It’s A We Thing
Call
me bitter if you want but nothing bothers me more than a
woman who is so caught up in her relationship that the term
‘I’ no longer seems to exist in her vocabulary.
You know the type of woman I’m talking about, don’t
you? She’s the friend who only shows up when she’s
single and expects you to drop everything you’re doing
to listen as she bemoans her lonely state, but who drops
you like a hot potato when a man crosses her path. She’s
also the type of woman who can’t see herself as a singular
entity and who pities poor old single you when she morphs
into the Girlfriend fiend.
A
few years ago I came into contact with this particular type
of woman; a woman who was so desperate to be in a relationship
that she would literally change her personality to match
that of the person she was dating and she could never figure
out why her relationships always ended so quickly. This
intelligent, bright and vibrant young woman was so desperate
to be part of a ‘we’ that she would change her
opinions, her passions and her life to get it, but when
it ended (as they all did) she would cry and bitch and moan
to me that she was never going to trust another man for
as long as she lived and that she was going to embrace her
Single Girl personality with open arms. That usually lasted
about a week. She would go back to her old chameleon-like
ways as soon as a man entered the room. Needless to say
our friendship ended as quickly as most of her relationships.
I came to understand what most men found so irritating about
her: every single sentence began with ‘we’. We
think this. We like this. We We We.
I
call it the We Syndrome; I have been studying it for quite
some time and have come to the conclusion that it only strikes
women. Men are immune to it. Men do not walk around thinking
‘I need to be in a relationship. I have
to have a significant other’, it only seems to affect
women and when it does hit them it strikes hard. I have
seen women go from strong independent individuals to mute
shells of their former selves who won’t form an opinion
without discussing it first with their ‘better half’,
and most of these women are completely blindsided when the
relationship ends.
What
bothers me even more about the We Syndrome is that it doesn’t
only affect the woman in the relationship, it affects everyone
around her. It has affected me more times than I care to
recall; I have been left out of gatherings because of my
single status (apparently I would feel uncomfortable being
the only single in a group of doubles); I have also been
set up one too many times (because I couldn’t possibly
enjoy being single), and every time certain so-called friends
find themselves in relationships Yours Truly ceases to exist,
but as soon as Mr. Maybe Not So Right After All high tails
it out of town my phone begins to ring.
The
We Syndrome is sneaky and highly contagious and once it
has you it completely warps your sense of self. The symptoms
vary from empty-headedness and complete dependence to selfishness
and isolation from former friends. There is but one cure
for this plague: a good strong smack upside the head from
a single friend who just wants to hear the term ‘I’.
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