Mother God, Matt Cardle and Manic Pixie Dream Girls
My unreasonable approach to dating and a cult documentary marathon.
Hello everybody - this one has been a little while coming but I’ve been practising the lifestyle in the poem above instead. Not sorry.
Reading
🪢 The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read by Philippa Perry - I love her, and I love what she has to say.
🤨 No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July - a gift, a weird one.
❄️ A Shining by Jon Fosse - got lost in it for a second
🍼 Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum - from the Bellwoods Library, essential viewpoints
📚
by - signed up for the paid subscription, loving every secondWatching
☕️ This Morning - I seem to be repeatedly in front of the TV at 10am on a weekday, love Alison Hammond but I’ve lost some brain cells.
🏚️ The Curse - very good stuff, you’ll like it.
And my highly recommended and much anticipated cult trilogy.
👽 Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God
🔥 And from the Twin Flames Universe - both Desperately Seeking Soulmate and Escaping Twin Flames (yes I watched both consecutively)
People tell me Mother God is difficult to source but trust me it’s worth it.
I thought it might be time to share my insane approach to dating with you. It’s full of anxiety and high expectations as you’d expect and I kind of hate the process. It’s making me overthink and over perform. If there was a way to create a years worth of bonding in one date, I’d opt for that please and thank you.
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie trope. It had it’s heyday in the noughties in our favourite cool person movies and general life and shaped the role I think kooky and interesting women should play in relationships. After all, this was a textbook example of how to land a troubled and creative man. That’s what we all wanted right?
So the idea is that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is there to shake up the world of the protagonist and enable him to live his best life. The problem is that her quirky personality traits and interest in indie bands and purple hair only exist to serve a purpose for the protagonist. She’s not a standalone character.
This happens to fit perfectly with my irritating need to facilitate others. So my immediate response to dating is to pick apart the men as quickly as possible and work out how I can be desirable to them in a dark and twisty way that centralises them as the main character. The problem with this approach is that no one gets to know the actual Katie, just the MPDG version.
When you date, you’re working through invisible tick boxes like it’s some sort of competition (I suppose it is). And the more boxes you check, the more romance related dopamine is available to be slurped up like a slushie on a hot day.
I blame this hormone for feeling the need to buy A Tale of Two Cities because someone I’d never met said it was their favourite book and once saying my favourite band was Brand New. There’s nothing more enticing than thinking the person on the other end of the messages might be raising their eyebrows at your niche interest that makes you ‘not like all the other girls’. In my head, I think a love of the Pixies is going to make them need to marry me immediately.
That raising of eyebrows ties nicely into the other physical reaction I feel the need to cause; the knuckle biting. Let me take you back to a niche TV moment 12 years ago. It’s the X Factor finale and Matt Cardle will be performing a duet with Rhianna (stay with me. Not the name of the song, but what I urge you to do). He seems to be completely enamoured with her and bites his knuckle in response to her presence and dress cut up to the waist.
This performance is a lot worse than I remember it being so I’m sorry to subject you to that but I promise I have a point. This moment stuck with me as an aspirational moment. You want to be able to grab mens attention to a point that makes them bite their knuckle. That aspiration never went away. Philippa Perry says looking for obsession is not the way forward, but here we are.
So now, I think the way that I approach dating sets a pretty high bar. I have to be the most interesting girl they’ve come across on the dating apps that asks really profound questions, has cool and accessible interests and is ‘want her but can’t have her’ sexy. And I expect myself to do all of this without that initial spark that comes with actually meeting someone in person. Is it any wonder I’m not using this time to accurately assess whether I actually like the person I’m speaking to or not?
I suppose the peacocking is an essential part of it. You can’t expect someone to find the idea of watching Real Housewives reruns with the cat a turn on. And the problem with relaxing into it a bit more and just showing your true colours is that they’re actually beige and grey. No one is actually that interesting.
So I think it’s about striking the right balance between showing yourself in a flattering light while not putting too much pressure on to be the best thing they’ve ever come across. Easier said than done. Perhaps I’ll allow myself to be the Mildy Unhinged Elfy Reality Person instead? Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? But I think it fits me better.
I love the insight here and also the quality of the writing. I also like Philippa Perry and bet she has some sensible, achievable advice to give. I thought Matt Cardle was one of your Matts at first. I have also attracted some male attention with my love of traditionally 'male' bands. I was once at a party and heard a guy say 'A woman who likes Radiohead! - where is she? I want to marry her!" He was rather nice actually, but I was already married, sadly. It's probably fairly normal to try quite hard and even do some out of character behaviour at the beginning of a relationship. Then you relax and let the comfy stuff show through. And later on he realises that he really has got a woman who loves the Pixies! And she also loves duvet days and cuddling. Sounds good to me. xxx
Fantastic work, loved every word!