Dating is impossible. Impossible! How am I supposed to know who is right and what is good when there isn’t any list? No black and white. No set of do’s and don’ts. Ridiculous. I’m fed up with the whole scene.
I came home tonight to my roommate, a woman going through a divorce who’s husband, when he brought her her mail yesterday also brought her flowers in honor of what would have been their sixth wedding anniversary. Flowers. After she caught him sleeping with a 21 year old two weeks ago after he’d already confessed to three adulterous flings during their marriage and promised that during this separation he wouldn’t sleep with anyone else. Flowers. Fabulous.
For drinks tonight, I sat with another friend who’s wedding anniversary would have been yesterday. He’s pissed because, according to him, the trend is for women to date tight-jean-wearing men or doushbags. That’s the trend. Tight jeans and assholes. Neither of which attribute he wants to embrace. “Yep,” said his friend later after a stimulating conversation on Sex and the City and Made of Honor, “Doushbags. Why do women go for a womanizer turn good guy? Why do they put up with that?”
Sick of hearing my gender criticized for poor decision-making, I spoke up in our defense. “Women don’t intentionally go for assholes,” I explained. “It’s just that the nice guys aren’t asking. And as for the bad guy turn good guy, women are nurturer’s by nature and regardless of whether or not we want to have children, we are maternal. We have Christ-complexes. We see men and we see their potential, because we’ve seen our fathers and our mentors and our friends screw shit up when they were young and turn out to be great husbands thirty years down the road. And that’s why we date shitty men. They make us laugh and we have good sex and we see their potential fifteen years down the line.”
I suppose my company tonight would have told me that I should set my standards higher if they weren’t so shocked by my outburst.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “It’s just that I’ve been working on this in therapy and you hit a nerve.”
“Well, when you’ve been hurt like we have…” the young un-divorced, un-married kid said. And he pointed to my good friend who’s wife mysteriously left him two years ago.
And I wanted to blow up again. I wanted to scream, “YOU’VE been hurt?!” For every ONE shitty woman who’s left a great guy like Cory, I can list you TEN shitty men. While it’s true (as they admitted over drinks), it happens on both sides of the table, STATISTICALLY, it’s men who do the leaving, the fucking around, the screwing people over.
I wanted to yell at him about my dad and my sister and my roommate and ask him who was more hurt now, but this kid is 23 and doesn’t know dick about marriage or pain and it’s unfair of me to ask him to see beyond his own experience at this time.
I was traumatized by relationships at 23 too when my boyfriend of three years left me for another girl both times I went overseas.
My acupuncturist would probably say my standards are too high, that I can’t expect men to not go to strip clubs, not look at porn and not comment on other women when their fiance’s aren’t around.
That’s what my ex-boyfriend did. And it royally pissed off one of the guys he was with who watch the whole thing happen. He looked an attractive woman up and downs and confessed, “God really knew what he was doing when he made women in mini-skirts with cowboy boots.” At least we’d already broken up by then. Course he has a fiancé now, but at least it’s not me. The fucker checked out my sister at my ordination ceremony. This “great Christian guy” loves good-looking women and it’s embarrassing.
Now that we finally live in the same city (and he’s engaged to someone with whom he’s never lived in the same city – shocker) I know that that’s not the type of man I want to be with: someone who makes those comments and upsets my friends by being disrespectful to me.
But is that too much to ask for?
My acupuncturist would probably say yes and my friends tonight would have probably said no, so who’s standards do I get to go by? That’s what I want to know. Do I give men a little grace to grow up and get over their hormones and hopefully become admirable feminists who love their wives and cherish the sacredness that is the feminine? Or do I hold men to a higher standard now of setting good patterns of behavior, of being healthy now, of respecting women and trying hard in relationships now? It’s fucking confusing!
I can’t pull this off.
Sex is natural or Sex is sacred. Men are jerks or women are jerks. Porn is inevitable or porn leads to bad sex patterns.
Maybe I should have just stuck with the plan my conservative youth minister laid out in the youth group. Stick to hand-holding and minimal kissing and marry a Christian and you’ll be alright.
But that’s so not right and not now and not normal and not healthy!!
So what is?!?!
What is?
What is healthy? Or at least resembles healthy?
Cause I want it. I want it so badly.
For all my men bashing, and fears of infidelity, and settling, and one-foot-out-the-door relationships, I want a real one so much.
I want a good man. I want a man who respects women. I want a man I respect and adore and laugh at and laugh with have great sex with. I want a man who is spiritual and quiet sometimes and gets me and I get him. I want to get married and work on our yard together and raise children and encourage each other toward love and peace and harmonious living.
“When your hearts and the timing is right, you’ll know, and then the rest of it – the practical stuff that you’re consumed with now – won’t matter, because you’ve met the right one,” my mentor said tonight. Oh god, I’m no where close to that. And it’s not fair. I’ve never felt that. How can I hold such high standards as to let my HEART dictate what happens?
There’s no prescription for the heart. No formula. No black and white. No right and wrong.
It’s knowing, feeling, sensing
Oh god. It’s so impossible…
No comments:
Post a Comment