interesting thread.

Photoguy,

I don't think you can change the outcome.  It will be what it will be.

Andrew,

If your position is correct, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, then the poor SOB that commits to marrying a RW in a weeks time has absolutely no clue to whom he is going to marry.  Which has been my point all along.

On the ability to maintain a false image:  When dating AW, I had a "six month rule".  I always felt that a person could present a false (more appealing) image for a short period of time, but would not be able to maintain it over a longer period ( six months).  Inevitably, these women would show their true face within the six month period.  Based on what you have written, I was really on to something.:cool:

I married my childhood sweetheart in my first marriage.  We dated for 4 years and were married for 21.  We knew each other as well as two people could know another.  So how could things go sideways with such knowledge?  I now realize that it was our external enviornment that changed and her bad behavior may have always been there but not apparent in the prior enviornment.  In our case it was all about money.  She was a good partner in a lot of ways during the first 15 years of our marriage.  That was the time when I worked to establish myself in my profession.  But once I had attained a very successful level in terms of money, she was unbearable.  I had always thought that the money that I had earned "changed" her into the bitch from hell.  Now I realize that my success just enabled her to display her true personality.  She always was the bitch from hell.

KenC

[andrewfi]

Ken ~ My view too - I am absolutely sure that people who marry in haste repent at leisure, even if the result is not always a divorce and that applies to normal relationships as much as MOB ones.

My practical experience, as well as training, tends to suggest that personality is observable and measurable and that we can modify our behaviour (but not our personality) to enable us to get the results we want from any kind of relationship. If my personality type is not naturally a good fit with yours, with self awareness, I can modify my behaviour to enable the relationship to work.
Therefore, my behaviour toward you will tend to describe how you will respond to me. Knowing that, it is thus easy to make somebody like me, or, if I choose, to dislike me, or just get angry. Usually I go with comfort and choose to have people like me and feel comfortable, I think most of us do, when we can . We can all do this, but we do have to learn. Of course, different language and body language patterns have an effect upon how this works out, but making a person feel comfortable with one is a very good start to building a relationship, of any kind. One way that we can know that relationship is in trouble (IMHO) is when one partner no longer bothers to behave in a manner that makes the other partner feel comfortable. Not having been married, I can not say whether that situation is surmountable; for me, when it happens, I take the view that it is time to move on, whether it is me, or my partner who does not care to try.

[KenC]

Andrew,

Being married means that there are always concessions and compromises.  I strongly believe that there are no perfect marriages or perfect combinations of two people.  There is a constant give and take going on through out the relationship.  Whether we understand it or not at the time, there is a mental tabulation of benefits vs. costs going on subconciously.  The stronger the relationship history is the longer the relationship can continue with a negative balance sheet.  That is why it was so easy to be objective in my observations of the women I dated after my divorce and why I was not so quick to cut bait on a relationship that spanned 27 years.

What blows my mind is the total lack of objectivity a lot of the guys going to Russia display.  I could understand making excuses for some bad behavior in a long term relationship, but not in a one or two week encounter.  These men make all sort of unreasonable excuses in order to force a relationship where there is little likelyhood of a good one developing.  I went to Russia with exactly the opposite idea in mind.  If my meeting with my now wife was not perfect (in my mind) then all bets were off.  And if anyone had asked me what I thought the chances were before I visited, I would have said "one in a million".  Given that I knew Lena was beautiful before I left to meet her was but one of many factors involved in my decision process.  Rather than going on the trip with the expressed mind set of making it work, I went with the thoughts of finding out why it wouldn't work.  And I am typically a very positive guy.

KenC

[Admin]

For more information on the subject you might want to Google on 'William Moulton Marston', psychometrics and PPA. There is much written on the subject of personality that is merely conjecture and parlour psychology, much less that is statistically valid. Marston's work and that of his successors is valid and reflects the real world. I can not help but think that learning to use the inferential tools available to us would be of great assistance inbuilding successful relationships, with people from our own national culture and others.

I agree completely that there is a great deal of 'pop' psychology out there and a great need for sound validation of various hypotheses. I am a fan of Seligman for exactly those reasons - his work is undergirded by more than 20 years of statistically-valid research.

Anyway, good discourse - and maybe it will prove useful to the readers.

- Dan

[andrewfi]

Dan, I am sure that objective forms of looking at personality and relationships, be they cross cultural or not are beneficial. The problem is accessing the knowledge that enables one to gain an insight. I know that my somewhat rusty skills have been put to good effect, usually without even thinking about it. It is not common, even these days to come across people who have any training or understanding of psychometrics and it saddens me that the discipline is so often seen in the same light as such 'tools' as graphology and astrology. Also, it seems that so many computer based systems provide a very small number of 'typical' or 'classic' profiles that their value is severely undermined. I was today looking at a website that was referenced by Bruno, this is one such - a website full of interesting and useful information, all, seemingly, with a single purpose, to obscure that reality that their computer based system offers a mere 15 different profile types. The system they promote is valid and worthwhile, but its application is close to charlatanry and the innocent reader, such as Bruno simply does not have the tools to distinguish the good from the bad.

 

[Bruno]

You will note that I do not comment upon gardening, it is not my metier.

Why not, maybe you know more that me... for gardening, i have only follow a six month course... my civil study is analyst-programmeur... my army study is A2 electro-mechanic and weapon technicus... nothing to make with flower... gardening is a recent and new way that i have choice 3 year ago... maybe in several decade, i will know a lot about this but now, my knowledge about this is new and minimum. Of course, in only one domain, medicinal plant, i am enough good... i have start wrote a book some year ago ( stop since my divorce ) but it was more over the bio-chimical interaction that the botanical side...

[Photo Guy]

People change over time. Andrewfin tells us the amount of change happens within certain parameters.

It seems to me, the outcome depends on the couple's ability to adapt to the changes. I'm thinking in terms of flexibility, attitude adjustments, and graciousness. A couple that is characterized by attitudes like intolerance or a lack of forgiveness, will not last very long, if the individuals change over time. Am I wrong? I'd venture to say that couples who practice unconditional love, will outlast couples who go to the other extreme.  Doug

[andrewfi]

Bruno ~ You do have difficulty with English and so you find it hard to understand others. Sorry, I try to make allowances, but I do not always succeed. I suggested that you use Google to do some learning. It was obvious that you had not done so, but merely regurgitated what you had misread from the first pages that you read, if you expect me to be awed by parroting, sorry, I am not, I will call you on it, just as I will call others over inaccuracies, I expect the same in return.

It is usually apparent when people use the internet as a source of fast information without processing the information into knowledge and thence understanding, many modern students do the same thing, it shows in their work, it shows in your posts in this thread and others. I provided a useful book reference for you to read, give it a go. There are of course many others, but that one is seminal and available.

If you have questions ask me, or perhaps Dan. Dan has probably forgotten more than I ever knew on the subject, especially given that my last professional dealings with the area were almost 20 years ago, but I will try to help, as I always offer to those who need it.