How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

I love my job, I really do. Being a therapist is my dream job and I could never imagine doing anything else. Being a therapist has allowed me to come into contact, daily, with the rawness of humanity and has taught me how to love people in a nonjudgmental and unique way that hopefully inspires healing. In many ways, being a therapist has saved me from myself! 

But in seeing the rawness of humanity you also see the drama of humanity. 

Due to the clientele that I find myself drawn to (women who have been in or are getting out of an abusive relationship, co-dependent individuals and women in their 20’s and 30’s), I am faced, daily, with huge doses of second-hand drama. Luckily for me, I have learned how to keep drama at the office and not bring it into my personal life! That aside, as I have sat with these beautiful and special women day after day, I have noticed a trend. It seems, with no exaggeration, that for many of these women, no matter how dramatic they are, no matter how much baggage they bring into a relationship, no matter how much they say and do the absolute opposite of what they should do (the healthy thing to do), how fast they push the relationship and how much they demand from their boyfriend, they seem to always have a man by their side. And not only that, but a man who sticks with them…even when the relationship is brand new! 

I find myself asking over and over why all of these women can keep a man and I can’t???

Now, I fully admit that I have done my share of sabotaging and I have probably even made things dramatic when it really wasn’t needed. But I am aware enough of myself and work on myself enough to know that this is not my norm, I catch myself in the act and I nip it in the bud. This has not come without great effort (and many mistakes), but it’s something within myself that I am proud to have developed! And yet, I sit with these women daily who can be dramatic, irrational, overly emotional, accusatory, projecting on ‘their man’ and having inflated expectations—who are never single—and I can’t get a guy to stick around for more than a couple months. Excuse the language, but WTF???

In beginning of writing this blog I did my own form of reflective research and thought about several of the men I have dated in the past couple years and what the turning point was in the relationship that made them start to back away… While I fully acknowledge that I had a hand in many of these situations and my anxiety sometimes got the best of me, what I noticed is that whenever the relationship started to fizzle was when I had a “meltdown”. Yes, I put quotes around meltdown because when I compare my story to that of my clients, it’s a blip on the radar… My meltdowns:

1. The time that a guy I had been dating a couple months asked me if I would be ok with him going to a strip club with a friend—my response: I went waaaaaaaay inward and got very quiet and finally was able to say that it was an insecurity of mine, something about body image issues and that I would prefer that he didn’t go. A few days later was the last time I saw him. 
2. The time the guy I had been dating for a couple months long distance told me he wanted to be a white water rafting guide, meaning that by the time he was done with that gig we would have been dating nearly 9 months and seen each other less than 20 times. In this he thought he could fit me into his schedule once every couple weeks—when I asked how that was a progressing relationship, and not a hook up, he told me I expected too much and after ending the conversation he never spoke to me again.
3. The time when the guy I was dating had talked about getting together one evening after work; after him telling me he would call me when he was done eating to make plans for the night and not contacting me for 4 hours I asked him if he wouldn’t mind simply telling me the next time that it wasn’t going to work to hang out that night if he knew he didn’t want to/had other plans or something came up. After hearing about how that was too intense of a conversation for that point in the relationship and telling me that it was my problem, he slowly started to back off in communication until one day, a couple weeks later, he disappeared altogether. 
4. Oh yeah, and then the time that I asked my boyfriend of a couple months for an idea of what he thought the future would look like in terms of a timeline—this only after he had told me he loved me, he wanted to marry me, asked me how much he could spend on a ring and talked about asking my dad for permission to marry me—he said I was putting him in a box and pressuring him too much…a week later we were broken up.

Ok, stop laughing…yes, those truly were my “meltdowns” and those truly were the responses. I look back and see that there were a few things that I could have done differently in each situation. But generally speaking, my meltdowns that I had were about a .0000001 on the Richter Scale; certainly not worthy of breaking off a relationship over. Now, I am also aware enough to realize that if those “meltdowns” were the reason for a break up, there were probably other things going on—other things that it’s probably good I didn’t have to bear witness to on down the road, but still…that certainly does nothing for a girl’s confidence…and leads me to believe perhaps I should consciously be immature, dramatic, needy, clingy and have a lot of issues that need to be solved in order to keep a boyfriend. 

This trend has me absolutely befuddled and I admit, I am still grasping for reasons this happens. After enlisting the wisdom and support of one of my over-30-and-single girlfriends about this we are still completely confused but have recognized a few things…  When something happens to me, whether it be in a relationship or life in general, it seems there are two ways to go about handling about it:

The first way is to react…meaning go with my gut, say whatever comes to mind, get dramatic, yell, scream, cry, give the silent treatment, become manipulative, project, become the victim, become passive aggressive or maybe even downright aggressive! Reaction means I can do anything I want to do in order to get my point across, soothe my wounds and protect myself without necessarily taking into account how that other person might feel that is the recipient of your reaction. The goal for this situation then becomes to simply restore a sense of normal as fast as possible. As long as the other person complies with your wish as fast as possible the hope is that the situation will calm down. Unfortunately, this type of handling never seems to solve the root issue because the next time that someone does something you don’t like, the reaction is the same. As big and dramatic as this form of handling is, I can’t help but wonder if it’s preferable for a man. There is something tangible to fix. She wanted you to pick up toilet paper on the way home…run to Target and pick it up. Problem solved. As confused as that man might be in regards to what just happened, as soon as it starts, he knows exactly what to do to make it better.  Men love fixing things, so this reaction, in a weird way, speaks a language they understand. 

The second way to handle a situation is to respond. Responding to a situation means one much be must slower, reflective and understanding of what is truly going on inside of them. Responding to a situation requires that one must first go inwards and recognize the underlying emotion and message that is being triggered in the situation and then deal with that first before bringing someone else into that space. Responding to a situation means owning my response, anxiety and desire to act out of rage and spend a minute identifying what part of me has just been wounded and what is really going on and why I have the urge to get really big or hide from the situation. When I go through this process internally and with awareness I can then reach out to the person I am trying to communicate with and let them know what just happened for me and what I need from them (compassion, empathy, affirmation, support, etc.) And while at face value this seems like it should be no big deal to offer this to someone, it also requires that the other person dig deeper within themselves and tap into that same, deep place in order to offer back to you what you are asking for. It’s more than getting toilet paper from Target or making the bed the next morning. 

It seems to me that when a strong and aware woman shows a vulnerable side of her the man must also be strong and aware in order to be vulnerable himself and offer the deeper, empathetic response. But that, my friends, is hard to do. It means I might have to tap into something in myself that I don’t like. It means it’s not about being right or wrong. It means it’s actually not even about fixing something. It’s simply about being present and open, and that is much easier said than done. In fact, it’s so much easier said than done that in those moments where a deeper response is required, it feels better to give back your own reaction. 

As I reflect back on my ‘meltdown’s’ that I have had (above), I can say with certainty that each time I responded rather than reacted. Each time I have expressed my concern only after an internal process has taken place and I am able to identify where it hurts, what I need to do myself and what I might need from the other person. And each time I asked for what I needed it came after being brutally honest with myself and recognizing at the core level I had been touched. And when I think about it, it probably does seem easier to buy crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy and take the garbage out rather than empathically taking someone into consideration, acknowledging them at their deepest level and responding accordingly.

I have to be honest…I don’t know if this is why when a ‘meltdown’ occurs I find myself being phased out of someone’s life. Maybe I have really bad manners, laugh with a horses whinney or have poor hygiene. (And if that’s the case, will someone please tell me?!?) But one thing I do know is that I’m not going to stop responding. And while I am aware that this does not come naturally for people, men and women alike, if someone isn’t interested in at least trying, then perhaps he’s not my guy.

I realize I am a strong and independent women. I think that’s probably an attractive quality to men as they seek a potential partner. But more than those characteristics, I am a human. I have emotions, thoughts, experiences, wounds and desires to prove it. But this doesn’t make me weak and it doesn’t make me dependent. It doesn’t (necessarily) make me dramatic, immature or irrational. It simply points to my humanity. And after having spent enough years of my life trying to hide it, deny it or conform it to someone else’s ideal and it’s not something I am interested in anymore. And to that end, if his reaction to my humanity is to walk away, I will stay true to myself and continue to respond.