Eva had never really believed in fate. She was more at home with facts, algorithms and long columns of figures, in which — to her managers' astonishment — she would pick out mistakes and inaccuracies at the very first quick glance. She knew her star sign, of course, and knew that some of her traits even matched it, but scanning the paper every morning for warnings and words of guidance addressed to her sign, the way her mother did — that was going too far.
Background: The stories are published from the feedback we received and with our clients’ consent. The names have been deliberately changed. At the end you will find a counsellor’s commentary analysing the relationship.
Skip to the counsellor’s commentaryAnd yet fate was slyly drawing her into its nets, wielding the most merciless of its instruments: Eva's father. Her father was her complete opposite: a star, a big boss who always did things his own way and was surrounded by a crowd of adoring subordinates and admirers. Whatever he took on, whatever project he started, he invariably did it brilliantly, for all to see. And the one "failed" project was her, his daughter. Thirty years old, unmarried, with no particular career ambitions, sincerely enjoying life in her own little cubbyhole, walled off from her colleagues by a monitor and stacks of paper. Her father could not understand why she did not want to build a career at his firm, why she did not like formal dinner parties, why she never dashed off on business trips and travels the way he did and, finally, where those grandchildren were whom he could ceremonially shower with hugely expensive construction sets and other Chinese junk, as befits an exemplary, loving grandfather.
Conversations on the subject did not merely weigh on Eva. Voices rose, the emotions became unbearable, she withdrew into herself, switched off, then lifted her enormous, fathomless eyes to her father and doggedly repeated the same answer: "no, I am happy with my life! I don't want to change anything, and I don't even want to talk about it!"
Her father raged, her mother sighed, the air crackled, and that finished Eva off completely. In the end she gave her parents a solemn promise to try her luck on dating sites. On a colleague's advice, she registered on a strange site which promised that a match would be found for everyone by professional counsellors. The counsellors talked to her, asked her questions, described her character, her looks and the character of her ideal partner with fair accuracy, and then said that as soon as they found her a match, they would be in touch. That suited her: less bother, no need to sit on websites for hours scrolling through photographs of odd men. She had kept her promise; now they would leave her in peace.
Not a chance! The very next day her father invited her to dinner, a family one. Oddly enough, besides the family there were two young men in the living room, whom her father introduced as very promising engineers. One of them, who looked distinctly pushy, her father praised especially, but Eva was staring at the second one in the deepest astonishment. Such things did not happen and could not happen. How could those counsellors possibly have known?! A casual jacket over jeans, unhurried, easy movements... No, he was not her ideal partner — they had called that a "second-best" marriage — but they had given her the description all the same. And now, forgetting every rule of politeness, she was studying the second engineer with all her eyes, scrupulously checking every detail of the description she had been given the day before against its living embodiment. Fate?
Her attention was noticed and even appreciated. "The second engineer" was called Pavel, and now he even allowed himself to look after her at the table. Her father was about to say something, but her mother laid her hand on his just in time. After dinner it turned out, quite by chance, that Eva and Pavel were going the same way.
Perhaps it was the hugely expensive Californian wine she had barely sipped, or the spring air, or the young engineer's unassuming manner and his stories about the life of research scientists, so entirely foreign to Eva, or the lime pollen that had noticeably thinned out the number of cars parked in her street — but in the morning she woke up not alone, but beside a man sprawled carelessly across her bed. The counsellors had definitely not warned her about that!
Barely making a sound, she slipped out of bed and fluttered off to the kitchen, trying to put back together both the shards of her memories of the evening before and the shards of her world, which only yesterday had been so orderly and predictable. The morning rituals helped: the bathroom, the balcony, slicing the bread and the cheese, making coffee... Just as she was pouring the coffee into her cup, Pavel came blundering into the kitchen. He gave her a radiant smile, sat down on a stool and cheerfully grabbed the steaming mug. As if he had always been part of her life, rather than barging into it only the evening before. The chatter over breakfast committed her to nothing, and then, as if nothing had happened, he got dressed and left, whistling some popular tune under his breath.
For the rest of Saturday, all of Sunday and then a couple of working days, Eva feverishly tried to work out what exactly that had been, how to feel about it and how to make sense of it at all. Of course, the modern world has seen far wilder things, but she had not expected this of herself. It is one thing when heroines of novels and TV series dive headlong into the whirlpools of passion; it is quite another when it is her, Eva, an employee of a large bank, the model daughter of her "star" of a perfect father. And the most astonishing thing of all: they had not even exchanged phone numbers! Where was she supposed to look for this Pavel now, so that he might smile at her at least once more, just as radiantly and warmly? Ah, fate...
And Fate made its move. A week later, while Eva was enjoying her lunch break in the park, she saw Him unhurriedly watching birds not far away. There is no telling what came over her, but she shot up from the bench and a moment later was standing beside him, her enormous eyes wide open. Pavel smiled, hiding his surprise. That night probably meant nothing to him. Perhaps he was not looking to start anything serious at all, but Eva did not recognise herself. From a modest little grey mouse she had suddenly turned into a self-assured, even forceful woman who knew what she wanted. Pavel now seemed to her an inseparable part of her life, of her morning coffee. And to achieve that, she could start with something simple: lunch in the park. And, strangely enough, he agreed.
How quickly they got married surprised everyone. They say that every partner is a kind of medicine for us. The wrong one treats our weaknesses; the right one strengthens what is strong in us and teaches us. When I rang Eva about her meeting with the candidate we had matched her with, the cautious young woman from the budget and control department, who gestalted everything around her, was unrecognisable: her eyes were shining and the smile never left her face. In her cautious way she told me how our consultation had helped her recognise the one, and how she hoped it would all work out. When she rang to ask us to delete her from our database because she was getting married, she had blossomed completely. You can achieve that kind of effect after a course of therapy, when a person genuinely cooperates... Or by meeting someone who really does complement you.
Counsellor’s commentary
When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate
Carl Gustav Jung
Eva is the autistic personality type. She is marked by a blurred, indistinct sense of her own presence in the world, by modesty and by a constant urge to put at least her own immediate surroundings in order. She prefers to deal in facts, yet she senses other people's emotions very well — emotions that in her perception can sometimes go off the scale. She is a very down-to-earth, rational person, able to notice the tiniest details and to create a truly cosy atmosphere.
Pavel's personality type is the frustration type. These are people to whom spontaneity is often alien. They are perfectionists in whatever interests them and could not care less about everything else. They are reluctant to start anything new, but once they have started they keep to the well-worn track, though they go about it slowly, with feeling, with sense and with due deliberation.
The union of Eva and Pavel is called a partnership marriage of the female type. As long as they have each other, they need no one else. They will live quietly together, dealing with problems as they arise. Eva's attention to detail and her gift for creating comfort complement Pavel's laziness and unhurriedness, along with his characteristic talent for planning events so that it all looks as if it had happened by itself; and his ability to think everything through strategically complements Eva's ability to see the small things, which is why she does not always see the wood for the trees. Divorce in such a couple is unlikely: for Pavel it is far too much of a hassle, and for Eva far too chaotic. Their shared home will most likely be a kind of "burrow", a cosy refuge from the chaos of the outside world. Even so, if anything is to get moving at all, it is advisable for them to take turns moving into the active position, as Eva did at their second meeting.
For Pavel and Eva, meeting each other was "fate". But there is the Dating Club, where people meet partners who are compatible, well matched and in harmony with them. And in fact, the meeting of Pavel and Eva happened not because of fate, but because Eva knew whom to look out for. Her attention "filters" were tuned to the man who suited her.
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