The men of her dream

 

It’s not a jaded or false cliché: Many women are drawn to troubled or problematic men whom they want to “fix.” A client today, who has had serial bad relationships, who vacillates between two unsatisfactory candidates, and is still smitten by the false smile of her pathological ex-husband, named that urge with that word. This short piece asks: What is “fix”?

This logic seems valid to me: Fixing a man can’t mean to transform him into a healthy, loving person, because she’s not attracted to such persons! These women aren’t. What can it mean, then? My client’s spontaneous, incisive answer: “To make him dependent on me.” And deeper: What does this “dependent” mean? Here’s the feeling behind that undefinable word: She wants to struggle – where their emotions are bleeding into each other – for love, which she actually couldn’t tolerate. For an injured child-grown-up, to be given love is to suddenly be touched in the buried unloved part of oneself, the part that had to be given up, that is too late to reach. She needs the struggle, the intimate pain, the process, the dream, not the end itself.