Dating Douchebags- Why We're Ruining It For the Rest of Us

My roommate Whitney and I were talking recently about all the women we know who have been the unwitting victim of a douchebag guy.  Because…  There are a lot of them.  Like a really exorbitant number of them.  And many of them, herself and myself included, have had the unfortunate pleasure (please note sarcasm on the word pleasure) of being exposed to more than one.

You know the guy I am talking about.  He lets you blow every cent you earn on him while he pays for nothing.  He’ll tell you all of the amazing things about himself but never asks about you.  He accepts your fabulous birthday gift that you spent weeks putting together and half your paycheck on and maybe, if you’re lucky, he picks up something from the gas station when your birthday rolls around.  He’s never available when you want to do something but when he calls you out of the blue he expects you to rush right over.  He’s happy to sleep with you but tells you he’s just not ready for a relationship.  He’ll use your car, your connections, your tendency to do do do for others but when you need something…  It’s just not a good time for him.  Or sometimes, he’s just a complete and total epic liar.

The degree of douchebaggery changes, but the common thread is this:  You give, he takes. 

We know so many women that have encountered this kind of guy that we are beginning to wonder if this is the new normal.  As if it weren’t enough that in the sea of 7 billion people in the world that we are trying to weed out not just those with different interests and values, we now also have to worry about getting past those who are just complete assholes?

Some of you may be thinking right now, well sure.  That’s part of it.  You have to weed out those people too.  But I have to ask…  Why?  When did it become acceptable to have to encounter these kinds of people at all?  There are entire websites devoted to memes about the douchebag boyfriend…  How did this type of behavior become so prevalent that we can laugh at it rather than be mortified by it?

I can tell you where the blame for this lies. 

It’s your fault.

And it’s my fault.

We are all to blame.  Every single one of us who has ever encountered this dude.  And you all know who you are.  Because every woman I know who has encountered this guy has let him treat her in this way for far too long.  Because any time you let yourself be used is too much time.  And I’m not just talking about being used for your money or your physical possessions.  I’m talking about being used for your emotions, your love, your sex, your soul. 

We are all to blame because when this happens to us, instead of immediately putting our foot down and saying, “No.  I am better than this.  And you will treat me accordingly,” we spend countless hours trying to say the right thing, do the right thing, be prettier, smarter, sexier, wittier, whatever it is that we think will make him treat us the way we know we deserve to be treated.  But here’s the thing.  If he doesn’t start off treating you that way, he never will.  Because part of what you deserve is to be treated as you should be right off the bat.  So you see, if he doesn’t start there, he’ll never get there.  Never.  Ever. 

We teach people how to treat us.  And by immediately responding to someone’s poor imitation of attention we teach them that that poor excuse is good enough.  It’s not.  It’s not even close.  And what’s worse is that even when you finally realize that this douchebag is, in fact, a douchebag, you’ve already taught him that his behavior is acceptable enough and when the next poor unsuspecting one of us runs into him he starts all over again.  Because you told him it was ok.  For awhile at least, you told him it was ok.

It’s not.

Don’t you see?  We’re all ruining it for the rest of us.

 

I’m not here to tell you to love yourself, or be yourself, or even to be happy with yourself.  I don’t think the problem is your self esteem.  You have it.  I have it.  If we talked about it, you could probably admit that you’re pretty awesome.  Because you probably are.  You aren’t perfect but you’re not asking anybody else to be perfect either.  No I don’t think the problem is our self esteem.  I think it is our inherent belief that other people just can’t always see how awesome we are.

That douchebag guy?  He can see it.  He totally knows EXACTLY how awesome you are.  If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be trying to take advantage of it.  Because how many stories do you hear about douchebags taking advantage of girls who aren’t awesome?  Right.  None.

He knows how awesome you are.  And he is treating you like that anyway.  Because he can.  Because you taught him that he could.  Because the awesome girl before you taught him that he could.  And the girl after you will teach him that too.

 

Let me ask you this.  When a toddler throws a tantrum because he wants a cookie and you give him a cookie what does he learn?  Throw a tantrum, get a cookie.  If he throws a tantrum and you don’t give him that cookie what happens?  He might try this a few more times, but eventually he will learn that you don’t get a cookie by throwing a tantrum.  Bad behavior is not rewarded.

 

Bad behavior is not rewarded.

 

Bad behavior is not rewarded.

 

Ladies, I am begging you, stop rewarding bad behavior.  Can you imagine if every woman you knew put her foot down and opted not to let herself be treated poorly anymore?  My god, the revolution that would occur when men realized the only way to get a woman into bed was to treat her with respect and dignity and integrity and admiration…

 

I know this is easier said than done, but for the love of god, when some guy doesn’t treat you with the respect you deserve, high tail it out of there.  If he is worth your time, really really worth your time, he will quickly change his actions.  He will change them, you won’t change them for him.  That’s not how it works.  You will never be pretty enough, smart enough, funny enough, sexy enough, anything enough.  Because you already are all those things, and he knows it.  And if that’s not enough to make him want to make you feel like he knows you are all of those things then why the hell would you waste another second of your time with him?

 

There are still good men out there.  I am convinced of it.  I know some of them.  I know men who, although they are just friends, make me feel like I’m a million bucks.  They tell me I am beautiful and smart and funny and talented and worth being treated like I am all of those things.  They tell me these things because they are true.  They do not tell me I am perfect.   I’m not.   But they tell me, by the way they treat me, that I am awesome.  I bet right now you are thinking of your guy friends who do the same for you…  Shouldn’t anyone that you are considering sleeping with make you feel just as good, if not better, than the guys you aren’t considering sleeping with?  I mean…  I’m just sayin’.

 

So I am asking you, all my single lady friends, to make a pact.  Let’s stop ruining it for the rest of us.  Let’s stop allowing ourselves to be treated as less than we are.  Let’s opt to walk away from anyone who makes us work to hard to be loved and appreciated.  Let’s leave the douchebags to each other until they figure out that being a douchebag just isn’t going to cut it anymore.  Because we know that they know how awesome we are.  And we aren’t going to let them pretend otherwise for one more minute.

 

How Blue Is Your Sky?

Having a nice little bout of insomnia this evening I took to one of my favorite insomniac past times- reading some of my old writing.

 

I was perusing a blog I used to keep on MySpace (I know…  MySpace), and came across an entry I made the day the Virginia Tech shootings happened.  This was how it started:

 

“The sky in Orlando today was that vibrant shade of blue that only exists in paintings. A blue so pure, so deep without being dark, that if you hadn't seen them before you wouldn't believe that clouds existed. The temperature dropped again too and so we're left with this beautiful day and a high of only 70 degrees. Breezy. Light. Breathable.”

 

I went on to talk about how this beautiful day was marred by what had happened.  A gunman killing at least 30 people.  At least 30 people.  We didn’t know yet how many.  We didn’t know that it would, more than 5 years later, remain the worst school shooting in American history.

 

I ended the entry with:

 

“I don't know. I wonder what their sky looked like today. I wonder if the sun was out and any of them decided to skip classes for the first nice day in a few weeks... Or if leftover rain from the storm lingered and so they thought, why get out of bed? And I wonder if the air will ever feel breathable to them again.”

 

A lot of you who know my writing also know that I wrote a piece about 9-11 for the stage that started with lines describing my own personal experience that day, and how I woke up looking at the sky and how blue it seemed…  “Like…  Electric blue.”

 

I remember the day, my freshman year of college, when we heard about Columbine.  The first of the tragedies of that nature to come.  We stood outside, in front of the theatre building, talking about how glad we all were to not be in a high school at that moment.  It was April.  And the sky was blue.  So blue that the clouds seemed almost neon in their contrast.  I remember thinking that, on the news, it looked like a pretty day in Colorado too.

 

A few weeks ago when a boy, a man I suppose, but a boy none-the-less, walked into an elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of them small children, tiny children, I distinctly recall thinking, before I heard the news, what a beautiful day it was.  I know because I was sitting near a window in a restaurant where I could see a TV over the bar and I recall thinking what a strange sensation it was to be between the reality of beauty outside the window and the reality of horror on the television.

 

Strange, how beautiful it seems the day is each time the world spins out of control.  Never when it is dark and dreary, always when it is so beautiful it almost seems like a dream.

 

Maybe I am the only one who notices.

 

Maybe I am the only one who is supposed to.

 

I am always so profoundly affected by things like this.  My empathetic nature means I feel other people’s pain so deeply, to my core.  I can’t train my brain to stay out of the head of the people I have never and will never meet, feeling their fear, their sorrow.

 

Always on an exceptionally beautiful day.

 

The kind of day when everyone you bump into outside can’t help but say, “Man it’s such a nice day today!” As though we have to reaffirm that what we’re seeing is real.

 

In my memory, it was always the day I noticed first, not the heartache.  But now that I see the pattern, I have to wonder if it isn’t, in reality, the other way around.

 

At first I had hoped that my memory wasn’t tricking me and that the order I remembered it was the order in which it happened.

 

But then I thought, maybe…  Maybe I don’t hope that.  Maybe I hope that when something so senseless, so frightening, so heartbreaking occurs I can’t help but lift my eyes to the universe, God, mother nature, whatever you call it, and subconsciously say, “Please.  Please give me a sign that there is light and love and beauty and warmth and such natural magnificence in the world that I can believe there is more of all of those things than the other things creeping into this reality.  Please show me that if I am to be between these two realities that it is that beautiful, warm, inviting, blue sky that envelopes me in moments of sadness and chaos and not the dark, cold turmoil that violence brings.  Please show me that the tranquility I feel in those brief moments when I realize just how pretty the world is, is truly what the universe is meant to be.”

 

And in those moments, when it knows I need it most, the universe always answers back with an electric blue sky, piercingly clear air, and a warm sun to fill the void.  Usually a little breeze too, the kind that makes you close your eyes and take a slow, deep breath.

 

That must be it.  I don’t know that I can choose to believe my own memories over the possibility that the whole universe is reaching back to me when I stretch out my arms to it.  I think I choose to believe the memories are changed so that when I think back and feel the pang that comes with tragedy, it is quickly washed away in my minds eye by that terrific expanse of blue.  The world is just too beautiful for anything else to be true.

A New Day

"Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past."

-Henry Ward Beecher