GOSSIP FROM THE GIRLFRIEND GATHERINGS

Learning from YOU to empower ME !

“What Love Ain’t” – Your Crutch

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Imagine.

You are a divorced father, and it is the weekend for your eight-year-old son to stay.   You wake up early as the day is dawning because you and your son are attending one of his all-day Boy Scouts’ events.   As you go out to pick up the newspaper to read with your morning coffee before your son wakes, you recognize a car park down the street facing your house.  It is the woman you are dating from the office sitting in her car watching your home at 6 am on a Saturday morning.   What do you do?

  1. Wave at her, acknowledge her presence and walk over to her car like this behavior is normal.
  2. Turn, go back inside your home and call her later to confront her about her behavior.
  3. Turn, go back inside your home and decide never to call her again.

I had a friend that did this to the man she was dating, and he chose #3.   True story.   She would not face her behaviors which resulted in her acting out in the workplace and having to get help from a mental health professional to keep her job.

The most significant fear of the needy woman is that something or someone will cause her to lose her man…her relationship.  Her focus is not about “him” the person but the relationship because it validates her.   One of the tell-tale signs of a needy woman is how she refers to the man in her life in general conversation.   If she refers to him by his name, this is good.   If she refers to him as “my husband” or “my man” like he is the purse on her arm, the jewelry she has adorned, or the vehicle she drives, then she may suffer from neediness.   When I hear this, I imagine the man stripped of his identity and humanity.

Now, that may seem harsh, but I remember a conversation I had with a man that opened my eyes to this phenomenon.   He told me what he liked and disliked in a romantic relationship.  One of the things he said was “I don’t want a woman who is sitting around waiting for me to come home and make her happy.”   Since I am completely the opposite, this piqued my curiosity.   I started observing the behaviors and conversations that women have about their relationships over the years.   I wanted to determine if there were indeed women who put so much of their well-being and happiness in the hands of a man.

Surprisingly, I found there are women from all walks of life who use the romantic relationship as a crutch to bolster their self-esteem, self-confidence, and worthiness.

Here are five of my most common observations about the needy woman:

  1. She must be in a relationship.   She will even hold on to one lousy relationship until she finds a new one.
  2. Insecurity and jealousy consume her which leads to her being very diligent in keeping her man from being near other women. She believes that all women have super-persuasive powers and can swoop her man away to make him do something he really doesn’t want to do.
  3. She voluntarily subjugates her routine to his routine to accommodate his life.
  4. She doesn’t foster and nurture independent relationships beyond the romantic relationship.
  5. She becomes suspicious and depressed if her man wants some space to foster his independent relationships (i.e., friends, spend time with children from a divorce).

I am a live-and-let-live kind of person, but I must confess that it is hard to witness the behavior mentioned above in a Sister.  However, I do realize that we are all on a journey to self-discovery and every path is not the same.   I hope that we all stay steady on that path and not deviate to pick up a “crutch” along the way.   The reality is no man wants to be your crutch and the recipient of your needy behavior.   He is an emotional human being, too, and not responsible for validating you.

L-O-V-E should not be about “needing from” another person but “sharing with” another person.   Keep that in mind, and you will avoid this relational pitfall to stay on the path to a meaningful connection.

He’s JUST a Man

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_DSC1998-EditRecently, I was asked for advice from a beautiful twenty-something young woman who is helping me to rediscover fitness in my life.    She needed some dating advice and I was flattered that she thought I could offer some helpful information to her.  After all, it has been awhile since I was twenty-something.

This young woman had recently reconnected with a male friend that she had worked with in the past.   He surprised her by confessing his feelings were more than friendship and asked if she would come and visit him as he lived in another city.   She was excited but apprehensive about this and asked my thoughts.

The first thing I did was to ask her about her feelings regarding his revelation and requests.   Her answers were very mature for her age.   She explained that she liked this young man and wanted to get to know him better “in a more-than-a-friendship way”.   However, she was concerned about going to his city and wanted to take things slow.  She wondered how to convey this to him.

I told her to tell him to come to her city (her “turf”)  for a visit and to tell him her boundaries.   She was amazed at my advice.   She asked, “Are you sure I can tell him my boundaries?   Is that okay?”    I laughed and told her it is perfectly fine for her to tell him her boundaries.   I asked her why she thought it would not be okay.   Her reply was, “Because he’s a man!”    I laughed and told her, “Yes, that’s right – he’s JUST a man”.     Her eyes lit up and she smiled.   I knew she understood.

It is important for young women (and some old ones, too) to understand that it is okay to have standards and boundaries for your relational life.    There was a time that women were considered “the prize” and she set the tone of the relationship.   Somehow that has gotten turned around and some of us are living a chameleon life.  We give a lot of energy trying to be a pleaser because we don’t want to be alone. Don’t lower your standards.   When you start contemplating them remind yourself….. “He’s JUST a man”.

QUESTION(S): What do you think about having dating standards?

 

The Hubby Track

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1038415_HiResAs I mentioned in a previous post, I am always eavesdropping in public places.   As a writer, this is one of the methods we study dialogue so that the characters in our stories are unique in their speech.   So, you can only imagine some of the interesting unlikely conversations that I overhear.

One Monday morning at my “day job”, I overheard a conversation between two men about their weekend activities.   I love listening to discussions between men because, as a female writing about relationships, it is difficult to write from the male point of view.   It is even better when they think no one is listening like on this day when there was a cubicle wall between them and me.

One of the guys had the normal “guy” weekend and there was nothing noteworthy for me.   However, the other guy’s weekend was very interesting and humorous.    He mentioned that he had gone out on a first date with someone he met at the home of another friend.    He said that the date was going okay until the young woman started asking him all types of questions.   When asked what type of questions by his workmate, he replied, “Well, it felt like I was on a job interview.”   Now, this guy was from London, so just imagine hearing the exasperation in that statement with his accent.   I burst out laughing.  I could not help it.

Of course, they heard me and stopped talking.   I stood up and apologized explaining that I could not help but overhear the conversation.   I told him his date was ensuring that he was not a waste of her time.   He was puzzled so I told him a few things that cleared it up for him.  He was amazed that I guessed his date was established in her career and nearing the age of 30.   I explained to Mr. London that his date was on the “hubby track”.

The pressure “to marry” for some women can sometimes become a toxic situation.   This pressure can come from family, friends and definitely from the fact that there are more females in the population than males.   Therefore, some women are destined to remain single.  There are some women who do not want to be counted in that number and Mr. London’s date was one of those women.   Also, the horrible truth is that some women judge other women not by their individual successes, not by their contribution to society but by the fact of their marital status.   This is the ultimate pressure – how you are viewed by your peers.

In my own family, I have a relative who had a different fiancée at every family gathering attended to the point I was getting them mixed-up!   It was as if she had a wedding photo ready with a silhouette for a husband and any man available could replace that silhouette.   Needless to say, I was worried for her and I am still worried for her.   She has now been married multiple times and even now is unhappy in her current marriage.  I want to tell her it is okay to be single and that is okay just to get off the “hubby track”.

Now, I am a woman who believes in love and marriage.   I also believe that a woman should take the necessary time to look for the signs of a keeper (as stated in my earlier post of the same name) during the course of interacting with a prospective mate.  In time, you will know if he is the one for YOU.  However, if you are “hubby job interviewing” dates and/or mentally marrying every man you date, you need to take a break from the “hubby track” and investigate your chief motivating force.   It is my belief that you will find you are acting out of some fear – which is the wrong reason to be on the “hubby track”.

QUESTIONS:

Do you think that some women judge other women by their marital status?

Have you ever known someone that could have possibly been on the “hubby track”?  If so, can you share their outcome?

The Fairy Tale Setup

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Once upon a time…………happily ever after.     These were the start and end phrases of stories that enthralled me as a little girl.   As an avid reader with a vivid imagination, I was always a silent character in the story watching the knight in shining armor swooped through danger to rescue the damsel in distress.  I could not wait to grow up and experience the same joy that damsel must have known in the strong arms of her knight.

But after years of dating, I soon discovered that the shining armor on the knight sometimes seemed dull and the coma-awakening kiss could lose its power.   To my dismay, I realized that my knight was not invincible and he did not always have all the answers.    The crushing blow came when I had to admit to myself that my shining knight was human after all and I better find a way to deal with my own distress.

This is the fairy tale setup.

Since little girls grow into women, we are prone to enter into relationships with this fairy-tale state of mind.   Even though we may have examples of the true nature of relationships, some of us believe that it will be different for us.   We believe our knight will not have any human flaws.  We believe we will be able to control the situation so that our fate will be the same as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.   We believe that our knight will shower us with “happily ever after”!

OK.   But here is my question – why do we always gloss over the beginning of the fairy tale and focus on the end?   All the fairy tales start with “once upon a time” – not “twice upon a time” or “thrice upon a time”.   So, with that fact in mind, it is safe to surmise that all of us who are waiting for the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty experience are waiting in vain.  It is not happening again.

The truth is there aren’t any more knights.   All we have are flesh and blood men that have human flaws and the capacity to love us.   I am sure they don’t want to be burden with carrying “happily ever after” on their backs but are willing to share their lives with us.   As one male friend told me years ago – the one thing he disliked in a relationship was for a woman to be sitting around waiting for him to come and make her happy.

The life lesson for me was to understand that happiness comes from within – flowing through you and around you.   We are all responsible for cultivating our own happiness.   This process can sometimes lead us to others with the same mindset and be the first step on the path that leads to “happily ever after”.

 

QUESTIONS:

Did you read fairy tales as a child?

Did you yearn for a knight in shining armor?

When did you realize he did not exist?