I Think We Have A Breakthrough
I had a little visit with my therapist last night. Her name is old writing books. I was looking for some old pictures and writing from the team I was on 20 years ago and though I still can't seem to find them I did go through a lot of old correspondence that I had forgotten about. Reading through some of the notes, letters and poems from old friends made me realize a few things.
It seems that sometimes we girls have a tendency to want to "fix" boys. There just seems to be some draw in being the one that can swoop in, pick up the pieces of a broken and wounded boy and be the only one that can make sense of the mess and put everything back together. Maybe this is the draw of the "bad boy". We want to be his savior, his confidant, the only bright and shining light in his world. What I failed to see though is you can't put together something that doesn't want to fixed. There were a few "relationships" I had like this.
I also had quite the tendency to take things personally. I would get ignored by a guy when I thought I was sending out serious signals that I was interested or he would confide in me and date my friends. Those were the hardest ones for me to take. Here I was thinking I'm doing all the serious work of fixing up this broken boy only to have him turn away from my assistance into the arms of one of my friends. I would take this very personally and internalize all of the rejection. Instead of thinking there was something going on on his end of the story I would assume it was all about me. I wasn't good enough at helping him, I wasn't attractive enough, I wasn't fun enough, I wasn't good enough for him.
Reading through some papers last night I had a light bulb moment. Maybe this wasn't all about me! (Shocking I know.) Maybe it had nothing to do with my lack of worth but instead it spoke more to my incredible value. (Hopefully I don't start sounding pretencions and arrogant now.) It is entirely possible that these broken and wounded boys didn't want to pull me into their hurt and confusion. After all I was a bit of a goody two shoes back then.
Who knows if this is true or not but I believe it's just as plausible as any other theory I've come up with so I will attempt to choose the one that isn't damaging to my self esteem and instead speaks to my value. After all I don't think any of those boys will be coming around to refute my claims.
So here I am many, many years later finally looking at the messages behind the words that were said to me. It might have saved me a lot of heart ache if I could have seen it in the first place. Oh well, I guess better late than never.
It seems that sometimes we girls have a tendency to want to "fix" boys. There just seems to be some draw in being the one that can swoop in, pick up the pieces of a broken and wounded boy and be the only one that can make sense of the mess and put everything back together. Maybe this is the draw of the "bad boy". We want to be his savior, his confidant, the only bright and shining light in his world. What I failed to see though is you can't put together something that doesn't want to fixed. There were a few "relationships" I had like this.
I also had quite the tendency to take things personally. I would get ignored by a guy when I thought I was sending out serious signals that I was interested or he would confide in me and date my friends. Those were the hardest ones for me to take. Here I was thinking I'm doing all the serious work of fixing up this broken boy only to have him turn away from my assistance into the arms of one of my friends. I would take this very personally and internalize all of the rejection. Instead of thinking there was something going on on his end of the story I would assume it was all about me. I wasn't good enough at helping him, I wasn't attractive enough, I wasn't fun enough, I wasn't good enough for him.
Reading through some papers last night I had a light bulb moment. Maybe this wasn't all about me! (Shocking I know.) Maybe it had nothing to do with my lack of worth but instead it spoke more to my incredible value. (Hopefully I don't start sounding pretencions and arrogant now.) It is entirely possible that these broken and wounded boys didn't want to pull me into their hurt and confusion. After all I was a bit of a goody two shoes back then.
Who knows if this is true or not but I believe it's just as plausible as any other theory I've come up with so I will attempt to choose the one that isn't damaging to my self esteem and instead speaks to my value. After all I don't think any of those boys will be coming around to refute my claims.
So here I am many, many years later finally looking at the messages behind the words that were said to me. It might have saved me a lot of heart ache if I could have seen it in the first place. Oh well, I guess better late than never.
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