"Don't eat that", he said.
"Don't eat that. Stop.", he said as he smacked the back of her hand, reaching for the bread basket.
Oh man. I wish I was making this stuff up. But no. A very good friend of mine from New York dated this guy for 2 - not minutes, hours, days, weeks or, heck, even months but 2 full years. Now this may seem like an innocent little thing to say.
Although I think I would bite the hand of any person trying to keep me away from the bread basket.
That's a total sin - nothing is more delicious than bread with butter. Our current carb hysteria is completely ridiculous.
What type of dark rabbit hole are we going down, if we allow someone else to decide, what we should eat and the size of our waistline?
I mean come on, that is not a relationship that is going to get better with time. If you start out wanting to change someone from the get-go, that's a recipe for divorce. Find someone else or go buy what it is you want down to the dot. You can buy shells, you know. We have a whole industry with that available at the tips of your fingers, for your pleasure.
If we think a slice of bread is going to kill us, we got far worse things to worry about. Like our neurotic, obsessive tendencies for one.
Back to the story though. He not only insisted on controlling her food intake, but also straight up told her, she needed to be more like Barbie. He wanted to date a Barbie. Now not like a sick fetish nono. Just like an ideal - a trophy of sorts he could feel good about to feed his ego. So she bleached her hair down to the crisp. All the alarms should go off big time here. If someone wants to control you like that, they do not love you. Not because they don't want to perhaps, they are just not in an emotional place right now, where they are able to think about anything except their own narrow needs, wants and demands based on a totally messed up value system.
They are more focused on their own insecurities and self-hatred, which they are now projecting onto their mate.
Most of us can probably think back to a time, where we felt incredibly miserable in the skin we were in. In that place we couldn't really love anyone else, cos we were so engrossed in our own misery. Looking back we might insist that we did love. The thing is, it's not really possible at that deep soul-level to connect with another being, if we are stuck in our own dark place and struggling our own fears and demons. It's a matter of survival - and in that moment we just plain survive. And that's okay. Different phases and life stages and everything changes in time, if we just let it.
It kinda feels like our entire life is on the rocks.
Entering a relationship only makes it worse, even though many of us will attempt just that with the hope that someone else can save us from ourselves.
Oh the irony of being a human.
It is not uncommon for high baller men in New York to want a trophy wife. Yes, I know I am kinda dissing NY a bit. Many things great can be said about NY too, but it is similar for any big city - there is a pretty steep flip-side to all the bling. It is undeniable that NY in particular is a city that loves power tripping and showing off. So many people there looking for love in all the wrong places. Many men in NY - not all, and yes, I am totally generalizing here - are addicted to the power trip and view women as trophies to have hanging by their side, quite literally, to aid their show-offishness. And many women go to NY to find a power tripping man with a Black Amex. You got your male chauvinist always-hungry-for-more-money-power-etc. and you got your female always-slightly-bitchy-and-hungry-for-a-sandwich gold diggers. Yeah life is fair that way - balancing out all the crap equally. Yay.
They do make for the perfect match of drama, vanity, infidelity and insecurity - well, and Botox, not to forget.
I'm not against Botox per se - although I find it questionable how safe it is shooting a neurotoxin straight into our forehead. You know, it's kinda close to our brain and all, but maybe if we figure we are tired of using it anyway - understandably so - it might be okay. Less brains, less pains, so hey all good, I guess.
No, it is our obsession with picture perfect that never runs below the surface, that I have an issue with. We waste so many tears on perfecting our shells, when we are still sad, hollow and lost beings on the inside.
You got 99 problems, and your waist is one. But hey, nothing some dollars can't fix. Advertisement from the 30'ies tell it like it is.
It's not attractive - at least not beyond the first 60 seconds.
And even within the first 60 seconds, you can usually tell when someone over-invests in their looks to compensate from all their shortcomings. Red alert, red alert. So unless we are looking for that trophy man or wife, hot looks will not necessarily translate into attractiveness, sometimes it can actually be repelling. Attraction and sex-appeal is energy.
Sexy energy is based on confidence.
Being at ease with our own sexuality, weaknesses and also knowing our strengths and boundaries.
It's not easy. Few of us have it, cos we are more concerned about other people's opinions about us. That is perhaps the only thing preventing us from being attractive - and happy.
What is undeniably attractive is, when we take care of ourselves and when we are not self-destructive.
That shows a level of integrity and self-respect - and then we are also more likely to be in a place, where others can count on us to show care and affection. And yes, self-care may also be to slab that butter on that slice of bread and straight up inhale that stuff like it's crack.
Self-care is also not trying too hard to manipulate our body into something it is not meant to be.
Self-care is resisting conforming to body ideals and trends. Self-care done right, makes us FEEL good, not merely look good. A lot of self-abuse will give us defined abs yet, but we will reek of neurotic negative energy, rigidity, plain boringness and absolutely zero sex-appeal.
Hungry, rigid people are not sexy - they are angry and also often slightly mean.
Good grief, is there anything more boring than being at a dinner party and half the people there are stuffed after eating a green salad leaf (hold the dressing)? It's a total joy kill.
Sexy is not restricting ourselves in a corset-like mentality.
And if someone else wants you to wear a corset - well, then ask them to try one on for fun. And the fun kinda stops there.
Want more?
I like Deepak Chopra's books on how to combine spirituality with the materialism in this world, learning to reflect rather than react, every time we feel threatened and unloved. That's basically it: everything we do is out of feeling unloved or wanting same - just different degrees and ways of acting out. Yes, it's not that complicated, really.