For a start, the notion of a ‘happy ending’ implies that for women, we are on a quest to find a man and that when we find The One, or The Ideal Man, Mr Perfect, or our Knight in Shining Armour, we’ll live happily ever after. The End.
However, the sun doesn’t rise and set on men and ‘getting’ a man doesn’t signal the end of your story as if all of your life’s desires have been achieved, but for those of you who persist in trying to get an assclown to ‘choose’ you and commit, it can signal the slide of your self-esteem to new depths. It can signal the end to whatever happiness you have left.
Somewhere along the way, the modern woman has rewritten the fairy tale.
Whilst there are various different types of fairy tale and they go back hundreds and hundreds of years, it’s the ‘happy ending’ ideal with princesses that get their princes that has been given a rewrite. In the modern day fairy tale, we ‘princesses’ are choosing ‘assclowns’ and hoping that they make us the exception and change their ways, effectively turning into a prince, so that we can live happily ever after.
In the fairy tale, we’re battling evil and drama with the assclown by trying to love him into being a decent person and seeing something that he either doesn’t know that he possesses or is absent but desired by us.
Miraculously, he’ll have an epiphany, a lobotomy, a mid life crisis, or The Ghost of Relationship Past will pay him a visit in the night and scare the crap out of him, and poof, he’ll come crawling on his hands and knees, begging forgiveness, professing to be a changed man, and whisk us on to his white horse and ride off into the sunset. All of the pain to get there will be forgotten and we can clasp our hands together tightly and say ‘Praise be! He must be a true prince, because he changed his ways just for me. None of those other princesses could get him to do this!’
This repeatedly gets perpetuated by the ‘rom com’ film, where girl meets guy, they have a series of cock ups, misunderstandings, and drama with a soundtrack in the background, and in the last ten to fifteen minutes, some more calamity occurs to throw the stubborn pair together, they share a long kiss, and everyone gathers around for a beach wedding and toasting babies.
Now I know that there was adversity in fairy tales but they never had to deal with lazy communication in the form of text messages, email, instant messaging, and online dating. In the fairy tale, the prince didn’t swoop in and rescue her when she was in danger, tell her that he’d be back later, and then disappear for weeks or even months on end. In fact, in the fairy tale, they weren’t dealing with men that cheated on them, lied, borrowed, begged, twisted, manipulated, and drew them into a world of contradiction, inconsistency, passive aggression, denial, and an absence of empathy or responsibility. In the fairy tales, they acted with love, care, trust, and respect. In reality, assclowns act with selfishness, single mindedness, distrust and untrustworthiness, and total lack of respect.
In turn, the women that love assclowns act with lack of self-love, too much care for other people, lack of faith, trust, and judgement, and without enough respect for themselves. Why? Because we believe that the perceived reward for ‘winning’ over an assclown will outweigh the pain en route.
We have to realise that the fact that we need someone to make us the ‘exception’ to what for them is totally normal, unthinking, bad behaviour, speaks volumes about the type of men that we are engaging with but also the mentality that we are going into relationships with.
Unfortunately seeking validation from an assclown means that you end up validating negative beliefs, not positive ones, because the fact that you would seek validation from someone who isn’t really qualified to be passing judgement on you considering that they can’t bring themselves to act with real love, care, trust, and respect, ensures that you stay believing the worst.
And I make a point of saying ‘real’ because as I discuss further in the book, women who love assclowns turn crumbs into overblown loaves of bread. Things that would barely even raise a ripple of movement out of other people take on a new magnitude in your relationship because you haven’t got very much to work off.
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Again brilliant! As always Nat you are right on! I will make my own fairy tale thank you. I am a princess because I say so!
Your humble follower
Movedon
Oh dear God, you are an enlightener of women NML. This a great post, it so highlights for me my misconceptions and fantasys about my Assclown. The thing is though, don’t these men play the role of the Prince initially? They shower us with gifts, affection and dreams of white horses and sunsets. And then when their inner frogginess emerges we can’t believe we have been so duped! Right on about the modern day fairy tale being the reverse of this, it is hard to accept that our prince is really a frog and the inside of his beautiful casing is toxic, putrid and low. If only we had read stories a little bit truer to real life when we were younger we might have been better prepared for these toads!
BRILLiant as always – i look forward to reading these like nothing else… i don’t know what i would have done if i hadn’t found this website. your intuitive analysis that speaks absolute truth.
yes the folly is that they PRETEND to be princes. i had never met anyone like this particular sex addict/ assclown combo ( a real winner that rivaled tiger woods & david duchovny and the rest…and he even PRIDED himself on being compared to Duchovny in Californication case he even had the house with the same address in the hollywood hills).
but i learned, albeit painfully, that it was smoke and mirrors. glad to get out alive, dropped the idea of “where did that handsome prince go who promised undying love and marriage – and who’s this ass**** who took his place and lied cheated manipulated and everything else??”
i went through “this can’t be him, this can’t be real, i want my fairy tale romance back” and then,m finally, thanks to NML, i have finally come to a place of acceptance and understanding…. not to say i don’t wrestle with it still now… but i have let it go and never looked back – and grateful i escaped an even worse fate for the poor girls he met before and after me who desperately tried to keep him around.
and for him, the irony is, i am the “one who got away” – b/c hes twisted the tale to suit himself and make himself the poor victim who “loved a girl and wanted to marry her but woe is him, it didn’t work out even tho he SO MUCH wanted it to. makes me wanna choke….. back spit. heh.
ill take that bit of fairy tale, im the “one that got away”… but drop kick him, his narcissistic neuroses and all the rest to the trashpile.
lesson learned.
Dreamgirl,
We may have dated the same assclown. It’s stikingly familiar.
lol.
I had to laugh when I read this post.
I have seen so many women in this situation. They do all the running after the ‘assclowns’ in hope they will one day love them back and be the ‘prince’. No longer do the men have to do the chasing because women make it too easy for them…oh and commit to a woman? Why bother when the men are getting the milk for free?
In desperation of turning their frog into a prince, they put up with anything and like you said, they “believe that the perceived reward for ‘winning’ over an assclown will outweigh the pain en route”.
It may also stem from the fact that we all like a challenge. It is human nature to want a challenge but this is a little much.
.-= Drica Lima´s last blog ..Taking His Place In The Relationship =-.
NML,
I figured it out. My high school sweetheart assclown was the only one that ever broke up with me. I think this kept me believing maybe someday we’d get back together so he could “validate” me, that we were meant to be together.
When we got back together 15 years later, we even watched Rom Coms together, including the one you mentioned above! Ghosts of Girlfriends past was so much like our own story, he even commented on it, that “hey, that’s us.” But in the end, when I waited to hear the words “I love you,” …it never came (and it never came for the girls before me for the last 10 years). I finally gave an ultimatum that I can’t stay unless he loves me and I heard the words “I really care about you, and I’m comfortable in this relationship,” which means to me if he doesn’t love me by now, I’m not hanging around to see if he’ll finally love me. He’s had years and his comfortable level is not mine. I need more. The passive aggressive ness, blowing hot and cold (in the most intense way…I want to marry you bla bla bla to I don’t know what I want) is not what I need in my future. It’s time to complete the past.
My happy ending is ending the relationship and refusing to be abused anymore.
-Myrtle
Recovering assclown addict since 12/29/09
awesome!
I am also a recovering assclown lover!! And I feel that I have finally crossed the long painful journey to the other side of the mountain of self respect. I agree, I stayed with my AC because I thought I would be the one woman he could love and now I see that I made the CHOICE to enter something so destructive and I will never make that choice again!
I am so much in love with caring for myself, having a man is not even a requirement for my happiness anymore….and interestingly, because I finally got me right on the inside, I have met a genuine, solid, kind man who appreciates me for me and makes me smile.
Well there is a little bit of truth.
What it comes down to is that we are all the same:
We all want
to be beautiful
to be romanced
to have an adventure
What we have forgotten is that we are supposed to be the beauty, while the man is alongside us, and together we go forward fighting the baddies and making the world a better place.
There is a way to do this. I for one am spending much of 2010 to this end!
.-= Cathy J´s last blog ..Cost of Dating: Part 3 Emotional Cost To Valuable Lesson =-.
Maybe we need to be told that we dont need love to be complete? That a man isn’t everything? That once an asshole always an asshole?
Agree!
They bring only disappointment, nothing else. DO I really need a man to complete my life?! Nooooo…I am happy to stay single!
Thank you for post, NML!
Fairy tales live in movies only not in real life. Your blog is showing different angles about person’s emotions and reactions.
I can’t believe I fell for the fairytale for so long!! Now I see more clearly I can spot assclowns a mile off and instead of seeing good in them and being lead by illusions I don’t give them the time of day : D
I so agree with you on so many levels. I met a guy online, he was hot, sexy and a total manipulator..haha..I feel for it. we talked for hours on the phone about everything everynite. THEN the meeting, it was instant chemistry, he was hot, I was hot, he met my friends, it just felt so right..then we did the nasty..hmmm, changed the whole game..he called the next day, and then two days later, we talked for maybe 5 minutes and then, that was it. Never again did I hear from him nor did I contact him because I read your blogs! haha… thanks for saving my azz… Men are funny, they sit online waiting for you to IM them, NOT happening in my world! Thanx!!