From the author: The article presents a shortened version of the work using the method of emotional-imaginative therapy with a request regarding relationships with the opposite sex. The client’s consent for publication was obtained. All personal details have been changed. A young, beautiful and quite successful woman (let’s call her Irina) came to see me and said that she did not feel happy. “I had several men, quite decent ones. And the relationship with them seemed to be going well, but for some reason I felt worse and worse with them and, in the end, left them,” said Irina. - Now I am dating one person. He is an IT specialist at some company, attentive and caring. Everything was fine, but now I again feel that there is no happiness, and I want to leave. I asked Irina to imagine the part of her that wants to leave Andrei (let’s call him that). It turned out to be a tightly inflated red and blue beach ball. It looks like the image of the Inner Child, I mentally suggested. Irina sat down in the place of the ball and imagined that she was speaking on its behalf. “Is Andrey somehow bad for you?” - I asked the ball. “Of course it’s bad!” - Irina answered for him and really pouted. - There is nothing good about him. Therefore, it’s time to move on from him. “Did he harm you?” - I was wary. “Did you do something really bad?” “Well... no,” Irina was a little deflated, following the sensations of the ball. “He hasn’t really done anything criminal, but he’s just not suitable for us.” “Why is he not suitable?” “Pfft, some incomprehensible IT specialist in some incomprehensible company,” Irina snorted behind the ball, suddenly groaned and quickly moved to her seat. “You know, I felt it so clearly now,” she quickly spoke, worried. - I feel good with Andrey, I love him, he is a real man, and a lover, and a friend. But now, in the place of the ball, I realized for the first time that it was his work and his profession that I was not happy with. - And who should he be? - I asked. Irina shrugged her shoulders in bewilderment. “I don’t know.” After all, I always sincerely thought that it didn’t matter who he worked as. The main thing is what kind of person he is. But the ball didn’t think so. “Yes, of course,” he panted. “Since he doesn’t understand who it is, then it turns out that Ira and I are some kind of nonsense.” “What an interesting connection,” I said thoughtfully. - Why did you even decide that? That you and Ira are determined by the one with whom she is dating? “For some reason I remember the fairy tale about Cinderella,” the ball answered in surprise. And we found out that in the fairy tales that the ball enthusiastically read in childhood (and the ball really turned out to be in the image of Irina’s Inner Child), all the heroines (unhappy, downtrodden, but kind, good girls who had to endure some suffering at the beginning of the fairy tale) in the end receive beautiful princes. At worst, princes or dukes. It turns out that if you are a good girl, you will have a prince. Probably, in relation to modern realities, a bank director, an oligarch, an official with a high position. And if instead of a prince there is an IT specialist, then something is wrong with you. (By the way, there are fairy tales where quite simple people find happiness without any coronations, but somehow I don’t remember a fairy tale where a beauty and a clever woman, having overcome all obstacles and losses, is legally married to a baker and lives happily ever after with him, getting up early in the morning to bake something and stand behind the counter. Or maybe you know such fairy tales?) Irina had to help the ball leave the fairy tale instructions in fairy tales and allow him to be happy in a relationship with a person, regardless of ranks and titles. After that, the ball immediately deflated and turned into a little girl. “Then how can I understand whether I’m good or bad?” - she timidly asked Irina. - If we no longer look at what kind of man is next? Irina wholeheartedly assured the girl that she was the best, the most beautiful and the most necessary for her. And nothing in the world can change that. And it doesn’t matter whether there is a prince nearby, an oil rig owner, a manager, or no man at all. From such love and attention, the girl blossomed and said that, in general, she really liked Andrei. And once it turned out that completely.