The Tuesday Girl
This is a blog I’ve written a number of times, but didn’t feel ready to post it. I’m ready now. And since writing this, I’ve been doing some reading. Currently, I’m reading ATTACHED by Amir Levine, and it’s blowing my mind. You’ll see in this blog that I clearly have an anxious attachment style. Now that I know, I can work on it.
The Tuesday Girl
(Take 4)
When I lived in New York, shortly after 9/11, I met a man that I fell head over heels for. Maybe I was extra vulnerable after that terrible day or because I was still new to the city, or maybe it was just that I was in my twenties and healed enough from my childhood to be ready to love. I was heart-open ready to love. I fell for him pretty instantly.
It didn’t last long.
He wasn’t into me or ready for me or whatever. I believed though, that if I were just patient enough, loving enough, understanding enough, he’d see me as a great partner. He’d change his mind.
I remember one night when we were supposed to meet after he had an event, at like 8 o’clock. He didn’t show. And I can’t remember the exact phone call or text, but he said he was on his way and to just wait.
So I did. Outside his apartment in the dark in Brooklyn. It was November, and I waited. And then it started to rain. It was cold. And I waited. I was drenched, but he said he was coming, and I couldn’t let him down. The doorman watched me and after a half hour or so, he asked if I wanted to come inside and wait. I said no, don’t worry, he’ll be here any minute.
He did show up. Around ten. He felt terrible. He didn’t realize he was so late, or that it was raining. He forgot I’d been waiting for him.
The point here is, though, that he wasn’t thinking of me at all. And that’s the part I didn’t understand. I wasn’t important to him. I didn’t even cross his mind.
I still think about that night. The length I was willing to go to, to get the man I was in love with to show up and be there for me. I’d go through anything for him. Even standing in the rain for over an hour, wet and bone chilled. It’s still humiliating.
I’d like to say this was a one-time thing, but I’m afraid it’s become a pattern.
***
After my first divorce, I connected with a man I’d known for ages.
He invited me over to his house to watch shows. He invited a lot of women over to watch movies and shows, and I suspect he still does, but for some reason I thought I was special.
And naturally, our movie watching evolved. We never slept together…but there was an intensity and a growing bond. Only he could never see me on the weekends. Only on Tuesdays. He was super busy with work and his family and there just wasn’t time to get together then, but there would be soon, maybe, and he’d see me on the next Tuesday. And weren’t our Tuesdays great?
I agreed because I could empathize with work and family and obligations.
Until I realized that it wasn’t true.
There was a weekend he was out of town to a family reunion, and he’d been tagged on Facebook in the pictures from the weekend. Only it wasn’t a family reunion. They were pictures of him and the woman he was living with, or marrying or whatever, and her two kids.
I was dumbfounded. I had no idea. None at all.
I felt duped and embarrassed and then it got worse.
He invited me out for cocktails. I was thrilled because we never went out, and I thought that he was going to explain those pictures, and maybe he was starting to love me because he’d finally asked me out. I got dressed up and met him at a local restaurant, so excited and happy to be out with him on a date. An actual date! And he said that the woman he was involved with had told him he couldn’t see anyone else so he was sorry, but we weren’t going to have our Tuesdays anymore.
He asked me how I was. I looked at my half empty martini and I literally did not know what to say. I’d dressed up for this. I’d had this foolish kind of hope that I was special. This wasn’t a date at all. The reason we were in a restaurant was because he didn’t want me to cause a scene. He didn’t want to deal with my emotions. So I left. The drink. Him. The situation.
AND THEN IT GOT WORSE.
I saw the woman at Target the next weekend. She was there with her two kids and they were getting supplies for a barbeque. I was there with my two kids, who were about the same age as hers. I heard her talking to her kids in the aisle saying the things they were getting to bring home to the man I’d been seeing. I had this surreal moment of a soft kind of anger. An awareness that we were the same age, with two kids the same age. Both of us artists. So why was I the Tuesday Girl? Why wasn’t I good enough to be the Forever Girl?
(And what made this guy so special that he was allowed to decide who was worthy?)
It’s something that’s followed me around, this curse of feeling somehow that I am never quite enough, or I’m always a bit much.
I vowed I’d never be a Tuesday Girl again.
***
Of course, it’s happened again.
I’ve been seeing a man on and off who I feel a deep connection with, but who, ultimately, isn’t ready or willing or enamored enough to really want me. He sees me maybe once a week. He texts me, he’s kind to me, but he’s so distant, and there are so many rules to the relationship. He tells me he’s not ready yet, and what I hear is “Just give me more time. Be patient.” But what he’s really saying is: “I don’t want you to be my girlfriend.”
I’ve seen him on other days besides Tuesdays, but it may as well be just Tuesdays. We’ve tried so hard to make it work, but when I look at the relationship AS IT IS, the truth is, he just doesn’t want me. I’m not a Forever Girl for him.
Worse than that, though, is that I allowed myself to be a Tuesday Girl again. I allowed it. And this isn’t going to change, until I change it.
***
WHO IS A TUESDAY GIRL?
A Tuesday Girl never takes priority. She’s not worth enough to spend a weekend with, or make plans with. She’s the person a man calls when they have space in their schedule, or down time, or they’re bored, and usually it’s last minute. A Tuesday Girl is on the outskirts of the week and priorities and plans. A Tuesday Girl doesn’t complain and she’s always available and compliant and understanding. She supports. She dreams. She’s always available. A Tuesday Girl doesn’t express her own needs, because they aren’t important. He is the only one who is important. His needs matter.
And a Tuesday Girl shrinks her own needs until those needs are small enough that she can convince herself that what she receives is enough.
***
I’ve been standing in the rain, on a Tuesday, thinking if I’m patient enough, or supportive enough, or loving enough, he will think I’m worthy enough of loving.
And of course, I am worthy enough of loving.
I shouldn’t have to prove it.
***
I started seeing a therapist who asked me challenging questions. “What is it that draws you to him?”
I said the way we can talk, how I feel around him, and though there are problems, I see so much potential and that I’m hanging on because that potential is so amazing, it’s hard to let go. “But that potential isn’t real, right?” She asked. “That’s not reality. What is reality is he isn’t meeting your needs.”
She told me I should consider seeing other people. If this man isn’t ready to make space in his life for me, if he doesn’t make plans with me without being pushed, I shouldn’t stand around waiting for him.
She recommended I read the book WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH. She went on to tell me that people who were raised in chaos (abuse, neglect, etc.) had to make choices when they were growing up. They could either be authentic (expressing their own needs, which in a dysfunctional family comes at great personal risk) or they can choose safety (and do the things they need to in the family system to stay safe.) Over and over, they make the choice to choose safety and set their own wants and needs aside. There isn’t time or space for that. And when they grow up and enter relationships, they have a high tolerance for bullshit. They’ll take a lot of bullshit because it’s familiar, they’ve been through worse, and they’ll give chance after chance in an effort to reach that potential day where they are safe and loved.
That sort of hit me in the gut.
I don’t know how to break this pattern. I like be loving and supportive. I like being empathetic, but I’m realizing that if it has a price…if I have to stand in the rain waiting, if I have to be satisfied with only a Tuesday night and no commitment, if I am not courted with enthusiasm and passion, then I lose a little more of my self-respect and self-esteem. I continue the pattern set in my childhood of giving up my authenticity for the potential of something wonderful, that doesn’t exist in the now, and may never happen in the future.
I don’t want to be a Tuesday Girl anymore.
I’m worth more than that.
We are all worth more than that. We deserve to be loved, and honored, and treated with tenderness. We deserve to be romanced, to have the people we’re dating excited to see us. We shouldn’t have to convince a potential partner that we’re interesting and worth spending time with; it should be a given. We should be treated kindly and passionately.
We should hear from people we’re dating, “I love spending time with you. Let’s plan the next time we can see each other.”
We deserve to be loved and to be safe and if we are standing out in the rain, waiting for potential to show up, we deserve to say to ourselves “Fuck this shit. This is ridiculous. I’m not waiting here.”
But it’s hard.
It’s really hard.
I think what’s different now is that I’m finally seeing the pattern, instead of simply existing IN the pattern. And this gives me the power to change it.
I’m not a Tuesday Girl.
And I’m not waiting anymore.
###
ABOUT TANYA EBY
Tanya is a narrator, mom, writer, cook, and walker of many many miles. Find her on IG at Tanya-Eby, on Twitter and at @Blunder_Woman. She’s looking for an agent for her thriller novel and is hoping to sell the horror-comedy screenplay she co-wrote with Amy Landon. If you know of any leads, please let Tanya know. :)