Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [64]
I would argue that the group experience of knowing that you’re not alone—particularly for issues such as promiscuity, where girls carry so much shame—is useful as well. So many of us have these stories, and yet so few feel safe sharing them. After Loose Girl came out, I set up a system on my website where girls could simply submit their loose girl stories and read others’ in the hope that knowing so many of us are out there would be healing.
EXAMINING THE THINGS WE TELL OURSELVES
Any girl or woman I’ve worked with who is still in the throes of loose-girl behavior, still pursuing male attention at any cost, even as it makes her feel like garbage, believes in the fantasy she has about men. With each of these women I’ve asked the same question: “What do you believe he will do for you?” Their answers are almost all the same:
“He will love me the way no one ever has before.”
“He will make me happy.”
“He will save me.”
A huge part of being a loose girl is believing in a fantasy, and that fantasy is of course not factual. We have been handed the lie about men by our media and culture. A boy will make you worth something. A boy’s loving you means you matter in the world. We’ve bought the idea entirely. But beneath the fantasy is the blatant lie. It isn’t true. Not even close. No man’s attention to a girl means anything. In fact, more often than not it just means he has an opportunity to use her for sex, which, in the typical cultural irony for a girl, makes her matter less. Perhaps more important, whatever fantasy you or your daughter or your client or student carries around is based on some lack that can’t possibly be filled by another person, and most certainly not some random boy. That emptiness is very real, but the fantasy that someone will fill it is not.
Often, when it comes into their awareness that they have these beliefs, the girls and women I work with are surprised. I encourage them to write those beliefs down on one side of a piece of paper, and then to make a list on the other side of what those men actually wind up doing for them. This is important, because even if men do provide some positives in these women’s lives, they do not do this impossible task of filling their emptiness, of taking away or saving them from their pain.
Larissa believed that every boy that gave her attention, or who she developed a crush on, would be “the one.” When I pressed her about what she meant by “the one,” she admitted he would be the one who would love her so much that all her pain would go away and she’d always be happy. Larissa grew up with parents she described as “distant,” whom she was never able to feel loved by. After she wrote down this belief, we discussed what she really did get from these boys. She determined that she got some affection and some sense that she was pretty and desirable, but little else. She said she never even felt like they were her friends. I didn’t expect this to change everything for Larissa right away, but it was a task I suggested she repeat with each encounter or crush. The more she paid attention to her fantasy about boys, the easier time she would have unraveling why it felt so terrible when it didn’t work out, and let’s face it—it was never going to work out as long as those were her expectations.
Deb provides another example. She had a boyfriend, but she cheated on him constantly. When I asked her what she wanted from him, she told me that she wanted him to make her feel whole. These sorts of answers are so common. We hear them everywhere. They are spread across our media, in every teen drama and romantic comedy. A boy will complete you. It’s yet another line delivered that rarely does any good for teen girls. Clearly, though, she didn’t feel whole. She slept with other boys because she felt desperate and uncared