Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [59]
To this day, when I feel particularly unlovable I go back to the wish that I could be something other than I am. Really, we all have those things we wish we could change, don’t we? There are some things we will be able to change and others we won’t, as the well-known serenity prayer reminds us. We have to come to terms with those things that are core parts of our personality because they aren’t changeable. It is good to acknowledge this. It is good for me to acknowledge, for instance, that I am never really distant, but that all men who would be with me will go through times of being a little distant. I can give men the space to love me, but I will be able to give only so much space. I share much about who I am. I don’t do well keeping my feelings silent and unattended to. When I think I’m not getting enough attention, I ask what’s going on. And so I will never be a rules girl, not without entirely denying who I am. And I’d rather like who I am than try to be someone else.
We know now that we live in a culture that has limited ideas about what we can be—men and women. Such a mind-set entirely belies the fact that humans are incredibly diverse. Add to this that many of us have been damaged along the way. We also live in a culture that has limited approaches to what love can look like: A man falls in love with a woman—usually a rules girl!—who also falls in love with him. Their every wish is fulfilled. Often they get married. And they live happily for the rest of their lives. Every romantic comedy, every Hollywood love story—The Notebook, Titanic, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and There’s Something about Mary are all popular examples—has this basic message inside it. Likewise, on television there is sitcom after sitcom in which the family is made up of husband and wife, and if it isn’t, then that is the reason the sitcom exists because how strange! Every love song on the radio, every advertisement to get you to buy something: it is all to make us desire the same thing—being in healthy love with the same person forever.
In truth, half of our marriages end in divorce. People have affairs—60 percent of men and 40 percent of women (but 70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses’ extramarital activity).2 We have blended families. We have open marriages. We have polyamory. We also have miserable marriages, loveless ones, sexless ones, deeply passionate and jealous and abusive ones. There are many, many ways to have love.
Recognizing this fact can be helpful for adult loose girls. It allows them the possibility of reenvisioning not just what they want, but what they can do right now. Perhaps they will be able to have this mainstream vision of love—if that’s what they even want—but for now they can only have this other thing. If women give themselves the freedom to think outside the lines about what love can look like for them, they will be able to find some satisfaction.
Sami considers herself a loose girl. She spent most of her adolescence sleeping her way through her high school and the local bars, and in college she did more of the same. She did it because she was looking for someone to stay with her, but few of them did. In her twenties, she finally met someone who seemed to love her. Eventually they married, and Sami assumed that her life was complete. She had what she wanted. But as the years passed, she found herself anxious and unhappy. She sought counseling, which helped sometimes, but other times she just felt like wallowing in pointless pain. Her husband,