10 Years Later: What I Learned From The Man Who Told Me I Was Not His Ideal Woman

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Fast forward to now, and the person I’ve become would never give the person he was the time of day. But a lot can happen in 10 years. A lot can change, a lot can be accomplished and a lot of self-destructive thought patterns can be undone.

In some warped way, the progress I’ve made is due partly to my Asian boyfriend and other men like him. I believe that the relationships we have, especially the dysfunctional ones, can teach us important lessons about who we are. I believe that often times those dysfunctional relationships mirror some dysfunction within ourselves that we can’t see unless it’s externalized. In this case, my Asian boyfriend was a manifestation of my own shame and lack of self-worth.

When I dated this Asian man, I was recovering from the nadir of my life. Overwhelmed by family and emotional problems, I had dropped out of the Ivy League university I’d worked my entire life to attend, and subsequently spent two weeks staring at the TV in a sleeping bag on my mother’s living room floor. For the next five years I worked a variety of dead-end jobs, made poor choices about relationships, and lacked goals, confidence and sense of identity.

When I met this Asian man, I had finally returned to school at a state college after my five-year holding pattern, but my concept of self was shaky at best. I knew I wanted to be a writer but had not yet forged a successful career. I didn’t have the degree, or the writing credits, or the amazing interviews with childhood idols I can now look back on with pride. I hadn’t yet done important research about my father’s past that helped me to come to terms with his absence in my life, and I hadn’t written a 200-page manuscript about the ordeal. I hadn’t moved out and gotten my own apartment. I hadn’t begun assessing myself through my own eyes and not the eyes of people who continually disapproved of me. I hadn’t unpacked and discarded some of the mental junk I’d accumulated living in a household scarred by alcoholism and mental illness. I hadn’t examined my own role in coming to the self-abasing conclusions I’d adopted. I was just a girl who had internalized a lot of the negativity she had grown up around. I was just a girl who made some bad decisions and lost her way.

So I wasn’t able to reject someone who did not value me properly because at that time, I did not value myself. My identity was amorphous, undefined, and I relied on others to give me shape. It was no surprise that I attracted someone who treated me as if I was not beautiful, not special and not amazing—I surely didn’t think I was any of those things.

Ten years later, I look back on my short-lived relationship with this man and laugh. My sense of self, my taste in men and what I’ll tolerate from a significant other have all radically transformed. My former boyfriend seems foolish to me now, and it’s hard for me to believe I ever thought otherwise. I don’t know if he has found his half white, half Asian ideal woman. I can’t say I care. But I do know that my self-regard no longer hinges on someone else’s misguided conclusions. I’m still evolving, always will be, but I’m focused first and foremost on being my own version of ideal.

Have you dated someone who made it clear you weren’t his ideal woman? Have you been in a dysfunctional relationship that helped you discover something important about yourself? Sound off in the comments.

Lauren Carter is a Boston-based wordsmith who writes about music, culture and race. Connect with her on Twitter @ByLaurenCarter.

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