Boomer Woman on the Blink

Once upon a time, a woman from a small agricultural city dreamed of finding her prince.  She worked hard to identify the desirable characteristics of her future prince and even wrote them down in her diary...so she would know him when the law of attraction brought them together.

 

This woman was a 'farm charm' who had been charmed to debt by a former husband and didn't want to make the same mistake twice.

 

Then one day in early autumn, this beautiful boomer lass, while wandering along Main Street in the big city to the north, was approached by her prince.  He asked if they could talk and they did...finding much of common interest.  They agreed to meet again and talked again and again.  

 

The beautiful farm girl and her prince developed a loving relationship and over the next year traveled far and there was much love between them.  Yet, she longed for more intimacy....while resisting laughing or the shedding of a tear in the arms of her prince.

 

Then one day, while attending a conference, she was approached by a wicked witch.  The witch cast a spell on the beautiful farm girl.....telling her half truths and lies about the prince.  As the witch's story unfolded, the woman began to believe that her prince was charming her toward a place where she didn't want to be...like her ex-husband had done.

 

After nightmarish dreaming, the awful spell convinced the farm girl to run away as fast as she could from the prince.  With the loving feelings toward the prince evaporated, the woman returned to her house and locked the doors of her heart to the prince.

 

The prince was very sad, the farm charm began questioning her ability to choose wisely and the wicked witch was quite satisfied that her powerful spell had soured the boomer woman's dreams. 

The lesson the boomer woman never learned: What we intuitively think happens to us.
 
This emotionally damaged woman will continuously question every new prince; fully expecting to uncover some damaging characteristic that lurks beneath the surface.  She will talk with her "experienced" girl friends about men in general---hoping to learn what love traps they have fallen into---which reinforces her expectations that bad things will happen in her love relationship.
 
Like the cat that sat on the hot stove, she will avoid sitting on any stove again. 

Her questioning of and about a potential prince intuitively becomes a negative force that works against her pursuit of happiness.  One potentially negative response leads to another and builds toward a relationship "show stopper."  Even her therapy sessions dwell on past negative experiences that reinforce each trap that could arise in her loving encounter.
 
While on the surface the new love relationship will appear to be going well, the intuitive negativity below the surface rises to a flood stage----washing away the fun, comfort and trustworthiness of the experience.
 
The meaning-making of the emotionally damaged boomer woman becomes her gremlin that bewitches any chance for lasting love and respect for her lover.  In the end, it is all about her.

Postscript

The above fictional story was written for both boomer women battling their gremlins from past failed love affairs and for the men they disengaged from---to better understand how the woman had so quickly lost that loving feeling toward him when he thought they were both committed to sharing the best years of their lives together.

After writing this story, I have received comments from boomer women like this one: "I couldn't believe what I just read.  It's like you know me."  The story seems to apply to many boomer women who have been charmed to debt and other disappointments in their previous love relationships and now are preventing themselves from enjoying true and lasting love.

What I discovered is that certain boomer women truly believe that they can find men that think and feel like they do. Yet, this longing for intimacy is balanced by the woman's resistance and fear of becoming hurt through becoming vulnerable to her man....which disallows both partners from reaching that deep personal intimacy. She pretends to be strong by questioning him to uncover his manly faults rather than loving him freely and completely for who he is.... not for who she wants him to be.  Ask her about this loss of passion and she will say, "For myself, at each and every turn, those things that I thought were so bad, so awful and devastating only strengthened me."

The unfortunate resulting perception is she really thinks she is qualifying her candidates against some matrix that she developed for her prince charming while all along she is missing out on the great love and respect he has for her and her well-being.  She believes  her perceptions have evolved to the point where charming men won't cloud her judgments but they do....and....when they don't work out, she will just "learn and laugh again."

Learning and laughing again after another failed affair is far from feeling the passion of deep loving in a trusting, respectful and close union of mind, body and spirit with the man of her dreams.