I was at a party recently where a girl I had just met kept referring to one of our mutual male friends as “her bitch,” mocking what I have always considered to be the beautiful fruits of a generous spirit.  Why emasculate him in front of his friends for trying to make sure she was having a good time?  Why not thank him for being so attentive to her needs?

With this still on my mind, I couldn’t help noticing a friend of mine, last weekend, repeatedly label the behavior of her man as gay.

Why are we tearing our men down instead of building them up?

I want to be someone my man can count on to encourage and support him, not someone he is worried will embarrass him in front of his friends by making him the punchline of a joke.  I want him to know that, when his buddies get on his case, I’ve got his back.

And I think that, often times, this starts innocently enough.  In my experience, male friendships involve a lot more teasing and – let’s call a spade a spade – ridicule than female friendships, so I think we sometimes try to get in good with a new beau’s friends by showing that we can keep up, and teasing right along with them.   Being able to go blow for blow with the boys (seriously, no homo-erotic innuendo intended) makes us feel like we are a part of our man’s inner circle.

I certainly know that I have been guilty of this in the past, but I also recognize that it is a slippery slope, and one that I want to avoid.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think this is a pattern we want to fall into.  Yes, I live in the real world and am fully aware that my man is flawed like the rest of us, but I don’t think that means it is healthy for either of us, or for the relationship, if I exploit those weaknesses for the sake of putting myself at ease.

I think Tammy Wynette knew what she was talking about when she sang:

And if you love him
Be proud of him
‘Cause after all, he’s just a man

You know the rest.  Sing it.  It’s damn good.

I have long been intrigued by whatever program generates the “possibly relatedlinks” that show up on our blogs and our myspace pages. Most of the links that pop up on my myspace homepage are for acting classes and Shakespeare festivals, and I can see how a computer program that is scanning the information I’ve included in my interests would detect a common theme of “Shakespeare nerd” and then try to point me to websites in this family. I enjoy checking out the types of websites that this mysterious link generator thinks my friends would be interested based on the information in their profiles as they are, often accurate yet bizarre.

But last week, a “possibly related link” showed up on my blog that stopped me in my tracks:

I want a baby so badly it hurts.

(As a side note: I would include this link in my blog, but it is no longer appearing on my page and, I could write a weeks worth of blogs detailing what would happen if my boyfriend found “I want a baby so badly it hurts” in the recent searches on his laptop)

Where were we? Oh yes,

I want a baby so badly it hurts.

I stared at the page in disbelief, asking my computer, how do you know that?? I haven’t blogged about wanting a baby. I haven’t blogged about babies at all! I suddenly felt like I was a character in one of those futuristic thrillers where the government knows everything about you, and the computer was not generating “possibly related links” but actually reading my mind.

Maybe Chris was right when he suggested last Friday that pregnancy was in the water in our small Los Angeles suburb (to which I replied, “I need to drink more water.”) Maybe the giant banner outside the new Bellini store that reads The Babies are Coming is actually a warning and it isn’t the government hacking into my brain and posting these links on my blog, but an army of mind-reading babies from outer space.

But whether it’s a computer program or a mind-reading baby, if whatever is doing this has the power to look into my soul, shouldn’t it know that I’m not readyfor a baby? Why can’t it be nice like the myspace link generator and just try to send me to acting class or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival? And what if the psychic alien infants have taken over myspace as well, serving to explain why today’s link on my homepage reads: Cate Blanchett has Baby?

I am in the midst of a major transition.

One of my many New Years resolutions was to stop being a theatre snob and start auditioning for things that might actually generate income, mainly the three things I have been avoiding like the plague for my entire “career” as an actress: commercials, television, and film. I committed to myself that I would not audition for another play until I had really started to make progress in those departments — not an easy thing for a girl who is used to being in rehearsal for her next show before she closes whatever show she’s currently in!

Last week, I quit all but my Saturday night job (I realize only after typing it what that sounds like, but I assure you, it is nothing as lucrative as exotic dancing or prostitution) and now my “job” is auditioning…if you can call what I have been doing “auditioning” when it is really more accurately described as driving an hour in traffic to wait for another hour to slate and eat imaginary food for 30 seconds.

This is a totally different beast.

I can walk into an audition for any play and, whether or not I am the prettiest girl in the room or the one with the most training, I know that I can hold my own with anyone else there. The confidence I have in my skill and work ethic as an actress gives me an ease when I audition for theatre work that I hold largely responsible (along with the aforementioned skill and discipline) for how frequently I am called back and ultimately cast.

Let me say it again: this is a totally different beast.

There’s no monologue. There’s no scene. Usually there’s not even any text at all.

And I’m even saying I don’t like it. I had a blast this afternoon dancing for thirty seconds in my kitchen (a casting studio) cooking up a delicious dinner (stirring an empty bowl.) It’s just very strange to me that my being cast or not depends solely on thirty seconds worth of look and personality. And, I suppose that I do have the advantage over all of the model-types that I have done enough acting and improv to not be shaken by walking into an audition and being asked to do something totally bizarre involving food and props which do not actually exist. The model-types, however, have a rather obvious advantage over me which (as hotness is probably a more important casting consideration than whether or not the actress looks like she really believes she is eating a turkey sandwich instead of maybe ham or tuna) probably leaves the deck stacked in their favor.

So instead of working on monologues and reading new plays, I suppose I should start practicing mime and mastering the art of eating imaginary food. And now that I think of it, if I really master the art of eating imaginary food, the models won’t have much of an advantage over me after all.

After reading yesterday’s post, my younger brother sent an email to warn me to “tread lightly” as my boyfriend might not be terribly pleased with my online lamenting that no one will marry me. Perhaps, my brother feared, my blog might be perceived as a virtual nudge towards the altar.

Not in the least.

I did say that I still identified with the struggles in this dated blog but (as we should all hope to two years after initially encountering a problem) I have a slightly different perspective now. I have come to terms with the fact that my decision makes me unattractive to many, but it has also finally sunk in that a man who disagrees strongly enough with my principles to not consider dating me is not someone I would have any desire to spend the rest of my life with.

I no longer fear that the choices I have made make me an undesirable bride because I realize that I have simply helped myself out by making myself undesirable to the kinds of men I shouldn’t be with anyway. Narrowed down the dating pool.

What I do sometimes still struggle with is the fact that this decision I’ve made which is pretty fundamental who I am, as it represents so much about what I want for my future, is often dismissed as absurd. I am in the middle of reading a great book by Rob Bell titled Sex God, which discusses the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. I was reading at work the other night and was particularly struck by a passage about how readily abstinence education is dismissed from sex education classes because it is perceived as unrealistic:

In lots of settings, abstinence programs are laughed at. So are those campaigns in which students commit themselves not to have sex until they’re married. Have you ever head a news piece on the television or read a magazine article about one of them that didn’t at least subtly mock the idea of “keeping yourself pure for marriage”? People who organize and promote these kinds of campaigns are often viewed as hopelessly naïve messengers from a far-off land that simply doesn’t exist anymore. The criticism of the “sex is for marriage” view is usually presented as the voice of realism. Are people actually capable of restraint?

But it’s not realism. It’s the voice of despair. It’s the voice that asks, “Aren’t we all really just animals?”

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been told my decision is unrealistic, that we “live in a different time” – even by fellow Christians! And yes, we do live in a different time. We drive cars and write emails. But modern amenities aside, the human condition is still the same. Does the fact that that I have a cell phone mean that the way God designed me to live my life and guard my relationships no longer applies? Do we really flatter ourselves to think that our brains have evolved to a point where we are capable of formulating a better way of life than God’s?

And maybe, just as I have learned to dismiss those who would consider me un-dateable based on my decision to save myself for marriage, I need to teach myself to disregard the comments of those who mock at my ideals, who tell me that my boyfriend must be gay or unfaithful if he’s willing to abstain from sex, who tell me that I’m living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. And sure, it is easy to put up the front of, “this is my life and you don’t have to like it” but it isn’t as easy to actually believe that. God created us to be relational people, which means that, like it or not, we want to be accepted, cared for, and understood.

I could go on about this for hours, but I feel that would be unwise considering I haven’t showered yet and I’m supposed to take new headshots this afternoon, so I’ll cut it short with a guarantee to vent more later.

I also promise that sometime I’ll blog about something other than the frustration of not having sex and the frustration of not having people respect that decision, but for now, I want to know how you feel, how you find the courage to make decisions that go against the norm, what makes you strong.

xoxo
Bits

I’ve been thinking a lot about starting a blog. I blogged fairly regularly on myspace until I began questioning whether it was narcissistic to assume that anyone had an interest in reading the ramblings of my brain, let alone commenting on them. But I miss the outlet that it gave me, the way that putting those ramblings into complete sentences in black and white helped me make sense of things going on within myself that I was otherwise not equipped to understand.

But what to write about?

Because my friends reacted strongly at the time, and because it focuses on issues that are ones I still struggle with, I want to start with a blog that I posted on myspace almost two years ago, in August of 2006. I am not going to revise the language so that the relationship “I just got out of” becomes the relationship “that ended two summers ago.” I am not going to amend my thoughts to reflect how I am feeling now. I am simply going to type every character that I did when I first tried to express this struggle within myself, and hope that revisiting my own words will be the catalyst I need to get me writing again.

The blog reads:

Despite the daily marriage proposals from, now, both Ron and Roy at the Spa-to-Go lotion kiosk, and alarming number of people have suddenly been warning me that I am making myself unmarriageable.

Several weeks ago, my manager at work told me that I will probably never get married because I am too picky. Shit. I’ve always thought that I bring enough to the table to have the right to pick and choose. But what if I am too picky? When talking to my parents about this issue, they tried to reassure me by pointing out that all of my boyfriends have been really great, quality guys, so I shouldn’t be worried that I won’t find someone…unfortunately, that had been my point…I have dated a series of really great guys who all had marriage on the brain and I broke up with all of them! Have I missed my chance? Should I have settled for one of them and just called it good enough?

More frequently expressed than my being too picky, is the concern that no guy will take me seriously as a romantic prospect without…well…the prospect of sex. I don’t deny that this is a huge obstacle for most guys, but I have always told myself that the kind of guy I want to be with, the right guy, will respect my decision and my values and not view it as a totally insurmountable obstacle. Unfortunately, people are suddenly trying to convince me that no guy will ever look past this, and that, when I find him, I am going to scare away “The One” for this very reason.

Last night, as my sister was trying to explain as gently as possible to her boyfriend and I why it may be too late for me, the oldest living virgin, to get married, he tried to reassure me by asking, “Well, do you want to get married?” implying that I shouldn’t be upset because, clearly, I don’t want to get married anyway! Seriously?! My college theatre department voted me “Most Likely to Get Married First” out of the whole senior class and two years later, I am now giving people the impression that I won’t want to get married?

I don’t really know what to make of all this craziness. Maybe I am just having a difficult time re-adjusting to what it is actually like to be single after such a long time. And not just single, but single with zero romantic prospects! Feast or famine, I suppose…

And I don’t mind being single right now. I think it is good for me. I just got out of a relationship with a guy who did everything he could to make me believe that he was the only thing in my life that made me matter, that my only accomplishment was dating him. And even thought I fought so hard not to let that get to me, how could it not? I think I need some time to regain the strength that he took away from me and rediscover the self-respect that he tried to convince me I didn’t deserve to have.

But once I do find myself again, I want to believe that there’s still hope of finding what I’m looking for with someone else. I want to know that I deserve to be a little bit picky. I want to believe that my values are something that should be respected, not ridiculed. I want to trust that there is a man out there who, instead of thinking that I am some sort of social fossil for wanting to save myself for marriage, will realize and appreciate that I have waited my whole life for him and didn’t want to cheapen that by giving away bits and pieces of myself to every guy who bought me dinner along the way. And deep down, I do still believe that. I don’t think God gave me such an incredible capacity to love just so that He could get a kick out of never giving me anyone to share it with.

I suppose, the moral of this blog is: If you don’t like me or my values, you don’t have to date me. There are plenty of guys who would consider it a privilege.

Now I just have to find a way to believe that…