DATING: Groucho Marx Syndrome

Recently someone asked me if I knew what the Groucho Marx Syndrome was?

It's the belief that goes, if someone wants to be with me then they cannot be that wonderful. We meet someone who is really wonderful and beautiful and they are all of the traits we say we want in a partner. Things are wonderful for a time, there is joy and happiness and fun and then the Groucho Marx syndrome sets in. The thought come along that they cannot possibly be as wonderful as we thought they were or they would not be with us.

Clearly we do not deserve someone so wonderful as this person in our lives. So if they don’t leave, we begin to tear them down both verbally and mentally. We want them to be with us because they are so wonderful, and yet if they were really that wonderful they could not possibly want to be with us. So there is open warfare to drive them away. And just when we have beaten them down in our minds to the point where they are “good enough for us” they leave. They leave because they can no longer take the abuse.

Then there is the realization that we really want to be with them. So what do we do. We spend the rest of our lives attempting to get them back or looking for someone who is just like them. Or reminds us of them and we usually are never fulfilled.