Vol. 3, Post #115 The Cassandra Effect

Believe women. Even those who are your friend & tell you that your dude sucks. Sex tips for girls (or folks holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds (people with readers).

Formally, Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was a Trojan princess and priestess of Apollo, cursed to accurately foresee the future but never be believed. When the god Apollo was struck by her immense beauty, he bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy in exchange for her romantic affections, but she subsequently rejected him, so he cursed her, condemning her to the torment of knowing impending doom with no power to prevent it.

In other words, he wanted her badly, she spurned him, he cursed her so that her gifts of “knowing” now were her greatest liability in that no one would believe her (she predicted the fall of Troy, etc. but everyone thought she was stark raving mad) and ultimately, tragedy struck and she died.

The Cassandra Cycle can be summed up as The Divine Gift, The Rejection, and The Curse, or, as some of you have come to discover, Modern Dating. Read on, Warriors!

Cassandra came to mind last week for an assortment of reasons, but primarily, spurred by a text I got from a pal that read like this:

“You no doubt know XXX (insert name of a pretty well known writer who I admire). She’s going through a hellish breakup with a guy who sounds a lot like your ex. I think she’d like to talk. Can I put you in touch? I told her you are completely discreet.”

The writer that my pal had referenced was most certainly known to me and further, was someone who, I assumed, had a pretty good command of the rituals of dating, mating, and fucking and forgetting when necessary, etc. That my friend thought this writer was going through something similar to my incredible upset and discomfort after a breakup with the last man I truly loved a few years back, well, of course I would speak with her.

Writer and I connected and then scheduled a call. I listened to her story and we paused several times as she attempted to tearily compose herself…

…And now I’m going to pause her story and go to another scenario that also happened last week; you’ll see how and why I’m tying them together, Dear Readers.

So…also last week, I was on the phone with one of my besties when she mentioned something sort of eye-rolling that she saw on social media and directed me to the post. Except I couldn’t see the post. I checked my spelling on the source’s name. Nope, couldn’t see it. Apparently, this person had blocked me. Odd because we had been on/off friends for some time. Our time together also included a brief stint in dating nearly a decade ago and then an equally brief dalliance as just lovers, when I was poly and he was curious to re-enter my life in that capacity.

Given the fact that my bestie was about to diss something this guy had put on his socials (my bestie DEEPLY dislikes this guy), and that it was something super inconsequential, the realization that I had been blocked by him made us both laugh out loud. Over the years, this guy had shown, time and time again, that he is an emotional infant, which is probably why he was so inconsistent in my life. He is petrified of talking about feelings, preferring to just text; he suffers from depression and does little to address it except smoke more pot which just makes it worse; and he has a maddening habit that other weak men like him also employ to tug at female heartstrings, which is this: He enjoys telling women that he is so confused and therefore scared of being in grown up relationships, and then follows that up with a quick “but I worship you” or “but I value our connection so much” and a lot of the time, this melts the heart of the various women he is attempting to con with this crap — so much so that some take him on as a project of sorts, hoping to help him “heal.” I know that I did that once, at the end of that period when we dated. He had disappeared into thin air overnight with no warning and told me that he couldn’t speak on the phone, only text, and to please give him some room to figure out his shit because he valued me so much and I was such a goddess and he was so fucked up. At that time, this made me “try harder” to get him to open up. Now, looking back on it? Ugh. Snooooooooze.

And now, all these years later, he has been semi-fucking around with a friend of mine and putting her through the same emotional wringer of “I’m so fucked up, but look, I’m TELLING you I’m fucked up so doesn’t that count for something?” to such a degree that it is beyond nauseating. Recently, I’d begun to tell my friend what I now firmly believe is this guy’s MO (not that he’s working on his tender fearful tendencies, but rather, that he’s turned this pattern of running as soon as he’s expected to be a man into a veritable geyser of never-ending bullshit aimed at making my friend question herself), and I guess something I said something to my friend got back to him, so now, he’s blocked me.

Now…two different scenarios, two different men. SAME SONG AND DANCE, and it’s the same song and dance that so many of you are telling me about in DMs, about which you are wringing your hands, muttering WTF?!

It’s this:

These Man Children who are out there, saying that they want connection, want to date, want to have successful healthy relationships but ALSO are saying that they don’t need therapy (or meds), don’t or can’t get over weird feelings for their exes, don’t feel understood by most of the people in their lives are, in essence, giving you a blueprint of how they will infuriate you, frustrate you, and most likely ignite your own emotional triggers about being abandoned or overlooked by people you yourself once loved, like your parents or caretakers.

So…what should you do? What should both the famous writer and my pal do about their crybaby idiot men who are down to fuck but don’t want to actually share blood, sweat, and tears after they come?

Easy. They should simply cross their arms and say, “Good luck, Babe.”

Now, here is where it gets a tiny bit messy.

No woman — no thinking, feeling woman who sees the possibility of love or the glimmer of hope in a man rising to the occasion to be vulnerable and healed — walks away from this situation until she is forced to do so. Until then, she doubles down.

She gives it her all. She is available to talk, and available to listen. She makes suggestions for therapies, books to read, videos to watch. She tells her friends that the man in question is “trying” and shouldn’t he be applauded for doing that?

The answer is, no, Sisters, he should not.

And since I’ve been that sister — boy, have I EVER — I’m speaking/writing about this from a place that is grounded in reality. Because while women also can be avoidant and distant and emotionally immature and unwilling to examine their demons, the men are leading the charge here. Sorry, guys, it’s true. And it’s particularly true for Young Old Dudes — the men who want their couch potato life, complete with an always packed bong, but also enjoy the adoration of a woman who offers them her mind and her body. Men who functioned best in a marriage and now that they are single, they are lost. Again, I’ve been that woman with that man.

And now, I’m that woman who is saying to both the writer and my friend, “Um, LOSER.”

Not because the men have issues. We ALL have issues. But because their issues are insurmountable based on these guys’ DESIRE to not fix them. They are incapacitated in their laziness and they like it that way, make no mistake about it.

And to that, this Modern Day Cassandra who is typing this post right now, wants you to know this…

Once upon a time, my two closest pals (who are not close to each other — they only have me in common and they are wildly different people who could share a brain on this; they are so perfectly aligned) told me the following, in summary, about my own Man Child of that moment:

“Every time he does even the smallest thing to show you he’s remotely a grown-up, you want to not only reward him with more of you and your goodness, but you want all of us to acknowledge that he’s changing. He’s not changing a bit. He’s just lapping up what you’re offering because he’s obviously not dumb and for that matter, yes, he obviously loves you back in his way. But he’s NOT the right man for you because he’s not the right man for even himself.”

And you know what? I bristled.

The same way the writer bristled when I told her that no, she shouldn’t call this guy’s mother to tell her that her son needed therapy. The same way that my pal bristled when I’ve said that the number of times she’s told me that she and the guy are “not speaking” (or the number of times that he’s blocked her number only to unblock her, or whatever), is akin to the sort of behavior we grimaced over when our kids did it as teenagers.

And so, like me with my two besties who tried to straight-talk me, I’m sure I’ve been seen as “kind of harsh” by the two women in my life that I’ve described here. And want to know why that’s fine? Because eventually they will smarten up and I’m so sure of that, I’d bet my house on it. Neither of these women (both gorgeous, both accomplished) will end up with these men, thankfully. And these men will end up alone (probably complaining about it to anyone who will listen. My dick is softening just imagining the whole thing).

As my friend Bart once said, of a dying love affair with someone who isn’t lifting a finger to feel its pulse, “All that relationship needs is moving boxes and packing tape.”

It’s a gorgeous wonderful thing to be aging and to know that in the time that remains, the move is surround yourself with people who are unabashed truthsayers, clear and present in what they offer and what they expect, or go it alone. In the case of the two women I’ve written about here, the thimble-sized cups of “maybe I could be your boyfriend if I wasn’t so fucked up” elixir that they are being offered is akin to a teaspoon of water in the Sahara Desert. And I know these women will seek their just desserts elsewhere when they are ready.

Good luck, Babe.