Premature Word Vomit

In so many ways I feel like, even three episodes in, the Bachelorette is proving to be even more drama filled than the Bachelor--ya know the show when 20 women are vying after the same man's heart? I never thought it was possible, but I think we are all in for a surprise! I guess I have underestimated the drama that can ensue when the male ego is at stake! It's a no-holds-barred game of gossip, back stabbing, playing the victim card and resembling a teenage girl when love (or 15 minutes of fame) is on the line for the men of the Bachelorette!

I know, full well, that the show is scripted and that it's not a realistic interpretation or situation in which relationships are born and nurtured...all you need to do is look at the success rate of the show to figure that out. But I also know that even on a show where contracts are signed and you must agree to however the producers what to edit your 'character', you still have a choice of what to say or how much to say. No one is forcing words and stories out of your mouth. 

As I sat and watched the Bachelorette last night and heard these guys pour out their hearts, their traumas, their losses and their passions, despite the lack of an open bar and a camera crew in my face I almost felt like we were peering in on my dating life (ok, ok...there were other differences too...I don't have a hair or make up team, I don't have 20 guys waiting for me in the next room when I am done taking to someone else nor do I have unlimited access to exotic and amazing dates...to name a few things). What I mean though is watching those guys open up so fast about so much felt like every date that I have been on in the past few months. 

I call it my Jedi Mind Trick...some people wish they had super powers of being able to fly or teleport...or to, like Mel Gibson on "What Women Want", get inside a woman's head to know what she is thinking. I have this super power of looking at a guy, listening to a guy or even being in the same room as a guy and I somehow end up in a conversation that ends with me knowing about their crazy ex wife, their kids, their fears or some bit of personal information that, if the tables were turned, I would likely not disclose until we were in an established relationship. Like the men on the Bachelorette, these guys are vomiting their deepest insecurities and parts of themselves to me, a perfect stranger, as they gaze back at me with hopeful eyes looking for approval, acceptance or some sort of indication that I am into them. Sometimes I wonder if there is some sign above me that says "please, tell me all of your deepest, darkest secrets (even if I just met you in the check frozen fruit aisle at Kroger)". (And yes, that actually has happened.)

I have often wondered if this is a new fangled tactic to get into my pants...perhaps the old pick up lines and sweet nothings being whispered into my ears are no longer cutting it. Perhaps guys have finally hear women's desires for an emotional connection before a physical connection and this is their attempt. Perhaps they think that by spilling their story I, or the Bachelorette, will get swept up in what they are saying and desire to move the relationship to the next, physical, level. (Never mind the fact that when a girl emotionally dumps on a guy when she first meets him it's his cue to run away...and rightfully so!) Regardless, I don't think the guys I have been dating have some producer whispering in their ear what to tell me to encourage some hasty emotional connection. 

I wish I could say that I have come to some definite conclusion on why this is. It gives me comfort at

least to know that it's not just the guys that I date that do it--the guys on the Bachelorette do it too. And of course as soon as I say that I am immediately called back to a myriad of memories in which I have done that as well. No cameras around, no producer coaxing me with questions, but rather a girl who is hopeful and shares way too much with a guy she has just met. A girl who just wants to be known. A girl who hopes that the guy who sits in front of her is maybe different than the rest. Maybe someone she can trust, someone who will take her into consideration, someone who will connect to her story, see her for who she truly is and fall in love with her heart. 

There is this part of me that believes that not all guys exclusively and only have the intent of having sex with a girl. Call it naive or having the wool pulled over my eyes but I have to believe there are some guys out there who prematurely word vomit because they too want to be known and loved by another. Sometimes it seems like men and women aren't so incredibly different after all...

© Lainey Dreson. 2015. All Rights Reserved

The Myth About 'Guarding Your Heart'

Growing up, the message I heard consistently about dating was to “guard my heart”…I was told that I didn't want to put myself out there because every time I allowed myself to be smitten with a guy, I was told, a little piece of my heart had been given to them—a piece that I could never get back. I was warned that if I wasn’t careful, when my future husband came along I would only have shreds of my heart left to give him. In fact, I was told that because a marital union meant a husband and wife were one, even if I hadn’t met him if I was dating someone who wasn’t my [future] husband and giving him my heart, emotions, body, time or mental connection that I was actually cheating on my husband. 

One night at youth group we had a speaker from the True Love Wait’s campaign (a ‘campaign’ designed to promote Godly dating and abstinence before marriage). Amidst a few skits and stern mini-sermons one of the speakers started talking about this concept of guarding your heart. In her hands she had two paper hearts cut out of construction paper; she used glue to bind the hearts together and started talking about a relationship in which the boy and girl gave themselves to each other in all ways and became really attached to one another. As she told the story with every mention of attachment and connection she pressed the two paper hearts together a bit more. Inevitably at the end of the story the two went off to college and broke up; the speaker tore the two hearts a part to demonstrate the relationship ending…and her point. Each heart had remnants of the other heart on them, there were holes in the hearts; clearly the hearts were not whole. This is what our hearts would become, or worse, if we didn’t guard them. 

I made ridiculous rules to follow because of this. Initially I said I was going to wait until my wedding day to even kiss someone—not because I really wanted to do that but because I was pressured to; I was told that it would make me more holy and therefore more desirable to a Godly man. I decided too that I wouldn’t tell anyone I loved them except for my husband, which subsequently meant I would need to wait until my wedding day to do that too. I took pride in those things and was applauded by others. 

It took me a lot of years to figure out that many of the things I had learned as a teenager were not necessarily conducive to healthy relationships. Slowly I came to my own conclusions about what I thought was “ok” or “not ok”—based not on someone else’s set of rules but my own experiences and trusting myself to know what was healthy and honoring for me. The one thing I was holding out on was saying “I love you” to someone. It wasn’t that I hadn’t loved anyone; I had been in love a couple of times—I just never said those words.  Sure, I want those words to be special but ultimately I wasn’t saying them because I feared that they would somehow cheapen the words on down the road. Or I feared that if I said them to someone who I later broke up with, I would then be so broken and shredded that I would have nothing left to give. 

I remember a couple conversations with guys that I dated over the years, two stand out in particular, in regards to putting yourself out there. While both understood that it was a risk they spoke of a greater reward that was possible if you allowed yourself to be vulnerable. I remember one of them saying, “if you love someone, why wouldn’t you want to just tell them?” I knew he was right and I saw how powerful those words were a couple months later when I spoke them to him as his face lit up, tears ran down his face and he told me how much it meant that I had said that to him. When we broke up I thought I would feel immediate regret for saying those words to someone who I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life with, but I didn’t.

And so, that brings me to the Bachelorette. You didn’t think I would neglect the fact that this show came on again this week, did you? No, my friends, I have been waiting for an embarrassingly long time for the show to begin. I’ll spare you the details of the awkward entrances the first night; I’m not even going to discuss how it made me squirm to “pit” two girls against each other to get the guys to vote for them to be the bachelorette (…talk about my worst nightmare!) I have no problem saying I was rooting for Kaitlyn all the way, despite the fact that a long time acquaintance and old friend, Brady, was on the show vying for Britt’s heart. 

I certainly don’t claim to know either of the girls, nor any of the contestants, sans Brady, and despite the fact that surely people are edited to look a certain way or appear to be a specific character on the show, I do think that with cameras around you all the time it’s difficult for your true self not to come out (even if you are trying to hide it). Britt often times seemed to receive a lot of flack (and even hatred) from people for her wishy-washiness or overly positive and grateful attitude—I admit, I exercise extreme caution with her in trying to understand who she is (while simultaneously maintaining a major hair crush on her as well as noting that her natural beauty, charisma and kindness would be potentially intimidating to me if I was in a room of guys with her!) So while we only see parts of her through TV and social media, there is a consistency in her character in terms of ‘putting herself out there’ and loving without abandon but instead with hopefulness and ernest pursuit. 

Spoiler alert: Britt was not chosen by the guys as the Bachelorette and so in the first few minutes of the two-night premiere we see the news being delivered to her and her exit in the limo she had arrived in just hours before. In her video ITM (In The Moment) as she leaves the Bachelor Mansion she says, heartfelt-ly: 

“I don’t know how many times you have to put your heart there and I’ve never held anything back, what can I do differently? I have a lot of love to give, I really do. And I know that I will when the time was right, I just thought that that was now.”

One could easily think that after being rejected on national TV not once, but twice, she would have every right for cynicism or even walls of protection being built up so that she didn’t get hurt but what seems unique and true to her is that she doesn’t build walls and she doesn’t get cynical. (I say these things knowing fully that I don’t know her and only see about 2% of her life that is edited for a TV show…but just go with me!) She continues to put herself out there, open herself to love and if and when she is let down she uses those experiences to expand her heart and capacity to love the next person. I could imagine that the people who are in her life as her friends and family likely feel very cared for by her since she seems to view loving someone as a gift rather than a risk. 

I don’t know how many times Britt has been in love with someone; I don’t know how many times her heart has been broken. I don’t know if she, growing up, was taught in youth group to guard her heart or give her heart. I only know that what we see of her on TV offers a different perspective of loving someone that I was taught to fear. 

I’m starting to wonder if the act of loving doesn’t take some practice. It strikes me as odd that I was taught that I should only truly be and act loving towards one person—that some how if I kept my love at bay or hidden I could flip a switch and suddenly love someone in a beautiful, authentic and vulnerable way. It strikes me as odd that guarding your heart in order to have a beautiful relationship actually breeds the opposite: walling up, protecting myself and being terrified of being hurt—nearly unable to withstand being hurt even (which is the definition of weakness). Putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, showing your love and being open with another (romantically or otherwise) surely has it’s risks and there will unfortunately (and likely) be times where our love is taken advantage of, misunderstood, not reciprocated or discarded altogether. But then there are those moments where love is returned, where vulnerability is matched, where safe relationship occurs and hearts are healed because of putting yourself out there. I don’t think the two cancel each other out; I think they both affirm the importance of continuing to seek out true love and true relationships. 

Simply stated I am starting to thing think the more you love, the more love you have to give.