I am strong, independent, accomplished, professional, and responsible. I will not back down from an argument, a confrontation, or if I really want something. I can handle myself and my business. And yet in my life I seek out and attach myself to people and relationships that require me to be anything but these things. I am what is colloquially referred to as, a push over.
I dated this guy Jerry a year ago for about three blissful months. Seriously, text book romance. He had all of the characteristics I am looking for and was the first person I have met who couldn’t wait to see me. After ending things with a man I dated for four years, demanding that I be the one to make all the sacrifices, this was the relationship that brought me back. The man who showed me that the phrase, “there’s better out there” was true. I was never insecure with him. He could be the life of the party, surrounded by women, and I never felt threatened. I felt like I could trust Jerry because he had never proven to me that I couldn’t.
Unfortunately, around three months in, he started flipping between Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. He’d stop calling or explain he needed more time with his friends. I laughed when he broke up with me and then again a week later when he called to apologize and asked to see me again. We played this game for a year where we pretended we were “friends”. We were great at dating and it was absolutely the best sex I have ever had. It could have been him, it could have been our dynamic, but I’m tempted to put it on the feeling of doing something we shouldn’t be. The danger that he wouldn’t be around in a week was intoxicating. The freedom to be wild and in the moment together made our relationship exciting. If he didn’t call or was a total dick to me in front of my friends, I’d make excuses because when it was just the two of us, it was amazing. We could laugh and have fun but we could also really talk. It wasn’t until he started volunteering for the boyfriend stuff and then bailing that I realized how the situation had spiraled out of control. I needed my friends to look critically at the situation and tell me to get out.
I had been dodging his calls for a month, hoping they would taper off but when they picked up in frequency, I realized I would have to say something to him. The problem was that I knew when I called I would be talking to Dr. Jeckyl and he would be sweet, apologetic and understanding. I would not deal with Mr. Hyde until he really thought it was over. Because it was all part of our dance, to say I never want to see you again, don’t call me, to storm out of parties, to yell and make up. We’ve always made up and that part is fantastic. I would have to be strong enough to forgo all of that and explain that I was serious, it had to stop. I deserve something better and I wasn’t going to find it in bed with him.
It was a Sunday afternoon two months ago that I called and said officially that I wish him nothing but the best. I apologized for going back on my word in the past but this time I meant it. We obviously can’t be friends and I’m sorry but I can’t see you anymore and you have to stop calling me. I haven’t heard from him since. Unfortunately, just because you make room in your life does not mean someone will arrive to fill it. I have taken on excessive amounts of work, hobbies, joined clubs, spent time with friends, traveled, danced, and slept with other men. I have yet to find someone with whom I feel a similar spark. I don’t believe it doesn’t exist but the temptation to see him is always there. I have not heard from him since so I can safely keep my distance.
That changed today because Jerry’s smart, and he knows what I need to hear to justify letting him walk all over me again. The text reads, “So I know you hate me and don’t want to see me, and while I’m trying to respect that, I can’t help but want to spoon with you under the covers and watch football.” He knows I don’t hate him and that the guilt of feeling like I have hurt him will make me want to call just to say, “you know I don’t think that”. Which means I have to call and then he’ll say he knows and he’s sorry for bothering me he just misses me. That’s how it starts all over again because like your typical doormat I think nothing of how much he has hurt me and instead can’t bear to think that I have hurt him. I am loyal to a fault and can’t seem to cut the cord.
The text came at 11:30AM on a Sunday. He’s not drunk and he’s very sweet on Sunday afternoons, lying in bed with his glasses on. He’s telling me he’s only not talking to me because he’s being respectful of my request. He knows I want a man who does respect what I want, who doesn’t? He also knows that if I cave he wins. Because I will say we’re only hanging out but I’m not going to fight him if he kisses me and it’s only resisting the inevitable. And though that afternoon will be fun, I have to go through the rest of the week, the rest of the month, knowing I’ve slept with someone who doesn’t want to date me.
Jerry wants the one night stand, not the home for the holidays kissing you goodnight part. He doesn’t care about me. He knows I love spooning and we share favorite football teams. These are generalizations that get me thinking about how much I love how tiny he makes me feel and how warm it is in bed on sunny fall afternoons, and then we’re just talking about being in bed together and having so much fun and before you know it it’s not just the football teams scoring.
It has taken me a year to learn that I am not ok with hanging out and hooking up. I need more than that. I need a friend, someone I can actually trust. I want Dr. Jeckyl because I could fall in love with him. He’s the one who makes my heart race and want to fold his laundry and have tea with his mother. Mr. Hyde makes me want to throw up for ever having kissed him. He makes me question why I would ever spend time with someone so shallow and completely vial. But they are one and the same, yin and yang, both the same Jerry. The same person who I absolutely despise is the one that I can’t stop talking about when we’re together. And yet it’s been a while and I wonder if he’s changed, or grown up, or figured out what it is that he needs. I hope he’s doing well and even though I’m lonely and cold and wishing I had a big spoon to snuggle with, I’m not going to respond. He’ll text again this week. He might just wear me down, but he might not. I might break away this time. It’s as if my desire to assert my independence is not as strong as my desire to play with fire. I ignore the fact that I’m compromising my values, my emotional wellbeing, and my time with someone who isn’t all the things I thought and hoped he could be for himself and for me.
This second guessing is exactly where the pushover comes out the most. Because I don’t need Jerry, but I do want him. I want the good parts and not the bad and that’s not going to happen. It’s a sick masochistic tendency to return again and again to the same person, the same flawed relationship. Men must be able to sense this weakness because even when I think I have escaped, I find another man that does not meet my needs and promptly fall for him. It’s as if I’m addicted to the pain. It’s not even the quick band-aid on arm hair pain but the long drawn out torture of getting stitches. Every time it feels like it might be done I cut through the little bits of thread that are keeping me together and re-open the wound. How do I take the scalpel away, how do I stop finding and dating men who are not good for me, how do I learn to walk away before things get so bad and start building grounded and solid relationships with men who do not want a woman they can pushover?
Leadership in America November 7, 2008
Tags: Afghanistan, Bush Administration, Iraq, President Barak Obama, War
Up until just recently, I opposed the Bush Administration for their blindness to the economic problems in our country in an abstract ideological way. In theory things in our country have never been as bad and unpredictable as they are today. In my personal life I have felt that that is ridiculous and in some small ways have considered it a problem but also something that can be handled on a policy level. Certainly grassroots assistance is needed, however I for some strange reason, have been able to separate myself and my life from the throws of an unwieldy market. I voted for Barak Obama on the principled stance that he will bring an end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the budget will again be balanced as it was under the Clinton Administration, and that the economic crisis that is impacting so many Americans will come to an end. I think on some level I felt as if the problems in the U.S. economy and therefore the world economy were being over dramatized by the media.
I believed this “crisis” was another gross attempt to distract from the political climate in our country. Thinking the government was utilizing fear and mass hysteria, once again, to hide important issues. Wary that politicians were guiding citizens, like myself, to focus on the fear of losing your savings or your home, rather than the issues; like Palin’s decision to charge rape victims in Alaska for their rape kits, many costing upwards of $1,000. She has returned to her state, that policy has not changed. Change is needed, not only on the national level but on the state level as well. Never has that truism been more apparent. However, that is a debate I will save for another blog. What I would like to impart right here and now is that I personally know several families that are in the process of claiming bankruptcy, loosing their homes due to foreclosures, loosing their jobs and finding themselves unable to meet basic needs. I am sure you can too if you actually thought about it, and not in the text book six degrees of separation sort of way but really think about your friends, your extended family, your co-workers and see if you’re really that far from this crisis yourself.
I am not on the cusp of the lower classes. I am an established member of the upper middle class if not the lower upper class, which if you have a lot of money means nothing and if you only have a little money means everything. The point is that these are educated, intelligent, relatively average people who are loosing their livelihood due to the impractical and exorbitant expense the U.S. Government is incurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, among various other financial sins. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi contends, “Think of it – forty days in Iraq could pay for ten million children getting health care in America for one year. And the president says we can’t afford it.” We can invest and reinvest in a loosing battle that only exists due to the incompetence of the leaders in this country, yet there is no provisional healthcare funding available for children in the U.S. The solution according to the Bush Administration is the same for the Iraq war and for economic downturn, don’t find out what is causing the problem or work to find a solution, just throw more money at it. Does anyone else see a recurring theme here? Failure on both fronts, in case you’re a little slow on the pick-up.
Speaker Pelosi makes another valid point, “Each year 550,000 people die in the United States from cancer. That’s 1,500 Americans per day. We spend $5.5 billion per year on cancer research – that’s less than what we spend in two weeks in Iraq. Today there is cancer research that is promising but unfunded. That is immoral.” There are over 4,000 Americans dead due to the war in Iraq, the number of Iraqis dead is estimated to be, 1,248,105 based on on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html. I think there is some truth in Josef Stalin’s remark, “One man dead is a tragedy, 10,000 dead is a statistic.” When the numbers become too large for us to wrap our minds around we forget that each one of those men and women were someone’s child. In fact many of our service members are still children. Consider the 18 year-olds you know or have interacted with, how many of them are ready to face combat? Death? And yet many do, and have, and will tomorrow. They have husbands, children of their own, parents, friends and sisters. They are not a statistic and yet we’re distracted with promises of “victory” or “insurgents captured”. Honestly, what does that mean? There is no victory when people are dead. Instead of investing in the lives we have we’re sacrificing them on the altar of mine’s bigger than yours.
President Bush made the statement that we had to invade Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and if we did not invade, it would become a dangerous hotbed of terrorists. Now President Bush and the Republican Party believe we cannot leave Iraq because if we do it will become a dangerous hotbed of terrorists. We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t, had this point come up earlier in political discussions perhaps those 4,000 Americans and 1,248,105 Iraqis would be sleeping next to their spouses tonight. The point is that the vast cost of warfare is what is crippling our economy. It is why my aunt and uncle are only able to live in their house because they’re keeping it up, even though the bank is foreclosing on them as I type. It is why my friend is filing for bankruptcy due to immense medical expenses. It is why a woman I work with is desperately attempting to get a promotion because she might loose the home where she raised her children and she might not be able to afford the doctor’s appointments for her pregnant daughter, who is uninsured. It is why my friend’s father, who works in the automotive industry, has been laid off for 11 months this year. It is why some friends can’t find steady work. It is why my step-mother and aunt have been out of work for over two years and can not find employment. Do I have faith in Barak Obama? Absolutely, I have to, if I believed there was no solution I would not work to find it. I would have to admit defeat and give up, I however am an eternal optimist and believe that something can and will be done, we just need to put our minds and resources together to figure it out.
Truthfully, I believe President Barak Obama has the sense to bring strong leaders to the forefront to compromise and resolve a number of the national and international issues this country is facing. Every day there is some small token, a realization, a hint that is dropped in my path, to show how much reform is needed. Arguably hope and change are not political platforms, they are ideologies. It is because of those ideas this man was elected at this time. He better make good use of it because there are a number of us left who need some change, a little hope and a hell of a lot of reform.