Remember the Bachelor? Not to rake him some more, it’s just that he’s such an easy target, poor thing. Here’s a guy, who thinks and unfortunately tells two different women he’s in love with them both, and yeah…does it in front of the whole world—which leads me to the conclusion he’s not so bright, or simply has no idea what love is. His head or his heart, he laments…never considering the third and more obvious option—his Johnson. That’s right, his gender defender, his wiener ultimately making decisions that later on he will pay for. Boner after boner trying to interpret these strong chemical feelings along with an overriding guilt about a little boy whose mother leaves his dad, which is rare. He cries, torn between his head and his other head.
Enter the victim, Melissa, setting herself up, hoping this time rejection will be a distant land rather than her own default. While the other gal, forgot her name, sits and waits patiently for her spell to work, filing her claws. Melissa, the perfect mother for his kid, warm and soft, self-sacrificing as most victims are; versus the viper, the seductress, interested only really in herself and what she will get, cold and aloof, who lures him in with her sexuality. It’s textbook. The Madonna/whore syndrome. Duh. Neither one will last. I sit, seeing what I see. Knowing what I know about relationships. And I wait, not to be right, but wait hoping someone will wake up.
While we are at it, ladies, what are you thinking? Where did the first baby mama go and did you really drop in with his family?? Hellooo. These are huge red flags. If you both weren’t so busy trying to win (Melissa love, the other one just to win), you would notice that this man has said in the span of days that he is in love with two women, gives his word to spend the rest of his life with one and then on a dime blows her off, kicks her to the curb and follows his other head toward certain disaster.
I promise. That relationship is doomed to fail. Not because they aren’t right for each other—they probably deserve each other—but because of the obvious: This is a guy clearly has a BAD picker. The mother of his child left him, left her little baby boy? How often does this happen that a guy picks a bad mom unless he is ***-ed up? How many moms leave their kids? Come on, it’s not the rule. He likes the abusive type of women. The self-centered control freak. That what turns him on, as they say. The way I have it is, that’s what love looks like for him and his penis had a stronger reaction to this pattern recognition than to the sweet victim type which he has no pattern recognition for. But she has a vagina and therefore he figured he could take the high road and secure a baby mama, and do the right thing. And this isn’t the first time he has made a mess of things in television—he was rejected before.
Enough about my psychobabble, let’s just break it down like this. Here he is, torn he thinks between two completely different women and even archetypes. The victim and the narcissist. One girl will love him too much, the other will never be had. He’s thinking, “This one’s good for me, the other one I desire.” Neither of which are about love, rather they are about wants and needs.
When we are in our early twenties it’s a time of self-exploration, “What do I like, not like, why am I here, what will I do, who will I be?” Me me me. It’s natural and an important phase of psychological development. It’s often associated with high drama, pain and lots and lots of lessons. At some point you start to make the shift from I to we, around age 28 usually. Not that folks can’t be happy before that, or find true love. It’s just that when we are unaware of who we are, what phase we are in, and are aimlessly led through life by our unattended wounds, we generally are people who recreate their family dynamics over and over again until we wake up and self-inquire. Make the distinctions between who we are, who we are not, and what we want. Otherwise, as I said, the behavior is predictable and, honestly, frustrating to watch (having been there myself, I want to scream and say, “Hey, can’t you see what you are doing!”) The answer is almost always sadly…no. Unless someone has a strong desire to seek the truth.
Being on a spiritual—or whatever you want to call it, self-improvement or development—path is the road less traveled as it requires facing yourself, being responsible, self-inquiry, and so on. Without which we don’t progress beyond the narcissistic egoic stage I mentioned before. More to the point we don’t really get what we long for, we don’t find true love, as it will always elude the ego. It can never be had from there.
What I am saying (and I know, in long run-on busy sentences) is that is that love is not a feeling, it’s a verb. It’s a state of being. It doesn’t choose one person over another and it does NOT have a shelf life. I have said, like our bachelor, “I love you,” many times. Depending on where I was at in my life it meant different things. It meant “I need you, I am glad you care about me, please love me back, let’s have sex, don’t ever leave me,” and on and on. Until I grew up—which is a choice I get to make every day, by the way. To be mature and responsible. And practice the art of loving. Starting with me. We can’t give what we don’t have, people. All you have to do is look at your life to see the truth of it.
So why not go for the good stuff? Love yourself first, learn about yourself, who you are. What your unique contribution is in life. What your gifts and strengths are. And in the meantime honor every person’s path you cross as a precious opportunity to contribute something to each other’s lives, rather than being so interested in what you’re going to get. This is a true element of love. Either way, you’ll always be true to yourself!