He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (14 page)

Dawn says she hates it when the men she meets “smother” her by calling on a daily basis or asking her out too many times.

“This week was a great example. One guy I had been out with and really liked called me and asked me out several times. I was busy, legitimately busy, every time. So he calls me and starts hassling me about why I haven’t called him, why I’m not reciprocating. I told him that my priorities were my priorities. I was honest—I told him that I wanted to see him, but that other things came first. He was a classic example of somebody who wants to pursue the relationship more than I do. I’ve broken it off with just about every man I’ve been with because they made me feel smothered or tried to make me feel guilty.

“Yesterday this other guy called and said to me, ‘How’s your hand?’ I said, ‘Fine, why?’ He said, ‘I figured it must be sore—you haven’t been able to return my phone calls.’ I told him I was busy.

“I don’t expect to always feel this way, but right now relationships make me feel claustrophobic and anxious. If a guy so much as sends me flowers, I get a stomachache. I wonder what he expects of me. It makes me queasy. A lot of guys send me flowers, and I hate it.”

Despite her current feelings Dawn is sure she will get married
someday. She has had two long-term relationships, and she describes them both as mostly positive experiences. She ended both of them. Marriage was “vaguely” discussed with these two men, but Dawn feels that the conversations were unrealistic.

“I think marriage is a great institution. My parents are happily married…. I love my family. I think it’s all great. Just not for me, not now. I’m not sure about kids. I love kids, but most of my life I thought I didn’t want them. But now I’m not sure. Maybe someday it will be important to me to have children, so I don’t want to rule out the possibility. If I did have a family, I wouldn’t do what my mom did and stay home to raise them, though. I wouldn’t ever want to do that. I would love to be with a man who did that.”

Although Dawn says career is very important to her, she realizes that she isn’t following a career path right now.

“I had been traveling for the last couple of years, and I came home and had bills, so I took a job. I’m planning to start traveling again probably later this year. I’m also thinking of the Peace Corps. It bothers me somewhat that I’m not on a straight career path. But I think I can wait five more years to settle on a direction. I think ultimately it really won’t matter.”

Dawn says that among her friends who have married, all have ended up with men that she couldn’t imagine spending time with.

“My married friends right now have life-styles that are not enviable. I get on the phone with one of them, and I’m talking a mile a minute about the million of things that have happened to me in the last month. I have a fun life … a nonstop life, an interesting life. My friends say things like, ‘Oh, we went for a walk, and then we had a barbecue.’ They never have any money because they are all saving to buy houses. They can never go shopping. They don’t do anything. And the men they’ve married! I know they love them and all, and some of them are nice guys. But not one of them have I ever had a really intense conversation with. I like intensity. They’re nice people, and good people, but I guess I want somebody more exciting. I prefer men who are challenging. If they’re easy, they take all the fun out of it.”

Dawn says that men don’t understand how she feels, and frequently they seem quite hurt when she ends things.

“They call and call. It’s like they think I’m going to say, ‘Okay,
you’ve whined so much, I’m going to be your girlfriend.’ I tried to be friends with one man after we broke up, but he refused because he said he loved me too much to be friends. After a year of not seeing him, we went out for coffee, and it was the same old thing.”

Dawn says that she tries not to plan ahead because she has a tendency to cancel things. She owns very little in the way of furniture or equipment and prefers to travel light.

“It’s a joke. I tell people I don’t want anything I can’t pack in a suitcase. People keep buying me things like juicers and toasters. One of my friends got me a microwave saying I needed something to make me a little less mobile.”

Many of the women we interviewed for this book referred to their need for their own space. Echoing Virginia Woolf, they talked about how much they would always want a room of their own. Dawn said:

“Yes, I have space issues. I need a lot of space. I think even if I were married and living with someone, I would want my own room. Just a place where I can have the things I like. The things that are all mine. A place to go and listen to my own music and where everybody would leave me alone. That’s always going to be important to me.”

Dawn is a perfect example of a contemporary woman with commitment issues, but she is following in a tradition that was established by men of an older age group.

“I’VE MET MY MATCH”

“I
always knew someday I would meet the ‘right woman.’ Well, I think I have, but I don’t know if it’s chemistry or pathology.”

—JACK

Remember in the comics when a villain, bent on gaining power over the superhero, tries to create someone with equally superior abilities, someone capable of destroying the hero? When two people with strong, active commitment conflicts get together, their relationship has all the earmarks of a superhuman struggle, sort of a romantic clash of the titans.

At fifty-six Jack, who has a long history of commitmentphobic behavior, has fallen in love with Stephanie, a thirty-four-year-old woman who has no interest in marriage or commitment of any kind. Everyone always helped Jack maintain his belief that once he met the “right woman,” he would change.

As far as he’s concerned, Stephanie is the right woman, but Stephanie, who feels very strongly about maintaining her own space, limits the amount of time she wants to give to the relationship. This is a shock to Jack’s system, because in all of his earlier relationships he was the one who established boundaries and limitations. Now that the tables are turned, he doesn’t know what to do. He says:

“All of my life I was perceived as being the one with commitment problems. In my early twenties most of the women I dated wanted to have children and be supported. I would see my friends get married, and I thought they were being trapped into the breadwinner category. It seemed to me that my resistance to marriage and commitment was a perfectly intelligent response to an unfair situation. After all, who wanted to sign on for a big house in the suburbs and a heart attack?

“Anyway, when I was twenty-seven, I met this woman who made more money than I did. She was a doctor. I thought,
Hot dog, I don’t have to worry about supporting her. She’s never going to give up her career
. She was a beautiful, bright woman, but even so, I grew to hate her. I didn’t understand why. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be around her. I was like that woman in the movie
War of the Roses
. I hated the way she ate, hated the way she dressed, hated it if she put on two pounds. In retrospect I was despicable, and I have a lot of guilt around it. At the time I blamed my attitude on the fact that she was domineering. In retrospect she really wasn’t domineering, she was just a strong, honest, outspoken woman—everything I had thought I wanted.”

This marriage finally fell apart because Jack’s wife became insistent on having a child. This was not part of his game plan, and he refused to go along with it.

“My wife put up with my criticism, my moodiness, my sulking. I was also having a very discreet affair with a woman, also married, and I wasn’t very interested in sex. My wife put up with that. But
she couldn’t put up with my refusal to have children. She kicked me out.”

Jack says that immediately after the marriage ended, he felt two separate and distinct emotions. On the one hand he missed his wife, who had been his “best friend.” On the other he felt like a kid in the candy store.

“When I got divorced in the early seventies, the sexual revolution was in full swing. Everything had changed. Women were prepared to go to bed with you at the drop of a hat. I became like a crazy man. I wanted to try everything and everybody. I got myself this terrific apartment, and I was thrilled by the freedom.”

But as happy as Jack was with his single state, he couldn’t resist getting involved with a woman.

“Within months of the divorce, I had become enmeshed with a woman who was in a different cycle. She was thirty and had never married. We went together for five years, during which time we must have fought and made up a hundred times. She wanted more from me than I wanted to give. She wanted marriage. To get me jealous, she would threaten to date other people, an idea that didn’t thrill me. But I still didn’t want to make a commitment to her.

“My attitude hurt her very much. I understand that. In the meantime I couldn’t stop seeing other women. There were too many of them … running around in short little skirts. Everybody was having a grand time. I wanted to be part of that. And I was. I told myself that my behavior was understandable. I had been married for so many years that I deserved this period of total freedom. I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too, because I didn’t want to give up my girlfriend.

“One day she issued one ultimatum too many, and we split up. Then I did something very stupid. No sooner had we broken up than I met somebody else. I knew this new woman ten days, and I proposed. And we got married three months later. I think I had to prove to myself that I
could
make a commitment. It made no sense whatsoever, and it was a disaster.

“My second wife didn’t know what happened. One day I was telling her that I was madly in love, and we had to get married, the next I was telling her that we had to get divorced.”

Jack says that he then compounded the problem by calling up his ex-girlfriend, who had been devastated by his marriage.

“I told her that I had to see her. And for at least a month I went to see her a couple of times a week. It made the whole thing even crazier. Finally she exploded and called my wife. My wife exploded and told me to get my act together. The end result is that I ended up on the street again.”

This time Jack says that he learned his lesson. He knew that when he met a woman, he often said things he didn’t mean and made promises he couldn’t keep; before he knew it, he was in yet another relationship, with yet more expectations. He didn’t want that to happen anymore, so he devised a plan.

“From that day forward I vowed I would never again sweet-talk a woman into anything. I would say nothing that gave anyone any expectations. I would tell every woman up front that I was never, ever, ever going to get into another committed relationship. And that’s what I did, and that worked fine. I had a couple of arrangements during this time, but nobody got hurt.

“Then this year I met Stephanie, who is really something else again. She was also married when she was in her early twenties, and that was enough for her. She says she is never going to let anybody get that close. I realize she’s had difficult experiences, but I’m nothing like her ex-husband. We wouldn’t have the same problems. But she doesn’t care what I say, she enjoys her life for what it is and she wants to keep it that way.”

Jack says that he is also worried that Stephanie might have at least as big a roaming eye as he used to have.

“She hasn’t actually said she wants to date other people, but she’s sort of hinting at it. When we met, I was very clear that I thought we should both see other people, but now I think it’s time to give that up. In fact I haven’t been out with anybody else in a long time, so that’s reflecting what’s actually taking place. If Stephanie is seeing someone, I don’t know when she’s doing it—although of course I have no way of knowing. She has told me in no uncertain terms that she can’t make any promises about fidelity. She says that what will be, will be, and that’s good enough for her. I’ve been with enough women to realize that sex itself is never that different. I’ve seen enough bodies. It’s time to settle down.”

Jack feels his age contributes to what is going on. At one time he had no difficulty in maintaining several sexual liaisons at the same time. Now he doubts that he has the energy to do this. He’s scared that Stephanie is still young enough to want variety in the same way that he once did. And he worries that Stephanie will eventually prefer a man closer to her own age.

“I think I’m the best man she could find. I can make her life better in all ways. I find myself saying the things to her that were once said to me about love and togetherness. I remember one woman I went out with years ago who always used to stare at me, and I would ask her why she did that. She’d say, ‘I’m trying to figure out what’s going on inside your head.’ Well, that’s what I do with Stephanie. I’m trying to understand what she wants and give it to her. I make a good living, and we could have a nice life. Her child is a teenager already, so we could travel, do things. Stephanie doesn’t want it. She says I keep spoiling things—why can’t I just leave things the way they are?

“A few weeks ago it was her birthday, and she wanted to have dinner with a girlfriend. It’s a ritual with her. Even so I don’t understand why she wouldn’t want me to join them after dinner. I felt very excluded. The same thing happened last Thanksgiving. She went off to dinner with her mother and child, and she didn’t want me along. Sometimes she makes me feel like a kid with his nose against the window. And when Stephanie makes her mind up about something, it’s nonnegotiable. For example she doesn’t want me to just drop in on her. And I can’t assume that I’m going to be with her on weekends. I’ve got to ask every damn time. So I’m caught up in this dynamic of when will she let me see her again?

“This is the first time in my life that I haven’t wanted to hold back with a woman. I tell Stephanie not to hold back, not to be afraid. It’s fun to relax and give. It’s ironic that I’ve changed, that I feel free enough to love wholeheartedly and I meet someone who is holding back.”