The Nice Girl Syndrome (33 page)

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unconscious memories of my abuse experience, which, in essence, rendered me powerless. So I stayed with Jacob another day and another horrible night. The day went well enough. I told him I wasn’t feeling well (which I wasn’t), and we took it easy, taking a barge tour and a ride in the countryside. That night, I told him I didn’t feel like having sex—that I still wasn’t feeling well. He became very upset, telling me that it was our last night. He said he’d fallen in love with me and was going to miss me terribly. He even tried to make me feel guilty. But it didn’t work. I was feeling so smothered by him that I just couldn’t bear his touching me, much less having sex with me.

From this experience I came to understand, albeit in a small way, how those who are kidnapped feel—how they often try to befriend their captors. As much as I had come to feel like I was a prisoner in Jacob’s apartment, I still didn’t want to make him angry. I felt like I owed him something for being so nice to me. I even believed I needed him to take me to the airport.

When I look back on this experience, I am appalled at my behav- ior. Not only had I been very reckless with my safety (I didn’t know this man at all and was in a foreign country; I could have been raped or worse), but I had become dependent on a man—something I could never have imagined I would ever do again.

Remedies

The best way to avoid getting into a situation in which you are finan- cially dependent on a man is to not allow a man to buy you. What I mean by this is that you not fall into the trap of being seduced by favors, gifts, offers of money, cars, or apartments. Certainly this does not mean you don’t allow a man to pay for your dinner or take you out for a big night on the town. It doesn’t even mean that you don’t accept a small gift in the beginning of the relationship—such as flowers. But it does mean you shouldn’t go out with a man just because you know he has money—especially if you aren’t attracted to him in the first place. It means that you don’t accept expensive gifts or favors that set up an obligation from a man at the beginning of the relationship. This establishes a very unhealthy precedent

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and sends a negative message to the man that you can be bought.

No matter how broke you are or how hard it is to pay your bills each month, going out with or staying with a man you don’t really like just because he is rich or has good connections is just not worth it. I can’t tell you how many women clients I’ve had who regret hav- ing done this very thing. For example, Maxine started dating Jim right after her divorce came through. She’d met him through some business acquaintances. As she explained to me, “I wasn’t really attracted to him, but I knew he had a lot of money. My ex-husband had nearly bankrupted us, and I was bound and determined to never get involved with another man unless he had lots of money and could support me in the manner to which I wanted to become accus- tomed, if you know what I mean.”

Maxine found out that being with a rich man wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “Right away, he seemed to think he owned me. He started telling me who I should hang out with and how I should spend my time. He was being so generous with me, I guess I thought it was worth it. But believe me, it wasn’t. Things just got worse and worse. He took me on a very expensive vacation to the Caribbean, which was wonderful, but the whole time it was all about what he wanted to do. He never asked me what I’d like to see or do. Because he was paying, he thought he had the right to have complete control. And it was during this trip that he started demanding sex from me— whether I wanted it or not. One night, I had gone back to the hotel room early because I had a headache. He stayed downstairs, entertaining a group of Europeans. When he came up, well after midnight, he insisted on having sex. I told him I still had a headache but he didn’t seem to care. When I still refused, he had the nerve to tell me, ‘Look, you either put out or I’ll go find another whore who will.’

“He apologized the next day saying that he’d had too much to drink, but I never forgot what he said. I knew that in some way he actually did see me as his whore. It was just downhill from then on. I confess, I still accepted his lavish gifts—it was just so hard to resist. But as time went on, I began to feel more and more like a paid pros- titute. And he was demanding more and more for his money—strict obedience, what he called ‘total loyalty,’ which meant that I could never associate with anyone he deemed unacceptable, and the worst part of all—sex on demand.

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“By the time I’d had enough, I’d lost all respect for myself. That’s why I’m here. I don’t ever want to do that to myself again—I don’t care how poor I am.”

It is very important that you pay your own way with a man and don’t accept favors you cannot repay. This sends the message that you can’t be bought and that you are a self-sufficient woman who can’t be controlled or dominated. Even if you don’t have enough money to pay some of the time, you can reciprocate by cooking him dinner or taking him on a picnic you’ve prepared.

Even after marriage, you will retain a lot more personal power if you continue to support yourself and contribute to the running of the household.

Unfortunately, as I discussed earlier, many women stay with part- ners they are unhappy with or those who are abusive just because they don’t have enough money to pay their own way or to leave. For this reason, even married women or women who live with their part- ners need to maintain separate bank accounts with enough savings in it so that they are not dependent on their partners to take care of them.

Many women also feel that even though their partners may have a lot of money, and they may not need to work, they need to make their own money so as to feel independent.

If you haven’t already done so, I strongly recommend that you take a women’s self-defense course. There are many to choose from. In the meantime, the following self-defense principles will enable you to better protect yourself.

1. Stay aware of people in your surroundings.
   Most rapists are more predatory in nature than opportunistic. They will often observe or case a situation in which women might be avail- able and alone. A potential rapist will often look at you far longer than what is considered socially acceptable. He may move when you move. He will stop and look around to check
   

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   for witnesses. He will often make several passes by his prey in a sort of dry run, seeing if the victim will react or to get a sense of how the attack might work. For this reason, you need to pay attention to who is looking at you. Has the same person or car passed by you twice? Does someone appear to be mov- ing with you?
   

2. Keep your distance.
   Many potential rapists actually “test” or “interview” a woman to see if she is a good victim. They test her boundaries to gain proximity and size up her defenses. This can occur in a few seconds or over months, preceded by a simple request for directions or persistent unwanted court- ing. Criminals, especially rapists and stalkers, are experts at violating boundaries. This is how they think: “If I can get this close, I can move in closer. If I can make her comply with one demand, I can help myself to more.” Do not enable this pro- gression of yesses. This is where the information on how to say
   no
   and on setting boundaries presented earlier in the book will come in handy. Take control and nip the problems in the bud. Learn to draw a line, to say no and mean it.
   

3. Recognize an “interview” and know what to do.
   The interview often starts out with the man trying to discern whether you are alone.
   Never
   confirm this to any man. If a man asks you if you are alone in a workplace or home, tell him no. Next, a potential rapist may ask you a series of questions in rapid suc- cession or he may change his questions, depending on your answer. He may also refuse to take no for an answer. This is his attempt to disarm you and test how strong you are. Remain calm and don’t become flustered with his changing questions. At the same time that he is asking questions, he may be walking closer to you. If this is the case, back up or walk to another area of the room or street away from him. Do not allow a man to corner you or come into your space. And don’t be afraid to say something like, “It’s clear that I can’t help you. I think you should leave.” Don’t worry about hurting his feel- ings. Nice guys don’t violate your space or sensibilities by pressuring you or crossing your boundaries.
   

4. Stay with people, go to people.
   Never get into a car with a strange man. If someone attempts to force you into a car, drop to the
   

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   ground to prevent him from carrying you away. Do not walk around a building to an alley or enter an elevator or a stairwell if there is only a man present. Stay where others can see you. If you are in a house or other private location, you need to go to people. Run out of the door to a neighbor’s house or climb out of a window. If you are being followed in your car, drive to a diner or a convenience store. Go where the lights are.
   

5. Keep a barrier between you and the bad guy.
   Keep your doors to your house and your car locked at all times. If someone is after you, use a barrier to block him or use distance to gain time. Stay in your car, if approached there. Keep the windows closed. Carry and use pepper spray. The more difficult you make it for him, the more time it takes him, and that means he might be discovered.
   

6. Attract attention.
   The first thing a rapist will say to you is, “Don’t scream or I’ll kill you.” What he is really telling you, however, is exactly what will ruin his plan. So go ahead, ruin his plan—scream your head off, blow the horn, kick garbage cans over, make a racket. Yell “Fire!” Although you can’t count on others coming to your aid, you want to appeal to his fear of getting caught and make him think that someone could hear you. Don’t be embarrassed to make a scene.
   

7. Control his hips and his hands.
   This is a recommendation made by the Rape Escape program. Controlling his hips will pre- vent penetration. If you can use your feet on his hips, you can control the distance between the two of you. His hands are the weapons he will use against you to hit, stab, or strangle you, so try to block them or pull them away.
   

8. Use your strongest weapons against his most vulnerable areas.
   Again, this is a recommendation made by the Rape Escape program. His throat, groin, and knees are your primary targets. Your secondary targets are his eyes, face, throat, and abdomen. Your strongest weapons are your kicks, using the bottom of your feet, your elbows, hammer fists, and palm- heel strikes.
   

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If you have a tendency to be dependent or to lose yourself in a rela- tionship, I strongly recommend that you read my book
Loving Him without Losing You
. In it, you will find important information and strategies to help you overcome these tendencies and to become the strong, independent woman you were meant to be.

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The Four C’s: Developing Confidence, Competence, Conviction, and Courage

Power can be seen as power with rather than power over, and it can be used for competence and co- operation, rather than dominance and control.

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o truly transform yourself from a Nice Girl to a Strong Woman and leave your Nice Girl image behind, you will need to pump

up what I call the four Power C’s—confidence, competence, con- viction, and courage.

Each of us already possesses these qualities within us, but our upbringing and our personal experiences can weaken our ability to access them or even rob us of these qualities completely. Most women need to pump up the four Power C’s for two other reasons as well. First, these qualities are not ones that girls and women are encouraged to express. In fact, we are
discouraged
from expressing them. When you think about it, the four Power C’s seem to be asso- ciated more with male behavior rather than with female behavior.

Second, for the most part, girls and women have not tradition- ally valued these qualities as much as they value the three feminine values: cooperation, compassion, and connection. Although these qualities are much-needed in our world (because they give this world its humanity and balance out the masculine values I call the

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three A’s—autonomy, aggression, and action), as we have seen, Nice Girls tend to exhibit extreme versions of cooperation, compassion, and connection, often to their own detriment.

Confidence

Confidence is the quality that enables us to trust ourselves—our intuition, our instincts, our abilities, our ideas, and our opinions. It enables us to move out of ourselves and into the world, trusting that we will be safe and capable and that what we have to offer is of value. A child must have confidence to take those first steps, to proudly show her finger-painted picture to her teacher, to stand up in front of the class at show-and-tell time, to ride her bicycle without the training wheels. If a child has been encouraged, and if her efforts have been rewarded with praise and/or acknowledgment, she will feel confident enough to continue her forays into the world. If her efforts are met with fear on her parents’ part or discouragement in the form of criticism, her level of confidence will be lowered.