Cars.
El Caminos. Corvettes. You name it.
I have a confession to make. I was really really shallow when it came to what kind of car a guy drove.
Like it was a deal breaker.
Crazy, I know, but it was. For some reason, it just really mattered. Like the guy who drove the El Camino.
You know, that half-car, half-pickup truck contraption that must have been popular at one time or another.
Well, it wasn’t in the nineties when I went on a date with a guy who drove one of those, and while he was attractive and charming and had a number of other great qualities, he, well, he had that car.
So I went out with him a couple times, but I just couldn’t get past that car and I’d cringe every time he’d pull up to my condo to pick me up.
And then more things started to bug me about him until finally, I became really unavailable when we tried to find a time to go out.
So that was that.
But it would happen again, and again.
I was particularly stuck on corvettes. Something about a guy in a new fast corvette did it for me every time. Why, I don’t know. Except that maybe it had something to do with its image as a fast car.
And I, after all, was into that type of guy. A hot, fast, guy.
And you know what? I really thought I could take a hot, fast, guy and make him into a guy who would settle down with me and be my one and only hot, fast guy solely in love with me. In a committed relationship.
I really believed if I could just be everything he had ever wanted in a women, he’d fall madly in love with me and give up his entire single life. And that’s what I thought about every one of those types of guys that I was attracted to.
Now if I had just figured out where that path would eventually take me, I could have avoided all the pain and heartbreak I would incur by being attracted to that type of guy.
Because I hadn’t yet figured out that it wasn’t my place to change him in the first place. But like I said, I hadn’t figured that out yet.
But you can.
So take a little piece of advice from someone who’s been there, and rid yourself of any ideas that you can get a guy to change just by being all that. He’s got so much history and baggage and a host of other things that he brings to the relationship by the time the two of you get together, that there’s no way he’s going to change just because you’re all that.
And I’ll let you in on a secret; he knows it, too.
But he’s got his own reasons for the way he is, and you getting into that is only going to make you crazy while he still remains his own commitment-wary self. But I know, we want so badly to believe that we can make them change.
And because, sometimes, we fall that hard.
P.S. Check out the book Men Who Can’t Love – I wish I’d read it before I ever set eyes on a guy. But it still wouldn’t have convinced me that my guys weren’t the exception to the rule and that I wasn’t the one woman in the world who really could make a guy want to change. And you might be thinking that too. I understand. All too well. But sometimes hearing it from someone who’s been down that path and seeing where it got her can help us see the light more clearly for ourselves. I hope so.
Tara – after thinking about this a bit, I realized that it’s so easy to over-scrutinize and fixate on relatively minor things. When my husband picked me up for our first date, he was driving his beat up 10 year old Jeep Wrangler (the kind with the thin plastic windows). My younger self would have made up some excuse to end the night early and would have gotten out of there as fast as I could. But fortunately by then I had realized that surface things like what kind of car a guy drives aren’t really important. And while I was looking for the guy that showed he “had it all together” by driving the fancy, expensive sports car, it turns out that my husband chose the Jeep because he’s into getting out in nature (camping, hiking, etc.), and he’s very practical (Jeep Wrangler’s are relatively inexpensive and he drove it for 10 years) – both of which have turned out to be great qualities in a husband! I never would have found that out if I had ditched him right off the bat because of one of my “things”.
So that said, I certainly wouldn’t write off a guy because he was a cheerleader. In fact, my husband tells me that he had a few friends in college that were male cheerleaders and they were great guys. Also, a quick Google search turned up this article. Samuel Jackson and Michael Douglas? Sounds like your guy is in good company…
agreed. i will give it one more try! 😉
oh and he also reads my blog so i can't make fun of this just yet. 😉
haha for me... sometimes it's cars and sometimes it's something else. whatever the case is....i find something and fixate on it. for example,the guy i went out with the other night- told me during dinner that he was a former cheerleader. and i'm having a hard time getting over this!! 😉
I understand , I do this about clothes. No style = deal breaker. Shallow, I know....! Haha but cheerleading will have me worried too, its a bit too feminine!!
Xc
Hey, I was married for over 20 years to a man who was a cheerleader in college..doing all those stunts and throwing girls up in the air. He wasn't feminine...it takes a lot of strength to do all that. Also, my young cousin, also a great rugby and football player, went to college on a cheerleading scholarship...tossing girls in the air and doing flips. Not a feminine bone in his body..he is married with 2 kids and is almost done with pharmacy school. I understand the initial hangup about this...it turned me off a bit and made me a bit suspect, too...but...don't let it be a dealbreaker. I now see it for what it is...a very athletic...and pretty impressive when you watch...sport. My ex-husband used to say he was teased about it, but said part of the appeal of it was that he was around beautiful girls all the time! He was never without a girlfriend!