11 years ago
Wednesday
Meet My Representative
Going back to Monday's conversation about romance, I personally believe in love and romance but I do have a side of me that is cautious when I meet new people. Reason being is that when you first meet someone you meet their representative. Their representative is usually the ideal person that they want to be or who they think you want them to be. Then little by little their representative goes away and you meet the true person. Unfortunately, their representative may be in place so long that you get deep into a relationship and then..BOOM!! the real person comes out and you don't know what to do. And of course I am going to give you an example. So, earlier this year I meet this girl and she was telling me all about herself. She liked to travel, to camp, be outdoors, going out to bars and such, etc... She was also finishing up grad school in a couple of months, she had a good job, good credit and was debt free. Yes, she told me that on the first night we meet. She also said she wanted a man that she didn't have to teach how to be a boyfriend. It took a couple of months but eventually her representative left and the real her came out. She really didn't like doing any of that stuff she talked about, all she liked to do was to go out to dinner, to the movies and shopping. She was finishing grad school but she had no idea what she wanted to do after and she had to quit her good job because she had to do an internship. Also, she really doesn't know how to be in a new relationship because she was so focused on what happened in her last relationship that she sabotaging ours. I really thought she was a keeper but as soon as she showed her true colors she was too much to handle and she didn't know how to be in a relationship. I mean she is a great person but it required way to much effort to be with her and it had only been a couple of months. Why do people have to have a representative? Why cant we just be real from the beginning?
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6 comments:
Oh Wow! I like that analogy. I feel that people sometimes like to portray who they really want to be and say those things and want to believe themselves or simply pretend to be that person because they really dig that person of interest and don’t want to disappoint him or her. I know that’s a lame excuse but she is not the first person I hear that does it many people that are not secure of themselves like to pretend or like you say have a representative.
OOhhhhhh,
I know its hard to say no to those fine qualities at the beginning. Maybe next time, if anybody want to act as a representative, tell them to bring their credit report.
So anywho,
Would you still be interested if that individual is not representing herself as your ideal person is? What if the individual says "I have no job and I have a bus pass" would you still be interested based on other qualities?
I think it boils down to people feeling the need of wanting to be accepted and wanting to belong. It's human instinct. When people first meet someone they like and have "butterflies" they function differently. That's why their representative is seen, and not who they truly are. People are constantly showing their representative because they want to be liked and want to feel a sense of belonging.
good new term for the Goffmanian dramaturgical perspective. 'representative' is a good clear concept.
Could classify representatives to see what "ideal type" we (think we) are following.
while it is true that the representative breaks down to show the "real" - we also pick ourselves up and go on and in an enduring relationship the representative has metamorphoses. so, while representative is a good concept it should not be a cage.
The relationship society is one that lots of people want to belong to. People go to great lenghts to become part of that society, even if that means showing what you think others want to see. Good luck next time.
to be fair to ourselves, too, is it not the case that sometimes when we meet a new person, we are DECLARING to the world (our "selves" included, as G.H. Mead reminds us) that this "portrait" is my ideal self? We "use" new relationships to develop what we have come to think should be our 'self'. See Blumer in the book defending Mead at the beginning of the Blumer article.
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