Focus

Dr. Darcy:

I’m dating a model.  How the hell does your wife deal with the attention you must get? It’s driving me crazy.  We walk into bars or restaurants and men assume we’re just friends and they literally hit on her right in front of me.  Sometimes they put their hands on her and I can’t help but think that if I was a guy they’d never do that, no matter what she looked like. People just presume that because she’s beautiful, she’s public property…

ANSWER

My wife doesn’t let me go out and hasn’t for years and I can’t really remember the attention I used to get when we did go out.  That’s a joke, albeit, a bad one.  Listen, you’re focusing on what you don’t want and as a result, it’s becoming magnified. That’s the way the mind works, plain and simple.  Whatever you focus on increases – either in reality or in your perception.  It actually doesn’t matter which it is as you’ll have the same reaction regardless.  That’s why they say that perception is reality.

You have a belief that your girlfriend gets unsolicited attention from straight men.  As a result, whenever you go out with her, your mind, whether you’re aware of this or not, is busy hunting for confirmation that what you believe is right. Then, whenever a man looks at her or speaks to her, your mind processes that information as evidence that your belief is accurate.  Bottom line:  You need to start looking at this differently.

You chose to date a model.  You had to know that she’d turn heads. And if you didn’t, you should submit a new question because the issue here is not that she’s getting lots of unwanted attention.  It’s that you vacillate between not seeing what’s right in front of you and magnifying other things that might go unnoticed in a more secure woman.

Writer’s Stats: Female, lesbian.