F*ck Feelings Page 19
• To change an attractive person into a responsible person
• To find a boy- or girlfriend and stop being just a friend
• To figure out why two people who are attracted can’t make it work
Here are three examples:
I don’t know why I have trouble meeting people. I’m willing to hang out in bars, but as an average-looking shy person, I don’t get approached by too many guys. If I do, then I don’t know how to flirt, so the conversations tend to be short. I’m a smart girl, I have a good job that I love, and I’ve got good friends who say I have lots to offer, but meeting guys, let alone cool ones who find me interesting, feels impossible. Maybe I need a makeover. My goal is to find someone, not be everyone’s friend.
My friends are getting married and I can’t find anyone I can see myself being with for the rest of my life. I can find girls to date, and even had a serious girlfriend for a while, but no one I could really see myself growing old with. I never really had a problem being the unattached guy, but the older I get, the more I feel like I’m being left behind. My goal is to figure out why I never click with someone or how to change my luck and find someone I really want to marry.
I get along well with women and have no trouble meeting and dating some of the coolest, most interesting women you could imagine. We have great chemistry, lots of laughs, and amazing sex, but then it always unravels the same way; they become supersensitive, tell me I make them feel unloved and ignored, and then get into a breakup/makeup cycle that drives me crazy. My goal is to figure out why I’m always attracted to the wrong woman and whether it will ever change.
You’ve probably read that the first step toward the right partner is to change something about yourself, be it your attitude or your waistline.
But if you get caught up in thinking about yourself, and what you can alter and why you’re doomed to die alone, you’ll lose sight of your goal; namely, to take stock of your strengths—i.e., the things you know you shouldn’t change—and figure out what you want someone for.
If you concentrate on what you want, not wanting to be wanted, you’re more likely to find someone who meets your long-term needs, wants the same things out of life, and won’t get on your nerves, at least not too much.
If you’re shy and relatively nonverbal, and find it hard to meet people or get them to think of you as anything other than a quiet pal, you may try the well-established route of looking for common-interest clubs and activities that help people get to know one another without having to get personal or make a lot of early eye contact.
If activities are not your style, however, use Internet dating sites to widen the field. As with a good cover letter for a job search, use a coach if necessary to create a brief, one-paragraph description of what you have to offer, and avoid the sites and apps that are focused on image. People searching for a mate based solely on looks are not the kind of people you have much use for.
Yes, most people may not be interested in responding, but you’re looking for that rare person who is on your wavelength and will know it, without your having to be sociable or charming in a way that you’re not. The Internet gives you the opportunity to reach those people, wherever they are, without having to waste time feeling rejected by people who like playful banter. You can find someone who is impressed enough by your basic credentials, goals, and interests to try out a conversation, someone who is checking out the fit, not the fun.
If you find yourself dating (but not wanting to commit to) women after you’ve experienced companionship, beach walks, and close feelings, then you’re looking for a dog, not a lifelong human commitment. Instead, ask yourself what you want out of living with a partner, given your experience of families, children, roommates, and close friends. Think about needing help in a crisis, building a family, and having financial security.
Put together a job description for the person you’re looking for. Then, if you decide you want a life companion, it’s because you’re ready to commit to what you need and you know the kind of person who might be a good fit, whether or not they make you buzz and tingle.
If you have no trouble meeting and getting attached, but always to the wrong person, remember that love is blind and just as likely to link you to a jerk as to a nice person. Once you have a good description of the person you need, learn to ignore that exciting initial burst, because, as you’ve learned the hard way, it inevitably leads to an infuriating crash.
Limit your dating to the kind of person who will make a good, reliable partner, not a fun, hilarious anecdote, then spend more time with the person you like best. Aim for good-enough attractiveness in a good, stable partnership candidate, not sweep-you-off-your-feet love in someone with bad credentials and a sad relationship history that you haven’t checked out. Romance is fun, but background checks and compatibility are what prevent divorce.
Don’t jump into a search by trying to change yourself and your basic traits and responses. Instead, use your experience to shape a search-and-interview procedure based on what you’re looking for in others. That is what a good matchmaker would do.
What you put into your search is what you get out of it. If you’re looking for short-term fun and excitement, then your search can be fun and exciting, but if you’re looking for something long-term and serious, it’s time to brace yourself not for a big makeover but for the tough job ahead.
Quick Diagnosis
Here’s what you wish for and can’t (always) have:
• Amazing attractiveness
• An easy time falling in love with the right person, while singing
• Access to good candidates through bars, weddings, and mutual friends
• Being most attracted to the person who is best for you
• No weakness for getting sucked into relationships with toxic people
Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
• Compensate for your hard-to-match nature by casting a wider net
• Use business techniques to conduct a job search
• Don’t let attraction trump common sense
Here’s how you can do it:
• Use special techniques and consultants for headhunting hard-to-find candidates
• Create a list of necessary qualifications
• Gather information about reliability in past relationships, money management, and drug use
• Don’t violate your scoring system
• Recruit the best match, not the most attractive
Your Script
Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you can’t find the right someone.
Dear [Self/Person Who Feels Love Will Lead Me to the Partner of My Dreams]:
I’ve tried to [dress both up and down/wear musk/lose neck fat] and still I haven’t found a [date/candidate to love/not-psycho]. Instead of relying on my [insert positive quality, and you definitely have at least one, even if it’s “all my original fingers”] to find me someone, I will use modern search techniques to find candidates with good [credit ratings/relationship histories/criminal background checks] and invite those interested in partnership to talk about a possible merger. I will not let feelings of personal rejection slow my search, and won’t give up until it’s done.
Did You Know . . . That Being Good Looking Can Be a Bad Thing?
At one point in most of our lives, we encounter an issue—from getting a speeding ticket to not getting a promotion—where we’re certain that none of this would be happening if we were just better looking than we are. The desire to be desirable goes beyond wanting to be wanted; good-looking people can get away with anything, let alone get anyone. To not-beautiful people, it always looks like the beautiful ones have it made.
The problem, of course, is that people crave beauty the way Gollum craved the ring, so if you do happen to be beautiful, it can be creepy and unpleasant to be viewed by the world as less of a person and more of a “preeccccciouss.”
Being too attractive might seem more like a blessing than a curse, bu
t it doesn’t mean you have access to the best mates; if anything, it can mean the opposite. As a beautiful, shiny object, a good-looking person attracts more than their share of Gollums; i.e., impulsive people with wobbly values who just want to be seen with (and sleep with) an attractive person.
It’s a pain to keep them at bay while trying to find someone who actually wants to get to know you instead of keeping you in their grasp. Your suitors may normally date people who are very different from you in style, goals, and values, but your attractiveness persuades them, temporarily, that they want you instead. Good looks generate interest, attention, and activity—and bad matches caused by beauty-induced blindness.
If you’re unfortunate enough to be both attractive and sensitive to other people’s needs, you’ll sympathize with their longings and feelings of rejection—and then you’ll really just want to be alone.
The attractive may get out of parking tickets and into better jobs, but they also must develop the ability to ignore the yearnings of others and become tough and selective about whom they choose to interview and hang out with. So don’t assume that being better looking means having the best life, because the best life wouldn’t include being a magnet for some of the worst people.
Getting to Commitment
Many weddings aim to be public, romantic, and often insanely expensive demonstrations of eternal commitment based on a grand, shared love. The greater the love, the more extravagant the wedding, the louder the band, and the taller the chocolate fountain at the dessert table.
The problem with this logic is that commitment is not just the result of mutual love; true commitment isn’t to a person but a cause, be that revolution, saving the whales, or a marriage. For commitment to work, both parties should be united in dedication to their shared vision of a partnership and, yes, loving the partner they’ve found.
If you think commitment depends primarily on love, then you won’t know what to look for, in yourself or another, other than love. And love might be the key factor in committing to a pair of shoes or pizza topping, but not another human being. You’ll either get a messy breakup prepartnership or, worse, a bad partnership and later an even messier divorce.
The fact is, not everyone is built for commitment. Some very nice people prefer independence, don’t like to share life decisions, or don’t want or need the security or family life that commitment enables. More men than women fall into this category, leaving women in the unpleasant position of playing musical chairs for potential male commitment candidates, knowing that there are not enough for everyone who deserves them.
Then there are people who, no matter how much you love them, will drag you down if you’re committed to them because they can’t manage their lives; they shower risk and trouble on everyone close to them, which, of course, makes them sexy and more likely to find suckers who will keep trying to make a relationship work. They may want commitment, but you don’t need a crystal ball to predict the future for them and their partners.
Either way, don’t try to convince yourself or your partner that committing is the right thing to do until you’ve reviewed the facts and your values and goals and still think it’s a good deal for both parties. If that doesn’t persuade your partner to take the next step, you’ll know you gave it your very best try, and that she maybe wasn’t the best match for you in the first place. But if you both are committed to the vision you share and working together to make it come true, then blow way too much money on jewelry. You’re ready to propose.
Here’s what you wish you could find to turn love into commitment, but can’t:
• A way to change your feelings about family and commitment from “meh” to “gimme!”
• A brand of beer for your beloved that both tastes great and makes the drinker a responsible adult
• The name of the person who wrote the actual Book of Love (and his/her address, so you can hire someone to take him/her out)
Among the wishes would-be committers express are:
• To move a relationship to the next step
• To find a way, at any cost, to avoid having to break up and start over
• To get someone they love to see that commitment would be great
• To get someone they love to stop their bad habits and settle down
Here are three examples:
My boyfriend and I have been living together for two years, but when I bring up the subject of marriage, he says he’s not ready or just doesn’t see the point. We get along well and I’m sure he loves me, but he says we’re basically married already so why spoil what we’ve got with a new title? Also, he doesn’t see himself as a father right now, or maybe ever. I’d really like a family and thought he’d come around when he saw how well we get along and how easy I am to live with. My goal is to get him to commit himself to marriage and the good life we could have together.
I love my boyfriend but I’m not sure I want to settle down, or want kids, or want to live in this town forever. He wants to get married, and I feel I’m just twenty-eight and I’d like to see the world and have more experience, maybe even live in another county for once in my life. We’ve known each other forever, started dating five years ago, and have lived together for three years, and it’s all been great and progressing along, but for some reason, taking the final step and making it permanent makes me very nervous. My goal is to deal with the pressure he’s putting on me.
My partner and I have been together for a long time—over ten years, at our last count—but neither one of us cares much about convention or ever starting a family, so we’re happy to just keep things the way they are. We know that neither one of us is going anywhere. Our families, on the other hand, and you can add society while you’re at it, seem to feel otherwise. Neither my partner nor I have led particularly conventional lives, so you’d think they’d just take our decision in stride, but no; both his parents and mine are constantly pressuring us to “do the right thing,” often adding, “before we die,” just to rub it in. My goal is to get people to accept that my partner and I are fine with the union we have.
Commitment is often presented as a mental, military-style obstacle course; if you can just get over the wall of anxiety, survive the electrified mud pit of personal baggage, and leap through the ice pool of faith, then you’ll be ready to serve out your loving, eternal bond.
On the other hand, if you or your partner has real reservations that are making you reluctant to commit, then, like the military, you’re probably charging ahead into another endless conflict.
That’s why, if commitment isn’t happening, it’s your job to accept the possibility that there are good reasons for not going ahead, because the best way to win a battle is to avoid it in the first place.
If you love someone and can’t get him to commit, reassess whether he’s avoiding commitment because he doesn’t like it, or because he’s just plain incapable of it. Some people may hold back because they’re restless and can’t stand the idea of being tied down, and others may not want the kind of life or family their would-be partner desires. There are also people who like their pleasures, don’t care for work, and don’t want to make sacrifices for someone else’s dream. Even their mothers refer to them as “winners” with dripping sarcasm.
Your job, if commitment isn’t happening, is to consult a list of possible disqualifications. Gather information about past commitments, if any; unless your candidate is relatively young, you should be able to uncover a past-commitment story. If the story doesn’t feature the other person’s problems, or a problem that is under better control now than it was before, then keep history from repeating itself and move on.
Don’t let love, a desire to please, or an urge to prove yourself get in the way of your doing a good, businesslike, due-diligence evaluation of whether partnership would be in your interest, as well as whether your would-be partner is reliable and has the necessary qualities and values. Because if you have to talk, trick, or push someone into commitment, then you’re both
committing to a world of misery.
If the mixed feelings about commitment are yours, and you feel pressured by your partner to make up your mind, don’t dwell on what she wants and how you feel about it. Instead, ask yourself what you want, and whether your life goals (aside from pleasing her) would be advanced by a partnership. Seriously consider whether you actually want a family, common assets, and a lifelong partnership. Then determine whether your goals and your partner’s match up.
Remember how you’ve managed commitment possibilities in the past; whether you’ve just avoided them, encountered possibilities that were bound to fall through, or had something good going and then ran away from it. Be as realistic as possible about any of your own negative behaviors that might interfere with partnership, and don’t assume you can change unless you’ve decided to try and made some progress.
If you think partnership is not right for you, of course you stand to lose a close relationship, but it’s better to disappoint now than later, and it will hurt less to end things before you’ve taken vows you know you can’t keep. Don’t fault yourself or your love and respect the fact that partnership is not for everyone.
If you and your partner both prefer to be nonpermanent partners, and it’s others who tell you that partnership is the only decent goal for good people, then your task is easier. In order to best manage the constant criticism, ask yourself whether there’s anything about this love relationship that is bad for either one of you, and that would be mended by settling down, sharing assets, and legally promising to stay.
Examine whether your current relationship puts one of you, or people who depend on you, at a disadvantage, either now or when one of you dies. Look at future worst-case scenarios to see if noncommitment could cause harm.
Once you’ve looked closely at the ethical and practical meaning of noncommitment and found nothing wrong with it, don’t enter into discussion or debate with friends and relatives who want to push you into marriage. You’ve considered their concerns, you’ve thought about the bad things that could happen, and you’ve done what you think is right. You’re comfortable making it clear that no further conversation on the topic is necessary.