A Common Misperception in Personals
This morning in my inbox I received an email from a lovely and sensitive woman I’ve been corresponding with for awhile. She’s been depressed lately and her depression has been intensified by what she perceives as a “lack of solution” through the online personals. I asked her what she meant by this.
It was explained to me that she felt that since so many people were online looking for people, that surely her odds of having someone find her or vice versa would be increased tenfold. But when that lack of response came to the degree expected, she internalized this as a rejection and further proof that love was unobtainable for her. “It was my last ditch effort to improve my situation,” she finished. Her email ended with her telling me that she was just going to go to bed for awhile and pull the covers over her head. This woman is forty eight years of age.
Because I cared about her and because I’ve been in that “just-want-to-pull-the-covers-over-my-head” space, I went back to our past emails and re-read them carefully, hoping to find something that might give me a deeper understanding of this “all or nothing” kind of perception.
What I found was that she had pinned her hopes of fixing her life by finding that “one and only man for me” through placing her ad. Her marriage to her husband, whom she was still married to, had corroded so much of her confidence in herself over the years that she was almost frantically hoping that in placing an ad, that someone would come along, discover the hidden treasure that she was and rescue her. It is a fantasy that many women and even men, have. But so much more us women.
I am a part of a writers group and some of our time is spent on going back in time to stories that we listened to and read as children that may have influenced our thinking and beliefs about love itself. A common thread in fairy tale stories is of the good-hearted, often mistreated female being swept away by life until a prince arrives on the scene, sees her as an undiscovered and overlooked treasure, and sweeps her off her feet to a much better life. It is a tantalizing thought. It is also one that many gown women unconsciously carry. But as Life shows us, there is a great deal of difference between wishes and what is real.
For any person that unconsciously goes looking and posting through the personals as a “last ditch effort” to find love, it can be an almost forgone conclusion that their efforts will result in further disappointment and discouragement. This will almost always happen when a person who is incomplete within themselves is fervently hoping that someone will come along and pick them up, thereby their focus being on what the other person can do for them rather than what they have to offer. Having trouble? What are you offering?