It’s About Making Babies!

At Baggage Reclaim, NML serves a particular group of women - women that pick a guy to be with that treats them badly, that cheats and lies, and often directly abuses them, too. Today NML takes on, “Shedding Tears for an Assclown”.

When I asked where her upset was rooted, I expected her to feel upset about the betrayal, the deceit, being taken for a fool etc but she was upset because she wasn’t with him anymore. She missed him. She thinks he’s “sexy, funny, and probably one of the best men I’ve ever met and now it’s over. What am I going to do?”

There is a phrase - “two faced” - sometimes used to (disrespectfully) refer to people that maintain one image of themselves in some circumstances, and a very different image in other circumstances. The number of images is by no means limited to two.

A guy cheating on a woman is being two-faced. He presents himself as virtuous and loyal. That persona may provide the woman comfort and even security. When he is with others, though, his ‘loyalty’ and ‘virtues’ don’t hinder his bed-mate seeking persona.

When a woman “proves” her guy has cheated, and thrown him out - she actually casts away the *other* persona, the part of the guy that could cheat on her, that didn’t find her enough of a companion. Which leaves her missing the part that was there, seemed loyal, and provided comfort.

Where NML sees ‘you threw the bum out for good reason, now get over it’ I see that she picked the wrong reason to end the relationship. She only forbade the cheating.

Cheating is never acceptable. Plural marriages and various lifetime arrangements are not arrived at by cheating, or ‘exploring’. Cheating sexually is always a major character flaw - the choice to deceive is always a major act of disrespect. If the situation were intolerable, or more or difference sex was ‘needed’ and honest person will end the first relationship before even noticing or looking for other potential partners. The disregard for inadvertent exposure to disease - STD’s as well as common communicable diseases - the disregard for taking responsibility for becoming a significant person in another’s life, these cannot be acceptable.

Yet Judeo-Christian teaching holds that the cheating itself is the sin. So that is a big reason for ending many relationships that indulge in cheating.

But on the human side, the reason for discarding a cheater is very basic to a relationship - respect. Trust. It is like the Parrot Shop skit from Monty Python. “The beautiful plumage don’t enter into it! The parrot is dead!” The sex, the comforts, the shared experience don’t “enter into it.” There is no respect, trust is broken. And that is the reason to end the relationship - it is dead, if it was ever more than “beautiful plumage”.

Where NML’s lady was confused, was that the value of a thing is what we pay for it. She ‘bought’ her relationship. She spent her weeks and months believing and living as if she were with her life-mate. The effort she spent getting along with him, making him happy, and holding to him only bought her precious moments, bought her a comfortable companion. And now she hasn’t yet faced the knowledge that all her effort and time and loss of opportunity to find a better guy - are lost. Evaporated. As gone as if a parent had taken away a favored toy. It feels unfair, the memories and expectations from before the split still seem so real, so present.

And she only really wanted to be free of his cheating - not all of him.

And that is the point. She didn’t want to be free of the guy - only the part that hurt her.

She hasn’t learned yet that the guy was never really there for her, he was Emotionally Unavailable, as NML puts it. The connection the lady had was with a fantasy, not the guy. She skipped the fundamentals in looking for a partner - don’t settle for less than respect. Character has to come first, ability to form (and experience forming) good family bonds, honest, loyal, well adjusted. After that comes shared interests, appearance, chemistry. And she hasn’t put two and two together to get four.

She is still waiting for ‘the right guy to come along’. Instead of surrounding herself with people of good character, making good friends, and generally avoiding places where dating predators congregate, she hasn’t identified yet - she picked this guy. And she will pick the next guy the same way, and he will also be untrustworthy and abusive. Because her self image is askew, she will continue to pick losers. And that will continue until she recognizes that she is the one picking the series of bad choices - that something in her is making them seem acceptable.

She is to be pitied - she has healing to do before she will find a good man.

As long as she thinks the point of dating, of picking a partner, is to find comfort, someone to have sex with, she will continue to bounce from sexual adventure to sexual adventure. Until she realizes that she needs to become a different person, with different values and goals, before a good man will see her.

NML writes about Morphing: Trying to fit in too much with your man on Baggage Reclaim. Yesterday the topic was related, But we have so much in common! That shaky ‘ole common ground in relationships.

NML has an advantage. The Baggage Reclaim site deals with a specific issue - recognizing and recovering from choosing emotionally available, hurtful, cheating, or abusive partners. This simplifies her message, and keeps the message relevant to the women that have picked an EUM for a partner - and that likely did so in the past, and will likely do so again unless they find the places in themselves that selects for that kind of partner.

In the more general run of things, the tactic of adapting to meet your partner’s need is a very good way to grow and nourish a relationship. Picking someone with shared interests and a similar background is a good way to avoid contrary understandings to get in the way of communicating.

In the general run of things, though, you expect your partner to be interested in you, to be honest, and respectful, and only take advantage of you in little things - if at all. You expect your partner to be as interested in your needs and growth and safety and joy as you are in your partner’s comfort. You expect that learning to build and grow a relationship, to nurture each other, to build a home and family will happen for both (all?) partners.

For the people at Baggage Reclaim, there is an entry criteria, something that binds the people, the advice, the community together - a horribly hurtful partner.

For the rest of us, the hurts and disappointments and rages of a reasonably healthy relationship don’t reach that threshold regularly. For most of us, the same tactics and techniques and defenses that bind the trapped to a tormentor and predator are good and useful skills and techniques and practices to restore a relationship, to get past a stress point, to accommodate an opposing view.

The same belief and reaction that binds to a tormentor is healthy with a healthy partner.

And that is the reason that a healthy relationship depends on selecting a healthy partner, a partner aware of the values of character and emotional bonds in a shared life, a partner informed enough to make informed assurances and promises.

And we have to be ready to overlook minor ‘glitches’ that give a life character and make an otherwise good partner exasperating and infuriating - and still detect the fatal flaws that will never be overcome, never be cured by ‘true love’.

Commitment isn’t just a resolve to pursue a relationship, or a goal. Commitment is also releasing, for good and all, the fear we have to carry at our core. The fear that a potential partner might not measure up, in character, in discipline, in ability to bond - the fear that keeps us aware there are more people we *shouldn’t* pair with. At the moment of commitment, not the declaration, but the moment we decide, that fear must transform into resolve to meet any challenge to share a relationship with our partner. At the moment of commitment we have to *know*, without reservation, that our partner is worthy.

Every time we select wrongly, we fail to adequately consider character before passion, every time we let a glib tongue or slick ‘moves’ rush us or blind us to what we need in a mate, we risk binding ourselves to a lot of fruitless pain.