Most of my students are adult women.

There’s a recurring topic during the lessons.

Finding and maintaining a relationship that makes us feel alive.

The obstacles seem daunting and legion.

Some of the examples the women give.

A partner that’s emotionally distant.

Financial worries destroying the peace at home.

Inlaws from hell.

The death of the sexual flame.

Lack of mutual interests.

Ex-boyfriends turning up suddenly offering what they didn’t want to offer before.

Not seeing each other.

Husband obsessed with a hobby.

Illness.

Cultural differences.

Different ideas about how to spend their free time.

Attraction to third parties.

Being used as a trophee and not as a living human being with feelings, worries, aspirations, desires, concerns, beliefs, …

Being pushed into the role of the guy in the relationship. By this they mean that they as the woman, have to take charge of things and also prop up their guy’s weak self-confidence.

Most relationships I know, especially here in Slovakia, are lop-sided. That means the burden is on the woman. The man will make money, the woman too, but the man seems to think making money is all that is required of him, and because that is such a drag, the woman has to support him emotionally at all times.

Rather quickly a relationship evolves where the man is treated like people treat an annoying dog one is attached to nonetheless. Or the man slips aways into grumpiness and the woman finds ‘things’ to do outside of the home. Or when this dynamic is refused, when the man doesn’t collapse to her dominance or retreats into his castle of grumpiness, usually when the woman doesn’t take control of him, when the man doesn’t settle for a stale life then the marriage usually falls apart. A Slovak woman will build her life around a meek puppy of a husband, too afraid to ask for much and she will build one around a passively complaining guy mourning his unlived desires, but she will not build it around a man who is fully alive and wants more than to be domesticated.