I know that it probably seems like I ramble on about how
terrible men are, how shameful and hurtful their behavior can oftentimes be,
how deeply their meaningless lies can cut into you, and how absolutely prone
they are to just blatantly lie to your face. I realize that I probably appear
to be some sort of man hater, a woman who blames all of her problems on the
allegedly awful men who have scorned her. I also understand, very well, that a
lot of these weekly anecdotes come across as just passive aggressive whining
rather than actually conveying how I feel.
It’s just that life comes with experience. I wasn’t born
with this natural distrust in men; it was learned. Just as children learn to
comfort themselves by crying, I learned early on to shield myself from men
because they can be tricky and deceitful. They may smile at you to reveal
perfect, sparkling teeth and gorgeous dimples but underneath all of that, there’s
an ulterior motive. There is always something lurking beneath that charm. There
are always cracks below the surface.
But don’t misunderstand because I don’t hate men. On the
contrary, actually. Despite what it may seem, I am relentlessly trying to find
the good in them. I’ve always had male friends, a lot of them really sweet and
respectful, and I would like to say that I know when the wool is getting pulled
over my eyes. I would like to say that I am bright enough to know when I’m
being taken advantage of. That I can quickly start to realize when they start
tuning me out and their gaze drops from my eyes to my neckline, but I have to
be fair when I say that’s not always the case. And I shouldn’t have to wear
turtlenecks in order to hold a man’s gaze.
The truth is that I have a lot of faith in people
(#SocialWorkerProbs) and I’m famous for continually giving them the benefit of
the doubt. I often try to reverse things and think about how I would feel if I
were the man in the situation. I tell myself that I would never disrespect a
female friend of mine, despite how physically attracted to her I might be. Her
relationship status notwithstanding, I wouldn’t want to ruin our friendship. At
least, not without her consent.
But no matter how hard I try to put myself on the other side
of the coin, the truth is that I’m still a woman. Women are sensitive and
caring; men are impulsive animals. It just is what it is.
No man has a good
enough memory to be a successful liar. –Abraham Lincoln
Another thing most infuriating is that when I have turned
that page, when I have put that childish man in his place for being
disrespectful or blatantly lying to my face for no apparent reason I’m the one who feels bad. When the dust
has settled and enough time has gone by for me to calm down, I start to think
that maybe I overreacted. Maybe I let my Italian blood get the best of me and I
flipped the table without rationally thinking. This, however, is fairly debatable
because in my defense, it takes a lot
to get me angry. Far more to get me so angry to the point that I actually
verbalize it. (That’s the German in me; I ain’t about that life.)
But regardless, I’m the one left feeling guilty. I’m the one
left feeling like I probably made a big deal out of nothing. I’m the one who ultimately
feels as though they’re missing out because they let their anger get the best
of them. I’ll drive to work in silence and tell myself, I should have just let that one go by. And then more time passes
and at the next red light I think, No, I
had every right to be angry. I was right to stand up for myself. My
anxiety, friends, is truly very taxing. Near crippling.
I guess I just don’t appreciate being lied to. I don’t like
being made to feel like I’m some uneducated miscreant, the last to know the
secret, the naïve individual who couldn’t see what was right in front of her. No
matter how meaningless or miniscule, I just don’t appreciate it. I mean, if you
can’t tell the simple truth to someone you allegedly care about, who are you
ever really honest with? Friends are the family you choose, right?
You know, one of my former roommates, who I had deemed my “best
friend” for a lot of years, was still collecting rent from me after I moved
out. To be fair, I thought I was just doing the honest thing by not skipping
out on rent before the lease was up. Do you know that that man had moved
someone else in and was collecting rent from BOTH of us? That’s the kind of
dishonest nonsense that I don’t like. Was it because we were such good friends?
Was it because he’s a man and I’m a woman? He thinks he’s one step ahead of me
all the time because he’s a male? So he thinks he can pull a fast one on me?
I think not. The balls on this guy.
I’m not upset that
you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you. –Friedrich Nietzsche
I had a friend who was seeing this man. He was maybe about
five or so years older than her, very handsome, and relatively successful,
especially given how young he was. They had a lot in common, she told me over
her glass of sweet Moscato, and although she was nervous to get romantically
involved with someone new, the whole thing was exciting. He was exactly her
type, he was a gentleman, intelligent, and held his liquor like Don Draper.
From what I could understand, he was damn near perfect and
was willing to do whatever she needed to be with her. He was positive and
complimentary, saying not what she wanted to hear but what he really believed
to be true. He repeatedly told her he wanted to take her on romantic vacations
(jet off to NYC for the weekend or get on a boat and float to some beautiful
resort), buy her thoughtful gifts (“You need a little black dress,” he had told
her), and show her the importance of treating a woman well (his own parents had
been married a million years and were still madly in love). This was primarily
because, as he put it, he thought she deserved it.
To be honest, I was sold. Granted, I’m a romantic and a
sucker for pretty brown eyes but I certainly believed in him. I desperately
wanted it to work out between them. After all, he sounded good on paper and he
was adorable. A little old-fashioned but in a charming way.
But as earlier stated, I’m good at finding the good in
people. I’m not so good at realizing when I’ve been duped.
They continued their little “fondness”, as she called it,
for a few months and then she started catching him in things. Stories gradually
start to change a little here and there and when she would question him, he
would get unseasonably hostile. He would turn things around, passively pick
fights with her, and label her “exhausting”. The reality was that she was
becoming too much work for him and quite frankly, he had other avenues of
pleasure, he had gently reminded her. She was pretty but he had no idea she
would be that much effort.
And to be completely fair, there is some truth to that. As
her friend, someone who knows her very well, I can easily admit that. She can definitely
be difficult but just because she has that tendency doesn’t mean she’s not
worth the fight, you know what I mean? The crazier they are, the more
worthwhile.
Anyway, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when she
went to visit him one night. The conversation was mildly meaningful but clearly
tense because they had just recently engaged in a war. “I really felt a
fondness for him so I decided I would let all of that go,” she told me, giving
up on the glasses and just ordering a bottle of Moscato instead. They had
agreed to disagree and decided to just hug it out. When he pulled her into his
chest, he smelled like fresh linens and masculine soap, she had later drunkenly
(and very sadly) confessed to me.
But then something super bizarre happened. It was something
so simple that she almost missed it. He lied to her. After all that clean
slate, fresh start nonsense, after all the apologies and all the promises to
keep the fighting to a minimum, after them both agreeing to give a little on
each side, each of them conceding that the other was right and they would try
harder, he lied to her. About something so stupid, she laughed when she told
me. And just like that, everything changed. It seemed irrevocable.
Moral of the Crazy:
I guess it all comes down to what we have the right to know. I beat myself up over things all the time. I feel
guilty about times I was dishonest, times I was caught in a lie and was forced
to face the truth on my own. I grew up in kind of a weird environment and I
saw, firsthand, how lies can hurt people. I know how easily things can get
twisted just by saying you’re having a work nightcap with the people at work. I
know what lays beneath those words, friends, because I lived it. And it was stressful,
even as a child, it affected me.
I’m not perfect but I try to be good. And with other people,
I try to maintain an honest lifestyle. I don’t want people gossiping behind my
back because they caught me in a lie. I don’t want people thinking they can’t
trust me because nothing I say is true. I want them to see all of me and be
like, “She’s a lot of things but dishonest is not one of them.” I would be
happy with that.
In the past, with men especially, I always felt like when
they were hiding things from me it was probably because I didn’t have the right to know. I used to tell myself,
because of the home I grew up in, if I was meant to know, I would know. If it
was my business, I would know.
So for a long time, while I would figuratively strip myself
bare and share everything with people, I would get bits and pieces of the
truth. With one man especially, it was little tidbits here and there, as if I
was supposed to somehow put all the pieces together myself. For example, we had
been on like four dates and he still hadn’t told me he had a girlfriend. What
he told me was that he had an “ex-girlfriend” that he shared custody of a dog
with. They had been “broken up for months” and only communicated when it had to
do with their twisted, doggy shared custody.
I learned the real truth over time via MySpace, of course.
(I am still a crazy person, friends.)
It’s true, they sort of shared custody of “their” dog but it was because she
was still in college and they had a long distance relationship. A very serious
long distance relationship.
I know, fuck me, right?
I mean, I get it, the truth is painful. Sometimes you think
to yourself that it’s better to just shield others from the real truth because
you don’t want to hurt them. But while it stings in the beginning, it goes away
eventually. And in my opinion, you get points for manning up and being
straight, even when the truth isn’t pretty. It’s like, be a man and say it to
my face.
I won’t sit here and say that I’ve been honest every day of my
life because I have not. (I lie about my height every damn day. Sometimes a
girl needs that half of an inch.) But in my normal life, my daily life filled
with people I love and cherish, I don’t want to lie to them. Even if they ask
me if their outfit is cute, I don’t want to lie to them. I won’t say, “Oh my
god, what are you thinking? Go change if you want to be seen in public with me!”
but I might make a face (and I have a lot of them) and say, “Yeah… it’s
alright. But don’t you want to wear this shirt instead…?”
I just feel like as people, as humans who are incessantly
interacting with each other, we have earned the right to hear the truth. I live
in America; I have the right to vote, marry who I want, open a business if I
want, and hear the truth from my friends. I think at the very least, we all
deserve that.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
If you tell the truth,
you don’t have to remember anything. –Mark Twain
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