Never Stay With A Man Who Tells You ‘Anyone Would Be Lucky To Have You’

You told me “anyone would be so lucky to have you” but you looked away when you uttered it, as though looking deep inside my eyes made it harder for you to turn this lie into a truth.

And of course, it did.

Why did I believe you when you said “anyone would be so lucky to have you” when I knew the moment you found out it’s you that I wanted, somehow the meaning behind your sentence changed and you realised there were two words that you forgot to add at the end of your phrase the first time you said it to me. As well as the second time. And the third.

“Anyone would be so lucky to have you… but me.”

I mean, that is what you originally meant isn’t it?

Why else did your eyes play cat and mouse with mine the moment that those words left your mouth? Why else did you stutter when I reminded you of that late Sunday afternoon when we were having a light-hearted conversation about life and I started giggling in the middle of a joke that you were telling me and then you stopped completely, and you took a deep breath in and those words sighed out of your mouth as though nature called it, but then 3 weeks down the line you felt uneasy because you no longer remembered or wanted to remember why you said it? Why else did you change the topic every time I mentioned it?

Because if you really meant the first part but not the last, and I mean truly meant it, you would’ve finished it off the right way.

“Anyone would be so lucky to have you…including me.”

And I want to accept the beauty of this. I truly want to accept it. I want to think that when a man says these words to me then he really means it and this, in itself, is enough to prove to me that I am extremely special.

But why should I accept such a conceited phrase, even if a man added ‘including me’ at the end and meant it?

The truth is, I’m so tired of being the person that associates my worth with the amount of appreciation or lack thereof that other people have for me, especially men who think that they can throw “anyone would be so lucky to have you” in my direction and somehow fixate their idea in my mind.

And they have in the past.

I have heard this phrase time and time again by men who have no intention of being that “anyone” but somehow manage to get inside my head and become this glorious image in my mind of how I think they view me. Or how much they admire me. Or how much I think they want me.

Well, he did say “anyone would be so lucky to have you” and he said it a few times. Not even once or twice, but three times!

Surely that must mean something, right?

The truth is a big, fat no.

It pains me so much that as independent and strong-headed women who preach about feminism and equality and the inability of a man to fulfil a woman who is complete in herself, we still succumb to falling deep into the traps of men who know just what to say to us to keep us feeling a certain way about them. Because we know – oh, deep down we know – that those words “anyone would be so lucky to have you” have been used many times by the same person on many different women. And even if they haven’t, even if it turns out that this is the first time this particular man has used this line on a woman and that woman is us, we still know that these words are just means to a bigger end of trying to keep us interested for as long as they want and until they want.

Yet we believe those words anyway as though our worth depended on it. As though our conviction that we are truly beautiful women who will love and cherish our partner is dependent on a guy we have just met confirming that our future partner will indeed be lucky to have us in his life.

Shouldn’t we already know how worthy we are in ourselves as well as how capable we are of loving someone else without being convinced by a third person of this? That too, a man who has no idea what he’s talking about?

Don’t we know that our partners are going to be extremely, irrevocably and indeed lucky to have us in their lives? I mean, come on – just look at us. We’re queens!

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this unending cycle of being reeled in enough to be reeled back out again, as though we were a yo-yo instead of capable young women who know their worth, in the hands of men who suffer from commitment phobia really needs to stop.

I want to be able to speak to a man without being fed atypical lines because of his perverse view that this is the only way he can keep me interested. I’ve had enough of being told that anyone would be lucky to have me because, believe me, I already know that and I don’t need a man who isn’t capable of following through the things that he says or understanding meanings to his words to convince me of that. In fact, I don’t need any man to convince me that because believe me, I am already convinced that anyone would be lucky to have me.

I want to know why I would be lucky to have you. Why should I so easily believe you when you tell me “anyone would be lucky to have you” when you haven’t managed to convince me with enough reasons as to why anyone would be lucky to have you?

So tell me, what do you bring to the table? What’s so special about you? Do you think you can keep a strong-headed woman like me happy? Do you understand the things that you say? Do you know what it means to be committed? And, more importantly, do you like spicy food? Do you like dogs? Do you want to go on adventures? Do you want to spend whole evenings having conversations about Philosophy and History and Love and Literature and discover the meaning of life together?

Because if you’re only as deep as your words go, then honey, you’ve got to go.