i found a 4-leaf clover yesterday, but i'm not the one who got lucky. my flatmate has a new boyfriend. lovely chap, quite the biscuit. (that's biscuit in the american sense of "something yummy.") talks just like hugh grant. she fixed him dinner last night, and judging by his departure at 10 am this morning, i'd surmise that he stayed for dessert as well. pleased as i am for my flatmate, i must confess to being slightly bitter and more than a little perplexed as well. How does she do it? She hasn't been in Bristol any longer than I have? How do you move to a new town, meet a fabulous guy who actually likes you in return, and get together and live happily ever in one freakin month? I repeat, How DOES she do it?
I marvel at this process because it seems so common, but is totally alien to me. I sometimes ask people, how do you meet a boyfriend? Where do you find them? Is there a secret plantation where they are cultivated that I don't know about? I almost always get the same answer, and it goes something like this: You don't find one, they find you. Stop looking - it will just happen. It's that passive "it will happen" that I really can't cope with. When does it happen? How? And why does it seem to happen to everyone but me? When I was a kid it was drilled into me by my feminist mother that the whole "someday my prince will come" business is bullshit. She told me to never wait for life to happen to me, that i should make life happen. I believed her. In every other respect, I've made my life happen. I've lived on 3 continents, I have physically stuck my hands in the soil and replanted huge tracts of rainforest, I've participated in groundbreaking environmental research programs, I've completed my MA and am working on my PhD, I've gone from being last picked on every sports team to a top athlete in 4 rowing clubs, I taught myself how to scull and won a silver medal in just 3 weeks. I play 3 musical instruments, vote in every election, crochet, write better than many published authors and have a green thumb. Where did I go wrong?
If it's true that love finds you, why does it find everyone else? I must be the most statistically improbable individual alive. Either that, or this theory of sitting back and waiting for "it to happen" is flawed. In which case, WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WRONG?!?!?!?
I found a 4-leaf clover yesterday, but I don't feel very lucky.
8 comments:
Love doesn't find you. And you don't find it. You've just got to get out there and swap spit. Eventually, it feels like love.
but that's just it - no one wants to swap spit with me. i don't get chatted up in pubs, no one's ever asked me for my number, the only guy in my history i can describe with the label of boyfriend eventually admitted to me that he didn't find me attractive; he only dated me to prove to one of his mates that he could get a girlfriend and he saw me as a sure thing.
so i reiterate: what am i doing wrong?
CB. I think you answered your own question. Reread your post. While I'm all for going out there and getting on with it and making your life happen your making it sound scary! Calm down. It's no good replanting great tracts of rainforest if it means you never take a moment to look at the trees. Have fun. Stop doing and just be for a while - it will happen then I promise you.
I obviously belived in that so much it got posted twice
You're suggesting that ambition and productivity somehow keep love at bay? That's ironic, since one of the pricinple reasons I keep myself so busy is because I don't have another person on whom to focus my energies. I've always figured that since there's not much I can do about the whole lonliness thing, I might as well keep myself as busy as possible in the interim. That way I'm too tired at night to notice or care that my bed is empty.
It's completely against my feminist principles (yes I do have some - they're very deeply buried) but I suppose that I am suggesting exactly that but not for the reasons that you might think
Men are a mass of insecurities, hang-ups and fear when it comes to women in general, nevermind ones that they might actually want to get to know better. I always thought that the ability to chat women up was something that men were born with, something that they could do without thinking too much about. Too late for the information to be of use to me and after spending years wondering why quiet, none achieving oh lets be honest here - plain boring women- always seemed to get the guys, I learnt that men are terrified of chatting up women because they're scared of being rejected (which explains why they tend to do it after a few drinks).
If you're someone who is a go getter then you're doubly screwed because a man is going to think first off " I really like this girl but she's never going to go for me" so he won't bother to approach you in case you say no, and then when confronted with a list of your accomplishments he's going to think "hey she's doing this this and this and she can do that and that and that, so she really isn't going to want someone like me"
F told me (after we'd got it togther) that had he seen me in a bar or in a work situation he'd never have chatted me up because he thought that I was completely out of his league. (which was ironic because I thought exactly the same thing about him). He is not a shy, retiring person - he's one of the most socially adept people I've ever met, capable of conversing with anyone on anything at any level. However, because we met in a situation which was completely removed both from the meat market of pubs and from what we did in real life we were able to get to know each other without pressure. Even then though I engineered the situation to get to the point where he made a move.
That's the other point. It rarely works when a woman approaches a man (for all they might say that they want to be approached by women)because by doing that we undermine their masculinity. They're terrified of us in any case so coming on to them is going to back them into a corner like frightened rabbits. Not to mention the whole madonna/whore complex that all men have (even the apparently well adjusted ones)
Like I said before, its not a case of stopping what you're doing with your life and I'm certainly not advocating a return to the 1950's sort of passive female, but I reckon that they did (even unwittingly) know something about the male psyche which feminism and modern society has thrown out of the window.
I know you don't mean it in that way at all but it seemed from your post that you've put getting a boyfriend on a list of things that you want to accomplish. It did read like; I can do this and this and this and I've done this and this and this and I intend to do this and this and this and the next thing on my list is getting a partner. Not only does it sound intimidating ( your list of accomplishments scared the hell out of me!) but it also sounded like you didn't want a partner because you wanted someone to share your life with but because that was the one thing you hadn't crossed off your list - If you're doing all this stuff, what do they have to be able to do in order to win your approval. Do they have to be able to row at championshiop level? Do they need to have replanted the rainforests? Must they be able to converse with you in all languages you can speak? We all have things that we want in the person we choose to spend our lives with but it almost sounded like they'd have to take a written exam before you'd consider them. I'm pretty sure that isn't what you meant at all but it is sort of how it came across and no-one wants to be thought of as an accessory or an achievement. I think thats where the stop looking and it will happen advice comes in. It is fact based advice which does work.
It also sounds like in doing all of this you don't have time for a boyfriend which is why I said calm done in my first comment. When do you have time for a partner? When do you have time to meet and get to know someone? What are you prepared to give a back seat to in order for the relationship to develop? Are you going to miss a training session to spend the morning in bed with someone or are they going to take second place to that? I know that the modern thinking is that you can have it all but the fact remains (and is upheld by the number of divorces or the trend of serial monogamy) that you can't. I'm certainly not suggesting that you give up your life and your goals to be with someone but if you want first place in someones life then you have to give them first place too and that can be a tricky balancing act. I know that's an old fashioned view but being old fashioned doesn't make it wrong.
Anyway CB that's my two pennies worth and as usual this comment is way too long! Bottom line is really relax, calm down, stop worrying about it and it will happen. Diffiult to do I know, I've been there (for years!)
Don't ever aplogize for a crazy long comment, HC. I'm deeply moved that you care enough to bother.
The point in rattling off my biography was purely to illstrate that I've never been the type of woman who could sit back and wait for things to happen - i just wan't raised that way. i didn't mean for it to come off that i either insist on have a man with a rediculous string of accomplishements or that getting a parter is a list item to be ticked off. It was just to show that i'm not a patient, passive, corner-dwelling individual. I know first-hand that no one wants to be an accessory or achievement, because that's all I ever was to the one male who bothered to feign interest in me. I want someone to share my life and to let me share his (or hers - unlike Jboy, i do row for both coxes). Sometimes the most wonderful moments of my life are also the most painful, because I've had them alone. Like right now, i'm looking out my window across the city of Bristol at the downs, and the sky is apricot in the eveining light, and the pink clouds are reflected in the wet rooftops, and all the windows of the hotel across the street are iridescent and incandescent with the reflected sunset, and it's so beautiful i wish to god there was someone else seeing it with me. But there's no one. Instead, i'm sitting at my computer crying about how lonely i am to a woman in a distant city that i've never met.
my mum used to tell me when i was in school that the boys didn't ask me out becase they were afraid of me. (Besides being 5 foot 10 inches tall by the age of 14, I was outspoken in class and held an office in every club I joined.) She also promised that would change when I got older, but i feel like I'm still waiting for the boys around me to grow up and stop being afraid of me.
You've said twice now, "it will happen," and i guess i might as well believe you since there's not much i can do. but it's horrible and miserable and lonely and frustrating and i've been waiting now for 26 years and sick of it.
Post a Comment