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that our actions scream, “You are not acceptable as you are.” He begins to resent us, resisting all our good intentions. (And after all we’ve done for him.) We push forward even harder, to the point of exasperation. Eventually he leaves. We are bewildered. We feel abandoned, used, and unappreciated. (We may have even put him through medical school, only to be left on the day he graduates.) We gave it all we had and got nothing in return. He probably left us for someone “who understood him better” than we did. (Probably someone who looked up to him, giving him what he “needed to make him feel more like a man.”)
Or, maybe, just maybe, we gave up on our little project and asked him to leave. We went off to find someone more appreciative of our benevolence.
8.He’s a Sugar Cookie
This heartbreaker is so sweet and yummy, we could just eat him up. We look at him as if we are staring at a bakery window, wanting and salivating, imagining what it will be like when we get home with our treat. Just like a bake-shop cookie, he is delicious and satisfying for the moment, but is not good for us in the long run. The problem with the Sugar Cookie is that he doesn’t reciprocate.
His love is equivalent to sweet, empty calories—nonnutritious and ultimately bad for us.
But we do love our Sugar Cookie so much, we can’t believe he’s just throwing us saccharine crumbs. So we make excuses for him, saying, “Oh, he’s so sweet, he’s just scared.” Our girlfriends tell us to give him time. We fear if we push him too hard he will crumble. So we wait and hope, taking whatever little morsel he decides to mete out to us. Even if we decide we deserve more, it is difficult to let go of the allure of the Sugar Cookie.
We may decide we are going to get healthy. Yes, we are going to stop our cookie consumption and find a more nourishing diet. But when we try to leave, we go through sugar withdrawal. The obsessive thoughts begin. We forget how unhealthy our diet has been, and only remember how warm and sweet and scrumptious it was to be with our Sugar Cookie. The obsessive craving draws us back to him. The next thing we know, we are on another wild sugar binge.
And so we end up feeling fat, stupid, and ashamed of our behavior. We walk away feeling bewildered, because he looked so good, seemed so sweet. How could we have ever known he would be so bad for us? The Sugar Cookie can be the most painful of all. He can do a number on our minds, bodies, and souls. To stay healthy and fit we must stay away from those unhealthy sweets.
GNAWING ACHES
These men are all different, and your situation may be different too. But they all have one thing in common: pain—the pain of elusive and unachievable happiness. You go to bed at night with a gnawing ache that constantly questions, “Why me? What am I doing wrong?” Or you feel that piercing sting whenever you see a happy couple. You wonder what the secret is. You may even have bought a relationship self-help book— maybe a whole stack of them—in your search for answers. Maybe you even followed their advice to the letter, changing your shoes, your makeup, your toothpaste, and deodorant. Maybe you even changed what you say and how you say it. But you have still found love to be elusive.
A broken picker is frustrating. Just when you think you are on the brink of happiness, it rears its ugly head, and you are off and running, pursuing fate’s latest call. Like a cruel joke, your broken picker has a way of thwarting any long-term contentment, expressing itself in a slightly different form each time. In our search to find a relationship, we may actually find someone who is willing and able to provide us with what we want—we may circumvent our broken picker and find a suitable partner once in a while. But since we still have the unresolved pain of a broken picker, we can end up sabotaging even the best relationship. We’re doomed to heartbreak instead of achieving our heart’s desire, as the following example demonstrates.
Yvette had been dating Steve for a few months. Things seemed to be going well, but she was becoming moody. She tried to brush off the feelings and focus on the “good stuff ” about their budding relationship. A landmark birthday was coming up and she was looking forward to doing something fun. Steve asked what she would like to do, and Yvette replied that she wanted to go parasailing. She had never done it before and thought it would be exciting. What better way to celebrate this special time?
Steve had been married before, and had two children who lived in a different state. He would see his children periodically during the holidays and for one week in the summer. It just so happened that Yvette’s birthday was going to fall during the week that Steve had the children with him. Steve realized that this was an important day for Yvette and wanted to do something nice—and to include everyone. Yvette had misgivings, but demurred. After all, if they were going to create a life together, as Yvette hoped, this was going to be a great opportunity for her to begin forming a relationship with his children.
As the date approached, their plans began to unravel. Steve’s children didn’t want to parasail; they wanted to travel down to Key West. The revised, kid-friendly plan was to leave early in the morning and drive the three hours to the Keys, spend the day jet-skiing and snorkeling, and then drive home—but Yvette really didn’t want to spend most of her birthday in the car. Plus, her birthday was on a Sunday. She knew the outing would be exhausting. They’d get home late, and Yvette was dreading getting up for work on Monday morning. Her attitude was quickly becoming negative.
On Saturday night, Steve called Yvette to finalize their plans. He said his daughters wanted to ride on his motorcycle, so he was going to ride the bike while Yvette drove the truck. That was the final straw. “It’s my birthday!” she thought, and she was not going to be able to do any of the things that she had wanted to do. If she went along with Steve and his children’s plans, she would be spending most of the day driving, and to top it all off, he wasn’t even going to be in the truck with her. She heard the words come flying out of her mouth. She wanted to take them back just as quickly as she said them, but it was too late: “I’m not going!” Alarmed and frustrated, Steve said, “Fine!” and hung up.
Yvette stared at the phone in disbelief. What just happened? She tried calling back, but only got Steve’s voice mail. He had tried to deal with her growing negativity, but he had had enough. Yvette started crying to the answering machine, and begging God to allow her to take her words back. She hadn’t meant it…she’d only wanted him to know she was important. Had that been so much to ask for? Eventually Steve did answer his phone; his voice was harsh and annoyed. Yvette apologized, and told him she hadn’t really meant what she’d said. He relented, and they “agreed” the outing would take place as the kids and Steve had planned, and with Yvette’s participation—but the damage had been done. That night Yvette tried to sleep, but spent the night crying, tossing, and turning. When morning arrived she was in no shape to go on the trip. She called Steve and declined again. She would be spending her birthday alone. Yvette’s birthday was a painful example of self-sabotage.
IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO...
If Yvette’s situation sounds like the ideal way to spend your birthday, please stop reading now. If you would rather drive around with a baseball bat on a Saturday night, looking for “his” car, don’t continue any further. If unavailable men and obsessive relationships are your idea of a great time, please step away from this book. But if you are ready to put an end to dead-end relationships, heartaches, and misery, I’ve got great news for you. There’s a solution, a way to jump off this merry-go-round of unfulfilling relationships. You can have the love you want. You can have a happy and healthy relationship, free from self-sabotage. There is, I assure you, a cure for a broken picker.
CHAPTER TWO How Do You Break a Picker?
“THINGS DO NOT CHANGE; WE CHANGE.”
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We humans are complex. We are emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental creatures. Whatever problems we have rarely have only one point of origin. Usually, there is a series of