The "Doesn't Bother You Too Much" Girl...

She doesn’t really ask for much.  She supports you in all your hopes and dreams.  She is there, for you, with you, helping you raise your kids, supporting your interests, holding your hand as you walk through medical crisises.  She withstands slings and arrows from your ex and your children.  She silently supports you and all your endeavors and for you, you “love” her and keep her around because she adds way more than she takes (even though you rarely give her credit for all she does) and if you are really being honest, she just doesn’t bother you too much.

I have been this girl.  I know a lot of these women.  A fucking lot.  Married or dating men who should be more excited to have them in their lives.  At first blush, you don’t notice how unequal the relationship is.  At first blush, it seems as though they are an evolving couple that is capable of going the distance.  But then, in observation of their union, you start to see the things that are lacking:  

It is almost always her that makes the sacrifice - of sleep, of time, of her interests...she is too busy tending to everyone else, so there is little time for things that interest her.  She is forever squeezing in her life around all the others that surround her.

When it comes time to celebrate her at anniversaries or birthdays, the obligatory gifts are there, but the time and effort to truly celebrate her are lacking.  Others (in varying degree of importance) are chosen over her, pretty much without her being consulted.  Her duty is to accept and not rock the boat.  Her ire and anger for being passed up and overlooked saved only for the really egregious slights.

Huge decisions that will alter both their lives are made without consulting her.  When she bristles at the very large inconsideration, she is told “this was what I needed to do” and “of course, she was considered, she is always considered.'  The conversation leaves her feeling empty and unimportant, lost in the violent sea of the love she has that feels so often just beyond her reach.

Her life is enriched but it is the kind of enriched that she can never quite access.  Money is there, but it is being reserved for other things, she is miserable in her job, but she is encouraged to keep on working even though it is killing her and the money she makes contributes little to the community coffers.  While he is free to take long absences from work, toiling on things that interest him without regard to all she does and is doing to enable him the luxury of his follies.

I am not ever sure whether where this woman finds herself is the result of intent or just malignant neglect.  Why doesn’t he see her?  The beauty and grace that is her, every day.  The way she patiently and lovingly listens to all he talks about.  The way she defers to him, supports him, fucks him, loves him and adds so very much to his life and the lives of others he loves and cares about.  Why can’t he see it???  Or does he see it and have no landing space within his heart to allow all that she does, is and says to soften that place where the selfishness begins?  Or even more malignant, does he see it and just simply not care.  Emotions and love are just tools of manipulation and control and they are wielded with a swiftness that leaves her always feeling just outside the circle that very much is her own life.

I am sure, perhaps, men feel this way also.  But it is different and the subject for another day...

I have been party to a relationship with a man like this, I am embarrassed to admit.  The set up off and fucked from the beginning.  My role was to support him, love him, show up for him, help him.  And I did all of it eagerly.  I did it all without thought or concern, I did it because I wanted to.  I wanted to do all the things I did.  And sure, maybe, sometimes, I saw the imbalance.  How much he was the priority and I was not.  But I guess on some level my own lack of esteem and value allowed that to feel comfortable.  Not liking to be the center of attention or doted upon, the neglect felt safe in the beginning.  The lack of interest in me felt good in some fucked up way.

Of course, by the time it didn’t feel safe or good anymore, it was way too late.  I was either married or so far in that getting out felt like an onerous task.  So I did what anyone would, I attempted to change it from within.  First very lovingly, patiently and with a great deal of compassion and heart.  But when that got me nowhere at all, I got mad.  And then the years turned that anger to madness all the time.  I was pissed and hurt and for the life of me I could not understand why someone who married up their life with mine, just couldn’t or wouldn’t see that I was struggling, in need of help, of a kind word, a compliment, for my birthday to be a bigger deal, for Christmas to be a time of loving support instead of allowing me to carry the total burden for the shopping, decorating, cooking, wrapping and schedule.  I was left alone in my tasks, while he, he was able to watch TV or ride his bike, or go for a run, or lie in bed.

I will not lie, there were times when left alone with so much to do, I kind of plotted his death.  Not really, but I did think about how much I wished I had a magic wand to make him disappear.  Or to magically change him into someone who SAW me and CARED about me and wanted to HELP me.  How could I be so invisible, when he was the center of my world?  There was never a time I was not thinking about his wants, his needs, his feelings and his time. He came before me and I can see now that was part of my problem.

I created an imbalance in all my hyper competence.  I am sure he would make a good argument that I had my ways about doing things that were too lofty to pursue, so it was better to just let me do it myself...

I know there were arguments that I was too picky, too exacting and too OCD and those would also be fair arguments.  But why were these characteristics of mine never examined by him?  Why did he not ever think, “why is she like this and what can I do to alleviate all this hyper vigilance?”  Why was there rarely any tenderness, only hard brutality of a hostile takeover for a task that proved too much for me or a complete feigning of interest and assistance that would never, in fact, come.

I have examined this phenomenon from all sides.  I see it in the marriages I divorce, in the couples I coach, in the relationships of friends and relatives.  And the only conclusion I have been able to draw that provides the most complete and unassailable explanation is that men tend to select women that just don’t bother them too much.  And there are whole droves of women out there, with their childhood wounds of attempting to get their fathers to pay attention to them, that are only too happy to do literal headstands and cartwheels to garner favor for even ten minutes.  And those women tend to select men who are only to happy to help repeat the pattern.  She thinks she is picking differently, she thinks that she has found one that will SEE her and HELP her. But really she has been selected for her unremitting failure to make any real demands at all. And since there are no demands, there is no pressure and his life is augmented while largely uninterrupted.  While hers quite silently slips from her grasp and becomes this other thing, a life lived from a distance.  All the things she would do if she only had time.  And her daydreams begin to shift to a time where he did not exist in her life and even though her load was larger, and the support duties all hers, it felt like a life to her in ways this one with him just quite doesn’t.

I have been the “doesn’t bother you too much girl” way too often in my life.  And I have come to see that I set it up that way.  Always showing up for him while asking for as little as possible.  Don’t want to disturb the king, or ask for too much because if I did, he might go away.  I never stopped and asked myself why that was a fear in the first place.  Why would my fear of  being left alone if I asked for anything from someone who I was giving everything to be an issue?

Clearly I had some work to do. And I will tell you it has been way harder than I thought.  And I am not really sure I have made any progress, my choice instead, is to abstain from relationshiping all together.  Oh, I date, but dating provides a deep level of independence that renders me immune and safe from men who only want a girl that doesn’t bother them too much.

I don’t know who and how I will be in the next relationship, or if I will even have a next one. Sometimes I feel so broken by the past, of what I allowed and accepted, of what I was given and all that I was not, that I just am not sure I can do it all again.  The freedom I feel outside of love’s confines and shackles so great that I the thought of a loving communion seems like such folly that sometimes I find myself laughing out loud.  

It isn’t all them and it isn’t all me.  Just another one of life’s one, two combos that has left me withdrawn and confused as to what and how to do it differently.  Most especially, from my vista, where I observe the other coupley people who are walking the same path.  It is not all of them, not by a long shot, but the fact that I see it at all strikes a cord of fear in me that reverberates for weeks and months afterwards.

Not being loved and cared for is one thing.  Being with a person who is supposed to love you the most and best and finding that relationship more prison like than solace leaves me hollowed out and despairing.  I used to wonder if I just really didn’t deserve any better and that was why I was where I was.  But I have done the inner work to know that isn’t true. We all have value despite our mistakes and defects.  No, it is in who I pick and who I allow entrance to my life.  And that I know goes way the fuck back to shit that is very hard to sort through.

For me, I have decided to be a woman that asks for what she needs, that I do bother the men I date as much as I can.  Not in an Eddie Haskle kind of way but in an inconvenient kind of way because it is the only way I know to be real.  Human beings and their relative needs and wants and desires are completely totally inconvenient.  And why should I scrub my life clean of that which is really just a human trait.  The price of love for me cannot be that I sterilize myself so that I become a blank canvas for the next man to scribble over and call his.  No, I have done that and it made despondently sad and murderously upset.

Instead today, I aim to be a canvas of my own making that is blossoming with life and teeming with interest and intrigue.  One that is so beautiful and lively that any man who dares to beckon me forward, must have a keen appreciation for all the work that went into this Erin tapestry.  And have one to share with me that is a work of art all his own.  And there, perhaps, if I finally get it right, we can sit together, in a mutuality of respect, appreciation, love and insight and observe the relative merits each of us calls forth for the benefit of the other, peacefully sipping coffee, snuggled in together both spent from the mutuality of our combined efforts to care for, see, support and love ourselves and each other.

I do not ever want to be the girl that doesn’t bother you too much.  I do not want to be the one that vexes you at every turn either.  I just want to be appreciated and valued and loved for all I bring to the table, while being offered up a similar gifts that are given without score keeping or a tag of guilt and shame with every presentation.  I just want to be important.  And for each of us, to remember that love is priceless and precious and in today’s world fleeting.  And if each of us, every day doesn’t appreciate the magnificent gift this other brings into our lives, we shall surely taint it beyond recognition or lose it all together.

Again...still.

Sigh.