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British actress Sienna Miller, 27, appears to have it all. Fame, revered style, good lucks, and the world at her feet, yet it seems that she is more known for her poor taste in relationships than she is for her acting skills. I can’t say I’m a fan of Sienna Miller but I actually feel for her because as many women who have found themselves on this site can attest to, when you don’t have the right relationship values and decent sense of self, you find yourself looking for love in all the wrong places and being in pretty self-destructive relationships.

Despite what some people may consider as having it all, Sienna likes men with unfinished business, high drama, serious IT factor, and she may believe a little too much in her own hype, something I discussed before when we overestimate the value of the things that don’t matter, causing us to overestimate our superficial value and what we think we bring to a relationship. She uses her charms to draw in guys but struggles to hold onto them, and on some level she recognises how doomed her relationships are. It’s not that it’s her fault she can’t hold onto them but she does mess with men that aren’t going to be held on to by anyone.

Putting aside much of the press speculation, there are some factual things that cast her very firmly as a Fallback Girl, even if you ignore any finer details.

1. When she started dating Jude Law, it was while he was separated from his wife, Sadie Frost.

Separated men, especially ones without a concrete divorce date set but packing a large ego, are something akin to a nightmare. The likelihood is that if they aren’t emotionally evolved enough to get their divorce sorted out pronto but do end up starting a relationship anyway, they are likely to wonder about freedom that they may have missed out on. Plus being separated for some men, namely your typical habitual Mr Unavailable, is like being in no-mans land, and the only person they genuinely concern themselves about…is them. Fallback Girls take the fact that a man is married (or separated) as a sign that he is capable of commitment and so believe that they will transfer their commitment to the new relationship. Unfortunately you can be married but not committed, or you may decide after being married, you’re not ready to commit so soon again. It’s just regrettable that these men rarely say so because they like an easy life living the best of both worlds.

2. Jude Law later admitted to cheating on her with his nanny (talk about pure laziness).

Famous people have an easy life because everything just appears to be on their doorstep. Pick up a girlfriend on set, have an affair with your nanny. Cheating, especially when it becomes so public, is one of those things that is difficult to recover from whether you end the relationship or not. Stay and there’s likely to be trust issues. Go…and there are still likely to be trust issues, as you won’t trust men or your own judgement. If the foundations on which you thought you understood your life have been shaken, it can be very confusing, and even if you weren’t a Fallback Girl before the cheating, if you don’t resolve how you feel about love, relationships and yourself, you’re likely to develop a penchant for unavailable men. You might be unwittingly (and often knowingly) commitment-shy, and despite despising him for cheating, may actually find yourself cheating on someone, or being involved with another cheat.

3. She dated Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, who seems to be considered an all-round Mr Nice Guy for almost a year till June 2008. She said on the LK Today show (a UK morning TV show) “I really thought I was very ready to settle down, but then I realised I wanted to be selfish for just a little bit longer.”

Now to be fair, we don’t know how ‘nice’ he is but if we take it at face value, this relationship reminds me of when I had a couple of relationships with some serious assclowns and decided to date a normal guy. He was ‘nice’ but he just didn’t do it for me and because I at the time, had my own issues with emotional unavailability and commitment to deal with, I just wasn’t ready for the relationship. I felt suspicious of him, I wondered when things would go wrong, and I found myself thinking that the grass was greener on the other side. Many of us have been there – trying out Mr Nice Guys because we think that we’ll find instant happiness but missing the drama and still being unhappy because the problem is really with us. Next thing you know, you’re picking fights, looking around, and trying to rationalise a reason to stay because nobody understands why you don’t want to be with the one decent guy you’ve dated. But you don’t feel ‘right’ and it’s likely that you’ll secretly think he’s too good or normal for you. So you bail. Don’t be surprised if you start romanticising the relationship when things go wrong with someone else further down the line.

4. And selfish indeed she was. It wasn’t long till she was photographed conducting a relationship with married actor and heir to a serious fortune, Balthazar Getty.

Say it with me ladies. If he’s cheating, that makes him a liar and deceitful, not boyfriend of the year. If you think he’ll be different with you, think again. The Cheater, only thinks about himself. If he thought past his ego and his erection and gave some genuine consideration to the people he professes to love and care about, he wouldn’t be cheating; he’d be sorting himself out. And when you find yourself publicly outted, don’t be surprised if you find yourself trying to cling to the relationship so that you can justify your behaviour. After all, nobody wants everyone to think that they’ve ‘stolen’ someone else’s husband just for a quick fling and it’s important to prove that your love is real. Doomed. Seriously doomed. This is like some disastrous cry for help and the brazenness of it all would almost let you believe that she has a massive ego, but on the flipside of it all, I just see one extremely insecure woman.

5. The first person Sienna runs to when the proverbial shit hits the fan after the Getty relationship is outed, is her father, who lives in the Virgin Islands and who hasn’t been with her mother since she was 6.

I thought this was very sweet but it’s also another likely factor in the puzzle because there is a very clear correlation between being a Fallback Girl and the relationship, or lack thereof, with your father. Almost every Fallback Girl I have come across has got some issues about her childhood that centre around a parent or both parents, and divorce often has a part to play. Many Fallback Girls when it comes to men, are playing out patterns that they have been honing since childhood, and the sad reality is that many women are searching for that elusive ‘daddy feeling’.

Sienna Miller isn’t just a Fallback Girl because of one very public, dubious relationship, but because like many women, she has a pattern and sequence of events that seem to set off alarm bells and are all in some way intrinsically linked together. The aim of highlighting famous Fallback Girls (or Mr Unavailables) is not to get drawn into the celebrity gossip angle, but to demonstrate the core behaviours that are at the heart of both sexes and emotional unavailability. At the end of the day, you can strip away all the money, fame, superficial and material things, and ‘they’ are just like ‘us’.

The big lesson: Aside from the obvious like stay away from cheats and separated men – be careful of overestimating your worth based on superficial things because you don’t value the important, character based things about yourself (or others).

Your thoughts?

Photo source: Wikipedia

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