This is a guest post by my dear friend Lisis of Quest for Balance. I’ve never had a guest post on Porsidan before, and I wanted my “first time” to be special. And what could be more special than inviting my best blogging friend to come share a story with us? Little did I know that the story Lisis would share involved one of her own “first time” experiences, and the repercussions that would last a lifetime…
What Lies Beneath Perfectionism
Most of us realize that when someone is a perfectionist, they are over-compensating for something they feel is terribly wrong. This causes a bit of cognitive dissonance because, on the one hand, everything seems great but, deep down, the perfectionist knows that is far from the truth.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Cognitive Dissonance is defined as “Maintaining conflicting principles (logically incompatible beliefs).”
When I consider my own varied stages of perfectionism, and my propensity to be both Yin and Yang (Jackie and Heidi), I don’t know what to conclude. Is it genius, or controlled insanity? Can I trace the bifurcation of my mind back to a specific event, or phase in my life, that would explain the dichotomy between my actions and my beliefs, my public and authentic self, what is real and what is not?
I believe I can.
When I was fifteen, I was a stellar student, the “perfect” child, reasonably popular and well-adjusted. I loved my parents, my siblings, myself, and my boyfriend. In fact, like most teenage girls in love, I thought he hung the moon. Then one day, he wanted to take our relationship “to the next level.” I can remember that moment like it was yesterday…every detail (which I’ll spare you) is seared into my brain.
When he brought up the issue of sex, all sorts of thoughts ran through my mind in about ten seconds. My parents would be SO disappointed in me. My older sister was a virgin when she got married. “Good girls” wait until their wedding night! I am supposed to “save myself” for my soul mate (the guy I marry), or I’ll be “damaged goods.” What if I get pregnant? I am supposed to be the good kid; I make all the right choices.
My parents loved me, and wanted me to abstain. My boyfriend loved me, and wanted me to give in. At the time, both “loves” seemed equal in strength, value, and sincerity. How could they each love me, and each want what is best for me, but each want incompatible things from me? I felt like no matter what I chose, I would seriously disappoint someone who loved and trusted me. I started to cry…
He sat up and hugged me, and he started to cry. “No, don’t cry, baby! You know I love you. We don’t have to do this. I’ll just wait for you. I’ll wait as long as I have to. I’m going to marry you.”
That was it.
That was the moment.
Those were the magic words…the phrase that removed the internal conflict. This was where my brain stepped in, and logic gave way to broken logic, and that resulted in my first (but not last) seriously poor decision.
Here’s the gist of my 15-year-old thought process:
He loves me! If he didn’t love me, he’d keep trying to convince me, or he would force me. But he is willing to wait because he IS GOING TO MARRY ME. He said it! It’s as good as a proposal, right? We aren’t married yet, but we WILL be. Why should it make any difference if we have sex now or wait until we are technically married? That’s just a stupid piece of paper. What matters is that we want to marry each other, so I won’t be “damaged goods” for anyone, because I’ll be marrying HIM, my first and only True Love forever and ever (heart, heart, kiss, kiss, hug, hug). Yay!
Conflict Solved… mostly.
I still can’t TELL my parents, because they just wouldn’t understand how certain we are that we’re getting married. But I’ll know in my heart that I DID wait, saved myself for true love, for my husband (to be). Besides (and this is where I started to downplay the significance of what was about to take place) it’s not THAT big a deal. My friends that have done it said it was nothing major. If you really loved him, you’d get over your goody-two-shoes complex and realize that this is it: true love! He’s going to marry me!
And so it was that I came to make this decision that would haunt me for 20 years, and lead to a plethora of crappy choices.
I had talked myself out of my virginity since I was with the guy I was going to marry, so it was no longer an issue I had to fret over, and I didn’t make any effort to conceal it…at school. However, I took great pains to hide it from my parents.
This was the beginning of my public persona (the one adults would see) conflicting with my authentic self. The way I behaved and the things I said I valued did not exactly correspond with my actions behind closed doors. I didn’t like that I had a whole set of emotional issues I couldn’t talk to my mom about. We were like best friends, but I had this HUGE secret.
It didn’t feel right. I had betrayed her trust and, at some level, I wanted her to know it. I wanted to be liberated from my secret. But we did not get caught. Not then, not ever. Instead, we got separated. He got sent off to live with his dad, and that was the end of that. My perfect plan had unraveled before my eyes.
I had not stopped loving him, and he had not stopped loving me. But it was clear we were not going to end up married, living happily ever after. It was becoming painfully clear that I had gambled my virginity on a losing bet. Now I was “damaged goods” and would probably never have a husband. Sounds a bit dramatic, but I was 15. I was distraught and devastated.
My mom wanted to be there for me, but I was still holding that big secret inside. I didn’t want to admit that I had made a mistake. I was already losing his love, I didn’t want to lose hers, too. I would just make up for it by being extra-perfect, and I would take my dirty little secret to the grave.
The Fallout:
I started behaving in self-destructive ways, secretly, while maintaining the appearance of perfection. I smoked, knowing I was asthmatic and it could kill me (maybe hoping it would). I started wishing I could just “not wake up,” so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain in my heart. I was carving my arms with pins, because that superficial, immediate pain that went away, felt better than the deep-down pain that was endless and excruciating.
I was sneaking out at night to go to parties I shouldn’t be at, with people I shouldn’t even know. This other side of me, the secret me, the one that screwed up and was damaged and stupid and worthless… that side of me started to feed on my pain to justify its actions.
But, by all appearances, I was the perfect daughter, the stellar student, the cheerleader, the tutor, the school’s “Most Likely To Succeed.” Academically, I was unstoppable. I wanted to achieve perfection in every possible way to compensate for, what I considered to be, my huge, unforgivable, unretractable mistake.
The guilt of knowing I had betrayed my parents’ trust haunted me for a long time… at least until my parents died. I went on to re-create that guilt-inducing scenario in all sorts of ways in other relationships… maybe hoping to finally get caught. But I still struggled to maintain a perfect image… the OCD beast was rearing its ugly head in an effort to suppress the ever-increasing guilt.
Why am I telling you this?
Maybe you try to keep a perfect exterior to cover up some painful, fractured inner world. Or maybe, you have a “perfect” teenager that seems too good to be true. Or maybe you feel inferior when you are around others who seem to have it all together, and everything going for them.
But nobody is perfect… not you, not me, not our kids, not the people we compare ourselves to. And that’s OK. That is exactly how it’s supposed to be. Trying to hide our flaws, or pretending we don’t have any, is a sure recipe for trouble down the road.
Love Always,
Lisis