One of the most common things I see on social media, is a plea from a girl for a certain type of man that she’s looking for. “Find a man who will do this or that for you” with perfectly framed snapshots of a couple on a swing, or a cute wedding scene, or a 40 year anniversary to depict that there is this utopia in a romantic sort and that most of it lies in this idea that you “just need to find the right guy”.
I support that. I am in no way against women being selective and waiting for a guy who will treat them with respect and honor. I would want nothing less for my sisters, or a future daughter of mine (if that ever came to pass).
But from what I’ve noticed, there is far more involved in a romantic utopia, than simply “finding the right person”. You see, many times, the search isn’t half of the issue with a girl. The problem lies in what a woman will accept, and what a woman actually gravitates to, and that goes far deeper than whether a particular guy does cute things worthy of postcards.
In this article, I will be outlining 5 kinds of girls and why they can’t seem to find that “pastel lighting, delicate kiss” kind of romance that Pinterest seems to declare is both common and deserved.
1) The Rescuer
This girl is the one who has everything right on the outside. Her friends and family are absolutely puzzled as to why she isn’t married, and even more puzzled by the guys she tends to date, because she seems like the type to have the guy of her dreams waiting on her doorstep, but then never seems to date such guys.
What the Rescuer suffers from, is approval – and not as much approval from others (although that certainly matters) but approval of herself. No matter how great of a person she convinces others that she is, she still feels dirty and undeserving.
Combine a sense of unworthiness with the love of being a martyr, and you have the perfect rescue mission. To the Rescuer, she is looking for someone who has a ton of potential, but is in a rough spot and simply needs someone to believe in him in order to see that potential realized. While this may seem unselfish, it’s actually very self-focused, because she’d rather be praised by someone below her for appearing better than who she is, than accepted and given grace for who she actually is by someone who is on the same level.
The Rescuer looks like a 10, but feels like a 5, so she dates a 4 in order to feel like a 7.
You see, the Rescuer is feeling like she’s an angel compared to the guy she’s dating, and that makes her feel much better. She’s feeling like she’s getting what she deserves, because she can’t get past who she is or used to be.
No matter how much the Rescuer sacrifices for their guy, the guy is incapable of appreciating her, because damage and pain makes him unable to see anyone but himself. This then has the potential to take years of mistreatment before either the Rescuer develops enough self-confidence to know her true value despite her mistakes, or the Rescue Mission actually does start to improve, but curiously, his improvement always had to be something he did on his own, and her efforts to be his Jesus were all but inconsequential.
If the Rescuer wants the pastel lighting and the “happily ever after”, she needs to stop letting her past (or others) define her worth. As the line from the movie “Perks of being a Wallflower” goes, “we accept the love we think we deserve”. The rescuer needs to start viewing herself as deserving of something great, in order for her to accept something great. And, believe it or not, it takes a lot of humility to do this, for it takes more humility to accept a blessing than it does a reward.
Many of the ideal guys for the Rescuer stand by scratching their heads, as it would seem that the perfect girl just turned him down for a guy who wouldn’t treat her half as well, and in all fairness, that’s usually the case.
So for the Rescuer, she probably has had plenty of opportunities to have that beautiful ending, so it’s not a matter of searching for the right guy, it’s a matter of being able to accept him when he comes.
2) The Ship Captain
The Ship Captain is the girl who feels as if love is a ship, and if she’s not on a ship, she’s sinking.
There are two kinds of Ship Captains: Emotionally based, and Practically based.
The Emotional Ship Captain doesn’t feel valuable unless she feels wanted, but rather than focus on the problem of feeling unwanted, she sees marriage as the end-all to those problems.
The Practical Ship Captain has usually been planning on getting married for years, and sees being single as a waste of time and treading water in the aspect of going for what she truly wants.
Both Ship Captains are experts at convincing themselves that the most recent boat they’re in, is everything they want it to be.
This isn’t because she’s optimistic, as much as it is the fact that, for the Ship Captain, being alone is more frightening than being in a less-than-ideal relationship, so she’ll try and change her perspective around the relationship to make the most of it.
The Ship Captain usually isn’t even aware of how dependent she is on a “ship”, because she’s convinced herself that every ship was unique and “everything she’s looking for” and that she was on a far better course with the new ship than she was with the old ship. And because she never learned how to be happy when she was alone, she isn’t ever truly happy when she’s with someone. And “faking it until you make it” becomes wearisome after a while. Not actually being satisfied, either leads to more plans of abandoning ship, or a final breaking point where the Ship Captain has to learn how to be okay alone. Hopefully though, this happens before she’s settled for a “convenient” guy instead of the right guy and she isn’t too far in to get out.
The guy that the Ship Captain is looking for, many times sees warning signs with the Ship Captain. Either she is a bit flirty while in a relationship, or she has a track record of never going more than a few months without a boyfriend, but a perceptive guy would see that as something to be careful of. Consequently, many Ship Captains settle for guys who are ok, but certainly nothing they’ve been dreaming of.
It isn’t until the Ship Captain learns how to be truly happy alone, that she’ll be able to accept a romance that is truly healthy and a guy who treats her the way she’s wanted to be treated. Unfortunately, this is often a difficult point for the Ship Captain to reach, since she is usually unable to see that she has the Ship Captain syndrome. In her view, the problem with not having that wonderful marriage rests more on not being able to find the right guy, rather than being the right person and unfortunately, the temporary high of a new relationship seems to confirm that her assumptions were, in fact, true.
3) The Scarlett
The Scarlett is the girl who is used to constant validation for superficial reasons, so that the validation becomes a vicious game of give and take.
Many very beautiful women fall victim to the Scarlett. When you are a beautiful woman, society tells you that your worth has been defined by your sex appeal. Sex appeal is a very cruel measurement of worth. Girls in this cycle quickly become distrusting of men and starved of authentic validation.
The Scarlett both succumbs and attempts to rebel against, this stigmatism, falling into what I call the “1 out of 100 disparity”. The 1 out 100 disparity is when, in the case of 99 out of 100 guys giving a Scarlett full validation, she’ll ignore, and may even resent the 99, and yet desperately try to acquire the validation of the 1.
Thus, the Scarlett’s sorting method of who she might allow to date her becomes unfairly biased on who is shiny enough to actually catch her attention, or who is audacious enough to withhold validation from her, neither of which commonly contain guys who might give her a fulfilling relationship.
Most good guys won’t play the manipulative card of withholding validation, despite knowing how to. They leave that to the players and the womanizers. Furthermore, many decent guys don’t play their cards all at once, but use humility to be impressive, and only to those who have earned the right to see it. Hence, the Scarlett often overlooks the guys who might truly appreciate her and validate her for more than what she looks like.
It isn’t until the Scarlett is able to find her sense of value away from her beauty, that the Scarlett is going to be able to even see the guy that she truly wants to be with.
4) The Bachelorette
Bachelorette’s are the girls who need emotional stimulant, so they create unnecessary drama in order to intensify affirmation from men.
Edward loves Bella, but so does Jacob. Now they must fight and prove if they’re worthy to win Bella’s hand and in the middle of it all is Bella, who is miserable…actually that’s not right – Bella is in heaven?
At the core of all of us, there is a grandiose expectation in love. To the Bachelorette, this leads some to expect much more out of a man than is humanly possible. In movies and romance novels, the hero somehow knows what the woman is thinking and he guides her into emotional perfection.
In movies, love triangles don’t have victims, just one happy couple at the end of one emotional decision. It’s a cold reality then, when the Bachelorette finds that her fantasy world simply doesn’t exist.
At the end of the day, Bachelorette’s just want to find a “special” kind of love, but they end up much further from it than when they began. Once again, the guy they’re truly looking for is able to see when there are games and will usually see it as a warning sign. If she’s trying to bring up a different guy in order to stir jealousy for instance, it’s going to be seen as a sign of immaturity at best to the guy with a level head. This leads to disappointment from the Bachelorette and she might even see the guy as a coward for not fighting for her, when in reality, he’s escaping the situation before things get truly messy.
In order for the Bachelorette to find a satisfying romance, she needs to feel validated and valuable without men telling her so. She needs to be able to handle rejection and still know her worth. She would also need to see a more realistic and purer form of romance and love. Take a break from Twilight, Taylor Swift and Nicholas Sparks and spend some time with your grandparents who’ve known each other for 50 years and still love each other; embrace the truer, grittier and purer perspective of romance.
5) The Tower
The Tower, is the kind of girl who sits expectantly in a tower, waiting for the only guy who could not only find her, but also manage to save her.
This girl doesn’t wrestle with having too many guys (although many guys usually do want her) and she doesn’t usually have a problem with settling, her problem is that she only sees herself in one of two places: her tower, or with him. Somewhere inside she feels the need to be rescued, and she has such high stakes in that rescue, that it’s much safer to only accept it if it’s “perfect”. The way in which she does this, is by putting up a series of walls that act as a safeguard, as only those deemed worthy will be able to get through to her heart.
This kind of girl might seem like she does indeed have a decent approach to romance. She often doesn’t have much trouble with failed romances and she gets along fairly well. However, this sort of walled approach makes it very difficult for men to approach her, and, if a man does begin a pursuit, he feels like he’s navigating a war zone blind.
The downside to the Tower from a decent guy’s perspective, is that there is usually something that she is needing to be saved from.
If those walls are finally overcome, the Tower would often make her “hero” her world and transfer everything from inside the walls, into his hands. Many good guys can detect this; and find it intimidating, as no guy is going to be able to be her world and satisfy a girl like that. He’s going to go through a huge process to try and prove his capability of catching her, but the fact is that no man could ever actually catch her, since she needs to escape her tower on her own; she needs to reconcile what’s going on in her own heart before she can share it with someone else in a healthy way. He’s scared to get close, lest she jumps.
The Tower needs to understand that romance can’t save her. Once she faces the reasons that she needs rescuing and deals with them, then the stakes aren’t nearly as high and those walls become healthy challenges to her guy, and he’ll be way more likely to accept the challenge, since he’s finally able to be seen with realistic expectations. And at that point, if fate simply doesn’t wish for them to be together, he knows she’ll be ok in the end. Real men consider such things.
Conclusion
The most common issue that I notice in a woman who is looking for true romance, is that she spends all of her time planning for a wedding instead of a marriage. She ignores her issues, and looks for a guy to be an easy solution.
Being single is difficult. It’s lonely and it has an aspect of hopelessness to it, since no one can see the future, and no one wants to end up alone. However, I would imagine that the feelings of being single and lonely, are no where near the feelings of waking up after a year of marriage feeling like you made a mistake. And learning how to make someone your companion rather than your Jesus is much more difficult after you’re married and usually only comes after a meltdown of sorts.
As much as you may not feel like it, YOU HAVE TIME. Cool down, let yourself do some discovering of who you are, and rather than focusing on not settling for a guy who won’t make you happy, focus on not settling for a version of yourself that will never make you happy. If you do that, then the right guy will actually be visible to you, and you’ll be visible to him.
