I was in a conversation today with a talented and attractive young single woman. She shared how enlightened she became realizing that for her, boys were a soft addiction. It might seem strange to think that boys can be a soft addiction, but it’s really not. The definition of a soft addiction is a ”seemingly harmless habit that zaps our time, money and energy”, and these habits that we do instinctually are trained in our brains to try to get our needs met. These habits don’t work, they don’t meet our needs, and we just deepen the groove in our brains – the neural pathways- that keep us doing the same thing over and over with the same unsatisfying result.
This woman talked about how she would spend a lot of her time thinking about these boys she was meeting, sending text messaging, and fantasizing about the future with these boys, but then was unsatisfied with the actual dating encounter. I thought about how much I’ve grown in my own dating life and how I’ve really cut out a lot of the unsatisfying bullsh*t that can go along in the dating process. But, really, I do relate. I still play games – softly addictive ways of being- in my dating life. The biggest one for me is the soft addiction of avoidance and ommitting the truth. I routinely avoid sharing how I really feel and what I really want in relationships. It is such a habit for me that it takes writing down what I want to say, telling a friend that I plan on telling my date these things, and even then it takes a lot of chutzpah to do it! At least once a week after a phone conversation with someone I’m dating has ended, I force myself to call back and share what it was that I was really feeling and what I really wanted- otherwise that which I’ve ommitted blocks the intimacy that I am trying to build.
Underneath these soft addictions are unexpressed feelings and deeper hungers. For me, I feel fear and excitement, and experience a hunger to be loved, to be seen, and to matter. I think that’s why I do what I do – the silly wiring in my brain has be thinking that if I share what I want, I won’t get it, and then for sure I won’t be loved. I would bet that the young woman I spoke with was feeling angry about the back and forth superficial text messaging, and a hunger for genuine connection, and so spent time in her fantasies where she could create the relationship that she wants. We talked about this and shared that we are trying new ways of relating to these boys/men, telling the truth, expressing our feelings – in text messages to start – and then in real face to face interactions. This is what it takes to rewiring our brains and start to meet our deeper needs and hungers.
So, I think that boys, or men, certainly can be a soft addiction, but more important it is the ways of being when we are with boys/men that is the issue. Boys and men are great! The soft addictions that we engage in during the dating process is the problem! But isn’t it cool that we can use boys and men to see how different we act, catch these patterns and then change them?
Any thoughts?
