Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree and Rising.

I’ll probably implode tomorrow. Beltane. Moon in Scorpio. Full Moon energies. Everything reeks of mating rituals, so obviously, they’re on my mind. Grrrrr. (And that’s a “Grrrr. Argh.” Not a flirty growl.)

 

For the past few years, I’ve been swinging insanely between do I want to date or do I not want to date. Depending on the day of the week, it changes. For good reason.

See, here’s the situation. I’m a strong, independent woman, reasonably successful in my career and generally happy with my life. I don’t need a man and certainly not just any man, yet there are certainly times when I’d like to have someone to share the journey with in a more intimate manner, especially since sharing is such a part of my life purpose, and a man who can stimulate me mentally as well as “make me feel like a woman.” Yeah, all that. No matter how much you live in your head, biological and psychological desires do kick in.

So what’s an Alpha female to do? Alpha doesn’t mean she’s just after the sex and not interested in the romance or the relationship. That would be easy. Just go after what you want and toss it aside when you’re done. Plenty of Beta girls do that. But what if you want something multi-dimensional, then what?

I really don’t care for the men I work with. They’re ultra-conservative, Christian Republicans who frown with disapproval at my sequined shoes, for Pete’s sake. Their idea of spending quality time with them is fetching the beer for them while they watch football on TV…moments before I slit my wrists from boredom.

I’m not the type to sit on bar stools and flirt. Yes, there was a time when I could pick out a guy, make eye contact, and he’d meet me at the door as I was walking to my car. But I wasn’t looking for a relationship, just a…foot massage. That’s not my style now.

I’d much prefer to listen to a guy talk about his world-view and me say, “Hmmmm, I like your mental charms so let’s have a cup of chai tea and talk all night.” Guys talk all the time about how much they want a woman to take the initiative, but I’ve rarely seen anything happen when they did. It’s almost like the guys really want women to take the initiative but they don’t know what to do then. For me, it’s usually met with stumbling, mumbling, and bumbling and rarely anything happens. Yes, and this from men who like me.

An acquaintance of mine says it’s because I’m a woman. That men just biologically cannot handle women as aggressors. Even ones who want a dominant woman have problems with being pursued. She’s been conducting experiments at ALT, adultfriendfinder, and collarme, in which she creates four accounts for each: one uber domme and one ultra submissive female, and then their male counterparts. The men, whether dominant or submissive, received almost no inquiries from women whereas the women, whether dominant or submissive, received hundreds of inquiries in the first day. So in spite of dominance, she alleges, men are still the aggressors.

Life Coaching Tips

I don’t like that. I don’t want to believe that. But then, I keep thinking of a personality quiz I took several years ago. There were several interesting things in the quiz results, including how I should rely on my emotions for guidance rather than logic, how I can use logic and analysis to help everyone else but me and that that’s the way it’s supposed to be for me, and one other thing that I really balked at.

The results said that I should never initiate a relationship with a man because I would always be disappointed. It recommended that I wait for the invitation and then the relationship would be great.

Me? Wait for an invitation? As in, be at someone else’s whim? Like hell. I had plenty of not-so-nice things to say about that quiz and its worth, but…maybe with some spices and some barbecue sauce, this crow I’m eating will be a little tastier.

I won’t say that every relationship initiated by someone else has been accepted. Far from it. But I have to admit that in every relationship I’ve initiated, I’ve been disappointed. I finally have a better understanding of why, at least.

When I meet someone and have an interest in him—at least enough that I’d like to see where it goes and so I take the risk and step out there to see if something might happen—a different side of me emerges that doesn’t seem to mesh well with the assertive side. This is generally only when I’m interested enough in someone to make the first move. It’s the compassionate, nurturing side that wants to mother and make things easy. I will make the first move, but at the same time, I’ll make it easy for him to get to know me, easy for him to schedule time with me, easy for us to do things together, easy for him to open up. I’ll be gentle with his emotions and not play those silly hard-to-get games. The payoff?

Oh, I really hate to agree with the biology here! But look at these action verbs. He doesn’t have to work at the relationship. Or at winning me. Or at fighting to keep me. When I make the first move, I’m already there. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have wasted the effort or risked the embarrassment of making the first move.

And I’ve wondered how it was that I so often was taken for granted! In the relationships I initiated that went beyond the first day, I was the one working at making the relationship work, making it easy for him…and making it easy for him never to have to do anything to make a relationship work.

The point made to me with this quiz was that if a man is interested enough in who I am to make the first move and I’m interested enough to accept his invitation, then he is invested from the first moment instead of never needing to be invested to have a “relationship” with me. The man who’ll take the risk of a first move is the man who’ll work to have a good, healthy relationship with me instead of just always assuming I’ll be there regardless of what he wants to do. According the quiz results, if I make the first move in a relationship, then only one of us will ever work to make a good relationship happen.

Damn. I hate being passive. But based on every pattern in my past, it’s looking rather like the truth for me. And I’m honestly not at all happy with the results of anything I’ve initiated in the past few months, so maybe I’ll figure out a way to ignore my biological and psychological twinges.

Thankfully, I still have that mantra…”The World Comes to Me.”


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