I had a moment of epiphany recently thinking about some guys I have known. There is a certain type of guy who lives to collect women. Not in the icky, "girls I've made out with" chart-on-the-wall way two guys I knew and studiously avoided in high school did, mind you. Not in the "Women of the World I've Wooed into Bed" way that my devious ex, T., did, either. What I mean is that there are certain guys who seem to need an entire fleet of women around them all the time to survive, so they studiously collect different types in different places to make sure they have the complete set.
I'm still not sure about the exact driving force behind this particular type of guy. I'm pretty sure it's not a libido-driven thing. Maybe for some of them it comes from growing up with lots of sisters. Or does it come from not having any? I feel like I need to do field research and find out. I've only known two confirmed Collectors in my time, and I don't think that's a broad enough research base to make any firm conclusions with.
All I know is that I keep winding up as a collectible for this type of guy. I guess I'm enough of an oddity that I'm like a limited-edition trading card or something that has a flaw in it and became collectible for that reason. I'd love to know what label I allow them to check off the big mental list, maybe it's something like Traveling Teacher Geek or Chick Who Likes Science Fiction, Old Movies, and Reading. Maybe it's She Who Might Edit My Writing.
I think that coming to this current working thesis about Collectors is going to be a good thing. I think that knowing they're out there, gathering up huge numbers of women to surround themselves with is useful. It doesn't really mean that you're not a friend to them; it just means that you are only a certain type of friend to them in a certain type of situation. As long as you remember that you are only one of the "village that it takes to take care of a Collector", then you should be okay. The trouble I got into before with D. was that I didn't know this about him, didn't understand that I was only one of the shiny objects in his showcase rather than someone he felt that he could love. I knew he didn't love me, knew I couldn't ever make him love me, but I never could figure out why he was around me. I think the Collector theory might just cover it.
Of course, this might all just be a lot of crap...
My daughter is just waking up to this concept, unfortunately due to wasting the last year wishing and hoping. If I was "out" blogwise to her, I'd send her a copy of this post! Would you mind if I paraphrased you - because it makes so much sense.
ReplyDeleteIt is WONDERFUL to read so many posts from you.
Thanks for the kind words. It's good to feel like writing again. I've been too tired to care about anything but survival for awhile now, so now that I have the time, it's like an explosion of blogging. It might get to border on too much stuff after awhile.
ReplyDeleteAs for sharing this with your daughter, share it however you see fit. I wish somebody had shared it or something like it with me before I spent all that time (something like 4 years) hung up on D. It would have helped me so much to understand him. Like I said in the post, though, this may all be crap, though....