Professional Documents
Culture Documents
And to Stephanie,
the best naked date ever.
I adore you.
www.stmartins.com
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LESSON #1
We Learn . . .
Sharing Our Feelings Is Stupid
(or Just a Very Bad Idea)
I t all starts with a first crush. That’s when we first smell danger.
It’s also when we first learn that sharing our feelings is a VERY
BAD idea or just plain stupid. From the first “like” our knee-jerk
reaction is to avoid letting anyone know. We might confide in a
friend or two, but the only way we are willing to openly share our
feelings is if we are 100 percent certain the person we like will like
us back.
We’ll flirt, ask friends to ask questions, creep on Facebook, ogle,
Google, and investigate, but rarely say what we feel. We get as much
information as possible without letting the people we like know we
like them. We want to know if someone is available and interested.
We ask friends to do our dirty work for us. The reason we use
friends is so we can distance ourselves far enough to deny our feel-
ings ever existed should the person we like not reciprocate or others
find out about them. Technology and friends give us a safe buffer
to cast blame and run like hell should rejection or humiliation
find us.
As a result, we have imaginary relationships with people who
don’t know they’re in relationships with us (thank you, Facebook).
We get jealous of people who like the people we secretly like. We
8 GE T TING NAKED
have friends find out information about the people we like, which
inadvertently gets the people we like interested in our friends be-
cause they are the only ones talking. Most friends won’t date the
people we like, but some will. It’s difficult not to blame them. It’s
hard to meet people.
If we do share our feelings and our crush shares our interest
we breathe a sigh of relief. If a crush doesn’t share our feelings the
results can be devastating. It only reaffirms why it was wrong and
stupid for us to share our feelings in the first place. We quickly
learn that sharing our feelings and not having them reciprocated
is about the worst thing that can happen. We can’t stand the pain
of not being liked by the people we like. If other people find out
it’s that much more humiliating. So we learn to hide our feelings
and run like hell when we smell rejection coming.
Step 1 will give you the power to say and do what you feel without
the fear of being rejected and/or humiliated.
W hen a crush doesn’t want us, we think: It’s me. I’m ugly, un-
attractive, and not good enough. No one will want me. I’m
defective. And why do we think this? It’s what we’re told. It’s what we
tell ourselves. It’s what we hear other people saying about the people
we watch share their feelings and get crushed. We forget the undeni-
able fact that not everyone we like will always like us. We just see
rejection as meaning we are defective. It’s all we’re equipped to think
at first. Some of us never change that self-destructive thinking.
If you want to listen to people say horrible things to one an-
other, hang out in a junior high school cafeteria. Teenagers can be
mean (understatement of the book). Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds
are some of the most dangerous of the human species. Adjectives
like “desperate,” “disgusting,” “stupid,” “slutty,” “flat,” “fat,” “short,”
“stinky,” “horny,” “ugly,” “creepy,” and all other horrible words that
tear people down are part of regular conversations among friends.
And I understand why it happens. It’s hard to be comfortable in
your own skin when you’re a prepube with raging hormones and
hair sprouting from random places. The goal is to make everyone
feel like less so we can feel like more, only everyone ends up feeling
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like less. And it sets us all up to feel defective when it comes to the
world of dating and relationships.
Rejection is hard enough to handle at any age, but rejection
in a world where everyone already feels so uncomfortable makes
it unbearable. No one wants to be reminded that he or she isn’t good
enough. So to avoid feeling defective, we learn it’s safer, smarter,
and easier to keep our feelings a secret—that is, unless we’re ap-
proached by someone who wants us or we know with absolute
certainty that someone we want won’t reject us. Then we can con-
sider letting down our guard and being vulnerable.
What’s wild is that we can feel completely defective, hate shar-
ing our feelings, and still find love (or just hook up). Feeling defec-
tive and being in an intimate relationship can be a dangerous
combination. It’s hard to demand and command respect when
you’re not sure anyone else will want you. It’s easier to make excuses
for people who treat us poorly, take back partners who treat us like
crap, and hang on to flings that should have been flung. It’s impos-
sible to see that we have options when we are just so grateful that
someone could love someone as defective as we might be. We learn
that to be with anyone means to be rescued from the land of the
single and searching.
Step 2 will help make you feel good enough and hot enough—
always.
Why We Think Men Are Assholes, Women Are Bitches 11
Step 3 will force you to stop making excuses and help you make
dating as easy as, if not easier than, hooking up.
Why We Think Men Are Assholes, Women Are Bitches 15
Source: The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run
Into in College