Ask NOT who you are, but who you are GOING to be...

Question of the day… “Why is it that, as people, it is easier for us to enter into relationships than to free ourselves from them?”

People spend most of their lives looking for the right relationship. They spend years, decades looking for someone “right” to spend the rest of what life they have left after vigorously searching out this one particular person, with. Now I suppose that the first question was just to let you know where my mind was when the upcoming tangent hit. So, here’s what I think… (Think about what you may ask… well, let me know if you think you have it cause I have no CLUE, lol). I think that Men like what a woman is when they meet her and they like a woman that most closely resembles the “perfect” woman that he has constructed in his head. On the other hand woman seem to be more attached to a particular man and hopes he has or fits certain criteria that she would hope her “perfect” man would have.

So to be even clearer I’m saying that – Women seem to be attached to the Man and Men attached to an Ideal.--. Let’s explore…

Ladies first. I would like to start by asking every single woman that has been in a long-term serious relationship which has ENDED or any woman that has known a woman in a similar situation to ask herself, “Why did it take so long.” What I mean by that is, if you are a woman that has been in a really long, really committed relationship and it has come to an end, then you’ve probably heard this phrase before “The amount of time you’ve been together divided by two is the amount of time you’ve been breaking up…” If you haven’t well oops, maybe that was some part of the man code I was not supposed to break but sorry guys, the formula is out the bag. Lol. So the real question is, why for that long period of time did you stay with a man that in your heart of hearts you didn’t want to be with? Now I know that there are a lot of exceptions to the rule, I respect that. And if you feel you are one of those exceptions, please feel free to realize that I’m NOT talking to you… So, like I was saying, why did you stay with him? Well, I would offer the answer that it was because you thought he would change? You thought that he had the potential to be a better guy? You thought that he just needed time? Or any plethora of reasons that just didn’t include “he’s just not what I want.” I have encountered so many young ladies that have been with or are currently involved with men that have NONE of the things that they are looking for in a man. And I often ask myself “why.” Well, after watching a VERY engaging episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” I realized why. A brief recap on the show. The main start is involved with two guys. They are both tired of being emotionally tossed around by her so she has to choose. The time comes for her to make a choice and she lists all the great things about guy A, he’s funny, charming, makes her feel nice, all that… Then it’s guy B, he’s hurt her, made her feel horrible, cheated on her, the whole nine, but he wants her back. So after she goes down all the pros/cons of both men she says “Well, guy A is so great… but Guy B is just, well, Guy B.” To suggest, that by Guy B just being who he is, just by his EXSISTANCE he is enough for her. Regardless of what good qualities guy A has. What I got from that and what my brain so quickly put together is that for her HE was enough… I mean she knew what she wanted, but she also knew that he wasn’t any of those things and she chose him anyway.

After I saw the show I thought about it more… In most conversations on those day time talk shows and on sit coms and dramas the women are always with the men because they have so much “potential” and they are “going places” or they just have the power to make them feel so “nice”. And I realize all those things; Potential (POSSIBLE energy), “going places” (Insinuating that they weren’t already THERE) suggest that this woman is with this man because she thinks and is EXPECTING him to change into something he currently is not. Now that in my opinion is so obvious in modern relationships today.

WOMEN ARE WITH MEN THEY HOPE WILL CHANGE AND MEN ARE WITH WOMEN HOPPING THEY WON’T!

Now, for men… A man, from my point of view as one, and knowing quite a few, lol, is about the ideal and not so much the specific woman. So, let’s use the situation for the show I gave before. I would say that a man in a position to choose two women would not let things like emotional history and the superfluities of either woman’s “charm” sway his decision too far away from his ideal. Let me explain. If a man has an idea of what his “perfect woman” should be, for example 5’6, dark brown, big booty, a sense of humor and braids. Well any woman that has those characteristics is good for him, from his POV. Not to say that the individual is no longer important but that does suggest that somebody simply “being who they are” isn’t enough like in the first example of the Grey’s Anatomy starts. A man would have a hard time looking at two woman and seeing Woman A, standing there all full of the qualities he wants and Woman B standing next to her and choose woman B just because she’s her in SPITE of having NONE of the qualities he wants in a woman… For us it’s more about the qualities the woman has not so much her. Although I suppose if they are her qualities that they are her, but that’s another tangent on it’s own…

I’ll let the women make their own inferences about their side of this story however I will contribute this! EVERY guy I talk to about any serious problem with a woman he is committed to, always stem from something that wasn’t a problem in the beginning. Something that he was doing from day one and something that has never been a problem before. Now, with all the information and insinuation stated above. The only reason I can think for something like that is because he’s doing something that she thought he would, to use a broad brush, “grow out of”. On the flip side, whenever there is something about a woman that I hear a man vent about it’s about things changing too much. The “change” for a man the PROBLEM, lol.

Now, I’m not saying that “Sameness” is the “man goal” but I am saying that 1) the dynamic of the man liking the ideals and the woman liking the man is bad because it leaves the door open for women to constantly come up on the short end of the stick. If a guy realizes, as I have, this secret then he can do pretty much whatever he wants cause he knows that it’s not about what he does or who he is or how he’s changed. For her... For her, it’s about him just simply being him. And that puts the women at an emotional disadvantage. And 2) Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it ain’t all that GOOD sometimes either!

In closing I’d like to make clear that this is most surely an ongoing, open though in my head so please comment on just what you think about what I said. Shit, I’m hoping maybe I can get some answers for you all.