I’m not meant to love and love isn’t meant for me. This realization took a long time coming. It took almost as long as he takes to make a woman come, you know as in she gives up and takes care of herself later after he’s asleep.
Yeah, my expertise at accepting a hard truth is sometimes a lot like his sexual expertise—perpetually out of office.
It’s ok, we all have blind spots and areas where we default to stupidity even though we know better, or in the case of his women, where they have vibrators, thank goodness. But it doesn’t matter how we get there as much as it matters that we eventually do.
I, like The Therapist, have the unfortunate habit of being soft when I’m supposed to be hard, and vice versa. I try things I can’t make work and people end up dissatisfied. It’s frustrating to say the least.
In my case I’m supposed to stay emotionally hard all of the time. I know this because whenever I go emotionally soft, bad things happen to me.
I try to love the wrong people, or I don’t adjust my expectations fast enough to avoid getting hurt.
I’m like The Therapist, much more enjoyable and useful to people when I’m hard. When I’m soft and like hey I’m going to try to just get along or have fun or have some kind of loving relationship with this person, the feedback I get is swift and negative. Harden up, be tough, that’s your job.
The Therapist, like any good looking man who is well hung yet an emotional Neanderthal, is a sex object if we look at him through the lens of usefulness.
I’m no better, just different. I’m a survival object. At least people look at The Therapist and fantasize about him holding them down and pounding them while pulling their hair. With me they’re keeping me in mind because they might need a pep talk when they get stuck in the middle of the seventh lava pit during one of Life’s forced marches through Hell (Me: We got this everyone, keep moving forward!) You readers hear me moan and complain and rage on here, but in my every day life I’m a fucking rockstar. I’m the person who helps everyone else and doesn’t need anything herself.
I’m the pick yourself up by your bootstraps go to girl, but when it comes to love, I lose. If I have a weak moment or if I get soft, it’s game over. I get abandoned, I get beat up, I get financially ruined, or all of the above.
People look to me to be strong. They despise me for it because it’s intimidating or something, but they expect it. Apparently that holds true even if I’m a therapy client with a therapist. When I was reeling from how I was terminated from therapy, I was expected to process my own feelings without burdening anyone, be considerate of The Therapist’s feelings (when he’s the one who did it!) and be respectful of the feelings and needs of my family and friends and those of his family and friends as well as the feelings and concerns of his boss and the potential therapeutic needs of any of their future clients. Guys, I have been suffering. I’m a human. I have limits to what I can handle at any given moment. I simply don’t have an endless supply of strength and emotional fortitude to draw from.
I let people down more than I like. I let myself down. I’m like The Therapist, at your command and hoping I can measure up in the moment when you really need me.
I want to be soft sometimes. I was soft with The Therapist sometimes. I still had a hard edge, but dang I was soft. When you’re hard you have to perform, when you’re soft it’s when you relax. I was going through a lot in my life back when I was his client, and I really did feel like he was a respite from me having to be strong and keep everybody else safe. I finally felt safe for once. I felt so safe with that hot therapist with his short hair and manly jaw, that I’m completely ashamed by how clueless I was.
Yeah I was somehow convinced that I was totally safe with a random stranger who I found on Psychology Today. It was a fucked up way to be, an absolutely naive attempt at an absurd ideal. But it was nice to get to be soft and still feel loved for a change.