Scared Straight

Dear Dr. Darcy:

I’ve been in the [lesbian] scene for more than a decade and I’m so tired of the way women treat me.  Invariably, they use me for money, cheat on me and toss me aside when they’ve gotten their fill of me.  I’m to the point where I’m ready to start dating men, just so I’d be guaranteed to have a different experience.  I’m so clear about what I want to avoid in women, so why do I always get what I don’t want?!

ANSWER

The answer is in your question.  It’s because you focus on what you don’t want rather than on what you want.

Humans attract and create what we think about.  Period.  Focus on avoiding situations, people, behaviors, etc., and as you’ve seen, you’ll get just that.  And while you have a decade of evidence to support this theory, my gut tells me that you’re already shaking your head in disbelief because as miserable as your life makes you, you don’t want to believe that you have control over it.  Sorry friend.  The only thing straight about me is my advice, as you must know…

The phenomenon of focusing on what you don’t want and then attracting it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Self-fulfilling prophecies stem from beliefs that we have about the world (many of which are inaccurate), and these beliefs cause us to behave in ways that create the outcome that we’re trying to avoid.  If you had a different set of beliefs about the world, you’d behave differently and you would not consistently recreate the same undesirable outcome.  How do I know?  Look around you ~ surely you’ve seen some lesbians who are not morbidly unhappy, which means that somehow they are getting what they want in life without defecting.

Here’s where this gets even worse:  With each additional negative dating experience, you confirm your belief that lesbians suck and that you’ll never find love.  Thus begins the vicious cycle of crazies, where you reinforce your negative belief about the world and the world delivers confirmation after confirmation that you’re right.  At the end of the day, you have a mountain of evidence validating your irrational belief.

You don’t need a man – you need a good shrink.  Someone who will point out how every experience in your life is directly correlated to a negative belief that you hold about the world.  Over time, you’ll begin connecting the dots:  Negative thought = negative experience.  When you’ve seen enough evidence of this, provided you have an authentic desire to overcome this pattern and you do not wish to remain a beat-me, kick-me victim your whole life, you’ll decide that the same logic MUST work if you begin identifying with new, positive beliefs about the world:  Positive beliefs/thoughts = positive outcomes/experiences.

When you’re done reading this post, read an older one that I wrote earlier this year, eloquently entitled, 6 Reasons Why Your Life Blows.