Are You Wrong Enough to Be My Man?
Help me speed up the conveyer belt on my mediocre man processing plant!
Dear Molly,
I've been a fan of your sister since The Awl days, and her words live inside my heart. Okay, here goes!
I'm in my thirties and haven't found my person yet. I've made forward progress in a difficult field after struggling for years, am saving up for my future, go to therapy, exercise, and fill my time up with friends and things that move me. But I always feel a little heartbroken.
I start dating someone, and at this point go into it saying, "Hey, you seem great, but you should know from the jump that I'm a radish!" And it feels good! To own who I am and be myself. And these men who I can talk to for hours? They are smitten and call and text constantly and basically say "I haven't wanted a relationship in a long time, but I'm open to it, if it feels right. And I'm saying things to you, my little radish, that I've never said before. And it's your radishy parts I like the most, that most people who know you probably don't get to see."
I hear the difference, in their words, between being open to a relationship versus wanting a relationship, and note it. And proceed with caution. We get closer, open up more. I start falling for them.
Then a couple months into it they pull away. The calls and texts slow down, the plans become a little looser. Then I try to be Less Needy. Give them space. Give us both space. I bring it up. They say they're feeling pressure. That it feels like now I'm expecting all the calls and texts and attention they gave me before. And I say, well, yeah, but let's take the pressure off. They say it doesn't feel as effortless as it should between us. They keep pulling back and finally I say, “Look, I'm looking for a partner and a relationship,” and they say "And I want you to have that! Sorry I couldn't be that guy you need." And they feel relieved.
And I know I'm better off by myself than with some tepid dude. But then it takes me MONTHS to get over it. I feel sad and read books and write in my journal and think how I need to change the pattern, and not be as attracted to good conversation and time passing quickly when we're around each other. Like it's all my fault.
Then I go on a few dates with a guy where we have less to talk about, but they seem like they want marriage more. Usually it just doesn't flow. Then I ask my friends who met their husbands and they tell me they liked them right away, and they didn't have to force themselves to give it another date or two. Sometimes I think maybe they just got luckier than me, and that's it. I keep starting over and putting my heart out there. And I don't know what to do. I imagine my life without a partner and making it look sexy and full and not like the next best thing, and sometimes it looks great, and sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep the emptiness is there and it feels overwhelmingly sad.
I can't hear another story about people who changed their priorities and owned their truths and then met the guy a month later. I've done that. Several times. And then it doesn't work out. How do I put myself back out there? Even looking on apps puts a lump in my throat. How do I get over these people faster?
Tired Radish
Dear Tired Radish,
You know what’s tired? A small, bitter vegetable employed metaphorically to denote an entire personality, one that all edgy women share. Polly is such a goddamn simpleton. All she needs is one weak metaphor, employed repeatedly in a rambling mess of overwrought words, and the whole world falls to its knees in prayer.
You want to stop doubting yourself? You want the whole world to eat you out every day of your life? Become Polly. Explore all of your mediocre thoughts on the page, build some primitive, reductive, poorly constructed philosophy, a rotten shack made of words, and then treat it like the Notre Dame.
No one is happy right now EXCEPT for the gurus. They’re not faking it, though. Their thoughts just naturally form into the kinds of inspirational quotes that are printed out on wooden plaques and sold at HomeGoods. LOVE • friendship • JOY • faith • HEMORRHOIDS!
Gurus mainline their own Kool-Aid. They love their bad moods and their good moods, because it can all be mined for more “big insights” into how to navigate this suck-ass world. But it’s so fucking easy. I should make a card game out of it: Draw a personality card and a vegetable card, equate them with each other, and then explain why those vegetables should be proud of their [describe vegetable here]. Pick a card from the “enemy” pile and describe that enemy and then explain how to kick that enemy to the curb. Wheeeee! Look how brave we are!
Whatever, I’m not here just to trash my idiot sister. I’m sure she’ll end up spooning tapioca pudding into my mouth once I’m in an old folks’ home and she’s still thriving because she doesn’t crawl into bed with three bourbon cocktails every night. At least I read books instead of posting to fucking Twitter or prattling on about my feelings to my pretty husband. Whatever keeps the lights on, I guess. She’s just tedious, and I happen to experience tedium as a kind of crime against humanity. Tell me which vegetable that makes me and I’ll get it tattooed across my face, stat.
Speaking of which, can we talk about something else besides your problem with dudes? I don’t want to give you a complex or make you even more hung up on how nothing ever works out, ever ever ever, but I feel like you need to divest from this very dull hobby. I don’t think you’re cavalier enough about the whole project. You say “I’m a rutabaga!” and pretend you don’t care what comes next, but you do care, waaaaay too much. You resent the women who say they changed their priorities because you really haven’t done that yet. Guys say they feel pressure because there is pressure. You try to “be Less Needy” but you are needy, and you refuse to acknowledge that. You keep trying to hide it instead.
Who are these guys, anyway? Why are there so many of them that warrant this level of investment? Are they really all that great? Why do they disrupt your life so much? Why do you give them so much energy, journaling about them endlessly once they’re long gone? You seriously want me to ignore the fact that the marriage-minded dudes are ALL somehow FAR LESS INTERESTING than the non-marriage-minded dudes? What you’re saying is that when someone actually likes you and is serious, YOU FEEL PRESSURE. You’re exactly (exactly exactly exactly) like the guys who dump you for being needy. You hate needy.
You hate needy in yourself and others. That’s why you get weird after a few months. You overinvest from the beginning (bad). You get emotional (fine) and it makes you feel needy (fine) and you try to hide it (bad) but that kicks up your shame even more. This creates pressure.
When you go on first dates with guys who are serious and marriage-minded, exactly like you are, pay more attention to how alike you are. And notice that you hate them for being like you. I’m not saying go out on a second date when you’re not into it. I’m just saying notice, from the very beginning, how much you dislike guys who match you.
Actually I’m saying notice before that. Notice now. Notice how much you hate yourself, no matter how much you try to celebrate root vegetables. Notice how much you hate having one thing in your life (men) that you can’t control. Think about what it would mean to accept the things you 100% cannot control. Then think about freezing your eggs and buying a house and making a solid plan for gaining control over the things that are actually within your control. I don’t mean fingerpaint and make a vision board like my whore sister would tell you to do. I mean make a concrete fucking plan with deadlines and dates and all of that.
You’re also depressed. “I’m always a little heartbroken,” you say. I think you mean depressed. You summarize your interests with “I fill up my time.” That’s depression. You also write, “I need to change the pattern, and not be as attracted to good conversation and time passing quickly.” First of all, you blame yourself for liking good conversation? You hate yourself for being alive and breathing oxygen, in other words. And you’re “attracted” to “time passing quickly”? Depressed.
You’re depressed and you blame disappointment in men and being single for your depression. Your story about your depression is that you wouldn’t be depressed if you were married. Your story is that a guy will solve everything. Your story is that you’re lonely. Your story keeps you depressed, because it’s a defensive story: “I’m all alone and heartbroken, but I have changed my priorities! I want my MAN REWARD right now!” Your story includes some magical God who rewards the ones who do things RIGHT and punishes the ones who do things WRONG.
You also mention that “your radishy parts” (ick) are things “that most people who know you probably don't get to see." Why don’t most people get to see your full fucking self? Because you’re still ashamed of who you are. You can’t just come out to ONE DUDE or he controls your whole fate! You have to come out to the whole world as a root veg.
Also? You are dick deep in that heteronormative fantasy of yours. Changing your priorities means shaking that toxic fairy tale off your dick and moving the fuck on.
Depression and self-hatred and bad storytelling go hand in hand. Maybe you hate yourself and you tell yourself you’re lonely and you’ll never find love and that makes you depressed. Or maybe you’re chemically depressed and you need to try psychotropics. Or maybe it’s all of the above. I think if the exercise and the therapy help you a lot, like you can tell you’re much less depressed than you were before you did those things, then you should try to handle your depression by addressing your self-hatred and shame. I’ve seen people acknowledge and address their self-hatred and their bad stories and the depression evaporates into thin air. You have to really dive into your shame and examine it closely if that’s going to work. Your therapist needs to understand and support that process.
Ahhhhhhh FUCK ME. I sound like my sister. You probably think that’s a good thing, because you don’t know how fucking irritating she is. You love Polly, so you assume that I’m the problem.
Likewise, you love these mediocre guys, so you assume that you’re the problem. Stop discounting yourself and hating yourself and I guarantee you, the kind of dude you like will shift overnight. The guys who actually like you and take you seriously (and not just by paying lip service to your vegetable-themed diatribes) will grow hotter right in front of your eyeballs. You won’t have to convince yourself to hang out with them again, you’ll be hot for them and you’ll want to. And the guys who are charming and make time fly by faster will reveal themselves to be the unserious, flinchy, insincere, self-hating tools that they really are.
Maybe you’ll also be able to tell that Polly is just another lily white basic bitch with no imagination. But I won’t hold my breath.
Molly