The other process that helped Leigh was finding a group of women who struggled like she did. Many psychologists understand that stories can heal. Sharing stories—telling your own and listening to those of others—is a therapeutic process. Much has been written about using narrative in psychotherapy—psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral therapies—as a way to help clients integrate their histories, their multiple selves, and as a way to make better choices. When we tell our stories, we are forced both to claim ourselves (“I did this”) and to claim our responsibilities to other people, such as our families and communities. When we tell our stories, and when our audience demands vulnerability from us, we can no longer get away with behavior like breaking into Facebook accounts. Suddenly, it is just us and our feelings and the question of what we will do with them.
I would argue that the group experience of knowing that you’re not alone—particularly for issues such as promiscuity, where girls carry so much shame—is useful as well. So many of us have these stories, and yet so few feel safe sharing them. After Loose Girl came out, I set up a system on my website where girls could simply submit their loose girl stories and read others’ in the hope that knowing so many of us are out there would be healing.
EXAMINING THE THINGS WE TELL OURSELVES
Any girl or woman I’ve worked with who is still in the throes of loose-girl behavior, still pursuing male attention at any cost, even as it makes her feel like garbage, believes in the fantasy she has about men. With each of these women I’ve asked the same question: “What do you believe he will do for you?” Their answers are almost all the same:
“He will love me the way no one ever has before.”
“He will make me happy.”
“He will save me.”
A huge part of being a loose girl is believing in a fantasy, and that fantasy is of course not factual. We have been handed the lie about men by our media and culture. A boy will make you worth something. A boy’s loving you means you matter in the world. We’ve bought the idea entirely. But beneath the fantasy is the blatant lie. It isn’t true. Not even close. No man’s attention to a girl means anything. In fact, more often than not it just means he has an opportunity to use her for sex, which, in the typical cultural irony for a girl, makes her matter less. Perhaps more important, whatever fantasy you or your daughter or your client or student carries around is based on some lack that can’t possibly be filled by another person, and most certainly not some random boy. That emptiness is very real, but the fantasy that someone will fill it is not.
Often, when it comes into their awareness that they have these beliefs, the girls and women I work with are surprised. I encourage them to write those beliefs down on one side of a piece of paper, and then to make a list on the other side of what those men actually wind up doing for them. This is important, because even if men do provide some positives in these women’s lives, they do not do this impossible task of filling their emptiness, of taking away or saving them from their pain.
Larissa believed that every boy that gave her attention, or who she developed a crush on, would be “the one.” When I pressed her about what she meant by “the one,” she admitted he would be the one who would love her so much that all her pain would go away and she’d always be happy. Larissa grew up with parents she described as “distant,” whom she was never able to feel loved by. After she wrote down this belief, we discussed what she really did get from these boys. She determined that she got some affection and some sense that she was pretty and desirable, but little else. She said she never even felt like they were her friends. I didn’t expect this to change everything for Larissa right away, but it was a task I suggested she repeat with each encounter or crush. The more she paid attention to her fantasy about boys, the easier time she would have unraveling why it felt so terrible when it didn’t work out, and let’s face it—it was never going to work out as long as those were her expectations.
Deb provides another example. She had a boyfriend, but she cheated on him constantly. When I asked her what she wanted from him, she told me that she wanted him to make her feel whole. These sorts of answers are so common. We hear them everywhere. They are spread across our media, in every teen drama and romantic comedy. A boy will complete you. It’s yet another line delivered that rarely does any good for teen girls. Clearly, though, she didn’t feel whole. She slept with other boys because she felt desperate and uncared for, and she secretly hoped one of these other boys would give her that sense of wholeness. Deb and I stayed in touch, and though she hadn’t stopped searching for that sense of wholeness, she could see how she had reached that point and needed to make a change.
Along with the fantasy about boys are the core beliefs—called core schemas in cognitive therapy—we have about ourselves. So often, we come to believe some essential lie about ourselves: I am not lovable. I am not special. I am worthless. I don’t matter. These lies come about through various channels, such as growing up with parental abuse or neglect or addiction, or with a trauma such as rape. Or they come about because of situations with boys, or because of our personality type, or simply because of how our culture makes us feel as girls.
Paula, for instance, developed the core belief “I am not special” right after she went through puberty. She developed crushes on boys, but those boys kept choosing other girls to date. When one finally did choose her as his girlfriend, he decided he liked someone else after about a month. This is ordinary dating behavior among adolescents, but Paula felt as though it meant she were different from other girls, that she wasn’t special.
Combine those sorts of core beliefs with the fantasy of what a boy can provide, and it’s easy to see why a girl might get hung up on getting with boys. She can easily come to believe that a boy will save her from these terrible things she believes about herself. He can make them untrue. I encouraged Paula to notice when she had that thought about not being special, and then we worked together to examine the thought process that led her to that false belief. Over time, she began to recognize that there was little logic to it. Having this sort of awareness so young—fourteen years old—Paula has the potential to avoid heading down a loose-girl path.
MAKING NEW HABITS
Deb was in the perfect mind space for changing her behavior, for creating new habits. One of the dangers of loose-girl self-harming sexual activity is that your brain develops habits. In the same way that one might develop a psychological dependence on a glass of wine in the evening, or a few hits of marijuana to sleep, girls (and boys) can develop a psychological dependence on promiscuity (as with other process addictions). Deb, for instance, knew she was making bad choices. She knew she had a false fantasy, and she hardly believed in it anymore. But just knowing is sometimes not enough. Often the behavior is entrenched enough that we have to do things differently, too.
It’s important to note that often the predictable pattern feels good. Something about that drama and pain, something about getting to feel the feelings we usually tamp down, feels good. Think about any other sort of addictive pattern. Imagine you were a heroin addict. Imagine the ritualized process of calling your dealer, driving into that seedy part of town. The haggard people on the streets. Your heart beats wildly in your chest. You know that you will get that feeling again. Then after doing that drug, imagine how it feels to come down and feel desperate for more, how familiar it is. The process is almost comforting, even as you start to sweat and feel sick. You know it by heart. This is the same for the loose girl. She gets pleasure from the process, even as it feels like hell. Those familiar neurons fire, those same sections of the brain light up, the various neurochemicals begin their work. The loose girl must acknowledge this buzz as part of her necessary awareness.