Perfection Sucks

Still on the same subject, I hope that you are not rolling your eyes at me..but this subject is near and dear to my heart. Too many women are silently dealing with these things and being told by the media and their own minds that it is their lack of desirability that makes their mates ignore them.

One of the things I learned during this time was that the problem, MY problem was not with Marc it was within me.

Yes, married people should be having incredible sex. Yes…one spouse should not withold from another…but..at the same time, my validation was focused squarely on Marc’s response to me, and that made me vulnerable for a stumble into infidelity. I found that when men complimented me, I had a physical response that I had to quickly suppress. Between my upbringing, and Marc’s seeming (to me) unresponsivenss it did not take much for another man to, even unknowingly, start my engines.

That frightened me because I did not want to fall into lust, and I certainly did not want to have an affair. I knew that I had to deal with my own issues and trust that God would begin to deal with Marc’s.

For me, feeling not quite good enough my whole life had created a vulnerability to appreciation. I tend to crave it. The first thing I had to do was change the voice in my head that constantly told me how ugly I was, what a screw up I was, how I never did anything right.

I wish I could say that I overcame that voice. I have not. I still battle with those things. At a size 10 I consider myself grossly overweight, altho most others do not. I not only do not think I am attractive, anytime that I feel unnoticed by Marc I can fall into despondancy because, “if only I was attractive he would notice me” If I make a mistake I immediately berate my stupidity and am so humiliated that I want to fall through the floor. And I am almost OCD about doing things carefully so as not to screw up.

Sorry, this is just the for-real-part of me. This is what I struggle with. It isn’t cool, elegant, funny, or amazing. I am not superwoman. I am not even perfect…and I has taken me years to be able to openly admit it…not because of pride but because of fear of rejection. Only perfection was tolerated in my home growing up. I was told as a 14 year old size 7 (5′4″) that I was chubby and needed to lose weight…among other things. I was given a standard, an almost impossible standard to live up to and I tried my very best to do it.

I brought that standard for myself into my marriage…I would get up before MArc and put makeup on, have breakfast started….I did not know how to cook very well because I had not been allowed in the kitchen so while he was at work I would make dinner over and over again until I had something that could be served. It went on and on…Perfect wife, perfect mom, perfect…

But I could not get it right in the bedroom…surely a perfect lover would create desire in the beloved? Surely a perfect lover would figure out what to wear, what to say, what to do to make things passionate? Playful? Intense?

I had failed. Nothing I did made a difference and the failure seemed to rest squarely on me.

So you see, it was imperative that I allow Marc to take responsibility for his own feelings and that I not allow myself to feel responsible to keep everything juggled and balanced properly. I had to step out of the limelight and realize that it was not all about me all of the time. In a twisted way this is self centeredness. Not what you would normally think of as being self centered, but self centered none-the-less.

I began talking myself up in the mirror. Looking into my own eyes and telling myself the things I needed to hear.

Geeez, I felt stupid.

But you know what, over a period of time it worked. I began to be built up and able to see Marc’s issues as his own, something that saddened me but that I could not, and did not need to manipulate or control.

Image:Morguefile