So this popular social media influencer the wizard Liz got cheated on while she’s four months pregnant at that ! I’ve seen so many people say that oh she didn’t vet properly, her picker is bad, she should’ve never caught feelings etc.
While yes vetting is important I am sick and tired of the narrative that a woman picker is broken if she vets a man and he turns out to be abusive, a cheater, a misogynist, etc. It just puts all the blame and responsibility on the woman when it really should be on that man.
I remember I was telling an old therapist how I still feel dumb about deciding to be with my 30 year old ex who had a double life when I was 18 and how my picker is broken and I was so dumb. She told me “if you knew that about him at first would you have dated him”? I said “No I would’ve ran from the hills”…. That really put things into perspective that because of this broken picker narrative so many women internalize and beat themselves up when they fall for the wrong person. It’s not all black and white.
Comments
I 100% agree.
I also never know what is meant by “vetting”, everyone has their way of doing it. Do I need to check if they’ve got a criminal record? Do I need to speak to their exes to check if this person has ever been abusive? Do I need to scour their social media for signs that they might have a second life/secret family? Do I need to look through their phone at all the messages to check for anything dodgy? It isn’t clear.
What if they don’t have social media (like me), do I not trust them at all?
I’ve been married 4 years, together with my husband for 11 years overall. He’s passed all my checks. Proven himself a good man to me. That does not mean that at somepoint, he might change and become abusive or a complete twat.
It’s like people forget abusers, cheaters, etc., do everything they can to hide the fact they’re an abuser, cheater, etc., because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have anyone to abuse or cheat on
Women are also always pressured to “just give him a chance! He might surprise you!” Then, if the guy they “gave a chance” turns out to be an asshole, suddenly it’s their fault.
People will do anything but blame a man for his own actions
There’s a SciFi movie called Chaos Walking where on a specific planet, mens thoughts are somehow projected where everyone can hear them. Mysteriously there aren’t women. Trying not to spoil it but you can imagine what happened to the women.
I’m of the mindset that most men cheat who have options. Even if you’re together 10yrs and he hasn’t yet, eventually he will desire novelty and all it will take is an attractive woman showing interest and attention towards him while the life with his wife is mundane and predictable. The men who don’t cheat don’t have the option because women don’t want him.
I know that men try to paint the narrative that she a hypocrite, but I don’t think so.
Everyone can be a victim of love. It truly makes us blind. Especially women can fall victim to their own body chemistry very easily.
This is why one should prepare for it to be weaponized in the worst case like she did. She has her own money- she can do it alone. She isn’t some little dummy.
Yes- he played her bad, but that could be any one of us. Everyone regardless of status can be scammed. Because this is what this was- a love scam. I don’t blame the person that trusted a scammer. I blame the person that is scamming innocent parties.
Men always say pick better, but we are no mind readers. The save option is to not pick at all or prepare for the worst outcome.
If you get screwed over by the guy – you should have known better, women at fault of their own misfortune!
If you are over-careful and picky – “lol not all men”, women at fault of men loneliness!
Really you can’t win, whatever you do. At this point I just stoped caring anymore :/
I think it’s helpful to just think of it as two seperate things entirely. Being a bad person is just way worse, on a different level entirely, than having a bad picker.
You can blame someone for beind a bad person – they remain bad regardless of whether they’re picked by someone or not.
On the other hand, some people can be bad pickers. If 99 out of 100 people tell you that a relationship is bad but you go through with it anyway – you’ve got a bad picker. You can blame the bad picker for this decision – but that doesn’t mean that this blame is in any way compareable to the blame you’d put on the person being picked for being a terrible person. Taking the blame for something doesn’t make you a bad person – it just means you made a mistake. Making mistakes is something we all do, it’s by working through those mistakes that we grow and become better people.
And don’t beat yourself up, don’t let your mistakes define you – but do recognise that they are mistakes, because they’re *only* mistakes.
Totally agree
My stbx husband hid his true feelings about many topics our whole marriage. He had convinced not just me, but acquaintances, coworkers and family members too.
I’m supposed to know a man will keep up a false front for 15+ years? Who would think that?