Guest Blog: Lack of “Validation”

This is a guest post by the lovely gem. I have loved every single one of her entries since I discovered her blog and asked her to write a guest entry for me. I love her wit and sarcasm, I hope you do too! I also wrote a guest entry for her: The Truth about Men and Women.

——

To introduce myself shortly, online I go by gem, in real life I live in New York City. I have also been single my entire life. So I’m going
to talk about validating men, something that I fail at miserably and which is one of the main reasons for my constantly single status. The most recent example of my failure to validate a man is with my newest paramour, whom I met almost two months ago. I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then, he’s nice, he likes me, I like him, etc. However, when it comes to actually showing him that I like him, I end up unintentionally coming off like a total jerk. Always. This past weekend was a prime example of this…

We’d just spent hours being absurdly cuddly and discussing silly little things in our life. It secretly made me a little nauseous, but the outward happiness was real too. (It’s a paradox, but it’s true.) And then suddenly we noticed how long we’d been lying around for and he realized he had to leave. He asked what I was doing for the day and I mentioned that I was hanging out with my friend and her Italian friend who was visiting her. I concentrated on how I’d be with the Italian, with his cute broken English and his wild Italian hair. My paramour watched me as I talked about this Italian guy, and his response was a simple, “Don’t hook up with the Italian.”

I just smiled at his advice, and moved on to my plans for after that, how I’d been invited to a few parties, none of which I particularly needed or wanted to go to. And he quickly invited me to a party he was going to that night, as any nice paramour would do. But before he’d even finished I said a curt, “No.” And without looking at him, I rambled that I’d told all the parties I was going to go, so I had to at least go to one of them… even if I didn’t really want to. He concentrated on the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to any of the parties and obviously I couldn’t go to all of them, so I might as well just go with him! Didn’t I want to go with him?

I didn’t go with him.

Now, I understand the Italian thing a little. Keep him on his toes, blah blah blah. However, I definitely should have gone with him to the party. I wanted to, even! But… well, once I start meeting more of his friends and he meets mine, then, if we stop spending time together, we have to explain it. I don’t want to explain where he went and I don’t want him talking about me after we’re done. I want our relationship to exist in a bubble and if it pops, I want that pop to have zero effect on anything else in our lives! Slash I am an idiot who lets her fears force her into making poor decisions when it comes to men. Because what if the bubble never pops? Why jump to the negative conclusion instead of hoping for the best and just doing what I know will make me happiest in the moment… Which is why my new plan is to validate him and our relationship from now on and say yes when he wants me to say yes!

Except this weekend. I sort of have a really busy schedule with some old friends and a friend who just moved back to town. And then I’m going out of town for the holidays… so basically I’m not seeing him for awhile and by the time I get back he’ll have forgotten me. Oh well, good thing I kept the bubble small!