The One That Got Away

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Professional women want it all. They want the perfect family, the successful career, perfect children, respect from their peers, adoration and appreciation from their family, eternal youth. Well, we all want it all, right? Well, yeah, but we men tend to do a better job of compartmentalizing the different aspects of life and resigning ourselves to the barriers of reality. The job is the job. Family is family. Marriage is marriage. Age is inevitable. We put these parts of our life in their own little sections of the plate, and we really don't like when the peas touch the carrots, so to speak. With our temperament, we men will often stay in one little section of the plate for an inordinate amount of time. It's the one that gives us the most obvious and quick reward for our efforts. It's the one that fulfills our desire to provide. We all know the stereotype of the man who stays in his work box, and he doesn't come out enough to spend time with his wife and kids or focus on his health. Like every other stereotype, this idea didn't just fall from the sky. Men can often get hyperfocused on the goal of completing work or just on the actual act of the work itself. And we put up blinders to the rest of the world. Next thing you know, he looks up from his desk and it's 6:30 PM and he missed his son's T-ball game again. As a consequence, we now have a generation of men that sit around nursing a bottle of beer saying to his buddies, yeah, my dad wasn't around all that much. Their dad was super provider dad. Super Provider Dad doesn't say, "Damn it, if I could just work 30 hours a week, I'd be around my family more and give them the time that they deserve." No, he resigns himself to his work because the work is his mission. It gives him a sense of purpose. His job title and paycheck are his scorecard. He gets hostile if the wife bugs him about working too much. "How do you think we pay all the bills, Sally?" Money doesn't grow on trees. I'm reminded of the story by Pat Croce, former entrepreneur and owner of the 76ers. He had so much energy and he would get so enthralled in his business that his wife and kids used to write him letters about how they missed him. Super Provider Dad knows that he can't have it all. Duh, why would anyone think that they could maintain this level of work achievement and be some kind of super dad and husband. You can't. It's impossible. It sucks, but he often chooses work over family and health, and that's that. In my generation of dads, we do a much better job of setting aside work and concentrating on our kids. We're a loving, hugging, soccer coaching, homework helping bunch of guys. Yes, our career suffers, and so does the marriage and our health. Dead bedrooms and dad bods galore. But we learned lessons from dear old dad, and we recognized the dangers of ignoring Junior when he needs us most. We closed up the work box and we opened up the kid box and we dove right in. And that mindset doesn't seem to exist in the professional woman's world. She will be the perfect mom, and she will be the most awesome employee at work, and she will be a fantastic wife. And she will be super sexy and pretty until the day she dies. The result? Failure. And a lot of guilt, anxiety, depression, and Botox. Somewhere along the line, somebody told women that they can and should have it all. And if not, they are an abject failure. For a woman to hear something like, "I don't know how you do it all," it's a badge of honor. Not an indication of taking on too much in life. The female propensity for neuroticism, one of the Big Five personality traits, it doesn't jive well with her very human inability to juggle so many things at once and ultimately succeed at every last one of them. They want it all, they inevitably fail, and they experience great negative emotion. People want what they can't have. In the world of psychology, we know that if you want to increase someone's desire for something, you present the thing, you pique their interest, and then you quickly take it away. You dangle it just out of reach. Playing hard to get is a common ploy for both sexes during the mating game. Why? Because it works. Men know not to answer a woman's text message or her call right away. Keep her waiting just a bit. Give her the impression that you're just too busy. You are an important person. Keep her new relationship anxiety going, and then answer and watch her excitement boil over. Women don't cave in immediately to a man's desire for physical intimacy because they don't want to come across as sleazy or desperate. He has to jump through some hoops to win a chance with her because she's a prize. She says, "I know you want this, but you can't have it. Maybe you can. We'll just have to wait and see." And that drives us crazy. For many women, there is no greater carrot dangling in front of them than the one that got away, or what I call the TOTGA, the TOTGA. The TOTGA is the guy that really, really pushed her buttons. He may have been the one that had the combination of all those qualities that make up the all-around dream guy. Maybe he was just a fun-loving, sexy type of guy that was full of adventure. Or maybe he was the sexy loser that she would sneak off with and not tell her friends or family about. The important thing is that the totka was presented with the option of entering into a long-term monogamous relationship with her, and he said in no uncertain terms, "I don't think so. Sorry, but no." She wanted him, but she couldn't have him. Not because of something he did necessarily, but instead because she failed at being the quality of woman necessary to land a man of that caliber. She had him in her grasp and she just couldn't hold on. This is like being denied that promotion that she worked hard for, like finding out that her kid is having behavioral problems at school like finding out that her husband is looking at porn non-stop. It's failure. Totka in her mind is the living embodiment of "there's something very wrong with me as a woman." For many women, if it weren't for the biological and social pressure to, quote, "settle down and start a family," she would absolutely still try to be with Totka. I have known several women that openly admit to the existence of totka. One in particular still sticks out as a textbook example. Amy, we will call her, she had a boyfriend and he was fun. She had an exciting life with him. She was very much in love. He said no to an extended long-term relationship slash marriage. She was getting up there in years and she was a career woman. She quickly found another provider man a doctor, and within 1 year they were engaged. They married, and soon after she was pregnant. Mid-30s, so just under the fertility wire. Smart gal. They are the most unloving couple I have ever seen. You would think that they are brother and sister. In the very short time that my wife and I have known Amy, she has mentioned the ex-boyfriend to us both. It's obvious that the guy is her todka. My wife and I went with her and her husband to go skiing. It was my first time ever on the slopes. I was busy doing the pizza maneuver with my skis and trying to keep from breaking my arms and legs. But meanwhile, Amy was zooming around like a pro, and I was impressed. So I complimented her on her skills, and she said, I used to go skiing all the time with my ex. He was really good. All right, was it really necessary to bring up the ex at that point? That made me take notice a bit because she could have simply just said, okay, thanks, I've been skiing for years. She would later admit to my wife that she still is in contact with her todka, and the husband knows about it and he doesn't like it, but she chats with Mr. Todka anyway. Every time she reaches out to the guy, it's her way of saying I'm really not all that bad, right? I mean, there's still a chance, a slight chance, you know, if, if the situations were right. She has to keep in touch with her todka. Why? Well, why the hell not? She wants it all. She has the dutiful provider husband, she has the baby, she has the career, but she doesn't have Mr. Todka. Her hubby says I love you and I adore you forever. The baby says, I love you more than anything on the planet. But Mr. Totka says, eh, I think I could do better. This is in part why, by my estimation, women seem to have such a hard time enforcing boundaries. With boundaries, much of the concept is saying to yourself, even though I can have it and I may badly want it, it's not good for me and my current situation, so I'm gonna have to say no. That goes wildly against the notion of I want and deserve it all, anything else is failure. She wants to be the VP of Sales for her company. Well, the reality is that means working 70-hour work weeks and not seeing her husband and kids very often. If she wants to be super homemaker mom who bakes pies and attends all the school functions, well The reality is no VP of Sales position for you. The guy who works 80 hours a week and never sees his kids, well, he'll get the job instead. If she wants to be a super sexy woman for the next 30 years, well, the reality is no more indulging in wine and desserts, and you got to go to the gym at least 4 days a week and probably yoga on weekends, and cosmetic surgery is a strong possibility. That will put you up at the top 10% of women in your age, at least looks-wise. And she wants to be the best wife possible? Well, the reality is the todka is dead. He never existed. Forget about him. Focus on the now. Learn to compartmentalize, in other words. Enforce boundaries. Hey, it's tough. It's tough for all of us, but it's especially tough for the ladies who like to not only mix their peas and carrots on the plate but they also like to throw a pile of cake on top of the whole thing and then chase it down with 3 bottles of Dom Pérignon. And then they complain that they have a bellyache. This is why people say that women, quote, multitask so much better than men, because the women tend to find it very hard to compartmentalize. This goes back to my theory about sometimes enforcing boundaries for your wife. It's a delicate balance. You don't want to be a controlling, abusive asshole that tells your wife no all the time. But you also want to make sure that she does what is best for you and your family. And for many men, they can't fathom having to enforce a boundary for their wife because she should know not to talk to that guy. She should know not to go out for drinks, not to send messages to her ex, etc., etc. Yeah, well, what if she doesn't? Are you willing to walk away? Are you willing to do things to keep her from crossing the line? Is your relationship worth the effort? In the world of infidelity, there's no stronger candidate for an affair partner than Mr. Totka. None. He's the dangling golden carrot. He's the guy that she let slip away. He's the reminder of her failure. He's living proof that having it all is impossible for her. For a lot of women, that is a crippling realization. If she suddenly grabs the totka carrot, she ain't letting go. He's the trophy that she holds over her head as she screams, "See, I can have it all!" So you've been warned. To quote Katy Perry, "In another life, I would be your girl." We keep all our promises, be us against the world. In another life, I would make you stay so I don't have to say you were the one that got away. The one that got away. The one, the one, the one that got away. All this money can't buy me a time machine, no. Can't replace you with a million rings, no. I should have told you what you meant to me, whoa, because now I pay the price.