Dear Hoops,
I have been seeing this bloke for about four months. He's quite a bit older than me with children a little younger than I am and a history of relationships that he alludes to but has never gone into a whole lot of detail about. He's never been married and neither have I.
Before him, I was extremely defensive (and lonely because of it). I met him at the end of a stint in melancholyville and a whole heap of therapy, drugs etc which had sort of opened me up to receiving attention and I thought that with this guy, I would try to break my patterns. I would be open and responsive, I would be passionate and honest about how I feel. He described me as loving, generous and attentive. I was proud of myself and I thought I was doing well because he seems to feel the same way. I think.
However, the voice in my head tells me that he is a wanker, that he only wants sex, that he's not bothered about me. While he texts and calls all the time, we don't see each other very often (maybe every three weeks) and I feel that if he was really into me, he'd make more effort to see me. It is usually me who initiates getting together, although since I broached this with him, he's been trying to be more forthright.
He says lovely things to me and when we are together I feel sure that he's into me but when he's gone, I start to wonder if he's just a player. Sometimes he won't call back, saying he has no credit, or he won't choose to spend New Years with me and I can't figure out if he's 'just not that into me' or if it's just my defences up to their old tricks again. So there's that.
Added to this, I don't even know if we're really a couple and while I want to be able to be open, trusting and generous of myself I am worried that I'm making a fool of myself and that I am being that girl. I have asked where we stand and he mumbled nonsensically about marriage. He said that things between us had become intense and emotional very quickly and that he had things he thought he wanted to say but that he thought it was too soon. I took this to mean that he wanted a bit of space, so I have tried to back off a bit but when we speak now, he often seems a bit glum, so I don't know how to act around him any more.
I realise that this is just a huge tangle of stuff (sorry) but I cannot seem to get this straight in my head and I am simultaneously worried about arsing up something potentially amazing and allowing someone to play me because I want him to be a good guy. Any chance you can offer some insight as to how I should proceed with this guy?
If you can understand any of this, I applaud you.
Yours,
Miss Brain Fart
Dear Miss Fart,
Come on! You can’t sign your name as Miss Brain Fart and expect anything less of me! It’s like you people don’t know me at all!
Okay: Get ready to applaud me because I actually feel like I have a pretty good handle on your situation. I really like being applauded, so I read your note a few times just to make sure. You should see how much attention I’m willing to pay if you’d promised to dress up like a cheerleader and do a HOOPS cheer!
Your problem is very similar to many of the problems about which I dole out advice about here in that it’s a problem with perspective. You’ve had issues in the past that you’re trying to overcome. You’re not 100% certain that you have beaten them and as a result, you don’t trust what you see and what you feel. You aren’t sure your own perceptions are accurate and as a result, you can’t properly assess your relationship.
Not being able to trust what you feel and what you see makes you doubt what you hear too. How can you possibly judge his intentions, his affections and his truthfulness if you have no faith in the tools you possess to those jobs? Adding to the problem is that you step out of a past full of self-sabotage into relationships with men—and let’s be honest here, it may not be true that, “all men are dogs,” but there’s a reason why you ladies say that. Many of us are dogs. Many of us, at very least, go through a dog phase where we are capable of doing truly horrible things to the fairer sex.
Even the nicest guys in the world have been dogs at some point. That’s the part of the movie you never really see. They don’t show you the scene where Michael Cera uses all of those charmingly vulnerable traits he has, not to capture the love of his life, but rather the cooter he’s always wanted to conquer. Same guy. He does the same cute, adorable, romantic things. The only difference is that after the last girl broke his heart, he uses them for evil—not good.
So. It’s hopeless! No, no, no! It’s not hopeless. I bring up that hopelessly depressing point though, to illustrate that these challenges face ALL women out there looking for love. You’re not alone. Every woman has to face the uncertainty and doubt and untruthfulness that can seemingly dominate the dating scene at times. You are not alone. That should be encouraging for you because of your past. You used to be part of a very small group. Now you’re part of a much larger one. You understand the errors in your past. You acknowledge them. You are vigilant and on the look out for them. That’s all you can do. As long as you continue to assess your own actions, as long as you always ask yourself the question about whether or not you’re self-sabotaging, then there’s a pretty good chance that you are not. Deep down, if you lie to yourself, you know it. You feel it. You have experience with that. You can only fool yourself if you are a willing folly.
So where does this leave you? It leaves you here: You are entitled to the happiness you seek. Your past is the fire in which you were tempered if you’re smart enough to use it as such. Loving another starts with being able to love yourself. Loving yourself means learning to trust yourself. Trusting yourself means trusting your feelings. From what you’ve described to me, I’d say that your feelings are telling you that something is off.
There’s a good chance that you are right.
How do you handle that? Well, the first concern you have is that he only wants you for sex. You have to understand that you’re more than just the sex and demand more from him. Normal couples don’t have sex every single time they see each other. There’s no reason why you should. Another of your complaints is that he doesn’t initiate enough, that he doesn’t see you enough. I’m guessing that on those occasions when you do see each other, it usually ends with the two of you in bed. STOP THAT! Most men don’t love spending time cuddling on the couch watching Michael Cera movies with you, but men in love do it anyway. Men in love want to see you and talk to you and be near you and it doesn’t always have to be about the sex. Men in love fall asleep holding you without ever having made a move from time to time.
Men in love initiate spending time together. And yes, a lot of the time they’ll try to end up in bed with you—but that’s just guys being guys. If he’s calling you, initiating dates with you, sending you flowers, emailing you, texting you, getting extra credit just so he can call you and SHOWING you that he’s always thinking about you—well, my guess is that when you ARE together, it won’t feel so much like he’s just using you for sex, it’ll feel more like an expression of how he feels for you.
It’s nice that he says lovely things to you when you’re together. It’s also easy. Guys aren’t stupid. We know what you want to hear. Some of us can say those things without meaning them, just to stop with the talking and start with the fucking. How do you tell though? Well, the fact that he’s so vague about things is a good indicator. You don’t even know if you’re a couple, but when pressed about where things are, he mumbles things about marriage? Is that really what he feels or is that exactly what he thinks you want to hear? This man hasn’t officially committed to being a couple with you, but he’s talking about marriage? That seems odd to me.
At best, he’s into you but unwilling to do the work it takes to be in a relationship. At worst, he’s just using you for sex. Either way you have some big problems here. You aren’t self-sabotaging this one. He is sabotaging it. Worse, he may actually be taking advantage of your past issues to keep you as a fuck buddy by making you think it’s more than that.
I actually don’t mind your age difference. It’s everything else about this guy that I don’t trust. It’s everything else about this guy that you won’t trust as well. My advice to you on this one is to trust yourself. I don’t think you’re arsing up a good thing. I think you have a right to confront him with all of this and demand some clear answers. He may be unwilling to provide them. He may try to turn this fight around and make you feel like “that girl.” Don’t let that happen. You have a RIGHT to be happy. You have a RIGHT to know exactly what this relationship is and where it’s going and if he can’t answer you, then you should move on.
Ladies, you have a right to be happy. You’re never going to find a guy who acts like the ones you see in the movies. If that is your definition of happy then the problem lies with you. But in a real relationship, when you’re in love, your man will make you feel important and special. Sometimes he’ll screw that up. Sometimes he’ll prefer to spend time with the boys and leave you at home feeling lonely, but those incidents will be few enough and far enough between that, even if they do make you sad, you’ll be able to put them into perspective and understand that he needs that time away from you once in a while because it’s healthy. The key is that most of the time, he makes you feel loved and special and wanted, and important and a priority.
When he does, you don’t doubt him. You don’t worry. You don’t obsess. You don’t become “that girl.” It’s pretty simple really. If you feel like you have to stop yourself from being “that girl,” on a regular basis, he’s not the right guy for you.
There is a lot of shit you need to step through before you find Prince Chraming, Miss Fart. Along the way you’ll need to learn to trust yourself. Accept your past. Embrace your past. Understand your past. It doesn’t preclude you from trusting your gut feelings. It simply demands that you question those feelings, that you analyze them and that you don’t trust them blindly. You must be vigilant against self-lies. You must be willing to question yourself. However, you must also allow self-trust to occur when you’ve done your due diligence. You must conclude that your gut feelings are right, after you’ve put them to the test. You must untangle your past from the present. Leave your past in the past. Carry forward only what you need to tackle today—and simply put, that is the willingness to police yourself. And in the end, believe in your right to be happy and in your right to define that happiness, not to simply accept the closest facsimile that is being offered. You have the right, and in this case the responsibility to be “that girl,” in this situation. You deserve answers. Demand them. Listen to them. Judge them and the truth of them. And if you choose to continue with him, place the burden on him to SHOW you he loves you.
When you’re loved the way you want to be loved, the way you deserve to be loved, you don’t ever have to question it.
Good luck,
hoops
