Auntie SparkNotes: Men Make Me Nervous

Dear Auntie,

When I was growing up, I had bad experiences with my mom’s then-boyfriend. He was very controlling to the point where I couldn’t do anything I wanted and wasn’t really allowed to go anywhere either. He also wasn’t very good to my mom which I witnessed on occasion, but all that ended several years ago.

Since then I have had a pretty normal, if not good home life (I’m a teenager so there’s the “not getting along with parents thing,” but other than that it’s peachy) The problem is that I get extremely uncomfortable around adult guys. So uncomfortable that I get anxious and nervous and want to run in the other direction. I don’t understand it though, I have never been physically abused, never been assaulted in any way, and I hate that I am pretty sure I come off as rude on occasion to adult guys I meet. Either friends’ dads, teachers, etc. I don’t think it has anything to do with my mom’s ex, but that’s around when it started.

I don’t understand why I get so nervous and anxious around them and I really want to stop perhaps coming off as rude. Is there any way I can act more comfortable around them? Or for me to figure out WHY I’m so uncomfortable around them in the first place? Is it just a normal thing and I’m worried for no reason?

That’s a good question, Sparkler, and the answer is… well, sort of.

Because even absent a traumatic history, it’s certainly not unusual for teenage girls to feel the way you feel in the presence of grown men. For one thing, the average adult male and the average not-yet-adult female don’t have a ton of common ground on which to relate to each other in the first place, making it difficult for them to interact. And on top of that, a lot of people get squirmy about the idea of these two groups interacting or relating at all. Even if nobody has ever assaulted or abused you, you’ve grown up in a world where men are often considered to be predators-in-waiting, especially when it comes to teenage girls.

Which, to be clear, is generally messed up and untrue and unfair (and leads to infuriating ridiculous nonsense like, say, the daughter of a single dad being unable to have sleepovers at her house, or a best-selling YA author being accused of writing books with the purpose of sexually grooming his teenaged readers.) Men are people, and like all people, they don’t deserve to be stigmatized just because they happened to be born before a particular year and with a particular set of genitals. But with that kind of attitude so very much in the air, it’s easy to internalize the idea that you “should” be uncomfortable and fearful around adult men—a fact adult men are quite aware of themselves, which means that they’re as likely to be awkward around you as you are to be anxious around them.

In short, it’s a recipe for weirdness. And if you don’t have any close personal relationships with men that might have been a rebuttal to that weirdness (and since in your case, your mom’s boyfriend was a bit of a jerk, and you don’t mention your dad at all), it’s not so surprising that you aren’t particularly at ease around grownup guys.

The thing is, you also have total control over how you deal with that unease. So right now, it sounds like you’re dealing with it by getting overwhelmed and uncomfortable and prickly—but you don’t have to do that. Knowing that this is an issue for you means that you can anticipate your discomfort, and acknowledge that it’s there, but not allow it to be the boss of your reactions. And you can prepare for your next run-in with an adult male human the same way you would any situation that you know is going to stress you out: by practicing.

Give yourself a few reasonable goals like, say, participating more in class discussions with your male teachers, or making eye contact and saying a polite hello to your friends’ dads, or smiling and saying thank you to the nice old gent who held a door for you at Starbucks. If you have to, practice in the mirror.

In the short term, just the act of making an effort should keep you from seeming standoffish. But longterm, the more you successfully manage to interact with men in these minor ways, the more your brain will recalibrate itself to not freak out the moment one crosses your path—until one day, you might even find yourself having an actual conversation with a dude over the age of 30.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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