So once again we’re focusing on an honest look at who the other person really is and whether we can live with that personality instead of being carried away by external impressions or romantic overtures, and missing the essential points of the relationship. Okay. Now we’re down to the last two mistakes to look out for.

Reason Number Nine – Avoiding Personal Responsibility

The ninth reason why people marry the wrong person is that people tend to use the relationship to avoid taking responsibility for their psychological deficits and personal unhappiness. In other words, people tend to make the tragic mistake of thinking that what’s wrong with their life and why they’re not so happy is that they’re not married yet. Well, let me tell you that if you’re an unhappy person as a single person, you will be miserable when you’re married. Your spouse… and this is an important principle… your spouse is not responsible for your happiness. Only you are responsible for your happiness. And therefore, it’s very important, if you’re not happy with yourself, if you don’t like yourself, if you don’t like the way your life is going, if you just don’t feel good about yourself and your life, it’s important that while you’re single you take responsibility for it now and deal with it. Either talk to a friend, talk to a Rabbi, talk to a professional, but resolve these issues now. Don’t bring them into your relationship and into your marriage and make them your spouse’s problems because they will. You’ll bring your unhappiness into the relationship and now it will be compounded because not only will it be your problem but now it will be the other person’s problem as well.

Reason Number Ten – Emotional Health and Availability

And this leads me to the tenth and final reason why people marry the wrong person, which is that people tend to pick someone who is not emotionally healthy or emotionally available. And speaking as a psychotherapist I can say that this is one of the most tragic mistakes that people make. Unfortunately in our society today there are many, many people who are not emotionally healthy and therefore, not emotionally available.

Let me give you two fundamental reasons that make someone not emotionally available. The first is a concept from family psychotherapy. It’s called triangulation. A triangle is a three-way relationship whereby there could be the wife and the husband, and then, let’s say, the husband has a dependent relationship on the mother or the father or somebody else. In other words he hasn’t broken the emotional connection, the emotional ties. And therefore there’s