I Wanted to Believe a Man

“You want to believe him,” I say to my friend. “That’s the problem.”

She shakes her head in agreement.

“I wanted to believe a man,” I say. “I wanted to believe my Text Guy last month. Something told me he was lying to me. I knew better. But I wanted to believe him.”

“I know,” she says.

“I don’t need attention,” I say. “I don’t need a distraction. It’s not who I am. But I was hurting. And that pain made me want a distraction. It made me want attention. It made me go against my better instincts. It made me want to believe a man when I knew down deep that I shouldn’t.”

My friend and I have both been hurt recently.

It made us want a distraction.

A distraction that didn’t turn out well for either of us.

We should have sat with ourselves. We should have let the dust settle. Instead, we dove back into dating. Ironically, we are two of the women who waited to date.

We worked on ourselves, and healing.

Why?

So that something like this wouldn’t happen to us.

We would learn from our mistakes, and make better choices in the next man. We knew it wouldn’t necessarily be wise to jump from a painful divorce into the dating pool.

We had already lied to ourselves during our marriages.

We had already believed in a man that we shouldn’t have believed in.

We were ready for a good man.

The kind of guy who would protect our heart, not break it. The kind of guy who would make our world feel safe, not unpredictable. The kind of guy who would fully love us, not only himself.

The kind of guy we could believe, not doubt.

The kind of guy we could trust.

It doesn’t seem like a big ask. It doesn’t seem outrageous. It doesn’t seem unreasonable. It doesn’t seem impossible. Yet in the divorced dating world it seems elusive. It shouldn’t be.

It should be a fair trade.

One good man for one good woman.

I once wrote, Sometimes We Lie More to Ourselves in Relationships — Than our partner lies to us. We tell ourselves what we want to hear. Because the truth is more painful.

We’re in denial.

I knew the guy I was talking to last month wasn’t being straight with me.

Initially, I didn’t.

But as time evolved, I began to suspect he was lying.

I’ve spent more than a decade in the counseling, and research of love and relationships. I’m not someone who can lie to myself. I’ve had too great of an emotional education.

I knew what I was doing.

I knew I wanted to believe him.

I knew I wanted him to prove me wrong.

I would tell him I didn’t believe him. He would get annoyed that I questioned him. He was good at countering my suspicions. I would accept what he told me.

But there was a reason that I had suspicions.

The other red flag?

The anger he expressed when I questioned him. It was manipulation. It was turning his lies into outrage. He was creating a smoke screen. He was attempting to confuse me.

There’s another term used for this…

Gaslighting.

My friend is smart.

She knows her gut instincts evolved for a reason. She knows the dating journey she’s been on. She understands she didn’t suddenly wake up doubting a man.

She was spotting bread crumbs.

Each one placing more doubt in her mind.

Still, it doesn’t matter.

She wants to believe a man. She wants to believe he’s telling her the truth. She wants to believe the words he’s spoken to her. She wants to believe his feelings are genuine. She wants to believe it’s real.

She can’t process that it might have been one-sided.

She can’t fathom being used, or lied to.

She rejects the idea that she could have been that ‘stupid.’ A word I use loosely. Because it’s how we feel when a man lies to us. But we shouldn’t feel stupid. We were simply trusting.

I get it.

Neither could I.

But we’re in a new world.

A divorced world of dating. We don’t need attention. We don’t need a distraction. But sometimes we do. When we’re not ready to get over one man, and we jump back into the dating pool anyway.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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