#because i'm a GROWN ASS MAN AND WOMAN who does NOT need the approval of my oppressors and i will NOT throw them under the bus to get it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

missmentelle · 4 years

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I just watched the Netflix show You and it's been discussed but I don't really understand - in a relationship, how does one project their own views and fantasies onto another person? How can you tell if it's happening? Is there a certain point where it's normal or it can't be helped? It's happened a lot in the show but I'm having trouble identifying it. Also, I recommend watching You: it's a thoughtful take on how we view romantic relationships as a society and how that can be twisted

I absolutely love that show. For those of you who haven’t seen the thriller show “You”, it’s about a charismatic but underachieving man named Joe who works as the manager at a bookstore in Manhattan. He meets a young grad student named Beck when she comes into his bookstore one afternoon, and is immediately infatuated with her; he is completely consumed by his desire for a relationship with her, and it becomes clear very quickly that he’s willing to go to extreme lengths to make it happen. (Mild spoilers for Season One ahead) Joe is obsessed with Beck from the moment he lays eyes on her. But of course, he’s not really obsessed with her - he is obsessed with the person that he wants her to be. He decides - based only on her clothes, the book she buys and a three-minute conversation with her - that she’s a bookish “good girl” and an intellectual, a serious writer who values real literature and doesn’t crave men’s attention. And he’s very interested in that. She’s his Manic Pixie Dream Grad Student, whether she likes it or not. It’s clear from the very beginning that Joe thinks extremely highly of himself, and he feels entitled to a woman who is just as intelligent and sophisticated as he is - when he looks at Beck, he decides that she’s that perfect girl he’s been waiting for all along. Moreover, he decides that she’s equally interested in him - she pays for her book with a credit card, and Joe decides that she did that because she intentionally wanted Joe to learn her full name. And of course, as Joe learns more about Beck, he discovers that she’s not the artsy, aloof writer he had been envisioning in his head. She goes out drinking with friends that Joe dislikes, she has a trashy boyfriend, she posts selfies on Instagram, and doesn’t actually do any writing. But instead of deciding “oh wow, I was super wrong about this girl, I definitely got carried away”, Joe decides that the REAL Beck is the girl he fantasized about in the bookstore, and that she just needs his help to realize it. He decides that he knows what’s best for a woman who is a complete stranger to him, deliberately manipulating her life to turn her into more of the person he wants her to be, until... well, you know how it ends.

When you first start watching You, it can be hard to understand how messed-up Joe actually is. He is the main character of the show, and the narrator. He is also capable of great kindness - he genuinely cares for the neglected child who lives in an abusive household next door - and it kinda feels like we’re supposed to root for him. After all, he just wants what’s best for Beck. He sees who she really is inside, and he knows that she deserves better than the life she has right now. He just wants her to reach her full potential and stop wasting time with people who don’t really care about her... what could be so bad about that?

The problem, of course, is that Joe doesn’t know jack shit about Beck, and he has no right to decide what is and isn’t good for her. She is a grown-ass woman, and he is a stranger she met at a bookstore. Joe claims to have good intentions, but his intentions aren’t the point here - nobody has the right to meddle in someone else’s life behind their back, no matter how much they love and care about them. When you truly care about someone, you respect their choices - Joe has absolutely no respect for the decisions Beck makes, and sees no issues with isolating, stalking and terrorizing her if it gets him what he wants. Joe claims that Beck is miserable, but we don’t know actually know that - he filters everything he sees through a very thick lens of his own self-interest. He doesn’t allow her basic autonomy to choose what matters to her. Beck is not actually a real person to Joe - she is a prize that he wants to win.

Think about the show from Beck’s perspective - you’re an adult, with your own whole, complete life. You have friends, dreams, a boyfriend, guilty pleasures. You make bad choices sometimes, sure, but they are YOUR choices, and you have the freedom to make them. And then you walk into a shop one day and the man behind the counter suddenly decides that you’re his soulmate and it’s now his job to make decisions for you. You barely know this guy, but he thinks he has the right to control your life - he wants to control who you date, who you talk to, and how you spend your time. Imagine doing something as ordinary as paying for a book with your credit card, and having the person behind the counter interpret this as evidence that you want them to Google you and come to your house. The very idea of it is terrifying.

The plot of You is obviously a huge dramatization, but the same dynamic does appear in real-life abusive relationships. Abusers often have very specific ideas about what their ideal partner should be like, and they believe - consciously or unconsciously - that they are “owed” this person. When they meet someone, they tend to decide extremely quickly that THIS is finally the person they’ve been waiting for all along. They don’t really feel the need to get to know the person as an individual - they assume that they already know everything they need to know about the person, and that the relationship will be effortless. When that inevitably doesn’t pan out because their partner is a real person with needs and flaws, they get angry and the abuse starts to come out - they try harder and harder to control their partner and force them back into being the perfect person they’d envisioned, and they lash out angrily when that doesn’t work.

Although it’s nowhere near as extreme as what happened in You, I’ve had my own experiences with dating someone who was projecting their fantasies on me. My long-term college boyfriend was several years older than me, and already finished with grad school while I was still an undergrad. As the relationship went on, it became very clear that he was looking for a meek, nerdy girl who would appreciate his geek interests but never try to overshadow him. He strongly encouraged me to do the nerdy thing he approved of - cosplaying, attending conventions, playing D&D - but didn’t want me wearing makeup (I wear winged liner every day of my life), dyeing my hair strange colours (which I used to do quite often as a student) or even wearing my contact lenses instead of glasses (I got contacts the moment I was old enough and haven’t been seen in my glasses since). He was hugely threatened by the fact that I took my academics seriously, and he freaked out when I was accepted to an Ivy League grad school because “it would be so humiliating to have a girlfriend who went to a better school than I did”. He had a very specific vision of the kind of girlfriend he wanted to have, and he was prepared to try to stamp out the parts of me that didn’t align with what he wanted. It’s okay to have standards and expectations for the kind of partner you want to have. That’s normal. I’d argue that it’s necessary. Speaking from personal experience, life is a lot easier when you expect your partners to have mastered basic communication and coping skills. And sometimes you will need to look for a partner who has very specific traits - if your dream is to have 12 children and live on a goat farm, you need to find a partner who is on board with that goal. It’s also fine to have preferences in terms of aesthetics, interests and lifestyles - we’re always going to have certain things that we find appealing, and it’s okay to be into that. What’s not okay is to have such rigid expectations about how our future partner will look, dress and behave that we can’t cope with not getting our exact fantasy. It’s fine to think that dating a quirky art major with a nose ring would be awesome. It’s not fine to think that dating a quirky art major with a nose ring is the answer to all your problems. And it’s definitely not fine to latch on to the first quirky art major with a nose ring that you can find, and then punish them when they turn out to be a complex human with real issues and not just a living doll. Whenever you’re dating, it’s important to remember that you are dating a real, live human, and not a cartoon character. They are going to grow and change, and they are going to have flaws, off-days and traits that don’t match up with your fantasies. Your punky goth girlfriend is going to have days where she just wants to lounge around the house in her pajamas and watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Your tough, manly lumberjack boyfriend might have a super sensitive gag reflex and spend an awful lot of time on the phone with his mom. We’re all weird, and each of us needs to have the freedom to be our own kind of weird in a relationship - if you find that your desire to be with someone is extremely dependent on their appearance, dress, weight, hobbies, friends, job, etc, and you can’t handle not having control over those things, you aren’t ready to date. The other big red flag to look for here is how fast someone rushes the relationship. If you’re projecting your fantasies on someone, you don’t really feel much need to get to know them - like Joe, you’re pretty sure that you know everything that you need to know about them soon after meeting. You are fully expecting this person to be the fantasy partner you desire, and so there’s no point waiting to see how the relationship goes - within weeks, you’re ready to move in together, adopt a pet together, and even get engaged. If you’re convinced that a person you met three weeks ago is your soulmate, it’s time to stop and take a hard look at things - you don’t know a person you meet three weeks ago, and you have no idea if they’re your soulmate or not. You are trying to date a fantasy and not a real person. Hope this answers your question! MM

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