I think I’ve discovered why women can have some pretty low standards when it comes to dating and relationships. What do women talk about when they get into their pow-wow formations? They exchange war stories! There’s a lot of talk about ‘his did this’ or ‘he did that’ and then group speculation and avid debate about whether that’s acceptable and whether she should kick his ass to the curb or not.
Face it, these stories are usually not of the warm-fuzzy variety.
What happens is that we start to lower the bar due to a contrast effect with our friends’ horror stories. (Incidentally, I think the contrast effect works the other way around for men… since they don’t tend to talk to each other, they end up comparing their girl/relationship to a totally unreasonable rendition of an ideal relationship, i.e. some combination of pure porn fantasy and Hollywood-type romance.)
So here is how it generally plays out... When something unsavoury happens to us (i.e. get stood up) - our mode of comparison is "Janie" (who’s man didn’t just stand her up, he stood her up on her birthday) and "Melanie" (who’s hubby also stood her up, but did so because he was cheating on her with another woman)! Suddently a simple/innocentish misunderstanding doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, all his excuses sounded completely legit… Ahem.
Just think if us girls exchanged the BEST stories ever about our current and past loves… Just think of what our current guy would have to live up to! Then, if he served us disappointment sandwiches from the get-go, we’d know right away that the guy is a hopeless case (perhaps just a bad cook by nature) and not even worth a chance! Huck that disppointment sandwich and the guy who made it, and go get yourself a 5 star chef.
A good example of this was my one friend who used to always complain about her boyfriend (now husband) to me. I was always hearing the crap about him and wondered why the heck she stayed in this miserable relationship. This is what girls do; they only whine and complain about their relationship, and we really hear about it when it’s to the point of MAYDAY MAYDAY! I finally said, "Please PLEASE tell me SOMETHING good about him and your relationship" because I was about two horror stories away from hunting him down and giving him a VERY STERN talking-to, that might have involved either torture or paying him off to leave her alone. She proceeded to tell me quite a few stories sweet things he’d done… And it was nice to hear, but then I begged her to stop! It was sickeningly sweet. Seriously, I think I threw up a little in my mouth.
However, amidst my green-ish haze, I found a glimmer of hope. That's right, HOPE.
Girls, we need to raise the bar. And that bar needs to be somewhere between complete jackass and over-the-top, totally unrealistic Hollywood love story.
2 comments:
hey I know whose husband you're talking about! I won't deny the fact that he was an ass the first year or so we were dating. Maybe my standards were lower? I was comparing him to a complete and total ass I dated before so he was like "god". When I finally stood up for myself after a year, he did a 180. But, I don't think thats a typical thing for most guys.
Oh man, every time I try to protect the identity of the guilty here on my blog, you guys can't stand it and have to out yourselves.
Ah well. Rose, you correctly identified yourself as the boyfriend-whiner I mentioned in this post. Friends, all I ask is that you mix in some good stories with the complaints. I'm not 'customer service' at the relationship superstore y'know!
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