Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Theory # 19: Relationships: Ex and the Single Girl
I had this brainstorm when reading Ex and the Single Girl by Lani Diane Rich. You don't have to have read the book to follow the theory, but it's a good book. Read it anyway. :)
the theory:
Anyway, Portia realizes that she's unconsciously sabotaged her previous relationship by making her ex feel like a failure. And the reason she did this was that she wasn't in love, thought she ought to be, because he was "perfect", and so she drove him away so it would be his fault it didn't work out, not hers.
That may be true, but I think there's another factor at work here, too. I recognize it, because I've done it myself. (See primarily Boyfriend v.3.0) I think she subconsciously made Peter feel like a failure because she wanted him to prove that he wasn't, or, and even more importantly, that he was confident enough that her subtle (and it was subtle--at a casual glance, she looked supportive) criticism couldn't undermine his sense of self-worth.
She wanted him to be strong enough not to need her approval and respect; strong enough to command it.
She was testing him, and he failed.
She did the same thing with Ian--the little sneer of the academic for genre fiction--but Ian passed the test.
Granted, it's not a very nice, kind, or attractive thing to do, but while it was deliberate, it wasn't consciously deliberate.
I think that it's a common, if not universal, need among women to find a man they can respect. Different women will find different traits respectable; will value various traits differently, but we're all (mostly) looking for someone we can respect. And I think we all (some of us, most of us), usually subconsciously, test the men we date. It's the courtship process.
I suspect that a lot of relationship problems come from ignoring those subconscious test grades.
Which is not to say that women are in sole control of relationships--not being male, I have no idea if men do the same thing or not. I'll have to ask my resident expert what he thinks and get back to you.
Categories: Theories, Relationships
the theory:
Anyway, Portia realizes that she's unconsciously sabotaged her previous relationship by making her ex feel like a failure. And the reason she did this was that she wasn't in love, thought she ought to be, because he was "perfect", and so she drove him away so it would be his fault it didn't work out, not hers.
That may be true, but I think there's another factor at work here, too. I recognize it, because I've done it myself. (See primarily Boyfriend v.3.0) I think she subconsciously made Peter feel like a failure because she wanted him to prove that he wasn't, or, and even more importantly, that he was confident enough that her subtle (and it was subtle--at a casual glance, she looked supportive) criticism couldn't undermine his sense of self-worth.
She wanted him to be strong enough not to need her approval and respect; strong enough to command it.
She was testing him, and he failed.
She did the same thing with Ian--the little sneer of the academic for genre fiction--but Ian passed the test.
Granted, it's not a very nice, kind, or attractive thing to do, but while it was deliberate, it wasn't consciously deliberate.
I think that it's a common, if not universal, need among women to find a man they can respect. Different women will find different traits respectable; will value various traits differently, but we're all (mostly) looking for someone we can respect. And I think we all (some of us, most of us), usually subconsciously, test the men we date. It's the courtship process.
I suspect that a lot of relationship problems come from ignoring those subconscious test grades.
Which is not to say that women are in sole control of relationships--not being male, I have no idea if men do the same thing or not. I'll have to ask my resident expert what he thinks and get back to you.
Categories: Theories, Relationships
Labels: relationships, theories
Comments:
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Yes, we do the same thing.
On my first date with my wife, I cooked dinner for her at my place (never having read The Rules, which hadn't been written then anyway). Oh, and my roommate Roger had dinner with us, too.
Roger had just been burned by -- gasp! -- a feminist. Actually, she was the nice person and he was the dick, but I didn't understand that at the time. But Roger wanted to make sure that Karen wouldn't be a knee-jerk feminist, so at dinner he told the fish joke.
(Eve comes back from bathing in the river, and God gets upset with her -- 'Now the fish are going to smell like that!' -- yeah, pretty lame joke.)
Karen passed with flying colors. She realized she was being tested so she just rode with it. To her credit, she never tested me back. Not that I realized, anyway.
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On my first date with my wife, I cooked dinner for her at my place (never having read The Rules, which hadn't been written then anyway). Oh, and my roommate Roger had dinner with us, too.
Roger had just been burned by -- gasp! -- a feminist. Actually, she was the nice person and he was the dick, but I didn't understand that at the time. But Roger wanted to make sure that Karen wouldn't be a knee-jerk feminist, so at dinner he told the fish joke.
(Eve comes back from bathing in the river, and God gets upset with her -- 'Now the fish are going to smell like that!' -- yeah, pretty lame joke.)
Karen passed with flying colors. She realized she was being tested so she just rode with it. To her credit, she never tested me back. Not that I realized, anyway.
# posted by 
: 4/05/2006 7:37 AM
: 4/05/2006 7:37 AM << Home
