Nobody can ever be good enough when perfection is the standard

By David McElroy · April 27, 2022

I don’t know why the image came to my mind while I slept. I hadn’t seen the photo for years, but I immediately knew what it was.

We were somewhere in the Caribbean on a cruise. At sunset one evening, we were on an upper deck enjoying the colors and the wind and the waves. Someone offered to take a photo of us and snapped this impromptu image. And for some reason, my mind brought this old photo to my consciousness while I slept.

As I awakened — with this image burned brightly into my mind — I heard some words very clearly. In my sleepy state, I made a quick note on my iPhone:

“Nobody’s ever good enough if perfection is the standard.”

I knew what it meant. I also knew I would think about it a lot more later. But I felt a sense of peace about it as I went back to sleep. Something in my unconscious was trying — once again — to teach me a lesson. It wasn’t really about her, though. It was about me.

It was about my terror of not being perfect — and about how my fears have affected women who’ve tried to love me.

Gina was smart and beautiful. She was immensely talented — as a singer and actress — and she had a powerful personality that could light up a room. She was a very impressive woman. And she loved me very much. More than I deserved.

But I found reasons not to want her. The story is complicated — with a lot of twists and turns — but I never would really commit to her. And as I woke up last night with this image on my mind, I finally understood why. What’s more, I understood why I had seen this pattern multiple times with women who have loved me and wanted to build a future with me.

I found something wrong with each one of these women. I’m not saying I made things up which weren’t true. Each time it happened, I found the worst of each woman — and I used that accurate imperfection as an excuse about why I couldn’t commit to the woman who was trying to love me.

Each time I’ve done this, I’ve had moments when I realized the folly of what I’d done, but those moments never happened until it was too late for me to change things. I’ve sabotaged my relationships — for the most trivial of reasons at times — and I’ve hurt women who didn’t deserve to have their love rewarded with rejection.

For years, I’ve gone over and over the facts of my various relationships and tried to find a narrative which explained my feelings and my actions. I’ve understood bits and pieces of it, but I’m not entirely sure I was seeing the full truth — until last night when heard these words in my head:

“Nobody’s ever good enough if perfection is the standard.”

It all makes sense. I had to reject these women for their imperfections. Why? Because if I accepted the love of an imperfect woman, I would have to consciously accept how imperfect I am. And accepting myself as an imperfect man is intolerable to a deep part of me which is still terrified of being punished.

Does that mean all these women have been great matches for me when I’ve pushed them away? Not necessarily. Some of them would have been good matches. Others wouldn’t have been. It’s a mixed bag. But the truth is that I couldn’t allow myself to make an emotionally healthy decision about each one on her merits — because I was unconsciously hung up on facing my own imperfections.

I’ve known bits and pieces of this story, but it somehow made sense in a more powerful way last night. When I saw that old snapshot of Gina and me, I realized that I wasn’t fair to her — which I figured out long ago — but I also realized that I wasn’t fair to myself.

On a conscious level, I’ve always accepted that I’m not perfect. I know that nobody can be perfect. But my old programming — driven by a narcissistic father who never intended to damage me — leaves me struggling with those old fears of being punished for making mistakes.

My realization last night certainly wasn’t about any desire to reconnect with Gina. It’s more about understanding why I made the mistakes I made — with her and with others — and it’s about continuing to grow and change in ways that can allow me to make healthier decisions next time.

I’m never going to be perfect. Whoever is “the right partner” for me won’t be perfect, either. But I can’t accept her as imperfect without fully embracing my own imperfection.

I can’t do anything about the mistakes I’ve made, but I hope I’m constantly becoming a little wiser and a little smarter about how to make better decisions next time.

Life is complicated — and we all appear to be our own worst enemies at times.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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