Groomed
When you're wired to love all the wrong people
I have vivid memories of my dad crying in my arms when I was four years old. I remember being so small, I’d be in his lap, trying to twist my little body so I could get my arms around him. My dad was 6’1”, so it was no small feat. I remember the feel of his body shaking, and the sound of his wracking sobs, and how much it scared me. I remember feeling too small to know what to do or how to help with emotions that big. I remember desperately wanting to make things okay for him.
The source of my dad’s pain was women. My mother, my stepmom, all the "lady friends" he had who wanted him for themselves, and any woman on the street he found attractive. The source of his pain was any woman who called the house looking for him when my stepmom answered. The source of his pain was taking me on dates with these women, leaving me in front of the tv while they “rehearsed” - they were all actresses, apparently - and then having to lie to my stepmom about where we’d been so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt. It all came down to the women in his life, that was the source of his pain. His mother died when I was one, so I don’t have memories of her, but he always described her as a nag. And yet, he told me when she was dying in the hospital, he raced to Buffalo and made it through the door just in time for her to look up at him lovingly and whisper “Alan” with her last breath. As though she’d been waiting for him. She probably had been.
The nag, my mom, me.
My dad groomed me for the kind of men none of us should date. He taught me that my job was to listen to him, to try to make him feel better, to perceive him as the victim, to hold him when he cried, to tell him it would all be okay, to absolve him of guilt for his own behavior…and this began when I was four years old and didn’t stop until I was thirteen, and old enough to finally stop it myself. Old enough to realize my dad was not the victim, but the instigator and perpetrator of all this pain. Old enough to understand that unloading all of your huge problems onto your tiny daughter is the work of someone pathologically selfish at best. Old enough to be pissed.
Knowing something in your head doesn’t mean your heart gets the memo. Or knowing something in your heart doesn’t mean your head is onboard. Basically, my wiring was royally screwed. And to be fair and balanced, at my mom’s house I was taught that I should not believe what I saw with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, felt with my own heart. My mother’s alcoholism was not to be talked about, acknowledged, or treated as a thing that was actually happening. Instead, I was told everything was fine. She was fine. I was overly sensitive and dramatic. Just because my mother became enraged with me regularly - would get to the point where she couldn’t walk across the room without help - speak without slurring, or express herself without going for the jugular, nothing was wrong except my perception that something was wrong. When you grow up thinking your job is to try to make everything okay for everyone else, and that you cannot trust yourself to perceive reality clearly…well, you can pretty much guess it’s going to be a shit show when you head into the world as a young adult and try to forge your own relationships.
When I was seventeen, I dated a much older guy who told me if we were still together when I turned twenty-five, he’d buy me a boob job and a Mazda Miata. He was shocked when I started crying. I dated a man who was so jealous, he once questioned me for hours about where I had gotten a pair of sandals he’d never seen before. He questioned me for so long that I finally yelled, “Okay, you’re right! I was walking down Broadway last week and this man approached me and the chemistry was so insane I immediately went back to his place, we hooked up, and then he bought me these sandals!” I dated a guy who told me he was afraid I wasn’t hot enough for him, that he’d always imagined himself walking the red carpet with a supermodel draped on each arm. I dated a man who told me maybe I didn’t need to be eating that bowl of cereal, who said the crunching noise of my apple was annoying, who finally told me I breathed too loudly for him. I dated a man I thought was madly in love with me, but it turned out he had an addictive personality and once the “drug” wore off, his favorite pastime was lashing out at me. In case you’re trying to keep count, some of these dudes were the same dude. And figuratively, they were all the same dude. All the same hurt, insecure, scared dude who could go from being incredibly mean to incredibly sweet. The same dude who was broken in some way and needed my help. The same dude who was scared of intimacy but also craved it…until he had it.
The problem when you head out into the world thinking your value as a woman is wrapped up in how you look and how much you can help - because clearly you aren’t lovable just on your own, just for being you - is that you end up with the dude or gal I just described. The one who wouldn’t recognize genuine love if it landed on their doorstep in a big red bow. The one who is going to break your heart over and over again because they’re in pain themselves and don’t want to be with anyone who would love them, because clearly if you think they’re lovable you must be worthless. Or they see you aren’t worthless and realize one day you’ll see it, too, so they spend their time cutting you down so you stay and take the abuse. The kind who doesn’t want you, really, but doesn’t want anyone else to have you. The kind who suddenly gets interested and sweet and kind again when you’re walking out the door.
The kind who calls you a nag even though you’re the one person who would wait for them to show up so you could die whispering their name.
If you’d like to meet me in real time for a talk about being wired to love all the wrong people (and how to rewire yourself for love, joy, and healthy relationships) I’ll be here on Friday 9/15/23 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are Podcast version. If you’d like to meet me out in the world, I’d love that so much. Here are two upcoming possibilities. (Registration for Joshua Tree closes September 30th!)