If Someone Says "You Complete Me," RUN! (10 page)

Take a look at how you defined intimacy in that exercise I gave you. I’m guessing you will agree with me that creating intimacy with another person can happen only through face-to-face connection over time.

Because, even beyond good sex and good companionship, people still crave intimacy. Not just physical intimacy, although we all certainly crave that, but emotional intimacy. It’s what makes us feel alive, makes us feel human. In the beginning of a relationship, sexual chemistry can seem to be intimacy, but understanding one another and the ability to share and connect take time to create. And they require a certain amount of vulnerability and honesty.

So while lots of people find relationships on the Internet, it’s hard to know if you’re going to connect with that person. I like a good old-fashioned bar, because I want
to know how you smell. I want to see you. Not because I want to see if you’re cute, but to see if you’re crazy.

There is a movie called
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
, where Diane Keaton’s character goes to this bar every night and picks up these edgy guys. One night she goes home with this really handsome, seemingly charming guy and then… well, let’s just say it doesn’t end well for her. You could say, “Oh, that was just a movie.” But it was based on a true story. It happens.

I will never forget that movie, because now I feel like I need to really know who a person. I need to see the person. I need to see you in the daylight where other people are, which is the way you should meet any new person. You need to be around other people when you meet new people because you don’t know if you’re meeting Norman Bates. Or Mr. Goodbar. You just never know.

Something you should know is everybody is Google-able now. So if your friends Google the guy you’re with, or the girl you’re with, or the man you’re with, or whomever, and they say, “Hey, this doesn’t look too good. This person seems a little sketchy,” don’t say, “No, no, that won’t happen with me.” And don’t cut your friends loose or cut them dead, because they are your friends and they’re just trying to protect you. So when you meet a new person, you might want to Google him and see what’s out there about this person. It doesn’t mean that it’s true, but it tells you there’s something you need to
know, because if everyone else can see what you’re finding online, they’re going to start asking you questions, and you should probably be asking those same questions. You need to get in front of these stories.

That’s life. You don’t really know until you know. Somebody gives his best face in the first five months of the relationship. Everything is fantastic, and then one day you have that disagreement, that first disagreement. If you’re lucky, it will just be like, “Oh, well, no, I never thought about that in that way.” “I don’t know
why
you didn’t think about it.
I
thought about it.” Instead of “No, I never thought about that” and
slap
! “Well, you think about it now. “Then you have a real decision to make.

So you don’t know until you know. That’s why you have to be present in the relationship and pay attention to what is actually happening, instead of living in some fantasy world or world of denial. You have to be present. Red flags are there for a reason. And you have to look straight at them. See those red flags. Listen to your gut. If your gut is screaming, “No, no, no, Mr. Bill, no, Mr. Bill,” like that clay guy from
Saturday Night Live
—well, you need to listen to that and act accordingly.

How can I say this with such authority? It’s because, in my lifetime, I’ve ignored enough red flags to fill the country of China. I would be Oprah by now if I had paid attention to some of those red flags, but I didn’t.

S
ome people just love ignoring the big red flags. It’s called denial.

When you see a giant red flag waving in your face, it is trying to say something to you. Usually it’s saying, “This is not the right thing to be doing,” or “There’s something wrong with this picture.” So when you see that red flag, pay attention to it. You know what a red flag is for.

You would pay attention to it at work.

You would pay attention to it with your brothers and sisters and your mother and father.

You would pay attention to it with your children.

Yet somehow we do not pay attention to red flags when it comes to our own relationships, and that’s why I think there are so many divorces, because we all think,
“Oh, no, we can make it better.” Let me tell you something: you can’t.

Now, why do I say that?

When you talk to someone whose relationship has tanked, and you say, “Boy, how come you didn’t see this coming?
We
all saw the red flags, and we know you saw the red flags. Those flags were gigantic.” Your friend or your sister or whoever you’re talking to doesn’t know what to say because she made a decision that she was going to try to fix whatever was wrong with the relationship. Or, worse, she was ignoring it.

The thing is you can’t make decisions for anybody else. You can’t make someone do something she doesn’t want to do. You can’t do it. All you can do is put yourself where
you
want to be and work from that. If you happen to be lucky enough to find a like-minded person, all the better.

I have always thought it was just a little bit crazy that no one ever says, “If you’re going to get married, you have to commit to the truth first.” Wishful thinking is not a good strategy for a happy marriage. What I mean by this is if you’re going to get into a relationship that leads to marriage, you have to be up front, first and foremost.

What does that mean? It means that once you know your own truth, you have to be clear to other people about who you are.

It means if you want to have kids, you need to get into that conversation early on.

It means if your career is always going to be your priority, you should explain that.

You need to say from the beginning, “Hey, this is who I am and this is what I do and I’m probably not going to change.” Because finding things out down the road isn’t a good thing.

Remember that you have the choice to see things as they are and not as you want them to be. Forgetting this is why I think so many people get divorced. When they got married, they knew who this person was. They may not have said it out loud, but inside, they knew. So then, five years down the line, when your husband or wife is still the person he or she was, you can’t be shocked. You can’t be angry. You knew what you were getting into and you got into it anyway. You just made the decision to ignore it. You thought you could fix it or that you could somehow deal with it. But you couldn’t.

Can people evolve and shift? I’d like to think they can. I’d like to say probably. I don’t know if they really, really do, though. They may try to be better or
say
they will be better—they may have the best intentions of doing so.

This whole thing reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. That’s the story where a scorpion asks a frog if he can carry him across a stream. The frog says
sure. They’re halfway across when the scorpion stings the frog, and the frog is shocked because he’s getting paralyzed and they’re both going to drown. So he asks the scorpion why in the world he would do that, and the scorpion responds, “It’s my nature.”

People are who they are.

We all think men are just looking to plug a hole, which of course they are, especially in their twenties. But girls also want to act like whores at times in their lives. Your twenties are the time for you to run around and find shit out. There is a lot more to each of us, though, man or woman, and none of us should be dealing with stereotypes, because then you are setting yourself up and it’s going to create problems.

If you really don’t trust the person you’re with because you know he is always trolling, my question to you is “Why are you with him?” It always comes back to that. “Why are you there?”

On the other hand, what if
you’re
the troll? What if you’re the person? You just have to be honest about it and say, “This is me, this is what I do. I go looking for other people. You may not be enough. Do you still want to stay?” Then they are either in or they are out, and there are no misunderstandings.

You have to listen. People are saying things, and you can’t be rearranging their words to be what you want them to be. Listen to what they are saying and take it as
fact from them. Now, how they’re feeling could change. But for now, take it as fact.

If someone says, “This is not what I want,” believe him.

If you’re getting married and the guy says, “Look, I don’t want to have kids,” trust him. He doesn’t want to have kids and shouldn’t have kids to try to save something, because that doesn’t work, because then you’re mad at the baby. What does the baby know? She is just lying there trying to speak English. She doesn’t know, and she didn’t ask to be put in the middle of this situation.

Oprah always says, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

I will add: believe them
the first time
. Although, it’s not always easy for us to do that. It might take two, three, or fifty times. But the truth remains the truth.

Now, why do people ignore the warning signs? For all the reasons we talked about earlier.

“Oh, I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want people to think I don’t have anybody.”

“I’m afraid I’ll get old and no one will be attracted to me anymore.”

“My biological clock is ticking.”

“I can’t have dinner by myself anymore.”

Yes, someone I know actually used that last one as an excuse as to why she had a boyfriend. She would say, “I just wanted somebody to have dinner with.”

It’s like, “That’s it?”

“Yeah, because it’s so uncomfortable to go out to dinner by yourself.”

That’s ridiculous. That is, to me, dangerous—and also terrible for the other person, who thinks he is actually charming you into believing he is the person for you. And then when he discovers, “Ah, no, I’m not the man of her dreams. She just didn’t want to eat out by herself.” It’s kind of a shitty position to put somebody in.

A lot of the time, not being up front about who you are starts at the very beginning, before there even is a relationship. It’s why people lie in their online profiles. That’s why they have that show on MTV,
Catfish
, where the guy goes and finds out who a person really is behind his or her online persona.

I can understand why people pretend to be other people online. I get that. In your online profile, you can be a better version of yourself, or a different you altogether.

You can be beautiful.

You can be skinny.

You can be white.

You can be black.

You can be Asian.

It’s an avatar kind of world, so you can be whatever you want. But once you get busted in that lie, it’s very hard to make a comeback, especially in a relationship.

Some people say, “Well, he wasn’t exactly what I was
looking for, but I can mold him.” Or “She wasn’t exactly my first choice. She is not as pretty as I want her to be, but I can live with that.” Those are two kind of terrible things to say about a person. You can’t just say, “Oh, well, I’ll live with it.” Why would you want to? How is that going to end up? With both of you being happy? Why would you want to be with someone if you weren’t his first choice? If he doesn’t find you attractive or wants to mold you? It’s insulting. I don’t understand the point of that.

If you are never, ever, ever, not ever going to meet the person on the other side of that computer, sure, lie your pants off. Lie your pants off. If there is
no chance
you are ever going to meet—though you should know that in order to become a couple, you kind of have to meet—but if your avatars are meeting and that’s all it’s going to be, lie your pants off and have a good time, as long as you are both on the same page.

It’s almost like playing a video game, like
The Sims
, where you can create your own world. If there is any possibility that you might want to meet this person, or that the other person might want to meet you, I would stay in the truth pool. Getting in the bullshittian pool is no good.

Beyond not being honest about who you are when you first meet someone, some people believe it’s okay to tell little lies here and there in a relationship. I’m not a believer in that philosophy, whether you’re lying about
how someone looks or you’re lying about what you are going through.

Like “I’m married.”

Or “I’m separated but really want to get back together with my wife once you and I have this fling.”

Or “I have an addiction problem.”

Or “I used to be a call girl.”

Or “I’m six figures in debt.”

Or “I just lost my job.”

Or “I have an eating disorder.”

Or “I like to gamble—a lot.”

Or “I like to shop—a lot.”

Now, those are all big things to lie about, but there are also the little lies we tell, day to day, the ones that chip away at trust. These little lies are the ones that create doubt once someone catches on to them. These lies may seem harmless at the time you are telling them, but they do add up over time.

Like “I’m leaving the office now and will be home in time for dinner,” when you know damn well you are going to the bar to have a few drinks with your colleagues.

Or “I’m just going to have one more and then we can go home.”

Or “I will take your car to be serviced next weekend if I can play golf this weekend.”

These may seem harmless, but when you don’t deliver, when you tell these little lies, you are creating disappoint
ment, and over time that disappointment will pile up. And you will be called unreliable.

If you tell a little lie in a relationship, even if it’s an irrelevant one, and you get caught, you are always going to be the person who isn’t totally trustworthy. You’ve created a little seed of doubt in your relationship.

There are stupid lies, too, like the ones that make the other person feel better. Say he asks, “Do these pants make me look big?” Well, you and I both know the answer is “Yes, those pants make you look big, and not only do they make you look big, but they are not flattering on you. I’m your partner. Why wouldn’t you want me to tell you that truth? What would you want me to tell you? ‘No, those are fine,’ when I know they are not.”

In other words, if you can’t depend on me for the little shit, how can you be sure that you can depend on me for the big shit? If I’m willing to lie to you just to make you feel better, that’s not being a good partner. That’s someone who just is trying to keep the peace, and in a relationship, you shouldn’t try to keep the peace.

I should be able to say, “Do not put those on. Don’t put those on because they are not flattering” or “They don’t make you look as good as you could be looking.” Not in a mean way, but in a nice way. That’s my job, to tell you the truth.

If your partner comes in and says, “I don’t think you should wear that, I can see through it,” or “You’re really
too big for this outfit,” or “You’re seventy-five years old and you’re trying to dress like a fourteen-year-old,” he is doing the right thing. That’s important information for men and for women.

So if your wife says, “You cannot wear that because it doesn’t look good,” you need to hear it. You need to be able to accept that because that’s a truth, and it’s coming from the person who lives with you, who knows what looks good on you, or feels he knows.

Now, remember, you’re only saying this if someone says to you, “Do I look fat in this?” If your husband or wife or partner comes in and, out of the blue, says, “That doesn’t look good on you,” that’s a different thing, when the opinion is unsolicited, and you haven’t asked him to give you any feedback.

However, you want him to take a chance and say to you, “Hey, I love you. I don’t think you should wear that.” That’s okay, because if you are both complete people, then you will recognize that the other person is trying to do you a favor and keep you from being embarrassed. You recognize it because you’re not looking to him to complete you or to do any of that shit. But you are looking to each other to tell the truth. And if the truth is “That suit is too small for you,” or “Nobody wants to see your bread basket”—you know what I’m talking about, gentlemen; it’s the male equivalent of camel toe—“and now I
know you’re Jewish. I didn’t think you were, but because your pants are so tight, it has now been confirmed.” If all that comes from someone who actually gives a shit about you, it’s okay. It’s better, it’s honest, and it’s real. You might not want to hear it. But then you can’t bitch when you go out and you hear somebody whisper, “Oh, my God, why is she wearing that?” or “Why is he wearing that. That looks ridiculous on him!” after your partner has tried to tell you don’t come out looking like that, and you were just halumphing him. Don’t do it.

You don’t want to hurt people’s feelings for no reason, so you want to be cognizant of how you say things to them. You don’t want to be an asshole. So be clear about what you’re going to say and how you say it. And be kind. If I can’t trust you as the one person in my life I’m supposed to be able to trust, how do you build a relationship from there? So, to me, without that first truth, without that absolute first truth, it’s very tricky for people, and thinking that you’re going to be able to change it later is a huge mistake.

There are ways to be kind and thoughtful and still get your point across. There’s a way to disagree with someone and still treat him or her with respect. Don’t “go along just to get along.” Don’t belittle or dismiss someone because he has a different point of view from you. There’s
a way to share your truth without being aggressive or defensive. And there is a way to listen to someone else’s truth without getting hurt or angry.