Maybe You Are Good Enough
By: Emma Austin
Tags: Relationships, Life, Love, Self, Dating

Todd was perfect on paper.

All my friends wanted me to date him. They practically pushed us together.

I could see why. He was a fit country boy. He was usually the most attractive guy in the room. He had a positive outlook and a good attitude. He had enough charm to know what to do when the attention was on him. On top of that, he was really kind and that mattered a lot to me.

And yet, it wasn’t enough.

Dating Todd was fun for a little while. He was nice to look at and a really good fuck. He’s the guy who showed me that getting pounded like a jackhammer could actually feel incredible.

After a while, though, it became clear that our sexual chemistry was the only chemistry we had.

Whenever we were alone, we’d rush off somewhere private to have sex. Not just because we were horny (though we definitely were), but because we didn’t have anything else to do.

When we weren’t making out or grabbing at each other, we mostly sat around feeling awkward. Todd had no problem holding a conversation. He could keep talking, bantering, and joking around with anyone.

Anyone except me.

I have no idea why that was. For whatever reason, we just didn’t click.

And that made me feel like there must be something wrong with me.

Here was this guy who’s great in almost every way. The friends who pushed me to date him were probably secretly jealous of me.

He’s the kind of guy anyone would’ve been lucky to fuck, date, or marry.

But I got bored of him, and quick.

It made me wonder if I was too high maintenance. Shouldn’t I have been content, if not happy, with Todd? Was I expecting too much from a relationship?

Or maybe I just sucked at keeping a relationship going. I had never had a long-term one, and maybe I never would if I couldn’t even maintain a relationship that was on easy mode.

After breaking up with Todd, I met a guy named James. He didn’t bore me, and neither did my relationship with him. But it soon turned into a total trainwreck.

That left me with even more doubt about myself. Did I gravitate to drama? Was I too low value to recognize a high value man when I had one?

Dating Todd was kind of fun, but breaking up with him made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. It took me years before I realized that we were both fine. We just weren’t good enough for each other.

Incompatibility Can Mess You Up

Sometimes, it’s obvious what’s wrong with a relationship.

You find yourself shacked up with an asshole who can’t stop making snide comments about your weight. You start snacking secretly just so he won’t say anything hurtful.

Or you feel like you can’t live your life because your boyfriend gets jealous whenever you do anything without him. When you’re apart, you feel like you need to give him a detailed itinerary of what you’ll be doing and then justify any deviation from it.

Or you keep getting in fights because you started dating a guy who seemed great, until you realized he always sides with his meddling mom.

Those relationships make you feel like shit because they’re shitty. And you know why they’re shitty.

It’s more complicated when the relationship doesn’t feel good, but you can’t put your finger on why.

When you start looking for reasons and come up empty, it’s natural to start pointing the finger at yourself. Your partner’s great. Your arrangement is fine. It’s everything you thought you wanted. So, you get to wondering if you might be the problem.

In a lot of those cases, we make ourselves feel miserable because we’re searching for the wrong thing. We’re trying to figure out who’s to blame when no one is. The real problem is just that you and your partner aren’t compatible. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with either of you, but it can end up feeling that way.

Because your partner is very independent, your need for closeness makes you feel like you’re too clingy.

They want something really serious, and because you’re taking your time and seeing how things go, they keep telling you that you seem cold and closed off.

Or they’re so adventurous and outgoing that every time you recommend spending an evening at home you get this uneasy feeling that maybe you’re too boring.

A lot of times, it’s less about you and more about the way that you’re mismatched. And that’s worth remembering because it can save you a lot of anguish.

For one thing, feeling like you’re not good enough just plain sucks. Thinking there’s something wrong with you eats away at you. Feeling like you’re missing some quality that makes you loveable, attractive, or just nice to be with can be depressing.

Being able to recognize when the real problem is an incompatibility between you and your partner can save you from all those terrible feelings.

It can also prevent you from making bad decisions.

Staying in a mismatched relationship just because your partner should, in theory, be great for you is a major waste of time.

You tell yourself that you’re the reason the relationship isn’t working instead of listening to that little voice in the back of your head that tells you to run.

You keep clinging to the relationship even though it bores you (and not in the right way) because you’ve convinced yourself it shouldn’t.

Or you get in a cycle of breaking up and getting back together.

That’s what happened the last time I fell for a guy who wasn’t right for me.

I knew I shouldn’t keep going back to him. I knew he was trouble. He wasn’t giving me the things I needed out of a relationship. I should have cut my losses and moved on.

Instead, I’d slip right back in. I’d text him, try to have a serious conversation with him, flirt with him, do things to get his attention, have phone sex with him — whatever I needed to do to give it another chance.

After witnessing a few rounds of this, my husband asked me “Do you think maybe you crave chaos?”

I could see why he thought that, but I didn’t.

I tried to fool myself into thinking that the drama between us was really passion. I wanted to believe that the butterflies he gave me were intense attraction, not anxiety.

But every time I let myself get close to this guy, I ended up questioning my own value. He made me feel like I wasn’t good enough — and I was worried he was right.

I couldn’t clearly pinpoint anything seriously wrong with me, but I kept running through all the possibilities.

The way he pulled me in and then pushed me back out made me wonder if there was a good reason for him losing interest in me.

Am I not interesting enough?

Am I not as funny or cute enough?

Am I too needy?

Do I come with way too much baggage for anyone to bother?

Those questions are why I kept going back to him. It’s not really because I wanted that relationship to work out. It’s because I didn’t want any of those things to be true.

I had to keep going back to make sure it wasn’t me — that there’s some other reason we couldn’t move forward.

And of course, there was another reason. For one thing, he played games with me instead of being straightforward and honest. He also used every classic fuckboi tactic in the book to string me along. But the biggest reason is that we just weren’t compatible.

He sucked at giving the kind of reassurance I need from a partner. He wasn’t interested in building the kind of closeness and intimacy I want from a relationship, either. And I’m not exactly sure what he wanted out of a partner, but I know that I wasn’t equipped to give it to him.

After wrangling with him for a while, going through a lot of emotional ups and downs, and feeling pretty miserable through most of it, I finally came to a conclusion that allowed me to let go. I was good enough — we just weren’t right for each other.

If I had remembered that sooner, I could have avoided most of the mess I got myself into.

Find Your Right Person

I still check in on Todd once in a while.

I don’t have any contact with him and I have no idea what his life is like now. But I’ll poke around to see if he got a Facebook account or something like that.

I’m curious about all my exes and how things turned out for them. With Todd, though, it’s different. He really was a great guy and I keep hoping that he found the right girl for him.

I’d like to think that wherever he is now, he’s holding down some kind of stable career and raising a couple of kids with someone who is a great match for him — someone who makes him feel like he’s good enough.

I could never have been that woman for him. Neither of us could meet the other’s needs. We both deserved better — not because there’s anything wrong with either of us, but because we weren’t all that compatible.

It was kind of a shame, really, because Todd and I wanted the same things. Not just all the sex we had, but something serious. He was looking for a woman to settle down with, someone who would eventually become his wife. And on some level, I’ve been on the hunt for a husband from day one.

We should’ve been perfect. And maybe we were. But not for each other.