Softboy needs a woman. He deserves a woman.
He is one of the kindest, most loving, gentle, protective men that I have ever met. Totally honest and devoted.
And yet he is alone.
He was talking me through the women who had been in his life. Some had treated him badly, with others it had been a mutual parting of the ways.
But the one he remembers most clearly is the girl who adored him and wanted to settle down with him. He turned away from her because he felt that life had more to offer.
Looking back, he regrets that decision bitterly. Walking away from love as an immature young man was a big mistake. He could have achieved so much more with a woman beside him who loved him for him.
I read this over at Betty’s Head. I’ve had to quote from the post because the set-up doesn’t seem to allow individual post urls.
“I feel safe enough with him that I can surrender. I can surrender my judgement, I can surrender my physical body, I can surrender my need to control. I trust his judgement as much as I trust my own.
The problem is that with each visit with him, each surrendering of myself to him, I invest another little part of my heart. I hand it to him, each time, asking him without words to keep my heart safe. Ironically, he can’t do that. He can’t promise to keep it safe and yet every time, I hand him another piece. It’s a risky business what I’m doing right now.
Times like right now, when I haven’t seen him for two days, when I don’t know when or even if I will ever see him again, I feel stupid for being so trusting. I feel foolish for allowing the love I feel for him to grow into such a monstrosity without asking anything from him in return. Part of me wishes that I was type of woman who could manipulate him into loving me, or at least wanting to possess me, which is really all that lightening bolt is. It’s a need to possess. It’s not love. The love comes later. The intense need to possess is what propels so many relationships forward.
I don’t want to possess, I don’t want to be possessed. I want to surrender. I want to trust and be trusted. I want to know in my heart that nothing could tempt me to do anything to discourage that trust. I had that knowledge when I was married and I have that knowledge now.
You want to know something else? He trusts me. I’m on his short list. He trusts me as much as he will ever be able to trust any woman not related to him by blood. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the desire to possess me because I’ve never given him a chance to. I gave myself to him with no work at all on his part, so that possessiveness was never aroused in him.
I have considered employing the feminine wiles espoused by my friends, by my mother, by all the dating experts online and in books, but I simply can’t do that. I can’t intentionally manipulate him, can’t intentionally invoke even the slightest bit of emotional pain on this man, even if it costs me….him. To employ such methods would violate his trust in me, and I don’t ever want to do that.
It’s a conundrum. It is painful to know that he is still looking, still cannot look into his heart and see me there. It’s sad to think that if only I was a little less trustworthy, I might be able to capture his heart.
I might be able to possess him.
I don’t want that.
It’s simply not worth giving up his trust, because when push comes to shove, I’d rather keep his trust. I’d rather live in his memory as the one woman in his life who never deceived him.”
This was my reply.
I can empathise with this totally. I wrote a post recently called I’m Gonna Make You Love Me which explains it in a bit more detail.
I think you’re doing the right thing. All those wiles that women use to entrap a man, he remembers them. I wanted Ruf to view me as someone he chose to be with. I had to open myself up so that he could feel safe. To establish an intimacy that was so natural and instinctive that, no matter what his head said, his heart and soul wanted to be with me.
For two or three years, his words of dismissal hurt me time and again but, looking back, I realise that was how I earned the love he shows me now.
Follow your heart. Be yourself. Don’t listen to other people – their relationships make them how they are. I didn’t want one like that.
Perhaps it won’t work for Betty and her beau. Maybe he will meet someone else. But he will always remember her fondly and, one day, when someone is treating him particularly badly, he will ponder upon his decisions.
It made me think of Softboy’s regret over the woman he threw away.
Recent Bites