Are You the Right Kind of Girlfriend

Text by: Julie Taylor
Photo by: Pat Dy
Makeup by: Barbi Chan
Hair by: Felicity Son
Styled by: Guada Reyes


Email to a Friend

See reader Comments







“When did I turn into such a bitch?” asks Beth, a
29-year-old broker. Recently, she threw a fit when her boyfriend, Jack,
told her that he’d rather watch basketball with the guys than cook
dinner with her like they had planned. Instead of rolling over as he
usually did, her boyfriend put up a fight. “He complained that I always
had to have my way and that he was really becoming fed up,” she says.
Although her boyfriend ended up passing on the basketball game, Beth
felt so hurt and embarrassed that she would’ve preferred a solo serving
of instant soup to their sullen candlelit seafood fest.
But
Beth’s my-way-or-the-highway attitude isn’t automatically a love
liability. “Insisting on having things your way can benefit your
relationship—you just need to be careful how often you push it,”
explains Karen Peterson, Ph.D., a Boston psychologist and author of The Tomorrow Trap (Health Communications, 1996). Let’s face it: Too much of anything—even
sex readiness!—can throw a relationship out of whack. If you think of
different kinds of behaviors as musical notes, the key to an enduring
love song is to play them all. We’ve uncovered five common personality
styles that should be part of every woman’s relationship repertoire.
We’ve also tracked down the too-much-of-a-good-thing warning signs.
Finally, we’ve given you the key to busting out of your personality rut
and taking your relationship to the next love-loaded level.

Personality Plateau 1: The Trophy
Warning signs:
You pay too much attention to your hair and makeup that you’ve lost
track of how much megadebt you’re running up on the credit cards
financing your party gear. After all, you want to look good for your
guy at high-profile events where you smile, hang on his arm, and let
him do all your talking for you. Linda, a 28-year-old bank executive,
has been there. When she started dating an investment banker, she felt
honored to sit by his side at black-tie events. “But after months of
feeling valued only for my appearance, I started focusing more on
details like if my hair was lying right rather than on what people were
talking about,” she says. Linda’s guy took notice, all right—of her
growing shallowness and shrinking personality.
Rut buster:
Sure, it’s great to be a star—and he’ll definitely love having a widely
recognized beauty by his side. “At first, the attention and physical
adoration makes you feel spectacular, so you go with it,” says
psychologist Janice Broody, Ph.D. But his objectification of your
assets will ultimately bring you down more than it boosts you up. “The
thing to remember about a trophy is that it’s an inanimate object,”
Peterson says. “And even the most spotlight-seeking man may tire of a
toy.”
They key to rounding out your trophy profile
is to let him see that your winning looks—or whatever he thinks makes
you so flauntable—are just one side of your multifaceted self. Boldly
voice your opinions. Laugh out loud. Talk about what makes you tick.
Don’t be afraid to let your less-than-perfect side show. After all,
it’s your unique imperfections that make you the memorable, lovable
woman you are.
A good way to break the ice-queen
ice: Ask him to go camping for the weekend, or anything that will allow
the trophy devotee to see you in a less glamorous light. “Letting him
see you in sweats and a ponytail is a sure way to shatter your
smile-and-look-pretty persona,” says Peterson. That’s all it took for
Linda to bust through her mannequin image. “I asked Jake to come work
out with me the afternoon before one of his company parties,” she
recalls. “After he saw me all sweaty and makeup-free, he seemed psyched
that I was more than a Barbie doll.”

Personality Plateau 2: The Be-with-me-only Bitch
Warning signs:
You instigate World War III when he tells you he wants to go to Hooters
with his old frat buddies. Like Beth, you frequently issue “It’s
basketball with the fellas or me!”-style ultimatums. And you suffer the
same fallout. “His friends are pretty much hated me because they never
saw him anymore,” Beth says. “And when he went out with me, I was
terrified he’d scope out other chicks.” The bottom line: She felt
insecure; he felt trapped.
Rut buster:
While drawing the line to have some private time can be a vital aspect
of any relationship, a take-no-prisoners attitude when insisting on
spending time together will only prompt him to devise an escape.
Luckily, the love-saving solution can be as simple as paying attention
to how you ask for what you want. For example, don’t say that you won’t
“let” your guy do something, which implies that you control him. “He
might feel like he’s being bossed around and start resenting you,” says
Peterson. And chronic resentment will make him wide-eyed to your one
wrenchy quality and blind to all the bodacious things about you. So
since all you’re trying to do is express how much you want to be with
him, just say so. If his going out with the guys makes you feel scared
that he doesn’t care about you, say something like, “When you make
those plans, it makes me afraid that I’m just not doing it for you.”
Then you can have a real conversation about what’s bothering you
instead of barking out sure-to-backfire orders.
And
if he wants to go out with his friends once in a while, why not smile
and make plans to go out with friends of yours? If you can’t stand the
thought of letting him loose all night long, suggest meeting up for a
drink later in the evening. “That way, you’ll still get to see him, but
he’ll feel like he still has his freedom,” says Peterson. Letting go of
some of her control was difficult for Beth in the beginning. “But once
I realized that he loved me and was just having a good time, I began to
relax and have fun with my friends,” she says. Bonus: Jack has a chance to miss her and shows her just how much when they reunite at the end of the night.

Personality Plateau 3: The Bimbo
Warning signs:
You do more moaning than talking, show more flesh than fabric, and your
favorite hangout is his queen-size bed. Cathy, a 28-year-old IT
consultant, knows the feeling—she worried about developing bedsores
after hooking up with her new boyfriend, Peter. “The sex was always
through the roof,” she recalls. “But after a while, that’s all our relationship was about. My panties would be around my ankles five minutes into every date.”
Rut buster:
Hey, we don’t need to tell you that a little sexual feistiness is key
to a great relationship, but if all that’s going on is getting it on,
you could be headed for relationship trouble. “Women are trained from a
very young age that sexual attention and physical admiration from men
are the highest possible forms of praise,” explains Brody. “And since
everything in our culture reinforces that, it’s easy for women to start
thinking that sex is the be-all and end-all of relationships.”
If
you find yourself worrying that you must constantly put out just to
hold on to your man, it’s time to prove that there’s a brain attached
to that bring-him-to-his-knees bod of yours. “Tell him that you love
the sex, but it would excite you even more to mix things up,” advises
Brody. “Set aside at least one night a week to go somewhere like a
reading at a local bookstore or a play at the community theater. Then,
rather than rushing back to your place, go out for coffee and dessert
afterward and actually have a conversation.”
Cathy
did just that and confirmed her hopes that their mental mesh could be
as deep as their body bond. “Peter and I started going to art openings
and wine-tasting sessions,” she explains. “All the stuff we did outside
the bedroom made what we did inside even hotter.” And now, instead of
seeing her strictly as a sex machine, Cathy’s man appreciates her for
the fascinating woman she truly is.

Personality Plateau 4: The Mommy
Warning signs:
You constantly nag him to pick-up the dry cleaning, go grocery
shopping, and put the toilet seat down. What’s worse, when he doesn’t
do it, you do—and gripe about it later. After 26-year-old Karen, a
florist, found herself doing four loads of her boyfriend’s laundry one
Saturday morning, she knew she’d officially entered The Mommy Zone.
“I’d been nagging him to do his laundry all week, then finally, I was
so sick of looking at it that I did it, feeling sorry for myself the
whole time,” she recalls. “I suddenly realized that over the past few
months, I had always been griping at him to do something—turn down the
TV set, not drink out of the milk carton, even going a little harder or
faster during lovemaking!”
Rut buster:
Every guy likes to be mommied every now and then—especially when he was
two weeks worth of dirty dishes piled in his sink or a fever of 102.
But beware when the Mom routine starts turning into a full-time gig.
“For a lot of women, there’s a certain security and comfort in having a
man depend on you,” says Brody. “But nothing kills a relationship more
quickly than trying to be his mother and his lover.”
To
get around talking down to him, Brody suggests the Post-It plan. You
each sit down with a Post-It and think of three to five things you
would like the other person to start doing, like his putting the cap
back on the toothpaste or your nagging him less. Then draw stick
figures depicting these actions and ask your partner what your cartoon
represents—think of it as therapeutic Pictionary. Post the cartoons on
highly visible areas. “This brings some fun into compromising,” says
Brody.
After that laundry revelation, Karen and
her boyfriend started playing a learn-to-compromise game of their own.
“We agreed to say a secret word whenever one of us did something that
irked the other. We decided on kiwi,” she says. “So anytime he pissed me off, I’d say ‘kiwi’, then we’d talk about it. Or vice versa. And since kiwi
is such a silly word, it always makes us laugh. After a month or two,
‘Mom’ was officially gone for good.” Good thing, too, since there is no
room for all three of them in their double bed.
Personality Plateau 5: The Buddy
Warning signs:
You definitely kid around with your man more than you fool around. In
fact, the only things that differentiate you from his guy friends are
that you (a) have boobs and (b) don’t pee standing up. Gaye, a
27-year-old policewoman was beginning to feel like one of the guys when
she spent the eighth evening in a row hanging out with her boyfriend’s
homies. “They came over every night for PlayStation, pizza, and beer,”
she says. “I like his buddies, but when he started asking what me ‘and
the gang’ wanted to do after work, I sensed trouble.” When Gaye’s
boyfriend stopped initiating sex, she knew for sure.
Rut buster:
There are some people who have a hard time mixing friendship and sex.
And—surprise!—your boyfriend may not be the only one in your
relationship who falls into that category: It’s possible you sought out
someone who would keep you at arm’s length without even knowing it.
“You might have subconsciously chosen a guy with a fear of intimacy so
you wouldn’t have to get too close,” says Peterson. But just because
emotional shyness played a part in your past doesn’t mean it has to
dictate your future.
When you’re ready to put the
relationship on the front burner, ask for more private time. Make plans
to be together without the gang. Turn of ESPN and connect in a sensual
way. “That could mean giving each other massages, going dancing, or
even recreating your first date,” says Sari Locker, sex expert and
author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex (Alpha Books, 1999).
Gaye
says it was hard to break out of the safety of the buddy mold at first.
“Jake couldn’t understand why I was getting all mushy on him, and I was
afraid it would drive him away,” she recalls. “I explained that I liked
his friends, but I missed those romantic times we’d shared.” The
flattery worked—Jake began to plan romantic outings just for the two of
them. And now, when they have Sega-fests with his friends, they make it
a point to spend some time together first. As Gaye began to feel more
like girlfriend than a guy friend, their romantic relationship grew
stronger than ever. “We discovered the exact same elements that make
our friendship so strong also makes our sex life sizzle,” she recalls.
“Now I’m the sex kitten, best friend, and girlfriend all rolled into
one!”