He kissed me on the lips and told me the sorts of things an insecure girl longs to hear. “I would bring you to Iran with me. I would love it if you joined me,” the man I wanted to marry said, his warm breath grazing my ear. “ I just don’t know how I could ever justify it.”

“I want to go with you,” I said, after listening to the long list of reservations he held about me. “Take me with you. We’ll be great together. You’ll see.”

From that very moment, I decided that I would win him over, prove his reluctance unfounded. A great relationship, after all, wasn’t so much about finding the right person as it was about being the right person.  I would change everything I could about myself— the way I dressed, interacted with men, and how I thought. I’d study the kinds of things he found important.  I’d do some reading on Islam, pick through the volumes on the shelf just above our headboard: the Koran, religious treatises written by some Ayatollah, and a series of rulebooks that dictated the procedure for everything from which hand to wipe your bum with to washing up after sex. After a while, he’d see how perfect we were for each other.  After a while, he’d marry me.  He’d take me with him. He’d hand me a life.

After coming home to the US, after the divorce, after settling in, I continued to suffer from this mindset. I believed that in order for someone to love me, I had to prove my worth. The trick was figuring out what a man wanted in a woman , and then playing that role. Love didn’t happen naturally, it had to be squeezed into place.

I started dating unavailable men because the dynamic was comfortably familiar. I wasn’t just replaying my marriage, I was reliving my childhood as well. The daughter of an alcoholic, I’d grown up believing that if I were just a little better, if I were the kind of girl Daddy really wanted, if I just tried harder, Dad would put the bottle down and slather me with love.

Shortly after I started dating The Narcissist, I chanced upon him reading a steamy e-mail.  Unless his friends had an odd way of expressing affection, the evidence suggested that he was sleeping with someone else.

For several days I weighed my options:  ask point blank for him to define our relationship, or pretend I hadn’t seen what I’d clearly seen.

Why would a woman, one might ask, hesitate to ask such an important question, particularly in this day and age, where sex can equal death? Why wouldn’t she seek a reality check?

In this society, we are taught that men are commitment phobic. That the best way to deal with this skittishness is to feign indifference. That to ask where the relationship is headed is the kiss of death.

But more, I didn’t ask because I was afraid to know the truth. I needed more time to assess what he wanted, to analyze and strategize, in order to win him over. Because I needed this very average man to give me a sense of worth.

How do you know, when you’re in the heart of drama, whether you’re being manipulative?  How do you know if you are forcing something that shouldn’t be forced?

You know:

• When you are afraid to say what you want, need, or expect
• When you are charming and amenable ALL THE FREAKING TIME
• When you can define his interests and needs better than you can define your own
• When you make all sorts of excuses to yourself for why he never says I love you, or gives you a call
• When you’re convinced that the only reason the relationship has stalled is because of the pain he suffered in his romantic past
• When you say, we’ll be great together, he’ll see

 

I love the movie Shop Girl with Steve Martin and Claire Danes.  You remember the scene where  Claire’s character suddenly realizes that they’ll never marry? How she struggles with the knowledge, but then calls him out on the rug. Demands to know the truth. And she has to make the choice right then and there:  Suffer the loss now, or put the hurt off til later.  And she chooses now, because she knows there’s no escaping pain. That it’s better to be free for the chance to find what she truly wants.  Claire Danes is my hero.

Speak up.

Tell the truth.

Be real.

Value yourself.

Trust that you are enough.

Because the truth is, men are not commitment phobic. The right man will move heaven and earth to be with you–the real, authentic you with all your wonderful flaws.

Believe me, I know.