You have such a gift, Polly, for taking what someone says and using it to arrive at what the situation really is. Someday, I really wish you would talk about how you process these letters - is it instinct, or do you keep asking questions and trying to find the answers in what is written (or not written)?
I am very often a lion trying to mould myself into a jar of honey. But I’m also very often the clumsy bear with the Princess Charming mask. And I guess the moral is here to be willing to show both the lion and the bear...
It’s deceptive to hide your vulnerability, but also deceptive to hide your strength. How does one navigate this right?
As always with Polly, this exposition is nuanced and empathic and true. And it gets to the blunt truths...eventually.
But I feel a need to emphasize one truth even more bluntly: A lie of omission is a LIE.
When you're performing romance with someone who adores you, it's a particularly CRUEL LIE.
If you're exchanging personal and intimate conversation with a person while withholding basic facts about your relationship status, you are no different from someone who takes off their wedding ring before entering a bar. You're trying to get something for nothing, based upon a deliberate lie.
That's a character issue. That's a betrayal of trust so profound that nothing healthy can grow from it.
And it's NOT ABOUT YOU. It's on him. The liar who never thinks about you and your needs in any serious way, not because he doesn't 'love' you, but because he isn't capable of that act of imagination.
Which is in the long run, as Polly says, really really boring.
Oh, Polly, thank you for this. I needed this three and four and five and six and seven years ago. But knowing me then, I would have read it and felt in my core that it were all true, but it would have been too scary to admit that, so I would have gone, "Ugh, she doesn't REALLY understand," and resumed my wallowing and pining and self-destructive behavior.
Dear OP, if you're reading this: Polly's right. She does understand. She really, really does. Take it from me. I had horrible, world-shaking, addictive loves with SEVERAL men who matched my enthusiasm for about three months before they unceremoniously dumped me/stopped talking to me/said they "didn't know what they wanted." One of them said I was his "DREAM GIRL" but "just didn't want to be with me" and he "didn't know why." One said he wanted to marry me and then chose his job instead, which was on the other side of the world. One wrote poetry with me and sang songs about me and said I Healed Him and MOVED TO MY CITY from ACROSS THE COUNTRY to be with me... And then dumped me literally two weeks later. Two weeks!!!! Why? Because he loved the idea of me, but not the reality. He loved the chase, but not the having. And then of course we somehow ended up dating for what became the worst year of my entire life, because he loved someone loving him so much, and I loved loving someone who didn't love me but MAYBE COULD if I TRIED HARD ENOUGH.
He literally told me that, OP. He literally said, to my face, "I think I just love how much you love me." And I went, yes!!!! This means I can love him EVEN HARDER and eventually I'll prove myself and he'll fall madly in love with me!!!
To make a long story short, it didn't happen, and I ended up in the hospital, and had a few really fucking shitty years where I had to untangle all my thoughts about myself and my past and my future and my relationships and the type of people I pursued. It sucked. It sucked baaaad.
AND--I'm married now, to a cis het man who is the epitome of "golden retriever gamer boyfriend" with "bi wife energy," AKA he is very sweet and kind and funny and talented and nerdy and loves me, the bi wife, with his whole heart. Me!!! The formerly unlovable loser!!!!!! And I love him back, safely and sanely!!!!! And we just celebrated our one year wedding anniversary!!!! I am truly more shocked than anyone.
Anyway, this is really long, but I just wanted to let you know, OP, that I get it. And I'm sorry. And my heart's hurting for you. But, most of all, Polly gets it, and her advice is spot-on, and if you really take it to heart and start answering some really hard questions about yourself honestly and vulnerably, and start pursuing people who ACTUALLY LIKE YOU (which will feel genuinely terrifying and maybe boring), and go to therapy and pursue your passions and wear bold lipstick sometimes (okay that's just a personal recommendation), you will find your match. Your actual match. Not your fantasy match.
I believe in you. Thank you for being brave enough to share your story.
Interestingly enough, I've been the cartoon bear with its paw stuck in a jar of honey more than once. Never had I heard such an accurate description of what that feeling is like. And I've had been lucky enough to befriend some of the women I've seen as jars of honey afterwards and they told me how empty they felt afterwards.
It took me a while to become a "real bear" and stop looking for honey everywhere I went, and even after finding one growling "no thanks" and walking away.
This reminds me of the zebras who can’t read Nitzche. LW I guarantee in 2-3 years maybe even less the honey bear will (bc he’s a performer of some sort who gives interviews right?) do something so cringe abs needing to be adored that you will see it and have to close your labtop and laugh just to release all the tension caused by the cringe. He will still be handsome and you may even think it might be nice to be friends bc he’s interesting ? But you will never ever want to be his GF /partner again bc his need to be adored will be so visible and embarrassing that uneven desire will just... It will just evaporate with you becoming an adult and the bear with a mask remaining a honey bear.
LW if you truly love him, you need to know him fully, and he you. Most people only achieve this after being dragged kicking and screaming through a marriage with children and a million other of life's problems. If they miraculously come out the side, and assuming they are not just grossly conflict avoidant or co-dependent, they will really know each other, and just maybe, love each other. Sound like a high bar? Who would even want to smack there head into such a thing?
But you sort of have to go there. Fortunately for you, you only have your ego and feelings, and all your subterranean childhood fears to overcome. I know it's not easy, and frankly I don't think anyone really does it. Most are satisfied with focusing on the image we have of our significant other, and downplaying the other stuff which would otherwise burst that bubble.
But remember that trope, if you love someone let them go, yada yada yada. It's true. You need to quell your own desires and fears just long enough to open yourself to learning who he really is. You need to ask him about all the things which you are afraid of the wrong answer. And when he says the wrong thing, or puts it in the wrong way, you need to get more details and dive deeper. Until you have a really true picture of who he is. And then you need to tell him everything in your head, and how you feel, and if you're lucky he will keep asking you more and digging deeper until he knows you. If you can be that open with him, and he you, and you still both accept each other, then there's love there. Real love.
Of course by that time you may decide he's not for you, and/or vice versa. But do you want love or romance? But seriously, real love is the most valuable, even if it's with a friend and not a lover.
Polly this is beautiful and needed as all of your writings always are! It makes me think on something agonizing though - how do you ever actually get over someone who seems so perfect and COOL and great for you? I fear never moving on, and I fear that some people are just made to live in that agony. I want a fuller, life and love. I don’t want to get stuck in my past. Gah!
This one just smacked me in the honey jar and made my eyes water (no really it’s just allergies! I’m allergic to minimizing myself for breadcrumbs but it’s just so tasty!).
LW, I hope this letter skewers your heart as well as it did mine.
You have such a gift, Polly, for taking what someone says and using it to arrive at what the situation really is. Someday, I really wish you would talk about how you process these letters - is it instinct, or do you keep asking questions and trying to find the answers in what is written (or not written)?
I am very often a lion trying to mould myself into a jar of honey. But I’m also very often the clumsy bear with the Princess Charming mask. And I guess the moral is here to be willing to show both the lion and the bear...
It’s deceptive to hide your vulnerability, but also deceptive to hide your strength. How does one navigate this right?
As always with Polly, this exposition is nuanced and empathic and true. And it gets to the blunt truths...eventually.
But I feel a need to emphasize one truth even more bluntly: A lie of omission is a LIE.
When you're performing romance with someone who adores you, it's a particularly CRUEL LIE.
If you're exchanging personal and intimate conversation with a person while withholding basic facts about your relationship status, you are no different from someone who takes off their wedding ring before entering a bar. You're trying to get something for nothing, based upon a deliberate lie.
That's a character issue. That's a betrayal of trust so profound that nothing healthy can grow from it.
And it's NOT ABOUT YOU. It's on him. The liar who never thinks about you and your needs in any serious way, not because he doesn't 'love' you, but because he isn't capable of that act of imagination.
Which is in the long run, as Polly says, really really boring.
Oh, Polly, thank you for this. I needed this three and four and five and six and seven years ago. But knowing me then, I would have read it and felt in my core that it were all true, but it would have been too scary to admit that, so I would have gone, "Ugh, she doesn't REALLY understand," and resumed my wallowing and pining and self-destructive behavior.
Dear OP, if you're reading this: Polly's right. She does understand. She really, really does. Take it from me. I had horrible, world-shaking, addictive loves with SEVERAL men who matched my enthusiasm for about three months before they unceremoniously dumped me/stopped talking to me/said they "didn't know what they wanted." One of them said I was his "DREAM GIRL" but "just didn't want to be with me" and he "didn't know why." One said he wanted to marry me and then chose his job instead, which was on the other side of the world. One wrote poetry with me and sang songs about me and said I Healed Him and MOVED TO MY CITY from ACROSS THE COUNTRY to be with me... And then dumped me literally two weeks later. Two weeks!!!! Why? Because he loved the idea of me, but not the reality. He loved the chase, but not the having. And then of course we somehow ended up dating for what became the worst year of my entire life, because he loved someone loving him so much, and I loved loving someone who didn't love me but MAYBE COULD if I TRIED HARD ENOUGH.
He literally told me that, OP. He literally said, to my face, "I think I just love how much you love me." And I went, yes!!!! This means I can love him EVEN HARDER and eventually I'll prove myself and he'll fall madly in love with me!!!
To make a long story short, it didn't happen, and I ended up in the hospital, and had a few really fucking shitty years where I had to untangle all my thoughts about myself and my past and my future and my relationships and the type of people I pursued. It sucked. It sucked baaaad.
AND--I'm married now, to a cis het man who is the epitome of "golden retriever gamer boyfriend" with "bi wife energy," AKA he is very sweet and kind and funny and talented and nerdy and loves me, the bi wife, with his whole heart. Me!!! The formerly unlovable loser!!!!!! And I love him back, safely and sanely!!!!! And we just celebrated our one year wedding anniversary!!!! I am truly more shocked than anyone.
Anyway, this is really long, but I just wanted to let you know, OP, that I get it. And I'm sorry. And my heart's hurting for you. But, most of all, Polly gets it, and her advice is spot-on, and if you really take it to heart and start answering some really hard questions about yourself honestly and vulnerably, and start pursuing people who ACTUALLY LIKE YOU (which will feel genuinely terrifying and maybe boring), and go to therapy and pursue your passions and wear bold lipstick sometimes (okay that's just a personal recommendation), you will find your match. Your actual match. Not your fantasy match.
I believe in you. Thank you for being brave enough to share your story.
Thank you again for your ability to see the core.
Interestingly enough, I've been the cartoon bear with its paw stuck in a jar of honey more than once. Never had I heard such an accurate description of what that feeling is like. And I've had been lucky enough to befriend some of the women I've seen as jars of honey afterwards and they told me how empty they felt afterwards.
It took me a while to become a "real bear" and stop looking for honey everywhere I went, and even after finding one growling "no thanks" and walking away.
This reminds me of the zebras who can’t read Nitzche. LW I guarantee in 2-3 years maybe even less the honey bear will (bc he’s a performer of some sort who gives interviews right?) do something so cringe abs needing to be adored that you will see it and have to close your labtop and laugh just to release all the tension caused by the cringe. He will still be handsome and you may even think it might be nice to be friends bc he’s interesting ? But you will never ever want to be his GF /partner again bc his need to be adored will be so visible and embarrassing that uneven desire will just... It will just evaporate with you becoming an adult and the bear with a mask remaining a honey bear.
Point....counterpoint....
LW if you truly love him, you need to know him fully, and he you. Most people only achieve this after being dragged kicking and screaming through a marriage with children and a million other of life's problems. If they miraculously come out the side, and assuming they are not just grossly conflict avoidant or co-dependent, they will really know each other, and just maybe, love each other. Sound like a high bar? Who would even want to smack there head into such a thing?
But you sort of have to go there. Fortunately for you, you only have your ego and feelings, and all your subterranean childhood fears to overcome. I know it's not easy, and frankly I don't think anyone really does it. Most are satisfied with focusing on the image we have of our significant other, and downplaying the other stuff which would otherwise burst that bubble.
But remember that trope, if you love someone let them go, yada yada yada. It's true. You need to quell your own desires and fears just long enough to open yourself to learning who he really is. You need to ask him about all the things which you are afraid of the wrong answer. And when he says the wrong thing, or puts it in the wrong way, you need to get more details and dive deeper. Until you have a really true picture of who he is. And then you need to tell him everything in your head, and how you feel, and if you're lucky he will keep asking you more and digging deeper until he knows you. If you can be that open with him, and he you, and you still both accept each other, then there's love there. Real love.
Of course by that time you may decide he's not for you, and/or vice versa. But do you want love or romance? But seriously, real love is the most valuable, even if it's with a friend and not a lover.
So says a stumbly, bumbly, bear.
Damn, Polly. You understand me better than my therapist.
You've got a knack for understanding the emotional workings of writer types.
My husband once said to me “sometimes you just think of me as a bear who’s going to eat all your jam, don’t you?” Now l call him Jam Bear
Polly this is beautiful and needed as all of your writings always are! It makes me think on something agonizing though - how do you ever actually get over someone who seems so perfect and COOL and great for you? I fear never moving on, and I fear that some people are just made to live in that agony. I want a fuller, life and love. I don’t want to get stuck in my past. Gah!
This one just smacked me in the honey jar and made my eyes water (no really it’s just allergies! I’m allergic to minimizing myself for breadcrumbs but it’s just so tasty!).
LW, I hope this letter skewers your heart as well as it did mine.
Absolutely some of the finer work of this current era of Ask Polly. No doubt about it.
Lord. You take my breath away.
The way you give language to things that we know are true but remain unspeakable blows me away. The cartoon bear!!!
I freaking love the animal metaphors. Thank you
Polly, this is incredible. Thank you for describing what this feels like so perfectly.