I’m not saying that who you are isn’t wonderful. Unlike The Rules, I’m not suggesting that you maintain a veil of mystery for fear of someone discovering the real you. I’m saying quite the opposite—that you’re a richly sophisticated human being with many layers who can’t be easily explained by a night worth of revelations. It took your entire life to form the person you are today, and you can’t explain all that in a matter of hours, no matter how articulate and self-aware you are.
Don’t try.
Self-disclosure isn’t about spilling out the deepest, darkest recesses of your soul at the first opportunity. It’s about getting to know someone and having him earn your trust. You don’t talk about how you lost your virginity to a business client over lunch. Why would you tell some new guy over dinner on a first date? Or a second or third date, for that matter? Make any new person in your life prove his worth before allowing him into your confidence. As Collins and Miller note, self-disclosure is a skill, one that involves knowing what information about ourselves to give and when to give it.
One of the problems with presenting too much, too soon, has nothing to do with the potential for scaring someone off. Assume that you’ve deluged a new guy immediately with your entire back story, warts and all, and he sticks around. Where do you go from there? Collins and Miller note that couples who rush through an initial stage of “frantic self-disclosure” often find the opposite is true later on. Having unburdened themselves to such an extreme degree early in the relationship, couples have less of an impulse to do likewise as it progresses. This is fine if neither you nor your partner ever changes or leads a separate life, it is less so if you’re stuck down here on planet Earth with the rest of us.
Relationships thrive on momentum. Stasis kills. After the shine of lust fades, what remains is conversation. Lots and lots of conversation. Don’t minimize the joy of discovery. It’s what allows relationships to blossom over time. Besides, as much as you believe you know yourself, there’s a lot you may not know. That’s one of the wonderful things the right person can do—help you to see things about yourself that you’ve never realized before. Spinning a giant origin story for your partner may elucidate certain facts and your own personal theories as to what makes you tick, but it may obscure his own observation. As the earlier survey on body image bears out, we’re our own worst critics. Thus, it’s likely that any appraisal of our own faults is likely to be far worse than those faults appear to other people.
So when you feel the impulse to tell New Guy all the things that are wrong with you, fight it. You’re painting a picture he may never see otherwise. Accept that you look more beautiful than you realize. If you can’t accept it, at least learn not to make a fuss.
Let New Guy earn his way into your heart and mind gradually. If he can’t be patient while getting to know you, it’s unlikely he’ll be patient during the natural growing pains every relationship experiences over time. Like sex, love doesn’t profit from hurrying. Slow down and savor it.
In the last chapter, an entertaining summation of our entire discussion will be provided, and a victory lap will be taken by your author and those of you who are patient enough to see the finish line.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Grand Design
So you’ve kindly waded through almost fifty thousand words thus far, and the question still remains:
What have you learned?
I hope you’ve learned that the quest to find the right person begins and ends with you. It cannot sincerely begin until you’ve sorted out that funny little person walking around in your skin. Within you is nearly everything you need to be happy—all the questions that need to be asked, and all the answers that have always been yours to discover. Throughout your life, the questions will change, but don’t look upon this fact as a source of consternation. As I said, one benefit of age and wisdom is the ability to ask better questions, and better questions yield more meaningful answers.
If you haven’t sorted yourself out yet, take the time to try. Remember the essential questions:
Who are you?
Where are you?
Where are you going?
Who are you going with?
These questions can’t be addressed out of sequence, either. Each answer begets the next. You can’t sort out where you are in life without first knowing who you are. You can’t envision where your life is going without knowing where you are right now. And you definitely can’t sort out the passengers on your journey without knowing your journey destination. Not everyone is suited to go with you, nor does everyone deserve to. Those worth sharing your life are a chosen few, and they can’t be selected carelessly.
Answering these questions takes real time, time without distractions. Half measures won’t do. The “commitment vacation” is a silly name for something that can’t be treated frivolously. The quest for self-discovery is something you must address in absolute earnest.
In many ways, you’ll have to go it alone. That doesn’t mean you have to live like a monk. Go get laid if you want (or need) to. Have fun! You see, as serious as the need for self-discovery is, an essential part of it is discovering what gives you joy. Discover your passions. Find out what you love to do. Find out what you love, period. Find out exactly who you are.
Whoever that person is, embrace her with all your heart. You’re stuck with her for the rest of your life.
If you’ve always been with someone, this period of introspection probably won’t be easy. The era of defining yourself principally as someone’s girlfriend is over, effective now. If you’re not comfortable being alone, it’s time to confront that and find out why. Your discomfort doesn’t refute the need to take some time for yourself. There’s conclusive proof that it is exactly what you need. It’s time to take the training wheels off your life and see if you can ride.
Retire all childish ideas about what love is supposed to be. We’ve been taught from childhood that romantic love is essentially a magic lottery. It’s entirely beholden to chance or to its self-important cousin, fate. Love either happens at-first-sight or not at all. We’re told that love is an all-consuming force that pays no mind to reason. In fact, we’re taught that love is the enemy of reason. All the stupid sayings we’ve heard reinforce this idea.
Love is blind.
The heart wants what it wants.
Love is blind for people who choose to be blind. The heart doesn’t operate independently of our brains. Your heart is as capable of choosing well as it is of choosing badly and, in any case, it’s always at your direction. Don’t scapegoat a dumb organ for your former idiocy. It’s time to hang all your bullshit out to dry.
You aren’t going to find love by winning some cosmic romantic lottery. Prince Charming isn’t coming, ever; but that’s okay.
Prince Charming was always a bit of a douchebag anyway. You don’t need anyone to sweep you off your feet. You need someone to prove he deserves to be with you. The market is open, but you’re no longer the product. You’re the buyer, and you’re going to survey the entire meat market (to reuse a rather gross metaphor) before choosing who you want.
You’ve earned the right to be choosy. Exercise that right to its fullest.
It’s also time to retire your “type.” Whatever it was, you can gauge its usefulness just by the fact that you picked up this book in the first place. Your old idea about who you should be with is outdated. It’s time to update it to the smarter, wiser person you are now, or at least want to be. Your type is no longer a list of superficial traits. Height, hair color, and choice of career are no longer the chief mitigating factors. You’ve learned to ask the compatibility questions that truly matter. What personality types do you gel with? What core values and beliefs are really important? It’s not just about who turns you on.
It’s about whom can you build a life with.
There are men out there who’ll try to tear you down. If you’re lucky, you only know about them secondhand, but many of you know their kind too well. Y
ou have the scars, both real and figurative, to prove it. You don’t experience those dysfunctional relationships in the normal way. You survive them. Though you can’t reverse the steps that led you to be with these abusive men, you can be vigilant in preventing it from ever happening again.
Anything taken from you—whether it be your dignity, your self-respect, your ability to trust or experience intimacy—can be reclaimed. The process of recovery won’t necessarily make you stronger, but it will make you wiser. That wisdom puts you one step closer to discovering someone who’ll honor your love in kind.
The terrible men out there are a small minority. They’re resolutely outnumbered by guys whose hearts are in the right place, even if their heads aren’t. Many guys aren’t ready for commitment. Some never will be. That’s okay. When you’re ready to settle down, you’ll find just as many who can’t wait to build a future with you. There are great guys looking for an opportunity to make the right person happy. They know themselves as surely as you do (or will), and they too know what they want.
There’s someone out there who’ll want to be with you, can’t imagine being without you. He’ll recognize, just as you will, that it’s what you’ve both been waiting for all your lives. And you’ll never look back.
There aren’t any “rules” to help you find the kind of love I’ve just described. Rules are arbitrary. Life is complex, messy, and contemptuous of restrictions. A well-known joke crystallizes the issue perfectly:
How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.
The dating “rules” you’ve been told to observe are now, and have always been, a rigged game designed to cement your subservience. They’re shamelessly unfair and baldly hypocritical. Ignore them. Recreate the rules in your own image.
If anyone else tries to tell you how you should behave, politely invite him to fuck off.
Part of evolving into a happier, more actualized self is observing the failures in your past and learning from the mistakes you’ve made. This often means accepting the hard truth that certain relationships can never be saved. Your ex-boyfriend has earned that title. Loving him isn’t necessarily enough to repair what’s broken. That you’ve invested a lot of time, emotion, and energy isn’t an excuse for continuing to toil in an unhealthy, hopeless relationship. That someone else will eventually replace you isn’t a reason to stay, either.
Just let go.
As much as our culture overvalues youth, there’s so much to gain from growing up it has almost become an underrated achievement. When we no longer guide our lives based on ephemeral pleasures, we create a plan for deeper, sustained happiness, and real fulfillment. Sex is fantastic, but the drive to get off is just as often the enemy to our best-laid plans (pun intended).
Very few decisions can be made without the full command of your faculties. Sex is a drug as potent as any other, so try not to make any life-changing decisions under its influence. Hastiness is your enemy in almost all things, and that’s doubly true for all those decisions that have far-reaching implications. Life isn’t a game show, so you don’t have to make choices against a countdown. The same options available now will also be there tomorrow and the next day. The ones that aren’t are likely best avoided anyway.
To find the right person, you need to have a clear idea of what you’re looking for. That discovery can’t happen overnight, so if you meet someone new and, in your excitement, you’re convinced he’s the one, take a moment and breathe. All you know in the first few months is that you’ve found a guy with the right combination of pheromones. Whether he has any of the other necessary traits can only be borne out by getting to know him. The level of intimacy you want to share is your decision, but be aware of your limitations. If you can’t engage in casual sex without obscuring your ability to view him objectively, don’t have sex until you have a much clearer idea of who he is.
A measured approach will nearly always serve you well. As I’ve noted before in these pages, precious little in life profits from hurrying. (Again, bear attacks are the exception. If you are currently being attacked by a bear, feel free to hurry. Throw this book at the beast, if that will help. Your author won’t be offended by his tome being used as a projectile.) You’ve probably heard people comparing life to a marathon, rather than a sprint. That’s true, but life is really more like a marathon inside a hedge maze. Running indiscriminately in any direction is no better than running backwards. Keep your eyes on the map, and you won’t have to sprint to beat everyone else to the finish line.
Those dumbasses are going to be stuck inside the maze for a long, long time.
Another big part of dating is proper evaluation. This means evaluating both yourself and others honestly. What qualities does someone need to have in order for long-term happiness to be possible? What flaws prevent that happiness? What are your shortcomings within a relationship? Do you have realistic goals for yourself and your romantic partners? What have you wanted to change about the people you’ve dated, and were those expectations fair? How easy would it be to change comparable flaws within yourself?
Asking yourself these kinds of questions in earnest will yield the answers you need to find what you want. The responses may not come easily, and they will change a little over time but you have to keep asking them. They will reveal all you need to know to be happy.
I titled this book Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This for a few different reasons, not the least of which was that I wanted a title you would notice on the shelf at your local bookstore. I explained my other reasons in the chapter of the same name (that’s Nineteen, if you need a refresher), but as I type the final few words, I hope the title has become nearly irrelevant. If you take to heart what we’ve discussed and proceed accordingly, you won’t worry about some dumb guy from your past who never appreciated how special you are. You’ve got greater things to consider, greater goals to pursue, and it all starts with you.
Ex-boyfriend? What ex-boyfriend?
About the Author
Blue Sullivan is a Contributing Writer for Slant Magazine and the Senior Arts Editor, Contributing Writer for Insite Magazine where he has interviewed music & arts luminaries including Johnny Depp, Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Barbara Streisand, Terry Gilliam, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Smith, Eric Bogosian, Oasis, Radiohead and Weezer. In 2004, he sold the motion picture screenplay, Saturday 2am, to Cucaloris Films, a production company founded by Producer Stephen Israel, known for Swimming with Sharks. Sullivan has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Minors in Mathematics & Communications, graduating magna cum laude from Auburn University and a Masters of Professional Writing, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Southern California.
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References:
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