Putting the “end” in “friend”

Yesterday morning, I had a perfectly friendly phone conversation with someone who’s been acting as my self-appointed “life coach” for a few months. We’d been out of touch for a couple of weeks, so it was time for a check-in. He asked about my hair (still growing), my weight (at my goal and holding), my chest cold (gone at last, although he clucked like a mother hen about how important it was for me to stay out of the rain for a while longer). Then he made an extremely earthy comment about sex. He’s characteristically blunt and I am demonstrably hard to shock, so I assumed he was, as they say, having me on a bit. I laughed and replied that I was willing to acknowledge that there’s always room to learn new things, but that I didn’t think I needed coaching in that regard. We moved on to other topics. Eventually, we agreed to meet for coffee on some future, less rainy day, and I got back to work, thinking nothing of it.

Eight hours later, I received email saying he felt he’d crossed a line, was sorry, had realized that he was becoming uncomfortable in our friendship, and was therefore letting me know that he had decided to draw it to a close. Have a nice life, bye.

Imagine my astonishment.

I never asked for someone to manifest in my life in a coach/mentor role — he suggested it. For reasons I still don’t understand, he took me on as a bit of a project, volunteering to help me approach the second half of my life with a bit more grace and savoir-faire than I used in careening through the first half. Yes, he advised me about improving my appearance, because that’s one of his areas of expertise. But we also spent a lot of time sitting around over coffee, talking about philosophy, literature, and so forth. When I was sick last month, he dropped cold medicine in my mailbox and called me every few days to check on me. I never experienced his attention as a come-on; it was a teacherly/parental vibe.

I graciously accepted all of his advice, took on what made sense to me, experimented with a few things that pushed my limits, and quietly ignored what clearly wasn’t for me. His pontificating and opining sometimes worked my nerves, and I sometimes felt that he simply liked having an audience, but in truth, there was a lot of wheat among that chaff. Every time we had a conversation, I literally sat for half an hour afterwards writing out notes. He told me several times, sometimes in exactly these words, “I see a lot of potential in you, and I want to help you achieve it.” I welcomed that as something I haven’t had much of in my life. Hell, I ate it up. I’d be lying through my shiny white teeth if I said I wouldn’t miss it.

What’s really interesting, though, is my response to this abrupt and unexpected ending. My first reaction was, “Oh no, what did I do wrong?” That startled me. As I thought about it more, I discovered two uncomfortable truths:

First, while I ordinarily balk at authority figures and rebel whenever I perceive that someone is trying to control me, I really liked having this parent/teacher/mentor figure telling me what to do. And second, I really liked the approval and praise I got when I followed his instructions.

On some level, there’s still a little kid in me who feels confused by the world, very much in need of guidance, and grateful to receive it from someone delivering it in a kind way. That little kid was thinking, “Finally! Someone who has the answers and can give them to me! Someone who can tell me how to get where I want to go!” Now she feels like she’s been told, “Yes, I have the answers, but I’m not going to share them, because I’ve decided you don’t deserve them after all.”

But the truth is, the adult in me knows damn well that whatever my friend’s reason for slamming the door in my face (and that’s precisely what it feels like), it has nothing to do with me, nothing at all. I still have every bit of potential, regardless of whether or not someone else sees and comments on it. It’s up to me to bring it out and put it on display. And I guess that’s my erstwhile coach’s final, and most valuable, lesson.

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Too picky

Yesterday, as I was roaming the city with my camera, my lens cap flew off one too many times, so I ducked into a camera shop on Stockton (or maybe it was Grant) in search of a lens cap leash. I found one, and as long as I was there, I asked the guy to price both a 70-200 lens and a 70-300, and asked his opinion on which he thought was better. After a few minutes of chatting about photography, he got a bit flirty and asked if I was single. I could clearly see he was wearing a wedding ring and he could clearly see I wasn’t, so I shrugged and said yes. He said he found that surprising, given my looks and personality — okay, I do like a nice compliment — but then he said it: “I bet it’s because you’re too picky.”

Now, I realize that the cultural zeitgeist has currently decreed that a straight woman over 30 who’s not coupled up is stubbornly and shallowly holding out for a mythical Perfect 10 rather than giving a fair shake to the poor 6s and 7s she’s overlooking for the minor crime of not having enough money or enough hair. (I also realize that there are, in fact, women who do that, just as some men out there are convinced that even though they’re pretty damn average, they need to stay single because Heidi Klum is going to show up on their doorstep any day now.) And given this ongoing frame that single women are single not only because they expect the moon and stars, but because they don’t realize that’s their problem — this man felt free both to leap to conclusions about me and to voice them, despite knowing nothing about me other than my predilection for Canon cameras.

Yet many women are single not because they expect too much, but because they don’t expect enough — or to be more precise, we expect disappointment. We believe another pernicious canard: if we want love at all, we have to endure the unreliable, uninterested, or unavailable. That’s all that’s left, so we should make the best of it. We know we’re dating frogs and not princes, but we think maybe if we just kiss them enough…

The thing is, if I was judging the state of modern man based only on the festival of misogyny that was yesterday’s Super Bowl advertising, I would be convinced that it’s raining frogs. Madison Avenue apparently believes that if it sank a drill into the male psyche, it would release a gusher of fear and resentment toward women so powerful that we should be terrified to be alone in a room with any boy older than, say, 14. In the world of Sunday’s ads, men now consider women such universally emasculating killjoys that only buying Bud Light, Dockers pants, and a Dodge Charger will prevent their penises from falling off en masse.

And not wanting this makes women too picky?

Fortunately, I have many men-friends who prove Madison Avenue wrong. They’re contentedly, even blissfully coupled and feel their lives are bigger and better for it. If one defines “too picky” as “At a bare minimum, I deserve someone like that, someone who thinks I’m so wonderful that he wants to enjoy my company frequently and exclusively,” well, then, picky is well worth aspiring to be.

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