Member-only story
A Personal History of Dating Men With ‘Potential’
I convinced myself I could make things work, no matter the obstacle
I have gone to extraordinary lengths to make people love me.
I loved my first real partner, the man I lived with in graduate school, because he was a delightful combination of strong and gentle. He’d experienced the harshness of the world and yet stayed kind. His smirking good looks didn’t hurt, either.
He had immigrated from Afghanistan to Scotland, where I lived at the time. His English was broken. He lived with friends who treated him like a little brother, and for whom he worked at a job he hated.
Like many women in their early twenties raised on Western media, I believed the goal was to get the man you fancied to love you. Always.
After all, I’d never seen a princess in a fairytale say, “I should really take my time. Find out if I actually like this guy who just climbed my hair. I mean, I barely even know him!” From books, film, and TV — even from my own family — I’d absorbed this lesson about women turning frogs into princes. It didn’t happen through a single kiss, mind you, but through enormous effort devoted to sorting your man out, whether he liked it or not.
