Saturday, January 13, 2007
some of the self awareness you get growing up sucks...
all my early dating life i ended up with "broken birds". i thought it was something about me that they sought out. that i was blind to it until it was too late. and couldn't figure out why it was happening. but i was always the common denominator. in hindsight i have to wonder if there was something about them that was attractive to me. low self esteem on my part? thinking that i had no shot with the normal girls? but the quirky/broken ones might appreciate my attention and affection? and if i fixed'em, i could keep'em?
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11 comments:
I think we've all had experiences like this. In fact, I married my "experience" when I was 21. You can't change someone. I learned my lesson the hard way. I think if you are happy with yourself, you will attract other self-assured happy people. So Sean, go get yourself a "normal" girl :)
PS - like the new profile pic!
yeah. Unfortunately you can never fix them. They can only fix themselves, as you know I'm sure.
what's normal?
Ah, but did you want to keep them if you were always comparing them to the "other" girls?
And yeah, I'll second what erika said: I like the new pic.
i don't try to change people. i don't like it when they try to change me. but when i was young i bumped into alot of girls who had had been through some really tough times. everything from rape and abuse to various near death experiences. and it wasn't like i was finding this out in the first couple minutes of the relationship. it was stuff that came out after months and months of dating and what do you do then? break up because someone has problems? i'm not baggage free myself.
but what was weird was that ALL of my early girlfriends had these traumatic experiences in their life. where i had tons of female friends who had had pretty trauma-free lives to that date. so why did all the ones i dated seem to be this way. and that's what i was wondering in this post. were they attracted to something in me, or was i unknowingly attracted to something in them.
Maybe it was a bit of both. In my late teens, I had a few female friends who had been traumatized in those same ways - so much so that I would almost know, upon meeting another friend, that she, too was in the same place. As it turned out, those previous friendships helped me recognize the pain in a new friend's eyes, and it let me guide her to places she could get help.
So maybe in that time of your life, you had a need to help, and they needed compassion, a soft place to land. It's not a bad thing to have been the good guy in a string of bad things. Sometimes it's that one good guy that shows you there are more out there.
To comment on your comment...I'd have to argue a little bit of both, and something else entirely.
People are attracted to the broken ones in the hope that they will find the diamond in the rough, earn acceptance they somehow feel unworthy of independantly, or because of the sense of power they feel when they are the one who can make it right. At least that is the theory.
People are attracted to the fixers in hope that they will be able to bring order to their seeminly disordered life. Fixers offer a sense of normalcy, and often are more broken than the broken ones they are fixing. At least that is the theory.
A third theory, is such is life. Everyone has shit. Everyones shit is bad. When you are around someone long enough, and get to know them intimatly enough, you get to know their shit. I'd wager that just about everyone you know has some kind of "fixable" issue. You just haven't gotten to know them well enough yet. The fact that you know that these women had issues is evidence that you stuck around long enough to get to know them. I hate to say it, but that's not a common trait.
"White Knight Syndrome." I had to break myself of it, too.
We all have the inclination to "save" someone. I think it's embedded in us. We all learn those lessons the hard way. It was probably something in you they saw that felt safe.
Sean, that was indeed the scariest thing I have ever seen. Now nothing can scare me.
I was referred here by ARM. She was correct in suggesting you would have something to speak to the BBS (Broken Bird Syndrome) that I too have suffered from. Excellent ramble on that notion by you. Thanks.
The "red flags" that are the indicators of such people are things that I have either chosen to ignore, or have chosen to try to address. Case in point, when my latest broken bird told me fairly early on in the relationship that, and I quote, "I don't cry," I felt a cold chill. What do you mean, you don't cry? And ya know what: She didn't. Now I am.
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