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.
No comments:
Post a Comment