Okay, let’s be honest. How many times have you said one thing to a partner but were thinking something else? Have you ever actually had the thought, or worse, said, “Could you just wait until the [game, show, decade] is over?” during a conversation? Have you ever been accused of not listening?
I know I have. The question is why? Why aren’t we honest, upfront, and real with the partners in our lives? Is it because we get bored? Do we actually lose interest? Are we all just a bunch of douche-bag-idiots determined to screw up our own lives?
Or is it something else?
Being single, I’ve had hours to ponder this question (nothing, and no one, to do will do that to you), and I think I may have discovered a reason, or at least a reasonable excuse, as to why we do this in matters of love. It’s the act of dating, or early courtship, that screws most of us up!
Why dating? Simple. All of us manipulate ourselves to better fit our perceived ideas of what the other wants in a partner. We hide, lie, or hold back the truth about the things we don’t like about ourselves. We push the things that unite us, and stuff those that don’t in a dark closet with the rest of our secret desires, our unfulfilled wants and needs, our unmentionables. We do it easily, and often, and we call it compromise. But, in reality, what it is false advertising. It’s the human equivalent of infomercials. Sure, it slices, it dices, it squirts mustard with the push of a button, but after a year and 4 uses, will you feel it was worth it? Did you really need something that only fulfilled part of your needs? Do you miss the things you stuffed in a drawer to forget?
This is what we do people! We start off not communicating! We don’t offer-up the real me because of the fear that the other person won’t like the real me. We hide our true selves just to have parts and pieces of us loved. Sometimes we do it to just fulfill a physical need. And we do it over, and over, and over again, because we know, we just know, that no one would want the real me.
You know you do it. We all do. Even the best of us are completely screwed up. And the reality is that this unfortunate flaw is built into the very core of our being. We will never change. We will always have difficulty communicating. But it doesn’t mean we have to do it blindly. It doesn’t mean we have to hide everything. It doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of being ourselves.
It means we have to be as much of our real selves as possible. It means we have to let others be as much or their real selves as possible. It means knowing yourself. It means being honest, telling the truth, and dealing with things when they do come up in as rational a manner as possible.
It means communicating.
Still single and unable to talk to girls,
Scott
Filed under: Helpful Hints, The Bad, The Man Perspective, The Reasons (man) | Tagged: advertising, alone, art, bad, bored, change, closet, communicate, communicating, compromise, conversation, courtship, date, dating, deal, decade, desire, difficult, douche bag, drawer, excuse, false, forget, fulfilled, game, honest, human, idiot, incommunicado, infomercial, interest, liar, lie, lives, lose, love, me, ourselves, partner, person, question, rational, real, relationships, said, screw, secret, self, show, single, stuff, themselves, truth, unfulfilled, unmentionables, upfront, why, worth | 1 Comment »