Playing the blame game
“So, how did it go with Mr. Hunky?” I asked Sara, calling outside of Trader Joe’s as I loaded my car with groceries. She had just been on date No. 1 with a new online potential the night before, so it was post-date girlfriend recap time.
“Well, I really like him,” she said. “But …”
“There’s always a ‘but’ at our age, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Why was ‘but’ hardly ever in the equation until we got old enough to start needing reading glasses to see, and Botox to get rid of all we could see?’
“Because we know too much now. So, what’s the ‘but’?”
“Well, he started talking about his ex, which always makes me nervous on a first date.”
“Me, too. It’s like having a threesome and the third person
doesn’t turn you on at all.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know Kat, but, whatever. But he was
talking about her like she was an A-1 biatch.”
“Maybe she is.”
“OK, sure. But, all he did was rag on her. Not a peep on how maybe he might have messed up. I hate that.”
I do, too. Because it’s rarely true. If it takes two to make a good relationship, then it takes two to make a bad one, even if it isn’t 50-50. It’s easier to blame someone for everything that went wrong, than to cop to our own part in it. And if a guy doesn’t understand that, then he hasn’t done a lot of soul-searching post-breakup. And that just means the next poor gal will be yet another in a string of ex Psycho Women.
So much for being accountable for one’s own behaviors.
I’m no psycho ex, but who the heck knows what Rob’s saying about me to some gal he’s trying to get all cozy with. I know he isn’t going to make me look perfect (although …); I’m the ex, after all. But, does he rag on me? Call me psycho? Say I’m a halfway decent wife and mother? Should I even care?
Still, I want to go up to each and every one of them and say, “Hey, I am NOT a crazy biatch!”
But maybe his new babes are like me; whenever a guy starts bad mouthing his ex, I always think, “OK, and I wonder what she’s saying about you …” Because if a guy is bad mouthing his ex, it will probably reveal a lot more about him than her.
There’s his truth, her truth and “the” truth, which is probably a little of both their “truths.”
Of course, sometimes you actually get to meet the ex and discover — my God, he was right, she really is a whack job! Or maybe she becomes your new BBF.
- What do you think when someone starts ragging on an ex?
- Do you believe him/her?
- What do you say about your exes?
- What do you think they say about you?
Photo © Christopher Hall – Fotolia.com
Can you be too pretty?
It was such a beautiful day yesterday that Mia, Sara and I headed out on our bikes. We told ourselves that it was to get much-needed exercise but we ended up at Sam’s, and so really it was more about splitting some fried calamari, quaffing a beer and people watching.
Our calamari had just arrived when two gorgeous, busty blondes walked by and sat down by the bar.
All heads turned, including ours. 
“Man, I’d love to get me some of that action,” one of the 20-something guys at the table near us said as his buddies nodded in agreement.
And for the next half-hour, the women — actually, their breasts, their bods, their beauty and what it would be like to see them naked and in action — dominated that frat-boy table’s conversation.
“See,” Mia said. “This is why I don’t want to be beautiful.”
“But you are beautiful, silly.”
“You know what I mean. These guys and probably every other guy in this place are lusting after those two just because of their looks. And, you know what? They’re probably entitled bitchy snobs who get everything they want just because they’re so damn pretty.”
“Whoa, Mia: you’re sounding just as judgmental as the guys next to us; why shouldn’t people appreciate beauty?” I said.
“Oh, please! Those guys aren’t appreciating their beauty,” Sara said. “They’re objectifying it. They’re being crude and reducing them to sex objects.
Who wants that?”
“I’m totally OK with being a sex object; I mean, if I have to,” I joked.
But, not really.
Do I want people to think I’m beautiful and sexy? Sure. And funny and smart and kind and creative and giving and … There’s so much more to me than just the physical, after all.
But to hear it from the 10s of the world, being beautiful can be a drag. Other women are jealous of you, most guys objectify you, nice guys think you’re “out of their league” and so won’t approach you, and you’re a target for all sorts of creeps, pervs and rapists. Everyone judges you for your looks, and projects all sorts of crap on you, including how intelligent you may or may not be, and how sexually accomplished you may or may not be.
So, should we feel sorry for beautiful people?
I don’t think so. Attractive people make more money and have more opportunities than the rest of us, as numerous studies have proven. Hard to feel sorry for that.
Still, I can understand their frustrations about being objectified, but I also can understand the frustrations the rest of us have, too. If you’re not all that pretty — aka, you have a “nice personality” — you have to have a lot of other stuff on the ball, like wits, smarts, humor, etc., and then hope someone can see through the plain wrapping to discover the gift inside.
But one thing the sort-of-pretty or not-so-pretty or just plain unattractive women thankfully don’t have to deal with is all the men who have paid big bucks to be trained by pick-up artists on how to land a hottie — the holy grail of dating. Being approached by men who have their game on has to be a drag; it’s not sincere.
Of course, being courted just because you’re unattractive, like “beauty-disadvantaged women” were a few years ago by the mayor of Mount Isa, a remote Australian mining town, has to be a drag, too.
- All things being equal, would you rather be drop-dead gorgeous or not?
- And, if not, where’s the cut-off — pretty, “nice personality” or Mount Isa-worthy?
Photo © Angelika Bentin – Fotolia.com
Every breakup is a lesson learned
Sara and I got the last outside table at the cafe, and — as so many places tend to do nowadays — we were packed in like sardines.
So it was hard not to hear what the couples around us were saying, especially since a few were saying more interesting things than we were, like the table to our left. It was a Post-breakup Girlfriend Recap, and by the sounds of it — and the fact that there were no tears or even a crumpled tissue in sight — at least a few weeks past the actual breakup. 
“His ex was such a bitch, anyway,” the 40-something redhead said.
“She made my life hell,” her 40-something blonde companion answered.
“Right. So, just imagine if you guys actually did get married. She’d be in your life forever!”
“But he should have stood up to her more.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t have it in him. He was spineless. At least you learned something.”
“I guess so. Jerk!”
“Is that true?” Sara whispered to me.
“Is what true?”
“That after a breakup, you learn something.”
“Well, in a perfect world, I think you should. Don’t you?”
“Maybe, although with the amount of breakups I’ve had over the years, I should be a freaking relationship genius by now!”
Sara had a point. All of us have had enough heartbreak to be our own Evan Marc Katz. Know how when we’re falling in love we’re always talking about how he/she makes us feel? It’s like we’ve never been more — insert your own word here — authentic, honest, open, giving …
Then you get dumped. Now how do you feel?
But breakups are just as revealing as the romances. They’re what moms call a teaching moment.
Regardless of how he “made” you feel, it takes two to make a good relationship, and two to make a bad one; our job in the aftermath is to figure out our role in that (and not focus on just how much he’s going to regret dumping us; unless he’s John Mayer, he probably won’t).
And learn from it.
Not just no-brainers like “Dating a stripper is a recipe for perspective,” one of the nuggets from the anthology “Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me” published a few years ago, but wisdom about ourselves. Because others hold up the mirror for us, and, honestly, it isn’t always going to proclaim us the fairest of them all.
I’ve learned a lot about myself and relationships from my marriage and all the dating I’ve done since, and I’ve learned just as much from being dumped; My biggest lesson is that there is a very, very clear line between being nice and a doormat. I will never be a doormat again (especially one that always beckons, “Welcome”— you can buy them cheap enough at Bed, Bath and Beyond with that 20 percent off coupon).
What have you learned from being dumped?
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