Just be yourself

I had previously urged you--independently and by quoting the wise women at Jezebel, among others--to drown out the noise about what's wrong with you. Yes, you should dump the asshole who makes you feel bad about yourself. There's no room in a healthy relationship for "I love you despite..." or "I'd love you more if..." You accept the person as-is, or you go find someone you can accept as-is. I also urge you to ignore well-meaning busybodies outside the relationship who tell you how to be. Note: I'm not saying we can't all work on our relationship skills and manage the things that can work better, but there's a difference between, for example, asking someone to adjust the way he or she communicates, and asking him or her to be a different person.

Most of the above links discuss physical appearance, but the last one also talks about personality, demeanor, and bearing. Or as Jay would say, quoting "Steel Magnolias," one's carriage and demeanor. Mom, you will have noticed, has increasingly shifted the proportion of her nagging from physical appearance to matters of carriage and demeanor: I'm too harsh and cold, and insufficiently feminine and "kitten-like."

And don't forget that I'm an extremist, because of the way I eat. On that last one, I think I told you that a guy essentially said to me, "I'd be willing to go out with you, even though I'm not thrilled with this vegan thing." Take it or leave it. You either have a problem with it or you don't. But the more relevant point there is, as I wrote about the other day, if vegan [or insert other dietary habit here] is who you are and you believe in it, the worst thing you can do is betray that part of yourself to increase your dating pool. Who am I to tell you what the worst thing to do is, but I will anyway: the worst thing you can do is to try to be somebody else.

The bulk of my friends' reactions to mom's most recent antics fall into two, non-mutually-exclusive categories: (1) She's delusional/that's really not you at all/where would she even get that stuff and (2) Why do you even have a relationship with her? She's toxic, and you need to get out. But there's a third, along the lines of, "even to the extent that you are less effusively warm-and-fuzzy, that's who you are, and you couldn't or shouldn't change that."

Take my mom's "carriage and demeanor" accusations--I'm cold, harsh, and overbearing, I talk too much, I'm insufficiently feminine, etc. Especially the last one. You know what? Just like there are married women of all weights, skin tones, skin qualities, etc., there are married women of all dispositions. I'm not even going to argue this one, because it's been said so well here, in response to Tracy McMillan's words that,

I am the mother of a 13-year-old boy, which is like living with the single-cell protozoa version of a husband. Here’s what my son wants out of life: macaroni and cheese, a video game, and Kim Kardashian. Have you ever seen Kim Kardashian angry? I didn’t think so. You’ve seen Kim Kardashian smile, wiggle, and make a sex tape.

The response: "I hate to tell you, lady, but dudes mature after thirteen."

If you'd like, we can come back to the fact that I'm single. If you should choose that as a basis for rolling your eyes when I say, "just be yourself," you're missing the point. What makes anyone think that you're going to be happier, married as not yourself, than single, as yourself? At least you get to be yourself. And if you're yourself, you can actually build relationships based on truth and a genuine connection. At the very least, you can be happy in your own skin.