Lies We Tell Ourselves

April 5, 2006 by The Tattoed Debutante

guy playing pool When I was a sophomore in college I started dating a boy. He was completely unmotivated, addicted to a certain illegal herb, and fully content sitting on the couch, totally baked, watching the Journey “Live” DVD. I don’t say these things like they’re bad personality traits. In fact, I think they made me love him even more. There’s nothing sexier than a man who is completely comfortable with his own inadequacy. (And we wonder how I end up with the Mensa candidates I always date.)

I bring him up now because that was the first time I subconsciously tried to trick someone into having a relationship with me. He made it abundantly clear from the get go that he was not ready for a girlfriend and had no desire to be in a fully functional relationship. Being as this was during my wild abandon, free loving college days, I was perfectly amenable to this situation, or so I thought. I claimed to love the freedom of the relationship, but I liked to buy pictures of us and put them around his room. I loved the novelty of being able to show up at his door after a night out, but I was constantly scared that someone else would already be there. I professed the greatness of our easy going, fabulously 1960’s-esq relationship, but I got terribly upset when he didn’t call or come over regularly. I really and truly believed I was happy in this situation. Clearly, my subconscious knew that this was a lie, but my conscious seemed more than willing to oblige. It wasn’t until he ended things and I found myself crying outside his door step that it occurred to me how wrong I was about this situation. Even worse was when I realized I had been playing it cool in hopes that it would evolve into something more. I really and truly had no idea that I was doing it. I wasn’t being manipulative or sneaky, I was simply hopeful and naïve. And maybe just a bit sad.

I watch my friends do this over and over. Some do it intentionally, using sex or comfort to “will” a man into a relationship that he clearly has no interest in. Some, as I did, are unaware of what they are participating in. They simply see themselves as parties to some modern arrangement and seem baffled by how upset they get when their arrangement ceases to resemble a relationship. They allow selfish, shallow men to continually use them for comfort and love, giving nothing in return, and pretend to be alright with it. When reality hits and the tears pour down, they still cannot accept that they have led themselves down this dark and winding path. They cling desperately to the hope that some day this boy will realize what an amazing woman he has and change his wicked ways. And he won’t. It will never happen. And no one should be okay with being someone else’s doormat.

My boy from sophomore year failed out of college, worked for a time at a pizza place, then moved to some Northern state like Montana to work on a dude ranch. I haven’t seen or heard from him since he failed out, but I still have one of those pictures I was so fond of hanging. It sits in the back of a frame, viewed only when I change out pictures, and reminds me that if I’m always honest with my wants, I will never settle for less than I need. And that’s not a bad lesson to learn from boy whose favorite past time was the worship of Steve Perry. Like Steve says, “Anyway you want it, that’s the way you need it, anyway you want it.”
Visit Tattoed Debutante’s Blog