The subject of this particular conversation with myself is less important than is the epiphany that led me here... and that's what I want to share.
After a particularly unfortunate emotional crash and burn -- a crash whose consequences were made more devastating by the incredible promise shown early on, I've been doing a lot of reflecting. To what extent was this false start foreseeable? I'm told it may have been eminently so, despite my failure to do so. Could it have been avoided? I doubt it, but certainly I had a hand in the surprisingly quick unraveling. Although I will forever maintain (at least, I think I will!) that it's a fundamentally good idea to hold back a little bit when you first start dating someone -- to refrain from diarrhea of the mouth, if you will -- in this particular case, it seems that my reluctance to share every fleeting thought with the other person caused a tremendous amount of frustration ... and, perhaps, acrimony. That wasn't my goal, but it seemed to slip out of my control before I realized what was happening. And then, it was over. Finito. Au revoir et bon voyage!
Why? For what?
Apart from the lofty goals of not making myself unnecessarily vulnerable to someone I've known only a short time, is there some deeper reason I don't tip my emotional cards more easily?
I genuinely believe at least part of the explanation also contributes to my persistent inability to ask for things from others, particularly *emotional* things. When have I ever asked someone to make a leap for me? Answer: Quite possibly never. I hold back; I wait in the wings; and I've convinced myself that the "right" person will make the leap without my having to ask.
My narrative about my dating experiences lo these last three years? It's that I meet men who either fall in love with me in three dates or less (and hence scare the hell out of me), or that I meet men who will never take the leap, for whom I will never be enough, who are either unwilling/unable to fall in love ... or who just never actually fall in love with *me*. I've so thoroughly convinced myself and others that this is a function of the men I've met that I don't know how to handle someone who floats into my bubble and defies this dichotomous classification.
For the former boys, it's pretty clear that anyone who can utter the "L" word after three dates or less is looking for love and will accept just about any warm body. My own quirks and traits have precious little to do with all that.
But for the latter, while there's certainly no questioning that there's a bloc of men out there who are, to borrow Bridget Jones's term, commitment-phobes, that doesn't mean everyone who doesn't make a commitment to me falls into that class.
Are you ready? Here's my epiphany -- albeit not exactly Earth shattering, I'll grant you:
What I've come to realize is that people will rarely give you what you're unwilling to ask them for.
Let that sink in for a minute.
If I'm not willing to ask someone to take a leap for me -- no matter how long we've been seeing each other or how minor that leap is -- then why on Earth would they ever want to do so? Put another way: If you're not willing to ask for something, how often will it just magically show up at your doorstep?
It's all too easy to dismiss this by offering up some version of, "The *right* person will ..." But by waiting for someone else to come into my world and be willing to make a leap with me unprompted, I've effectively given away all the power in dating. It's no longer about me and what I (legitimately) want, it's about what someone else is willing and/or able to give. And that's just, frankly, not fair. (Incidentally, this manifests in all sorts of ways, not all of them having to do with moving from dating to an exclusive relationship, etc.)
This is something that Maggie has tried, many times, to get me to accept. And while I've nodded, many times, and agreed her logic made sense, I'm not sure it's ever quite hit me like this.
Conversations like these always leave me wondering why asking for stuff makes me feel so damn uncomfortable, and the obvious conclusion -- which I've admitted aloud many times, although it never gets easier to say -- is that I doubt my own worthiness.
I'm reminded here of an email I sent to my closest friends about a month after I left my ex-husband, an email in which I asked them to share with me their favorite thing about me. My self-esteem had taken such a tremendous bruising during the span of that relationship, and Maggie's suggestion -- a good one -- was that those I trusted most would be able to help me see the good qualities I possess. I got replies from almost everyone, and in many I was told some version of, "I've never seen you as anything but confident, maybe even fearless!" Those were nice things to hear, but they underscored how tight-to-the-vest I keep my insecurities. I've learned, from experience, that people who are insecure are emotionally exhausting, and in my quest to be anything but, I've overcorrected by trying never to show any insecurity at all.
The thing is (and this is the difficult-to-admit part), while I recognize that I'm at least somewhat intelligent, and uncommonly kind and generous, when I look at myself, I don't see someone who's this fantastic catch that some amazing guy would be lucky to have. I just see a sweet person who makes for good company, most of the time. I've accepted (but don't usually see for myself) that I'm the kind of girl others pathologically describe as "cute." But I don't see myself as the girl men will fight over. The one who makes a man stand up and say, "I don't want to lose her."
The come to Jesus meeting, then? It was my recognition, to myself, that I am not going to find someone who feels that way about me until I can see it for myself. I can't expect to get something I'm not willing to ask for, that I don't believe in myself.
So this is my new project: It's time to get back to the British epiphany with gusto.
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. -- Anna Quindlen
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