Girl, Respect Yourself

This is a familiar scene to every girl: You meet a guy you like. He’s smart, bookish, and nerdy in all the ways you are attracted to. There is only one caveat — the whole time you’ve spent time with him, on every single one of your dates, he has not asked you a single question about your interests. None.

You’ve heard him talk about World War II. You’ve heard all the reasons why a Tesla actually saves you more money in the long run. You’ve listened to him ramble endlessly about his thoughts about our crumbling democracy and the class struggle and the fact that he exists outside the political spectrum and about how he wants to be a writer except he hasn’t published a manuscript or really anything at all because he is still “working on it” even though he has been talking about publishing a novel for years.

One thing he hasn’t talked about: You.

Every time you try to respond to him with something interesting, so that he thinks you’re well-read and “actually pretty smart”, he responds with an even more extended monologue reexplaining what you have just said, but with more detail, research and references. All of which is fine, you think. At least you are learning something, right?

Eventually, you start to wonder why you do all of this: Listen to him for hours and never have yourself listened to. Reply to his messages with long-winded, well-thought-out, independently researched paragraphs, only for him to shift the conversation back to himself and his interests. You wonder why you chose to continue a one-sided conversation — why you decided to stay in a one-sided relationship, over and over again.

There’s a name for this phenomenon: Fawning. To fawn means to try to win favour by flattering someone. It is an evolutionary phenomenon. Just as six-month-old roe fawns are vulnerable and find ways to ensure their safety — flattery being one of them — so do young girls, using fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

The 4 Fs of Trauma refer to the four ways a person is instinctively wired to respond to trauma. In particular, many women are socially trained to please others to appease threats or gain the affection of agents who might protect them. These trauma responses are often not conscious choices, but are instinctive survival responses.

While the fawn instinct is unconscious and is not your fault, it is still your responsibility to recognise when it does happen and if it is disadvantageous to you. This is what it means to respect yourself: To be conscious of our choices and protect ourselves from people who actively disrespect us.

If all a guy talks about is himself and his interests, it is not because his interests are inherently superior to yours or that he is more deserving of attention. While you try to be polite and listen to him, he is either blissfully unaware of his rudeness or plainly does not care. Therefore, either he is of low emotional intelligence, or he doesn’t think you are deserving of respect — both of which are situations where you don’t want to waste time dealing with.

A litmus test to see whether he is truly deserving of your admiration or is just a self-absorbed asshole is to try to imagine your female friend being treated like that on a date. What would you tell her? As a matter of fact, if you saw your younger self being treated like that, what would you advise her? What advice does your younger self need at that moment?

There’s a saying that a good man is just an average woman. Maybe that is true. Perhaps you are bound to encounter way more shitty dates with a socially inept, narcissistic, self-mythologising douchebag who thinks he is a walking encyclopedia.

But you know you deserve to be treated better than this. You deserve someone who listens to you just as much as you listen to them. You deserve someone as good a friend to you as your supportive female friends. A self-respecting person does not waste time on things or people who do not deserve it.

There’s a reason why you ask other people questions on dates — why you listen to them and compliment them kindly. Thus far, you have consistently followed the principles of empathy, compassion, and respecting others. If you apply these standards to your own behaviour, what is stopping you from applying these standards to others?

Girl, respect yourself.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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