One of the things that I think goes unaddressed is how failing to fulfill people’s social wishes for you and who you are affects your relationships with others.
Let me enlighten you:
If your friend is avoiding your buddy that you are trying to fix them up with, it may not be because they are secretly in love with them. It may be because your buddy doesn’t have a job and was fired for stealing from his previous job.
It may be that he gets on her nerves.
It may be that he’s has money spending patterns that are not in line with her values and future goals for herself.
It may be that he doesn’t take care of himself in the least, and she isn’t interested in ‘fixing’ him if he is older than say, 25. Because its damn well past time to grow up and use deodorant.
It may be that she is focused on herself in a positive (non-narcissistic) way and she does not have time right now- she is taking classes, focusing on self-betterment, or realigning her own values.
It may be that you need to re-evaluate the friends you think she should be with.
Why are you trying to fix up a friend with accomplishments and goals with someone who has done a stretch in prison? How are you being a good friend to the accomplished person in that situation? Why are you trying to fix up someone who has their act together with someone who in on track to declare bankruptcy at 35? How are you being a friend to the person who has their act together? Do you think that having someone else is so paramount as to void common sense at all costs?
Then you go around telling everyone that she’s probably gay. She isn’t gay. She just is strong enough to know that your friends aren’t going anywhere. They are still waiting tables at 45 because they don’t want to have to pass a drug test. She had a real job at 21. She has been working since she was a teenager. She has 3 degrees. She watches productions of Shakespeare for fun. She isn’t some uptight character from television that can only find love by getting some man to loosen her up. No. She has plenty of fun. ON HER OWN and paid for BY HERSELF and she isn’t about the pay for HIS.
She can’t date at work because it would ruin her level of respect and how people may perceive her. The one who supposedly “slept her way to the top” or “dated her way to the top” or “married up” is always seen with a side-eye. She realizes she has to be appreciated for her work, and that her partner will be a part of how she is perceived in the work environment– he will come to parties and events and in a sometimes very very very classist world, what he does WILL matter in terms of whether she moves ahead and ends up with a decent retirement.
But you aren’t interested in that. You want her to be something you have predicted because it will make you feel good. It will give you something. Something you should be able to give to yourself instead of seeking it out of the social outcomes of a third party.
But the way people perceive you and your life choices and who you choose to be with can affect things without your knowing. I’ve heard comments and conversations about things that people do not realize affected their ability to be taken seriously in the work environment. I’ve been thinking about careers and my own retirement since I was a kid and was aware of people retiring.
I’ll be honest with you: All I have ever wanted to do is retire. I am exceptionally good at filling my own time. I was the firstborn of the youngest kid my grandparents had. I was the baby. The only kid around during my first 3 years of childhood. My mother didn’t trouble herself much with me. When my brother came along, it was a different story. She had to keep him at her side all the time because he was a boy.
As a result, I had to hang out with kids much older than myself. There are tons of photos of me hanging out with teenage cousins. I had a radio when I was very young and listened to pop music all the time. I had leftover makeup samples from Avon when I was 3. I had a sense of independence that was sometimes encouraged and sometimes loathed by my mother: I was supposed to be adult enough to do x and y but not adult enough to think for myself.
I did not relate well to children my own age when I did go to school. I read early, swam early, and just was… early. At the same time, my mother was trying to hold me back into not just childhood, but a childhood that wasn’t at all normal for the 1980’s. She wanted me to want to stay home. She wanted me to not want the cool things. My wanting things like a pair of Nikes or a Levi’s jacket was a fundamental betrayal of something, somehow.
It was hard to relate to other kids. They didn’t understand. It was very hard. And now, I find it is hard to relate to other adults. My parents were giving me dolls at 25 and I had to beg them, absolutely beg them, to stop. But I was doing adult farm work at 13. And I had makeup at 3. And I had a radio of my own by age 5.
At 16, I went on vacation with relatives who were all in their 40’s-60’s. Alone. The only teenager.
To say that I lived in a space of strange contradictions is an understatement.
Sometimes it is still hard for me around people. It is hard to relate to people who didn’t come from my unique set of 80’s era behaviors in the first place. When you add in my own unique blend of inner assessment-making tools of other people, well, it tends to hamper things.
I went on a short vacation recently. A short, cost-effective vacation.
I realized that what that kid me wanted more than anything else was her own space. Her own time. To not worry about relating to anyone. To just be.
I have my own house. I have my own pets. I can do what I see fit now. And that is enough. That, and a sense of financial stability, is all I have ever wanted.
I realize I’m disappointing people by not being the construct they have thrown on me. Whether that is reflective of the need of their friend who just needs a woman to understand his pot addiction, or reflective of their desire for me to really just secretly be in need of the right church, or reflective of their desire for me to be secretly gay. I’m sorry that none of those are true, because I know that there are people out there that would find those things emotionally fulfilling to view on a social media feed. What is the self these days, except the social media performance of the self? What was the self yesterday, except the public performance of the self?
And what do you do with someone who refuses to be a package neatly tied up in a bow by either? A person who refuses to exist in a character’s story arc, instead determining to favor life itself? The messiness and the un-story-ness of it, the reality of work and its class expectations and choosing to navigate a world that encourages so wholeheartedly for women, especially single and childless women, to make stupid decisions about career and money to participate in a character’s story arc?
I’m just living my life. Alone, and extremely grateful, to be where I am at– with no bankruptcies, and with a small, easily-paid-off house. To not have someone else killing my finances or arguing over the bullshit of life.
I don’t want to have to listen to a partner telling me how I should be handling the care of my pets. Or know that he is bitching to his friends about it.
I don’t want to have to listen to his Aunt Becky talk about my neighborhood. Fuck. That. My house will be paid off before I retire. When Aunt Becky is crying of her husband’s new affair and taking out her third mortgage.
I don’t want a man to bitch because I don’t want to blow a gazillion dollars on drinking during our vacation. Some drinks? Fine. All the drinks? NO.
I don’t want a partner’s stuck up relatives. I don’t want his jealous broke relatives. I don’t want mine. Why would I want yours?
I don’t tend to feel lonely. At least not that emotional “need to have someone around” type of lonely. If I do, all I need to do is be in a store and know that other people exist. That is enough for me. I don’t need real connection in the way that other people do. I grew up having to learn to be okay without it.
But I’m also not some broken little person needing a man to rescue my poor wounded heart either. I don’t need to be fixed.
What I need is to retire one day. That is what I NEED.
Spiked Peaches- A tilted view from the South 