WWGMD? (What Would George Michael Do?)

All right, so I have a confession. Word of warning, if you’d like to keep your image of me in your head that I am an amazing superwoman who is the epitome of awesomeness, then click that X up in the right hand corner right now. For those of you who are gluttons for punishment, or just get a kick out of me being opposite to my outstanding reputation, then proceed.

So, the other night I was laying in bed “thinking”. (Take from those quotes what you will…). Throughout my dating experience I’m always asked by friends, family, random strangers, etc. what type of man do you want. Whenever I hear this question I get a very weird reaction inside. Kind of like someone kicked me from behind and then proceeded to knee me in the side as I tried to get up. That’s kind of a violent reaction to a fairly simple question right? Well, after hashing out some reasonings, my only guess is that I get that queasy feeling in my belly upon hearing that question because my mind starts chanting “Oh you have NO idea what the hell you want.” And, as someone who has strung through too many dates and has been around way too many male friends and heard too many female friends complain about men, how do I NOT know the answer to that? After a few awkward moments of dawdling, stalling and uttering more umm’s and well’s, I give the very standard “Oh, he has to be smart, cute and funny.” How freakin’ original.

Throughout all of my eloquence, how did I come up with that garbage rolling off my tongue? And once again my head starts chanting “You have NO idea what you want.” So, like any good self-fulfilling prophecy, I started to believe it, and I started to own it. I even developed the very fancy way of sugar coating this into something deeper by saying, “Oh well, I hate saying a laundry list of qualities, I just go with my gut when I’m around someone”. BULLSHIT!

So as I laid “thinking” the other night I came to a realization of what I DO want. And…it obviously racked me a little bit. What I want? One word: Protector. A protector?! Are you kidding me? Of all of my preachings saying women, get your own, do your own thing, don’t let a man be the end all be all, and then this nonsense pops into my head? Oh take my feminist card now…if I ever had one that is.

But no, I’m sure it’s not that dramatic, but it still caught me by surprise. Literally the thought of coming home to a man who wraps me in his arms, looks me in the eyes and says “Baby, I will never, ever hurt you, and I will never let anyone else hurt you because I want to take care of you for the rest of my life” made me damn near burst into tears. YES! Why don’t men say that? Or better yet, why have men I met not say that? Do they exist? Please say yes.

Then I realized that is truly what makes someone vulnerable. All my life I have been taught to be self-sufficient. As an adult that unfortunately has translated into a bit of a character flaw in which I rarely if ever ask anyone for help. Being able to sit there and say to someone, “hey, I need you.” That’s vulnerability. Being vulnerable is not sharing your life story front to end, it’s not taking risks on something outrageous, nor is it crying pools of tears to someone. It is and always will be one person admitting to another that going it alone is tough, difficult and at times insurmountable. True vulnerability is trusting someone enough to lean on.

Call this my Ah Ha moment where I finally realized that maybe this was the missing piece. It was not me being picky, or not knowing what I wanted, or never meeting the correct man. All along it’s been me not willing to trust another person’s strength against my own. So in the philosophical words of George Michael, “Ya gotta have faith.”