Every Girl Has a Fantasy

Growing up, every girl in my circle of friends -- and even outside the circle -- has a fantasy about their future. As girls, one of the most common things we think about growing up is finding Prince Charming, falling deeply in love, marrying him and then starting a family with him. We will grow old together and die still very much in love. However, we all know that reality is never as beautiful as a fairytale, still most of us dare to dream in the beautiful, the wonderful, and the unrealistic delusion.

My circle of friends have a common fantasy which ends with a loving husband and great children. They often plan a wedding the day they meet a guy for the first time -- or even before that. The color of the bridesmaid dresses are already set in stone, and the flower arrangements have all been decided upon. Every new guy they go out with becomes the new potential husband and the fantasy ends with them being 50 years old and still madly in love. For me though, my fantasy never ends happily.

In my overly-imaginative image of the future, I see myself with someone and perhaps I am in love with them, but we end up fighting in the end and then we leave each other. Divorce is involved, cheating is involved, lying, screaming, and chaos is all mixed into the tumultuous end of all my future relationships. Even if I find myself happily married to someone in my fantasy today, tomorrow my fantasy changes to us fighting, to the man treating me badly or hurting me, and to us breaking up with either my leaving him, or him leaving me. I see abuse, I see myself being taken advantaged of and treated like a maid, and I see myself crying all the time. I have never had a beautiful fantasy like the other girls, they have always ended negatively.

I believe that out of all my friends, I have the most issue with the subject of love. I have seen my girlfriends pour out their entirety to a guy they like and then have their hearts broken. I have seen abuse in physical and verbal form, and I have had to hold a number of hands to comfort these girls in my life when they go through a rough patch. In the end, out of all these experiences, I have lost all trust and respect for men in general. Of course, not every man in the world is a woman's enemy, but for the most part, I cannot allow myself to fall for someone, because I do not want to be hurt.

I have no confidence that I will not become like those girls who go all pink and bubbly when they're in love and then end up spending a month in their pajamas in bed when they are left behind. I have no confidence that a man will be able to accept me for who I am, with all my flaws intact. I have no confidence that I can attract a man, because I have been used and brushed aside so many times by men who are actually after my girl friends. I have no confidence that I can stand up to a man who abuses me, because we tend to write off our man's shortcomings and take it as though we really are in the wrong and that they are right. I just have no confidence at all.

I have allowed people to walk over me all my life, my friends included. Though I am much better now than I was in the past, it still smarts whenever I can tell how someone is trying to manipulate me to do something that I do not want to do. I can fight off my friends when they start trying to take over my life, but I have no confidence that I can do so with a man. In my mind, none of my relationships will ever end up well and that's why, I'm not so sure I am ready to date, ever.

I have arrived to the conclusion that I have confidence issues and maybe it is committment phobia as well, or just an inability to trust. Whatever it is, I definitely have issues.