“Manic Pixie Dream Girl” you exist for him. He won’t call you a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, he’s probably never heard of it and on the off chance he has he probably doesn’t really understand it.
But he’ll expect you to be her. He’ll expect you be spontaneous and carefree; he might laugh and agree with you when you say you’re impulsive, but he means the going on trips kind of impulsive, the making grilled cheese at two in the morning kind of impulsive. He doesn’t mean the trashing your apartment because you hate it, driving states away to your parents’ house because you’re overwhelmed, or deciding to break up and taking it back the next day kind of impulsive. He says impulsive because it’s supposed to be a flaw that makes you real, but he means spontaneous because you can’t be a burden.
But he’ll take and take. You’ll need to be emotionally doting, you’ll need to constantly show that you worship him, you’ll need to make him feel needed and loved and supported. You’ll need to listen to his stupid and dull ideas like they’re brilliant so he can feel brilliant, you’ll need embrace him when he has the smallest emotional breakthrough, so he feels pushed to be better. You’ll have to be there for him, but you cannot take from him.
You need to be an explosion of feelings and emotions and energy all the time so he feels lifted, but you can never let them truly out because he can’t feel attacked. You’re supposed to seem moody, but you can never be angry at him, or upset at him, or jealous of him. Just of other people, you are supposed to be his entertainment, but not his vice.
And he’ll hold you back, he’ll belittle you, so you doubt yourself, he’ll be too self-involved to love you in a way that allows you to feel lovable. He’ll be too scared to try escargot, so you’ll get French onion soup, he’ll want to go to Costa Rica instead of Cuba, so you never get to see a world past the resort.
But you can’t let him feel like that, you need to act like this big magical thing that enlightens him without being better than him. Like Jesus, but a woman, so nonthreatening. You have to show him a whole new world, a better world, an interesting one. You have to act fearless but in an irrational way so you can’t be brave, because you can’t be braver than him. You have act fun but in a crazy way so you’re not actually more fun to be around than him. You’ll have to act smart but in a bookish and out there way, so you don’t seem actually smarter than him.
All of this means you’ll have to adopt some fake flaws but since you can’t be a burden or emotionally volatile like your characteristics might suggest, instead you’ll have to be “messy” or “disorganized” you’ll have to talk with a stupid voice and laugh at stupid jokes. You’ll have to like dumb things like astrology and gender studies, so he doesn’t have to take you seriously.
You’ll have to be what he needs but you can’t expect him to fulfill a single need of yours. You must work to be a one-dimensional character with no growth so he can grow, so the story can be about him. At the end of the day, you don’t exist for yourself, you’re the manic pixie dream girl, his girl, his dream.
Photos: Her Campus Media