True Nature. Dating story no. 12

One of the biggest problems in modern relationships, to my mind, is the sheer number of stereotypes: a woman should be weak, a woman should adapt, a woman should carry the household on her shoulders, a man should be tough, a man should earn, a man should despise housework, a man should pay for everything... The list could go on for a very long time.

Time and again, when I run interviews, I come across young women of the active personality types who are ashamed of being active and constantly try to play the passive one. Passive men, on the contrary, act the macho with their last ounce of strength. The irony is that people do not really know themselves, and so, without having worked out who they are, they start playing some ephemeral “ideal” just to be liked. But you cannot keep up an act for a lifetime. True nature always breaks out of its cage, however strong that cage may be, and the only question is who gets hit by the flying debris.

Sveta and Grisha were exactly this kind of performer, and they met while waiting for their own perfectly matching partners at our club’s online meet-ups. Strictly speaking, they suited each other too — not so perfectly and harmoniously, but well enough for this to become yet another success story.

Svetlana

Svetlana was a striking, emotional beauty, an enthusiast by nature who changed hobbies like gloves. Even for the online meet-ups she always had perfect make-up and a beautiful outfit. She came online as if she were stepping onto a stage, always managing to turn all eyes on herself and happily basking in everyone’s attention. At the same time she had a good deal of life experience behind her — scandals, brutal partners and dramatic show-downs. That experience of relationships with rich and dominant partners, plus a marriage (which, after two years of war, left her with a rather decent flat in the city centre and an executive-class car), had convinced her that a woman should be quiet, inconspicuous and caring, should provide for herself and should not run after “bastards”, as she briskly called all her exes.

The result was that on every date she played a sort of Bambi: fluttering her eyelashes demurely, constantly biting her tongue so as not to blurt out something wrong, laughing falsely at unfunny jokes and coming home in utter disappointment, which she invariably ate away with fast food and microwave meals. Sometimes her true nature took over: Sveta would change before your eyes right there on the date, becoming aggressively sexual and frighteningly frank, which, in her words, left the men completely stunned. More often her nature took over a week or two later, when she would work herself up over why he was not calling, bury him under a hundred text messages and throw a fit about him not respecting her.

Grisha

Grisha had a similar problem. Normally a very calm, domestic, quiet perfectionist, so ready to help everyone that his trouser and jacket pockets were stuffed with tools and gadgets for every occasion and probably a mini first-aid kit as well; correct and rational, and at the same time a romantic and an idealist through and through... The moment he arranged a date he changed completely: a trip to the barber the day before, a business suit as if for a funeral, whether it suited the occasion or not. Every forbidden move went into play, such as listing the property he owned or explaining which vitamins a woman over 35 should take so that her children would not be born mentally disabled.

Grisha did his utmost to play the caring, all-powerful macho who knows exactly what he wants, even while talking complete nonsense. When his prepared topics ran out, Grisha froze, smiled like an idiot and pretended to be listening attentively. If the woman was still interested, and if there was the slightest chance of intimacy or even a kiss, Grisha vanished from view at a speed worthy of an Olympic record, and afterwards complained loudly that yet another candidate was not quite something enough. His list of requirements for potential brides was astonishing in its length, its contradictions and its rigidity. In his time off from dates and from our club’s online meet-ups he whined that he wanted a family and children and... ate away his own uselessness along with the stress at work. When his weight passed a certain mark he pulled himself together and went on yet another diet, because what woman would look at that belly, and became even angrier and more categorical, because a man is supposed to...

But his true nature broke through as well. Before long all the women at the online meet-ups and discussions had noticed what a helpful, calm, all-knowing fellow was livening up their company: how handy he was at everything, how well he understood every conceivable problem from health to fixing computers, how thoroughly he laid out every question point by point, and how utterly incapable he was of saying “no” — indeed, how he volunteered himself just to be of help to somebody.

Many of our clients took this as the arrival of a new, never-refusing girlfriend, but Svetlana realised that a wonder of the world like this had to be taken before anyone else grabbed him. Soon a question from her arrived in my personal inbox: how compatible was she with Grisha? I answered honestly that a union was possible and could be quite harmonious if a number of conditions were met. That was enough for Svetlana, and at the very next online meet-up she went on the attack.

Whatever people may say about stereotypes, never — do you hear me? — never lay claim to a female “public good”, which is what Grisha had become. Sveta’s move sparked a revolution. Grisha was suddenly wanted by everyone at once, but Sveta was nobody’s fool either. When it came to what she considered hers she could fight like a virtuoso, so before long Grisha stopped attending the online meet-ups and met Sveta in person instead. Svetlana also prudently disappeared until better times, leaving the other participants gasping for air and asking: wait, so we were allowed to do that too?

The first disaster

The first date was staggering in its naive artificiality. Svetlana tried her hardest to be modest and proper: she let Grisha take the initiative in choosing the café, braided her hair into a plain plait, limited herself to a minimum of jewellery, dressed almost like a churchgoer and set herself to do nothing but praise Grisha — because, despite my “briefing” on the passive personality types, the idea that a man must be the stronger one was already hard-wired into Sveta. Grisha, too, put on his universal funeral suit, secured his friends’ advice that young people these days are happy to eat sushi, steeled himself to break yet another diet that forbade him alcohol, and withdrew a good amount of cash from the machine. If you are going out, go out properly!

Grisha’s self-advertising horrified Sveta. Had she not known him from the online meet-ups, she would probably have run away by then. Grisha turned out, by his own account, to be an incredibly busy and important man whose day held 30 hours, and that without a break for sleep, while all his colleagues at work and in his hobbies turned out to be raving idiots and saboteurs with not the faintest notion of what it means to do something properly. All women turned out to be monsters after no-strings sex who had no interest at all in family and children. A separate topic was Grisha’s father, whose purpose in life was to ruin Grisha’s life personally and, in parallel, his mother’s. But Grisha is not like that: he will certainly find time both for a family and for children, and while there is neither family nor children he will keep running like a squirrel in a wheel — and, as his brother’s wife told him, if a woman cannot appreciate him, so much the worse for her!

Sveta was on the verge of panic. In real life Grisha suddenly embodied much of what she had promised herself to avoid and steer clear of. She wanted to shout and wave her arms about, but instead, for some reason, she made herself keep quiet and washed the stress down with wine. Panic set in for Grisha as well: the bright, interesting woman had turned out to be some sort of frightened drunk, dressed as if she wanted to scare him off. He was quite used, in fact, to being blown off by women, but usually it happened later, not right on the first date. All the same, neither his conscience nor his upbringing would let him abandon a woman in such a state.

The wine helped Sveta’s true nature to break through the carefully built armour. Undoing her plait seductively and unbuttoning her collar, she launched a frontal attack, remarking on the way that she had no idea where that sweet, homely, caring Grisha had gone — the one she had liked so much at the club’s online meet-ups.

– Gr-r-i-i-isha, come out! she demanded, trying to pull off the jacket she had come to loathe. Grisha froze and forgot to breathe. This drunken fool was coming on to him as well! On the other hand, she had said herself that she liked the “normal” Grisha, not the one he was so strenuously playing now. So was it his own fault? Thoughts raced through his head at cruising speed, from “what do I do” to “how did I end up here” and “damn those counsellors”. Meanwhile his hands somehow paid for dinner by themselves, put a caring arm around Sveta and walked her to Grisha’s flat nearby. Despite her protests, he laid Sveta down on his sofa, took off nothing but her court shoes, carefully sat his soft toys beside her, put a bottle of water within reach and finally shot out of the room, bracing the door with his back so that Sveta would not, God forbid, carry on coming on to him. He was sure he would not manage to fall asleep, so he stayed sitting there against the door, scrolling through various sites on his phone. At around three in the morning he fell asleep without even noticing.

Waking up

Sveta woke up surrounded by plush mice and rabbits. On the bedside table stood the life-saving bottle of water. The previous day was a blur, but it clearly had not ended well. With great effort she recalled some of the episodes and was horrified that this earthly angel Grisha had put up with the antics she still remembered, and with those she could not remember, and had then given her his own bed as well. She found Grisha sleeping sweetly on his own crumpled jacket by the door.

Later they laughed as they told the story: Sveta was overcome with shame and was even ready to flee not only his flat but the city, and possibly the country. And then she realised that not one of her suitors had ever behaved as much like a man as Grisha had, and that a thing like that must not be let go under any circumstances. So instead of emigrating in a hurry, she made breakfast.

Grisha knew perfectly well what his many friends thought: that he was wasting his time on women with whom nothing was obviously going to work out. He tried to part as friends rather than to fight, and ended up as the proverbial shoulder they all happily cried on when their own new relationships fell apart. His friends would surely have condemned him for agreeing to have breakfast and a chat with Sveta after the night before, too. But it was over that breakfast that neither of them was pretending any more, and he felt the kindred spirit and the closeness he had been missing all his life.

Of course, this was only the beginning of the road. Grisha would not have been Grisha if he had not held out through a rather long sweets-and-flowers phase, during which both the initiative for kissing and for holding hands came from Sveta alone. She dragged him to discos and parties, gave him no time to come to his senses and somehow gave his life meaning and colour. Grisha had never really known how to behave with women, but with Sveta that somehow did not matter. By the time he had worked out what to do it was all over already, and Sveta was gazing in delight at “her hero”. She got exactly what she had been looking for: someone who would take her as she was, with all her whims and oddities, a reliable footing and support with whom she visibly grew calmer and more at peace. The fact that he was ready to forgive her absolutely anything held her back, remarkably, in what she allowed herself. And her astonishing ability to cut through, but only where it was needed, quite imperceptibly helped him to set his priorities in life and to stop doing everything for everyone, making the family the absolute priority. Most importantly, they no longer had to pretend to be someone else, because they liked each other very much just as they were.

An example of how their relationship might develop further is a couple from Yevgeny Ginzburg and Rauf Mamedov’s film “The Island of Lost Ships”: Trepach and Maggie. A mad love and closeness, with Maggie the star of the whole neighbourhood, gathering the attention of every sailor, free and unstoppable, while Trepach carries their many children and the household, both at home and across the whole island. And for one reason or another — the children, the family and his mad love for her — Trepach forgives Maggie absolutely everything.

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