Part 2: On Lowering the Bar
Last time, I addressed how dating should feel different from starting a diet. Today, I want to talk about the other message from my client’s book (but one that I see all the time in Buzzfeed articles and advice or self-help posts for women who date men): that you, the dating female, are probably setting your sights too high and should lower the bar. Of course, women aren’t the only ones who get this message, but it’s overwhelmingly aimed at women, and in particular women who date men.
In over 11 years of working as a psychotherapist, I’ve never worked with a woman who needed to set her sights lower when it comes to dating. What I usually hear is the story of a talented, intelligent, vibrant woman who tolerates behavior that varies from inconsiderate or insensitive, to rude, to chronically mean, to emotionally, sexually, and even physically abusive. That woman then tells me all the reasons why it could be worse, or how much worse her friend actually has it, or how bad her significant other’s childhood/last serious relationship/stressful job was/is, so really it’s not their fault, and she could do a lot worse, and maybe she’s setting him/her/them off by expecting too much/too little/not being clear/being too clear/not communicating/communicating too much/being too sensitive/not being sensitive enough, etc.
Let me be clear: the harder you have to work to create a narrative of “okayness” for your partner’s behavior, the less okay their behavior likely is. I will address specific examples of this (and scripts/tips for staying out of that cycle) in a future blog post, but essentially, I observe this very common cycle:
Significant other (or date-person) does something hurtful.
Woman exerts impressive and extraordinary amounts of mental energy trying to construct a mental story that would make that hurtful behavior “okay.”
For example: He’s been super stressed lately, he told me he’s not good at communication, he said he was really tired and maybe that’s why he’s so irritable all the time, I shouldn’t need him to ask me about my day . . .
This pays off in that she can now stay with the person who did the hurtful thing, which
Happens again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, she works harder and harder to write that mental story that would make this okay behavior, or that even makes her responsible for the not-okay behavior.
This cycle is allllll about settling, about setting sights lower, about lowering the bar. “He doesn’t abuse me,” the chorus goes, or, later, “he doesn’t abuse abuse me.” That’s what it comes down to when we tell women to lower their sights, to lower the bar: “Am I being abused? Because if I’m not, I should stay.” Is that what any of us want? Is that meeting anyone’s needs? There’s a lot of rude, inconsiderate, thoughtless, selfish, manipulative, hurtful, chronically mean-spirited behavior that we may or may not consider abuse, but does calling it “selfish” or “mean-spirited” really make it more okay to tolerate long-term than calling it “abusive?” We don’t have to officially pathologize or diagnose everything just to give ourselves permission not to tolerate it. Someone doesn’t have to have a diagnosis of malignant narcissism, for example, for us to know that they shouldn’t be elected to public office or be entrusted with the care of other people.
My experience is not that there are women crossing romantic partners off their list of potential mates because their jaws aren’t square enough/bodies aren’t perfect enough, or they’re not over 6 feet tall or they don’t make a six-figure salary. I have literally never known anyone, professionally or personally, who did this (if you’re doing this, please stop! See my next blog post about how dating should be different than ordering off a menu!). My experience is that bright, vibrant people with so much to give, who express reasonable, normal relational needs are actually setting their sights depressingly low, and then telling themselves—or being told—to lower them more still.
I spoke last time about the importance of appreciating yourself realistically but genuinely. When you’re able to take compassionate stock of yourself, and you’re moving in a direction that is in line with your core values, you feel intuitively that you should be treated humanely and respectfully. Sometimes in order to get to that place, we have to re-evaluate or even re-write the story we’ve been told all our lives about what kind of treatment we deserve from others, and that may involve healing and grieving how painful that first story is. Therapy is the best tool for that kind of healing, because it provides a completely safe relationship in which to explore the feelings and memories associated with those first, painful stories.
When we’ve done that healing, or as we’re doing it, we can begin to trust our subjective experience of someone else’s behavior as hurtful. That means that we don’t have to ask a dozen friends or go digging online to see if the hurtful behavior was pathological or if it matches clinical narcissism or whatever—if it hurt your feelings, feel free to say something! The reaction you get will be incredibly informative. If you’re completely unable to imagine saying something, that’s also very informative. It may mean that you’re so unused to giving those feelings voice that you feel frozen, in which case it’s time to get help accessing and expressing that self-advocacy voice, or it may mean that the “rules” of your relationship are such that you’ve learned never to speak up about those feelings, because it’s not safe or it makes your partner feel bad or get depressed or upset or angry or blame you, etc. Time to set your sights higher. That’s not an experience you need to have in a relationship, and you can walk away.
Whatever the information you gather from this process of doing things differently, it will help you understand yourself and what you want and need in relationships better. And that, in turn, will help you set your sights exactly where they need to be set to help you have the kind of experience you want to have in future relationships.
Of course, there is a personal responsibility piece of this, and that’s what we’ll talk about in my next post!
