The Commitmentphobes Guide to Getting the Love That Terrifies You

If you are curious about the resurgence in my blog writing after the hiatus, it's because I'm injured...again; one of the job hazards of teaching white belts is that they are very clumsy. A student fell on me, breaking two toes. I'm still teaching Spin and Karate, but no hiking or biking in my "spare" time.

I’m in the best of both worlds at the moment. I’m in the moony, happy, make others sick first stages of a new relationship. That relationship having grown out of a solid friendship, there is all the bliss with (almost) none of the game playing. Being with a man who does not play head games or hide his feelings is so novel to me, I get confused.  I also get a little panicked.

I might be a bit of a commitmentphobe….but I am trying to work on it. The entire reason I’ve had a lot of bad boyfriends isn’t that I’m “unlucky in love”. It’s because I am subconsciously attracted to men who I have absolutely no chance of having a successful relationship with. Some commitmentphobes form attachments to the unattainable, they pick an object of affection who lives far away, is already in a relationship or has some other large barrier to being together. This way they can have all the drama of being in love without all that messy actually working at having a relationship. I go the other way; I am attracted to guys who are carrying around so much emotional baggage they can hardly stand upright. The type who run away the moment they start feeling close, only to come back again when they sense I am getting fed up. They are the ones who pursue a girl like their life depends on getting her, and then neglect her and emotionally push her away until she’s halfway out the door, then do everything they can to pull her back, all the time blaming her for “always creating drama”. I call them Lava Lamp Boyfriends.

Enter the nice guy. After years of dating Lava Lamps, I’ve met a guy who is sweet, expressive, honest and completely trustworthy. He’s also athletic, outdoorsy and fixes things like bikes….and boy can he climb a hill on his bike *swoon. Before he ever read my blog he was a perfect checklist of the etiquette that impresses me so. We are so compatible that I am starting to think I have entirely imagined him. Sure, he’s a bit younger….ok, he’s a lot younger, but he’s an old soul, I’m a young spirit and cougars are in this season. I am not making it sound impossibly perfect, it is impossibly perfect – and that’s what sets off my commitmentphobic panic alarm.

The first round of panic came early on when discussing his Movember facial hair and he said “just wait six months when it’s big and bushy”. Granted, I don’t generally like facial hair and so he thinks the look of panic on my face was at the thought of a bushy “mountain man” beard, but  it was that harmless enough sounding phrase “just wait six months”. I don’t ever plan anything more than 3 weeks in advance with someone I am dating. I once broke up with a boyfriend (years ago), because he talked about teaching me to ski and we had started dating in May. I squelched the panic and convinced myself he was just goading me over the goatee.

Panic number two involved the perfect gift and a huge timeline.  I am a nature loving, get dirty in the outdoors kind of gal (my guy calls me “Granola Hot”, a categorization of women I did not know existed until now). In fact it was a long hike in the woods that made us both realize our friendship could cross the line at any minute if we dared to let it. I also love homemade gifts and prefer to be picked flowers than sent them so what my guy did shows just how well he truly understands me. He is growing me a tree. “What?” “I am growing you a tree, do you want to see it?” flipping through the photos on his phone. “It won’t be ready for 3 years though. There are three, I have a tree, there’s one for my dad and you have a tree.”

Breathe, breathe, breathe. On the one hand, a guy who would grow me a tree gets me better than anyone I’ve ever dated. On the other, he’s planning to give me a gift in three years….Slow, deep breaths - in for four, out for four. Don’t Panic! It’s a wonderful gift and the fact that he is thinking long term is a good thing. These are the conversations I have with myself regularly so I don’t start to sabotage with one of the many stupid things I do to get in the way of my own happiness.

I’m not a horoscope kind of person. I read them for amusement but put absolutely no stock in them. I have a friend who does. We share the same horoscope, as does my guy and my best friend, and some of the things she tells me about the personality of our sign are pretty dead on. Years ago she told me, “Pisces are like all fish, try to grab them and they will dart away from you in fear. Swim up next to them and they will swim with you forever.” So maybe, just maybe, since we are two fish and don’t have anything to grab with, we can swim through this relationship ocean together happy and only mildly panicked.

Job Hazards and Personal Disasters

Coming from both a training and a theatre background I have friends who hate exercise, friends who are athletes, friends who are fit and friends who used to be athletes but currently hate exercise. The latter is where our story begins today.

Years ago I vowed never to train family or loved ones. Whenever I have tried to personal train someone close to me it has turned out disastrous. First, they have the lowest compliance with the programs I have created for them. Second, they try to bargain their way out of doing the workouts THEY approached ME to design for them. And, they argue with me when I try to correct their form, something that drives me nuts. 

Recently (and very foolishly) I broke that vow and now I am remembering why I made it in the first place. The most difficult of all, even more so than training my exercise hating mother (which I didn’t think possible), is training someone I am currently or used to date. Most people date others with common interests and I am no exception. When I belonged to theatre companies, I dated actors (and subsequently vowed to never do that again; a vow I’ve had no problem keeping), now I generally date cyclists or martial artists. The martial artists don’t need my professional services – they know the human body better than any family doctor I’ve ever had. Then there are the cyclists; the epitome of grace and fluidity on the bike, complete disasters off of it!

Normally, when working with a client I have strict parameters around the relationship. We meet at the gym at a mutually agreed upon time. If they are late, the time is still subtracted from their session. If they cancel at the last minute, they lose the session. They listen, they ask questions, they do what they are told because, well, that’s why they hired me!

People I date(d) show up late, and think nothing of calling and cancelling at the precise time I am expecting the doorbell to ring. Ah yes, the doorbell is ringing because they are training in my home. Maybe it’s the theatre training or maybe the karate sensei in me, but when I am training someone, anyone, I get into the role. I treat everyone like a client. I don’t give kisses or caresses, I don’t want to sit and chat or cuddle a bit before we head into the basement. Work is work and I have no problem compartmentalizing. I dated another black belt for years and for the first 2 no one at the dojo even realized we were dating. I have watched another sensei punish his wife with pushups in class. It’s all about the discipline in karate and dojo is dojo, it is a separate and distinct society.

As startling at it is, here in the closing months of 2011, many people still hold on to the ancient, outdated beliefs of the traditional roles of women and men. Women should be nurturing and vulnerable and need protecting, and although they are supposed to have a butt you could bounce coins off of, they aren’t supposed to kick butt to get it that way. Men are supposed to be providers and protectors who can also fix things. The fact that most men provide for their families with desk jobs that make them out of shape has not altered expectation anymore than wanting a woman with a great body has even though exercise is the only way to achieve it.

Now, when you are a female personal trainer who also has a couple of degrees of black under her belt, even the most traditional or sexist of men recognize that you don’t need their protection. Unless they have really healthy self esteem, though, they will not appreciate that you are also more athletic than them, until you have them in your basement, teaching them some strength exercises. They may be able to handle you being more flexible (men really don’t care about flexibility, anyway…at least not their own); they may be ok with you having better balance. But even the most progressive guy will feel emasculated if you are stronger. That’s when the arguments start. The nice guys, with healthy self esteem or at least modern views of gender equality will make excuses and explanations for why they have the weaknesses they have. The insecure guys who hold fast to sexist stereotypes about guys and dolls will feel so threatened they begin to tear you down, dragging your self esteem to their levels. They start by looking around the room and telling you what needs fixing (because, they can fix it, they are manly men) or cleaning (because you are not a womanly woman). If the insecurities are really bad, his exgirlfriends will start to creep up in conversations over the next few days. Generally in a reference to how good she was at something that either you are hopeless at or that you are really proud of but she does better. It’s an ugly game. Sadly, that doesn’t make it any less popular.

My sensei has a lot of platitudes he repeats to us. We call them “Senseisms”. Some of them are hysterically funny and some of them are so insightful you’ll find yourself repeating them anytime a friend is in need. My favourite is, “don’t blame yourself for what other people lack.” The next time I find myself in my basement, listening to the litany of charges against my femininity I am going to remember that the list has nothing to do with my lacking femininity; the lacking is of self esteem on the “manly” side.

The Best Wingman You May Ever Have is the Bad Date the Girl You Like Is On

Like all good stories that probably shouldn’t be told, this one starts with "I have this friend"…he’s funny, he’s smart, he’s attractive, he’s fit and he likes a lot of the same things I do. We talk, we ride, he patiently and sympathetically listens to me whine about the terrible guys I’ve dated in the past. We’re just friends. Hear that sound ladies? It’s the sound of your buddy’s head hitting the wall.

We all have one, possibly more, cute, funny, really nice guy friends who are always there for us, whose company we thoroughly enjoy. You know the one; he’s the first person you call after a bad date. He’s the one you call after every bad date. He’s also totally into you and he’s waiting for you to wake up and smell the coffee, sister. Well, here’s a steamy cup of espresso for you:

Being involved in or a fan of some very male dominated sports, I have a lot of guy friends, in fact at times my life is one big sausage fest – hold the toppings, they are all just friends. Some of them I have had secret crushes on, a couple of them I dated a life time ago. In either case, I relegated all of them to the friend category and spent time and energy dating men less attractive, less funny, less charming, and less intelligent than my friends.  After my last big breakup and subsequent bad first date, I was so turned off of the idea of relationships I made a New Year’s Resolution not to date for a year. It worked, I was happy. I had the best summer in years, hanging out with cute, smart, attractive, really good guys who were just friends. I was really happy. So happy, in fact, that I forgot about said resolution when an old friend (and crush) invited me out and I discovered much to my surprise that he considered it a date. Things went fine; I didn’t even know it was a date until it was nearly over. I got a little excited (probably from the validation of an old crush asking me out). We had a second date. It all went terribly, terribly wrong. Remember my older blog entry about etiquette? It was pretty much a checklist of everything he did wrong. Seriously, it made me suspicious that he read it and set out to exhibit every pet peeve I have. When I got home, I asked a cute, funny, smart guy friend to go to the pub for his amusement and my catharsis.

As we talked and I related the details of my bad date I realized I had never had a bad time with him. That being around him made me happy, very happy, and then it hit me. Why am I spending valuable time and energy on bad dates and unfulfilling relationships when I was sitting across from someone who was cute, funny, intelligent and already had an excellent track record of making me happy? The answer is, I’m not anymore….and it turns out, he’s totally into me.