Build-A-Man: The Women’s Molding Complex

One of my favorite stores is Build-A-Bear.  Most of you are familiar with the concept and layout of the store.  You enter this bear factory and pick a bear color, size, and appearance.  You go to the next section and to stuff the bear and stitch up the bear.  Then you get to dress the bear how you like according to  your tastes.  And finally, you get to name the bear and he is yours and has to do what you say and go where you go…  This is how most women approach relationships.

Any man who loves me has to love me as is.  It is a sentiment I share along with many other women I know.  I am not changing.  I am not lowering my standards.  I am not compromising my integrity.  I am not going to be somebody I am not.  I am not going to try to fit someone’s expectations of me.  I will at all costs stay true to myself.  The person I have grown into and have enjoyed being for the last 28 years is the person anybody I enter a relationship will have to love.

Then we enter these relationships with what could be the most perfect of men – these poor, unsuspecting men.  We find one flaw, maybe two or three.  I suppose the right thing to do would be to love them as is.  Accept their flaws in the same manner they accept ours.  That would be noble.  Instead, we become magnifying glasses to these one, two, or three flaws pointing them out every time without fail.  Some of us actually have the audacity to ask them to change to adjust to our standards or expectations.  But we love them so we want them to be better- the better that is defined by us, the women, of course.

Dare a man ask us to change or to improve without the unforgiving wrath of a woman coming down upon him?  How preposterous is the notion for a man to inflict his standards upon us.  Or what if he became the magnifying glass to our shortcomings until self-consciousness and insecurity seeped in to a once secure place.  I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be loved conditionally- only if you do this or do that, then and only then- yeah of course, I love you.