Relationships aren't about each person putting in his or her respective halves of 50% each. If you're really giving your "all" then you're giving 100%. So if there is a problem, it's perfectly fair to say that you are 100% a part of it.
If this concept of a relationship as a two-way street is so rudimentary, why do I keep witnessing girls place the blame entirely on guys when things go wrong? Why are some girls dumbfounded about outcomes that could've been spotted coming a mile away? Why do so many girls have difficulty realizing how much influence they wield, and that too often they're abusing these powers or wasting them on the wrong guys?
Not convinced? Allow me to be more specific:
- The preoccupation with trading up. We look to external add-ons to ugrade the S out of our lives, but we don't upgrade ourselves. What's up with that? Who gave us license to use guys as a means to a higher end? Or to abandon good guys because we might be able to do "better"? The search for something better in itself is not flawed, but sometimes the preoccupation with something else can be. In our culture, we're overly socialized to embrace choice. We're empowered to delete, undo, refresh, unfriend, unfollow and reset at our heart's every whim. The result? Half-baked commitments and constant compulsions to find the next shiny thing -- instead of polishing what's already in front of us.
- Making guys jump through hoops. I totally get it. Guys these days are spoiled rotten with an overabundance of choice and, for the most part, suck at properly courting girls. We still just want to feel wanted. But does this mean we can turn the field into a circus and sit around expecting men to entertain us with showy displays of affection? Because I feel like we do that sometimes. We place so much pressure on guys to win us over while at the same time passively reserving the luxury of being able to back out. It doesn't make sense that we expect a guy to automatically know what we want when we ourselves don't even know what we want. Something's gotta give, because relationships aren't won, they're built.
- Using men to stow your baggage. He doesn't "complete" you, he never should, and he never will. No one is equipped to fulfill that role. Girls have been known to fold their insecurities up and lug it into a relationship, expecting a guy to carry their weight and assuage their bruises. We all have an Inner Fat Girl -- the fragile yet tyrannic voice within us that occasionally finds its way into our ears, making us question whether or not we deserve greatness. The same voice that also drives us to fear being held responsible for our own happiness. Why let an uninvited guest sabotage us?
- "Guys are intimidated by me." Sorry, but...no. Unless you asked a bunch of them to fill out an anonymous survey, it's simply one of three things: 1.) you're a flat-out, high-maintenance B and you need to soften up OR 2.) your beauty is of Angelina Jolie-esque proportions, in which case you should probably just shut up and stop talking about your physical form as if it's a curse OR 3.) something about you rubs a guy the wrong way because it reflects something in himself that he doesn't want to deal with -- a bullet you should dodge anyway. Whatever the case, this is a lame, cop-out excuse and it does little to illuminate the real issue.
- Gaggles of girlfriends. It's hard enough winning the heart of one girl. Now multiply that by five. Perfectly decent guys get dismissed all the time because the girl's friends are too quick to disapprove. More girls need to ask themselves: Am I listening to my girlfriends because deep down inside I know they're right? Or am I agreeing because I want them to validate me? It makes sense to want our choices to be vetted by our most important allies. And your girlfriends to want the best for you because to them, you're the cat's meow. But let's face it -- sometimes we have so much fanatical, unconditional adoration for each other that no guy will ever be good enough.
- Out-of-proportion reactions. If guys have wandering, excitable eyes, girls have wandering, excitable minds. We can churn out rose-colored imaginations and we can overanalyze. No, it's not okay to start planning your wedding three days after meeting him. It's not okay to be up at midnight lurking on his social media accounts. It's not okay to punish him by withdrawing intimacy. It's not okay to interpret something as silly as "I'm not hungry" to mean "I don't love you." It's not okay to make him jealous using juvenile tactics. And I say this last part with extreme caution because of this and this, but sometimes...you just have to reign the crazy in.
- Delusions of scarcity. Perhaps it's in our DNA to fall to bouts of tunnel vision. Or maybe it's all the crappy romantic comedies and TV shows with the oversimplified punch lines that we consume. Regardless, we have to stop tricking ourselves into thinking that there aren't any good guys out there. And are they really all gay? It's a fatalistic mindset and it's a trap. Limit your beliefs and you're limiting your pool. Approach dating from a place of abundance and naturally you'll create a positive feedback loop.
- Making excuses for guys. Ever heard of the quote, "We accept the love we think we deserve?" What you choose put up with reveals what you think you're worth. There's no reason to associate yourself with a guy who makes you question your worth. Ignore all the red flags you want, but at the end of the day he either likes you enough to secure you or he doesn't. He's not shy, he's not busy, he's not scarred, and he sure as hell isn't pining away out of fear of unrequited love. The right guy knows that fortune favors the bold and will act. It's in his DNA. We gain absolutely nothing by doing their parts for them.
Our conversations -- whether in smelly locker rooms or over champagne brunch -- will always carry mildly sexist undertones. But they will also always allude to a vested need to connect with the opposite sex. Therefore, there's no point in perpetuating an "us versus them" mentality when in reality "they" represent a part of our humanity that we innately cannot do without. I guess what I'm trying to say is: we could all do a lot for ourselves and our futures if we stop using each other to stuff our egos, stop getting lost in the thick of it, and start owning up the fact that sometimes we stir our own shit.
Here's to being 100% the solution.
