Until recently, and thanks to what could be described as a grossly delayed epiphany, I had a track record of entering relationships with men who almost always needed something from me. The spectrum of "needs" ranged from excessive emotional support to specific expectations around sexual intimacy, to the general ticking-off of a checklist that fulfilled their curated life.
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Their friends approved of me (tick), their mothers loved me (tick), but ultimately I was not what they wanted. Rather, I upheld the role of a pretty placeholder and emotional caretaker, before eventually being tossed out to make way for the new.
The first lived example of this was with someone I shared a two-and-a-half year de facto relationship with before he left me overnight for a new lover. Over time, I had slowly but surely been reduced to an empty fuel tank and as I lay on the couch in a state of shock, in the backdrop of his departure scene was one of his mates carrying out the bed we had shared for over two years. In my coiled state all I could ask was, "what am I going to sleep on?"
The emotional heavy lifting that was expected of me in that relationship had proven to be too much, and towards the end I had immersed myself in my work with a greater sense of focus. I recall strengthening the friendships around me, perhaps (in hindsight) as a way of building an emotional ballast. Looking back, I had been trying to create a balance between supporting him as well as myself.
The result? His newly appointed lover inherited the void, and I was told that she was "very supportive and understanding" towards him during this ordeal. The very things he was apparently attracted to in me, he eventually pushed up against: in the beginning he had marvelled with pride at my ambition and coping mechanisms, but when the reality of these attributes played out in everyday life, he sought validation through someone else.
Girls actor Zosia Mamet knows this kind of scenario all too well, detailing in a recent essay that a former partner had become outwardly riddled with fear of her growing success. Mamet wrote that her ex lover, an established photographer, "was always working, long hours, hopping from one job to the next," yet the thought of her pursuing an acting role that could separate them for a few months resulted in a string of emotionally manipulative actions on his part.
These double standards enforced by insecure men seem to be all too common. As marriage counsellor Christine Hutchison recently observed, many heterosexual relationships contain a "pattern of unequal emotional labour that neither party is fully aware of".
Like Mamet, it has only been through some messy experiences and inevitable maturing that I can now look back and reflect on these incidents with some clarity.
So what is it about some men's relentless pursuit of women before deeming them as disposable when they fail at - or resist - the role of emotional caretaker?
The burden women wear from the universal "nurturing" stereotype isn't just derived from the attitude that "women are just better at certain stuff". It's an unconscious framework that governs the way we conduct ourselves from an early age. From infancy girls are praised for harnessing their kind, caring and domestic potential. And if these stereotypes are further perpetuated by trauma - in my case growing up in a physically abusive household - then come your 20s when you're faced with adult life, it can get pretty ugly.
That said, now on the other side of 30, I recently found myself in another serious relationship. It would be some months into it before I began to recognise familiar patterns that saw me increasingly de-prioritising myself to adhere to his life predicaments. His financial issues. His emotional battles. Meanwhile, he took to challenging my feminism in public. While the relationship had initially been dubbed as "serious", it was inevitably short-lived.
Dynamics built on unhealthy levels of expectation can indeed play out more subtly though, and it is never anything but harmful for the party at the receiving end. If any relationship, romantic or not, operates unequally on the framework of a give-and-take negotiation then it's headed for doom, make no mistake. "Drainers," as I refer to them, will harness what they can from you even when those behaviours present with the confusing contrast of some affable and lovable qualities.
So from my own collation of lessons learned, here's what I do know:
- Unhealthy relationships can manifest gradually. It's not always obvious in the early stages, and can come in the guise of a partner simply going through a transitional process of growth. My own experiences have shown me that these kinds of personalities often reveal a history of forging similar relationships; in my case I was simply slotted into a much bigger narrative of recurring behaviours.
- You can only control what you do. Living in fear - consciously or not - of what you might lose should you place warranted focus on your own wellbeing, is not a healthy space to be in. If setting boundaries results in your partner leaving, or you leaving, then so be it.
- Invest in yourself, always. Whether you're single, dating, or in a relationship, the one thing less likely to crumble is a robust sense of self. That includes building strong friendships around a strong foundation; that way if things do break down, there is a support framework in place, an emotional succession if you like.
Failing all that, my advice to anyone in the thick of similar predicaments: run now and never look back. Or like me, you might find yourself paying double rent, sleeping on a blow-up mattress, and wondering at what point the fuel light went on.
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