The #1 Mistake Women Make in Relationships
by Sam Fox
I just finished the memoir Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made, by Mary Pols. I’d been moved to pick it up after reading positive blurbs like these:
“Bay Area film critic Pols chronicles her unexpected pregnancy and journey into not-quite-single motherhood….A page-turner by someone who stopped waiting for Mr. Perfect.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Candid and unaffected, Pols provides an important lesson about not being willing to compromise herself, and that being brave can bring the richest rewards.” — Publishers Weekly
Consider this a total spoiler alert if you’re planning on reading it. Otherwise, I’ve gotta tell ya, this writer wrote a book about compromising herself in every possible way. She wasn’t brave, she was absolutely idiotic and reckless with her own life. And yeah, it’s a page turner in the same way an accident on the freeway is something you can’t help staring at as you drive by slowly. It’s pretty much a long list of what not to do between the ages of 20 and 40 if you want to find a life partner.
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Here’s an account of Mary’s most important relationships. I’ve highlighted the 29 most crucial, glaring errors. Feel free to add to the count in the comments.
I. Peter
Mary met Peter in Wash DC, a few months after college. He was a teacher; handsome, well-educated, convinced of his own worth.
“Peter’s half-brother was a well-known actor, and some of that glamour hung about his own chiseled features and long, lean frame. (1) I was smitten. He seemed (2) smitten, at least with the sex (3).”
He gave her tests – what did she think of various books – if the answer was wrong she was a fool. You like TC Boyle? Fool. Don’t like my favorite author of the day? Fool. (4)
“He once told me that I didn’t challenge him. (5) He broke up with me not long after, a long pattern of push me, pull me.” (6)
When he applied to the Peace Corps, he was interviewed about whether he had a significant other, and whether that would interfere with his mobility.
“I told them that I’ll miss you, but that it wouldn’t stop me from going.” (7)
Mary was not discouraged. Peter wrote occasionally, and although the letters were mostly about the logisitics of building latrines, she eagerly awaited his return to the U.S. (8)
“I believed that, eventually, he’d own up to feeling the same way about our relationship as I did. This misconception lasted all through the years he spent in the Peace Corps.” (9)
When he came back, he asked her to ride across the Sahara on the back of his motorcycle. She had started grad school at Berkeley and couldn’t go, but “the invitation itself was enough to fuel my fantasy life.” (10)
Four years after their first meeting, he came to see her on a trip home and they spent a blissful day together. He said:
“I missed you so much. There hasn’t been anyone else. Well, I mean, no one like you.” (11)
But later that night he said, “I get the feeling this means a lot to you. This reunion, or whatever it is. You seem to believe we belong together. Or something like that.”
Mary: I’m not pretending all of this doesn’t mean something.
Peter: It doesn’t mean anything.
Mary: I don’t believe you. I think you love me.
Peter: I feel something for you. It’s deep, but I don’t understand it. I just know I don’t want to end up with you. (12)
At that point, Peter hopped in his car and sped away, burning rubber on his way out of the drive.
II. Michel
Mary met Michel at the LA Times after grad school. They were friends for a couple of months before anything happened. Pretty soon he found a new job and relocated. He said he was not ready for a commitment, so they broke up. Mary drove up to visit “on the pretense of seeing other friends.” (13) She asked him to lunch. They had sex. A few weeks later, she made another weekend trip using the same excuse. (14) They spent time together and he suggested she move up to San Franciso, but said “I don’t want you to move here just for me.” (15)
A few weeks later, she called him to say she had secured a job interview in the Bay Area. He stated again that he didn’t want her moving just for him. She pressed, and he confessed that he didn’t see a future for them. (16) She moved up there and waited for him to change his mind. (17)
My hope evaporated so slowly that I caught traces of it in myself for years to come, like perfume trapped in the folds of a sweater you rarely wear. (18) In the next eleven years, the bad things that happened with men had become less significant for the kind of quivering mess they left me in than for the amount of my valuable reproductive time they had consumed. I had standards for what I wanted and had learned a few lessons about holidng out for someone I could really count on.
III. Thumb Sucking Boy
Now well into her 30s, Mary took up with Thumb Sucking Boy, who was five years younger. This bothered her less than it did him, but over time he took her to meet his parents, and even bought of a copy of Mortgages for Dummies (19), which Mary took to be a very good sign. Still, he seemed weak and unfocused. On one occasion, he whined about wanting to be the man in the relationship, but “he looked very much like a boy, with his belligerent, semi-intoxicated expression, swaying forlornly at the end of the bed.” (20)
Once, Mary came out of the bathroom to find him watching TV with the top sheet pulled up over his nose. She asked, “Are you sucking your thumb right now?” He quickly removed it, but a barrier had been torn down, and after than he began to do it more often. “Whenever we disagreed about anything, he’d plunge the thumb into his mouth, as if it were in retaliation for some perceived slight.” (21) Mary was troubled by this rather juvenile behavior, but decided to run it by her shrink. Knowing from past experience that her therapist wouldn’t make a judgment call, she was surprised when the shrink exclaimed, “THAT IS WEIRD!” She ended the relationship.
IV. Matt the Baby Daddy
Thirty-nine year-old Mary went to a barbecue to meet up with the promising neurosurgeon she had recently been introduced to by friends. He didn’t show. Feeling sorry for herself and frisky at the same time, she proceeded to Finnegan’s Wake, a local bar. Once there, she spied a cute guy in a baseball cap smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk. She struck up a convo with him.
Mary: I’m coming home with you.
Matt: I’ve got to get a new place. But not until I get a J-O-B. (22)
“What I always loved about the hookup…was the sharp sense of recognition you had when you met a man’s eyes and realized that not only were you going to sleep together, but he’d be the next person who would really matter to you. (23) You just knew it…even a hint of that feeling is often enough, b/c it makes you remember hope. Matt saved me from my unwanted celibacy. (24)”
The pillows were foam and only half-covered with ratty navy blue cases. There was a pile of lacrosse sticks in the corner, and an array of baseball caps on top of every bed post. He kept quoting Homer Simpson, saying “anywho” whenever there was a pause in the conversation. (25) She asked him if he had a condom, and he dutifully went and got one. But his erection was iffy, and she never insisted he put it on. (26)
PREGGERS!
Matt, 29 and halfway to homeless, was surprisingly interested in being a father to Mary’s son. He hung around a lot, and they wound up having a lot of sex during the pregnancy, always initiated by Mary. (27)
“In late January, we went to a full-day Lamaze class together, and as he sat behind me to massage my back, he put his arms around me and kissed my head. It felt as though we were a couple. Not content to let sleeping dogs lie, I wanted to know if we would keep on behaving as a couple after the baby was born. I asked him point blank about our relationship.”
Matt: I feel the same as I always have. I told you from the beginning that I wanted us to be friends who co-parent. I want us to get along. That’s important for him.
Mary: So nothing that has happened in the last few months has changed that? Nothing? Not sleeping with me every night, not spending all this time together, none of this has any impact on you at all?
Matt: It’s been nice. Really nice. It’ important that we be friends. But I don’t want there to be confusion for him later on.
Mary: Was this mercy fucking? You felt nothing at all?
Matt: Of course I felt something. I just don’t want things to be weird with us. If we keep sleeping together, they will be.
Mary: Well, I have started to have feelings for you. My feelings have evolved for you, but here you are, saying that you haven’t changed since the day I told you I was pregnant? How can you know that for sure?
Matt: I just do.
Mary: You know that you will never be in love with me?
Matt: Yes.
Mary: You KNOW that?
Matt: Yes. I can’t give you what you need, Mary. I’m sorry.
I badgered him for a little longer, accused him of having no heart, a cold heart, a dead heart. (28)
What had I been doing with Matt? Why had I given myself so easily, yet again, to someone who didn’t really want me? (29)
The #1 mistake women make in relationships?
1. HANGING ON AFTER ALL HOPE IS LOST
2. ASSUMING THERE IS AN EMO, VULNERABLE, GENEROUS BEING INSIDE THE ASSHOLE
3. WRITING A ROMANTIC SCRIPT, WHEN THE HERO IS M.I.A.
Mary spent her youth with assholes. FOR 20 YEARS! She talked about having high standards, but halfwayed it with men who didn’t love her until she ran out of options. I’m happy for her that she has her son, Dolan. I’m glad Matt is a loving father. But honestly? Saying that she wouldn’t have changed a thing, so that she could have THIS son, the best of all possible sons…that doesn’t cut it. She made bad decision after bad decision, and she wasted her youth and beauty.
KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY. IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON YOU WILL EVER LEARN. IGNORE IT AT YOUR PERIL. YOU MAY WELL FIND YOURSELF ALONE AT 39 WITH PUNY, SHRIVELED EGGS AND A HOMELESS GUY SLEEPING ON YOUR COUCH.
