Mr. Perfect and the thrill seeking butterfly

This week's Mr. Perfect Blog comes courtesy of Emma Wooldridge. Emma is a Social Worker specialising in cross-cultural practice and trauma-informed care. She has worked in Mental Health, Policy, Youth Affairs and most recently worked in Community Engagement as part of the Royal Commission to Child Protection and Detention in the NT. A country girl at heart, she believes access to the natural world is essential for wellbeing and feels privileged to be be currently living on Larrakia Country, Darwin NT. Emma writes for various blogs and you can occasionally find her at www.kabukisky.com

I want to tell you a story about my experience of ‘Mr. Perfect’.  I am a single, 33 year old female who counts friends across the world, a hard-earned degree and a few recent grey hairs as some of my biggest achievements. I have worked in some of the most intense environments the human condition will experience; disaster zones, hospital wards, post-colonial politics and the lived remains of trauma at the hands of Institutions like the Church, the Military and Prisons.

In these environments I have learned the true impact of what it means to (sometimes suddenly) not feel like one belongs. I have learned the power of connection and how a daily phone call for some may be just the village they need. I have learned that courage is just as much about being vulnerable at the dinner table as it is in dressing for war. And I have learned most of these things by men.

I acknowledge my personal history and narrative is one woven strongly woven by women. And I grew up hearing their stories, their struggle and their song. In my early 20’s I identified myself in their choices. I saw their hard won fight for making decisions in a world that denied their voice and choices. A grandmother that left school to work on the farm and was never able to study as the nurse she dreamt of. A grandmother who left the glitz of city life to move to a dirt floor shed in the bush.  A mother who, I later realised, worked 3 jobs when I was at university just so I could pay rent. And then later put her own self through university so she could become the nurse she had always dreamed. The stories of my paternal side were not so accessible. There were the campfire stories of ‘Uncle Monty and the fur stole’ or how my pop lived on one 44 gallon of water for the week during the depression. How my great grandfather was gassed in the war and returned home, never quite the same. The smell of the work shed, weekends of chopping firewood and mowing the lawn. Plucked stories from my childhood memory that I only have the first few sentences of. But through my family and you ‘Mr. Perfect’ community, I’m seeking to change that.

You see, it was only 3 years ago I had a moment at an International Conference that shook me to my core. The setting was Japan, Cabinet Office and we delegates were only slightly over-represented by women from 10 far flung countries of the world. And I don't remember the exact topic but it was about women and leadership and power and my male Maori colleague very clearly said “don't forget about the men”. And through him – this strong, warrior family man – I felt a rush of pain. Let me be clear, I do not speak for him and I don't seek to represent what he was expressing at that moment. It is my interpretation. In that moment, I heard a call and one that I chose to respond to with curiosity and inner reflection that has continued over the past 3 years. I wondered to myself, “what is it like for men to hear these stories of ‘strong women’ and female power?”, “through the re-claimed voice of women over the past several years, what has this done to the voice of men?“.

It suddenly felt like my knowledge and thinking and conversations were not enough. With my age and circle of friends I grew tired of the simplistic view of men and no where was this more evident than in the dating world. So I read a book about dating, written by a man. In a sea of advice columns and social narrative dominated by women this felt revolutionary to my late 20s self. And it sparked a significant shift in my perception of men in the world; I have found myself rejecting and challenging both the discourse and the views around me. And this is where it gets personal, because as much as my dating stories began as a source of intrigue and entertainment for my friends, I grew tired of the game I was playing with myself. What was this story I was telling myself about men’s role and what I wanted them to be in my world? And why was I sharing these stories as a source of entertainment?  

That dear grandmother met her husband on the Manly ferry when she “asked a handsome young soldier to close the window for her” and after years of correspondence during the war, they married and she moved to that dirt-floored shed to start a new life with him. She loved him deeply and after his death, having never learnt how to drive or use a chequebook, was forced to start a new life without him. She used to say to me “have you found him Em? Have you found Mr. Right yet” And I would say with a cheeky smile “No Nanna, He hasn't found me”.  And years of  these exchanges, I was forced to confront this narrative – that I had a level of expectation on they type of guy who would waltz into my life and be everything I would need. I cringe writing this.  But I share this as source of context to demonstrate my experience of ‘Mr. Perfect’.

Because if you haven’t got the sense already, I have been a ‘Ms. Perfect’. The type who got good marks and smiled at the camera and danced dangerously with food to keep my waist trim. All the while feeling disconnection with myself, the world around me and desperately lonely. And when my friend spoke those words all those years ago, it began a time of deep de-construction of my inner ‘Ms. Perfect’. One that has seen me travel the world collecting memories like these. . . coral lodged in my feet from barefoot moonlit dancing in; Andean altitude sickness cooled by flash mobs on crowded trains and sweaty, soulful exchanges in the tropical Australian outback. Because I realised that if being ‘Ms. Perfect’ meant that I do it alone then I choose something different.

What I express here, ‘Mr. Perfect’ is that when I expected that of you, I was really expecting it of myself. And when I couldn’t tolerate your story, it was a denial of my own. Yin, Yang; Masculine, Feminine; Mother Earth and Father Sky. Call it what you like; my liberation is bound up in yours and we must do this dance, together.

Here I end on something very close to my heart. And in this spirit of sharing I hope to encourage a community of shared deconstruction of the ‘perfect’ narrative. Some of my best moments over these past few years have been the ones where life gets truly clunky. And again  - many of these moments of teaching for me have been through the voice – and sometimes silence of men.

I travelled home to my dear Uncles funeral recently. A sudden death that sent crashes through our precious family like heart-breaking after-shocks. We gathered in a fire-warmed shed on a cool July night and all I could see in that room were the missing men. Widows to death and divorce I was mostly surrendered by women, again. The exception one middle-aged uncle and the pool-playing youth of my cousins. In them I felt that call, “What about the men”.  In that intimate, family evening I saw our national dizzying representation of women outliving men. And I felt even more empowered to do something about it.

As I write this, I am seated in the heat of an NT October afternoon. The outdoor fan blasts above my head. A black winged butterfly dances about the fragrant garden bordering the view. Occasionally, that delicate butterfly sweeps into the verandah and flies above, just short of the steel blades of the speeding fan. At one point I collectively hold my breath, expecting the worst outcome. . . but that thrill-seeking butterfly whooshes down and flies calmly back out into the garden. She is the perfect metaphor for my words on vulnerability.

And so this is my offer to you, ‘Mr. Perfect’. I lay out the bones of my story as an offering. An offering to put down the armour I take on each date. An offering to celebrate the views and wisdom, the many faces of the masculine. An offering that by humbly acknowledging my story, I share yours.