He Learnt Silence

Know that the silence often conveys more information than anything that one could possibly hope to hear come out of another's mouth. It is one of the harder lessons that one could learn as an adult operating in the modern world. And it sure took Samuel quite a many misstep before he could finally learn this elegant method of eliciting previously unknown facts that could be used to illuminate various matters.

But as always, I jump the gun and start from the end. I apologise.

Samuel had been in and out of many relationships with the largest variety of women that one could ever dream up. Free-spirited hippy-like females, mainstream conservatives, and even dominatrices, he had approached them all at one point or another to date them. Yet at the end of the day, they all had dumped him. At first, his ego felt slightly bruised, but he managed to delude himself into thinking that there was clearly nothing wrong with him, and everything wrong with whichever woman it was who dumped him that time.

But Samuel was not a dumb man. After the umpteenth rejection, he started to notice patterns that appear. To him, it was a startling revelation. To us, it's also a startling revelation, for there are few who are sufficiently self-aware to reach the point where they can confidentally inspect themselves thoroughly and dispassionately to discover just what kind of flaws they have---hardly anyone attempts to look for the good points because their ego runs off effectively from their own [aggrandised notion of] self-worth and goodness. Samuel's insight was simple: he simply talked too much and never truly had the chance to sit down and actually listen to what she had to say.

In other words, he was trying to hard to impress that he was missing all the important signs and signals that she was trying to tell him, intentionally or otherwise.

Knowing the problem was half the solution, but actually changing his habits to solve the problem itself was an altogether different exercise. He began with small steps, like any sensible person, and slowly intensified it to the point where he could carefully and constructively insert silences to give her enough space to talk more about herself. The efforts were slowly showing their intended outcome, for soon each of his relationships were starting to last a little longer before they terminated. To his surprise, he found that it was no longer always the case where he was the dumped---by keeping silent, he managed to discover character kinks that he knew he was unwilling to live with and be the one who dumped.

He met a nice girl who went out with him for a good two years before they both decided to live together as husband and wife, and the last I heard, they are still married with each other nearly fifteen years on.