My Boyfriend Wants Me To Change How I Dress and More. What Should I Do?

Greetings from a loyal fan in Australia! Loved your book, " Why He Disappeared ". Right now my man and I are in a period of "time out". Why? He wanted to know details of my sexual history (which isn't that bad but bothered him), and said if he was in a serious relationship with someone the way I dress would need to change and Facebook cleaned out, basically things would need to "severely change". Clothes apparently cling to my body and jealous over guys on Facebook. Keeping in mind his conservative, middle eastern background (although born in Oz), some people have said he's clearly serious about you others are saying he's crazy. He didn't end the relationship but asked for space for us both to think… I thought this one was different. Can you help me make sense of this? Haven't made contact nor has he for 2 days. I was kinda blindsided by this and he has treated me amazingly otherwise. We've been dating 3 months. Haven't met family or anything yet but he mentioned them in relation to the above (i.e. if you meet my family). He's a workaholic CEO type, divorced twice, 2 kids. Please help!

Mariana

I know this is an important and sensitive issue to you, but the answer couldn't be more obvious to an objective third party: RUN!

I'm hoping that by the time you read this, you already figured this one out for yourself. But if you didn't, let me provide you the logical framework to make an emotional decision.

I believe there are many people who don't have the capacity to make ANYBODY happy.

I've already hinted in previous blog posts about something I've kept to myself for a long time — I believe there are many people who don't have the capacity to make ANYBODY happy. It's not that they're evil. It's that they're too selfish, too insecure, and lack the communication and compromise skills necessary to make a marriage work. Try though they might, every time they get into a relationship, the same thing happens. They are the common denominator in their own lives.

So while I would be inclined to dismiss him based on his archetype: workaholic CEO type, twice divorced, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's sensitive. Maybe his wives were gold diggers. Maybe he's just "traditional". Nope. There's only one word to describe him:

Controlling.

NOBODY has the right to tell you how to dress or who you should be friends with on Facebook.

DO YOU WANT TO FIX YOUR BROKEN MAN-PICKER?

If he doesn't like you the way you are, he's just going to have to find a woman in a burqa who has no male friends and no Facebook account.

And the fact that you didn't dump him at the mere suggestion of this only indicates to me that you've lost any sense of objectivity because of how you feel about him. I've written about this in my upcoming book. It's called "the normalization of deviance". You get so used to something that's broken that you don't even realize how fucked up it is.

If one of my relationship tenets is that you can't have a relationship with a man dependent upon him changing, the reverse equally holds true. If he doesn't like you the way you are, he's just going to have to find a woman in a burqa who has no male friends and no Facebook account.

But he'd better not be with you.

DO YOU WANT TO FIX YOUR BROKEN MAN-PICKER?