It was two days before Christmas and I was out early in the morning
to walk the dog and buy fresh bagels and salmon for a special
pre-Christmas brunch with my girlfriend Paula, her boyfriend and his
daughter.
While I was out shopping it started to rain. As I stopped at one
store after another to get just the right delectables, the rain got
heavier. Finally, loaded down with both arms full of packages and
struggling to keep my dripping wet dog, Ptah, in check, my cell phone
rang. I juggled my packages into one arm and rustled the phone up to my
ear. It was my old friend Caroline from England. We hadn’t spoken since
October when she’d just returned from India. We’d traded emails last
week, trying to make a ‘phone-date’, but hadn’t been able to find a
time that worked for both of our schedules.
As soon as I picked up the phone, she said breathlessly, “I have to
go out in 15 minutes, do you have time to talk?” Knowing that if I
didn’t take this opportunity, it might be several months more before we
spoke again, I quickly said “yes.” I hurried across the street with
Ptah in tow and ducked into a bank’s ATM area to talk. Of course, I
remained in that automatic bank for nearly an hour talking to Caroline,
while Ptah settled on the floor and several people came in and out,
retrieving their Sunday morning cash.
Caroline told me about a cartoon she had seen in The Guardian.
A woman was screaming at a man about all the wrong things he was
thinking and feeling and the man just stood there confused and silent.
When she was finished yelling, the man said calmly, “Are you ready to
go then?” And the woman said, “why yes, I thought you’d never ask…” and
they walked off. The point being, Caroline said, that women are somehow
masters at making up stories about what men are thinking and feeling
and most of it is in our heads – our fantasy projections created and
placed on the person in front of us, much of which isn’t true.
I was so excited to hear Caroline talking about this because, of
course, it is something I’ve been grappling with a lot lately.
Recently, I seem to have a feeling and then make up a reason to place
it on my partner and somehow make it his fault. I haven’t figured out
what to do about this, but I have been noticing this projection
practice more and more. I have been trying to cut out the step where I
place it on him and then instigate a fight with him about my fantasy.
Needless to say, I haven’t been very successful at stopping myself, but
it’s pretty exciting to notice that not every feeling I have is his
fault.
Caroline thought women were more prone to these projections – and
also more prone to believing in our fantasies – then men. According to
her, women make up more stories about men – what they are thinking,
feeling, desiring – than men do about women. I wasn’t sure this was
true, but I began to explore the idea in my mind as I was talking to
her. How many times had a boyfriend told me that he didn’t feel what I
said he felt? And when he argued with me, I still believed my
interpretation of his behavior more than his. After all, I think I am a master interpreter.
I remember when I was growing up, my dad always yelled at my mom,
“Stop mind reading! You don’t know what I think!” Of course this didn’t
stop my mom from trying to figure out what he was thinking, since he
rarely shared his inner thoughts or feelings. He was raised with the
values that real men don’t talk about feelings. And I think this is
just the point: Caroline may be right that women make up more stories
about men, but probably we developed this skill because we had to learn
to read the subtext of the male world (which contained all the power
and controlled our destinies). Even if our reading was wrong, it was
better than the non-information provided by men who mostly didn’t
articulate their feelings.
I think about the difference between my Mom and Dad. If the two of
them went to a party and afterwards I asked each of them about the
party? They would respond totally differently. My dad would say, “It
was great!” If I probed a bit more, he’d say, “Everybody was doing
fantastically!” My mom, on the other hand, would have absorbed all the
nitty gritty details: who was talking to whom, who wasn’t talking to
whom, who was flirting, who looked miserable. She would have a story
for each one, gleaned by observation and conjecture. My mom would not
always be right, but she certainly always had more interesting stories
to tell. So, of course, if I wanted to know what was really happening at the party, I asked my mom.
Ok, back to Caroline and I. Sitting there in the bank machine
station, listening to Caroline’s voice from across the ocean, I began
to think she was right. Maybe women did make up more stories about our
partners and the world; maybe this was a result of generations of
powerlessness. At least that was my theory that morning. Caroline went
on to tell me about a book she was reading, called, LOVING WHAT IS
by Byron Katie. I realized I had it on my bookshelf. I had bought it
several years before and read parts of it, but forgotten it.
We had to say our Christmas goodbyes – Caroline was late for her
meeting and I had to get back to make brunch – but I vowed to read LOVING WHAT IS
again over the holidays and report back to her in our next phone date.
I closed my cell phone and gathered my wet shopping bags, woke up my
sleeping dog, and herded her back out to the rainy Manhattan street to
my loft to prepare breakfast.
Later over the Christmas Holiday, I began reading LOVING WHAT IS; I was struck by the simple and clear way it dealt with the projections of the mind. Although Byron Katie
doesn’t say anything about gender – as far as she’s concerned both men
and women are pretty skilled at living in their fantasies – reading the
book helped me make my first New Year’s resolution: I resolved to be
aware of my thoughts and watch my projections on other people to try to
see what is really true, before I jump to fantastical conclusions.
But what about you out there: What were some of your New Years
resolutions? And what have your girlfriends taught you over this
holiday season?
