I’ll be amazed if this blog has any readers left pretty soon…it’s been about two months since I last posted. Part of that has had to do with the debilitating migraines that returned in full force with November’s violently schizoid weather and continued well into December. I’m certain I experienced a dramatic drop in my seratonin levels, too, as the daylight hours dwindled down to eight and once-active possibilities seemed to settle underground with all the other dormant living things. My unstoppable winning streak ended. And I found myself wondering, again, whether one can really control things like desire and chemistry — or whether, to quote author Jeanette Winterson again, “passion commands us, and rarely in the way we would choose.”
On the more positive side, the space created by the sudden excommunication by my infuriated “best friend” allowed me to have more time and energy for an old college friend in New York who needed a lot of long-distance support in ending a dangerously abusive live-in relationship. There’s no way I would have had the emotional wherewithal to spend half as much time on the phone with Laura if my other friend were still calling me all the time. I need serious down time to myself. So that was a trade-off that worked out for the best.
**
In the last month or so it’s felt as if my life were loosely following the script of some highly unoriginal romantic comedy or sitcom. Nearly every one of these contrived narratives uses a combination of familiar plot devices. In the sitcom that has been my daily life, the plot devices involved have been:
1. Two main characters who have great chemistry and palpable sexual tension (which the audience is well aware of), but only one wants to take it to the next level
2. The other party has turned him or her down, usually in favor of a third party
3. An alternate love interest for the rebuffed party, who.knows this person would be a better choice but can’t get excited about it
4. A twist in the plot involving a crisis, mistaken identity, and/or separation, which causes the rejecting character to examine his or her feelings for the other
5. A moment of truth with the alternate love interest, who exits the picture
Sounds like Moonlighting, or Friends, or The Office, right? But I’m talking about stuff that has really happened to me lately. Without the neatly tied-up ending.
**
Things began to sour with Jamal when I tried to pay him a compliment. Haltingly I tried to tell him (after we had a lovely Thanksgiving with my friends) that I was getting over a painful incident involving a male friend that had only reinforced some old emotional wounds, that I was trying to make better choices for myself, and that the sweet things he’d said to me had helped me through a difficult time and made me want to spend more time with him.
Maybe he would have accepted that if I hadn’t only hugged him good night that night, I don’t know. I just didn’t feel like doing more than that — not yet. I figured there was plenty of time and that we could take things slow.
Later in the week, during a long phone conversation, he angered and upset me by telling me it didn’t sound to him like I’d let the other thing go. Stung and defensive, I told him I was doing my best — that sometimes our emotions don’t always catch up with our conscious decisions — but that I’d come a long way in breaking out of many of my self-defeating old behaviors, and that I thought I was doing well.
He still didn’t buy it. Getting hot in the face, I felt frustrated and patronized — suddenly not so sure I wanted to hang out with Jamal after all. I stayed angry for days, and didn’t call. He didn’t call either. Not surprisingly, I soon got ill with more migraines and stomach trouble, and was out of the office for five days in a row.
**
While I was gone, the sad and shocking news got around the office that the teenage son of a middle-aged coworker, a woman whose first name is very similar to mine, had died suddenly. Our disappearance from the office at the same time only created further confusion for a caller named George who was already constantly confusing our names. George became one hundred percent convinced that it was my son who had died, and he managed, through sheer dogged insistence, to convince several other people — including Ted — that this was the case. As I heard later from George, the two of them had a very heated argument about whether or not I had a son, and Ted got very upset. So upset that several people felt the need to tell me about it when I got back to work.
(As he told me later) Ted walked around with a “hurt heart” for the next two days, showing up nicely dressed on the day of the memorial service to go there from work. Then he talked to Jamal in the kitchen. I don’t know the details of what was said, but it started to dawn upon Ted that George had been sorely mistaken. Ted promptly gave George hell (which I also heard about from George later). Not being close to our coworker, Ted did not attend the memorial service.
When I finally came back to work on a Wednesday, unaware of the whole preceding drama, neither Ted nor Jamal were around. George and a couple of other guys filled me in on the case of mistaken identity and on Ted’s violent reaction. Ted wasn’t there on Thursday during the day shift, either, although I glimpsed him coming in as I was leaving. I wondered about Jamal, debating whether or not to give him a call.
On Friday, Ted arrived late and nabbed the empty station next to me. When we experienced a lull in calling, he cried “I’m so glad you don’t have a son!” and hugged me, telling me how brokenhearted he’d been for my sake and filling me in on the missing part of the story. I must admit I wasn’t displeased to be the recipient of his attentions for the rest of the afternoon.
For the first time in weeks, in fact, my pledge rate climbed out of the toilet. (The previous week I had gotten a quota warning for poor performance.) Ruefully I had to admit to myself that being close to Ted again felt better than anything else had in a while — even the attentions of a suave, handsome, younger admirer. I also felt overwhelmingly horny for the first time in God knows how long. Shit. I’d done my damnedest not to, but I had to admit I still wanted to jump this old fool, who probably wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit him in the ass. And I would, too.
Ted left at shift’s end to go to a yoga class (he has lately become a yoga addict to rival Sonny) but first he drew me in for a squeeze. “Mmm,” he exclaimed, “your hair smells yummy!” When I pulled away in a hot confusion and murmured something about my fruity hair product, I saw him flushing crimson, as if he were a shy nine-year-old instead of a diffident forty-nine-year-old. I wanted to follow him out of there then, to yoga, or bed, or the moon, it hardly seemed to matter.
Good-natured, hyperactive young Tim, bouncing in his chair and reeking of Axe and cigarettes, decided to tell me his life story that night between calls. As I listened to his painfully honest tales of substance abuse and rehab I wondered if there weren’t in fact something morally objectionable about using a recovering codependent to prop you up emotionally or otherwise when it wasn’t really him you were interested in.
**
On Saturday morning, I got a goodbye text message from Jamal, saying that he was moving to another city two hours north. That day.
What??!!! I called him almost immediately.
It was true. He had been presented with the opportunity to move upstate, and had jumped at it. His buddy Joel, whom I knew, was already living up there in a group home for recovering men, and could probably get him a job at his company.
As shocking as this was, I relaxed. This development seemed to me like the best possible thing that could have happened as far as Jamal and I were concerned. There would be no awkwardness at work now, no confusion, no frustrated expecations. Feeling free to speak frankly, I admitted to Jamal that he was at least partially right, even though the things he had said had gotten me so angry I hadn’t wanted to talk to him for days. I wasn’t over the other thing, and I had been trying to force things with him. “Wanting to want something isn’t the same thing as wanting something.” I didn’t say anything about Ted. Nor did he.
Jamal and I said a number of nice things to each other and parted on good terms. I think he understood it wasn’t anything personal.
**
The resemblance to a rom-com or sitcom script ends there, however. There are no grand moments of truth ending in mad kisses to relate, nor even any coffee-table-smashing resolutions of sexual tension to report. No, it’s still The Same Old Story I’ve gotten stuck in a thousand times already, not some feel-good chick flick from the producers of When Harry Met Sally.
On a day Ted had stood perilously within what Americans consider their personal space radius and provoked me to want to pounce on him like a cheetah (is it his pheromones, or his body heat, or both?) I overheard him talking to a buddy about the candle he had just given his girlfriend for Christmas, as well as the little end-of-year paper-burning ritual they had performed together. It sounded ever so precious. Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Hey, Teddy, here’s a New Year’s resolution idea for ya: quit yanking the chain of your part-time bitch if you have no intention of ever giving her a bone.
Because while I’ve fallen back into suffering agonies of lust that keep me awake at night like the pangs of hunger, this pot-bellied middle-aged dweeb is apparently getting off regularly with his darling li’l’ gal pal, content to just flirt with me for kicks. After I’ve completely blown it with probably the hottest guy who’s ever been completely and totally into me. Whom I just couldn’t get all that hot and bothered about, honestly. (I was really willing to try, though.)
What a fucking vagitator. That’s the urban slang term I discovered for the male version of a cock-tease. Vagitator. Getting a lady’s vag agitated for nothing.
**
Needless to say the negative self-talk returned with a vengeance, along with every alarmist and abysmal prediction about the rest of my life based on the precedents of the first half. At Christmastime, no less — when my family members like to parade their shiny happy victorious Christian lives and families under my nose, while I’m out here soldiering on alone, feeling like a loveless failure. You will never be whole and happy, warns a voice religious-recovery specialist Marlene Winell calls my “idea monster” — a voice I internalized via my indoctrination, but which the Bible-bangers would refer to as being “under conviction by the Holy Spirit.” Your life isn’t working, see, and theirs are, because they’re “surrended to Christ,” or whatever ultimately hollow relibberish they make sound like something deep and meaningful.
As I have to remind myself, I already tried, with Herculean effort, to drive the lemon they’re trying to sell me now. Part of my core damage has to do with feeling thoroughly rejected and abandoned by their apparently very selective Big Daddy Himself. The grace and joy and supposed “relationship” they crow about endlessly was never part of my generally wretched experience as a wannabe disciple.
Of course I must not appear even the least bit vulnerable in front of my family, because when they smell blood, that’s both their vindication (poor, misguided, Prodigal daughter, trying to live without God’s Wonderful Plan For Her Life! ) and their invitation to invade, like good Christian soldiers, and pour their Salt of the Earth on my open wounds.
An objective and empathetic friend pointed out how profoundly disrespectful their behavior is toward me. I had never thought about it quite that way, but it’s true: they have never trusted me and can never trust me as my own authority, nor even allow me my fricking privacy. Wielding their rigid dogma like a bludgeon, my family members continuously and with unmitigated audacity smash my personal beliefs and my choices as inadequate, mistaken, and wrong. Is it any wonder that even as an adult I’ve been paralyzed by a lack of self-confidence?
I spent most of Christmas Eve in tears, watching the film “For the Bible Tells Me So” (about the ongoing Christian Right vs. gays drama) and grieving the fundamental rejection the fundamentalists necessarily — by virtue of their absolutist beliefs — perpetrate upon each and every defenseless child’s natural soul. My kinfolk claim to love me, but that love is conditional, predicated upon the nonnegotiable refusal to accept any deviation from the Truth. So it’s never really me they love, but some idealized, sanitized, Christianized concept they hold in their minds of me, some supposedly “real me” who loves (their patently horrifying) God deep down beneath it all, and who bears little relation to the complex and distinctly agnostic individual I’ve become. Things like unorthodox and theologically incorrect ways of thinking and an immodest sexual appetite are unfortunate and unseemly manifestations of “sin,” not part of who I truly am. Whereas, for me, these curiosities and passions define me. So I am in effect mostly invisible to them.
I cried a lot this holiday, lonely and feeling as if that loneliness were in itself some kind of judgment, damning my life path. Certainly my relatives would say it was so. Look at them on Christmas day: seemingly blessed, successful, prosperous, happy, secure in their “salvation” and enjoying a feast around the family table to celebrate their Lord and Savior’s birth. And here I am, two thousand miles away, dangerously poor, alone, aging (in this culture, depreciating in value) as we speak, living in decidedly precarious circumstances without any kind of safety net, not even remotely “successful,” once again aching for the touch of a man I can’t have.
As if in an act of mercy, my unconscious proffered up an attractive suitor in one of my dreams, a man I’d never met but who was both attractive to me and enthusiastic about being with me. This did help to remind me that just because I’ve had one more frustrating experience (after many such frustrations) doesn’t mean that all possibility is lost forever. It just seems that way right now, having driven off the most attractive prospect on my horizon, who in all honesty didn’t do it for me, and knew it. (Tim, sadly, doesn’t really do it for me either.)
**
What truly saved me from despair, however, was one of my favorite films and one of the few I own, 1998’s Pleasantville.
For a “fantasy” film involving two teenagers who get pulled inside a 1950s television show, it never ceases to impress me in its accurate representation of the conflict between the conservative love of tradition, safety, control, and order and the messier, riskier (more “liberal”) celebration of free thought, feeling, spontaneity, and uncertainty.
The film is understanding and sympathetic toward the former view: at the outset, we see a montage of modern-day high school classes and assemblies dealing with the daunting subjects of the AIDS epidemic, an impossibly competitive job market, climate change, and famine. Alarming stuff. No wonder so many people today long for a simpler, safer, more “innocent” time. What’s more, the patriarchs of idyllic black-and-white Pleasantville, notably Big Bob the mayor (played with bluster by the late, great J.T. Walsh), are essentially well-intentioned (if controlling) small-town types who try to maintain civility even when their way of life is seriously threatened. .
But it’s clear which side the film is on. Gradually it brings into living color the characters who, one by one, begin to access emotions, desires, and complexities within themselves that had lain dormant in Pleasantville’s predictable, antiseptic universe. Simplicity, order, and innocence are compromised as the protagonist David(Tobey Maguire)’s TV-land mother, Betty (Jane Allen) falls in love with the owner of the local soda shop (Jeff Daniels), who is awakening to his powerful artistic impulses and turning into a wonderful modernist painter. Goodbye, Father Knows Best!
The most important message the film holds for me is the reminder that the outer appearance of the “shiny happy” idyll, the perfect 1950s nuclear family — conservative and squeaky-clean and unambiguous — is always repressing or missing something vital, is actually antithetical to authentic human life. “You can’t stop something that’s in you,” cries David, during his trial in a courtroom clearly modeled on the one in To Kill A Mockingbird. In the end, he manages to show even a horrified Big Bob that the full range of human color is in him, too. Despite what conservative religious zealots like my folks believe, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When David returns to his present-day home and his real-world, divorced mother (Jane Kazmarek), he finds her crying in the kitchen, having called off her weekend getaway with a younger boyfriend. His responses sum it up for me.
David’s Mom: When your father was here, I used to think, “This was it. This is the way it was always going to be. I had the right house. I had the right car. I had the right life.”
David: There IS no right house. There IS no right car.
David’s Mom: God, my face must be a mess.
David: It looks great.
David’s Mom: Honey, it’s really sweet of you, but I’m sure it does not look “great.”
David: Sure it does. Come here.
David’s Mom: I’m 40 years old. I mean, it’s not supposed to be like this.
David: It’s not “supposed to be” anything.
It’s not supposed to be anything. There is no “right life” — contrary to the popular myths I was fed from birth. What there is is my life.
And no, thanks, I have no desire to return to a black-and-white world.
happy new year!
well, i had been hesitating to write “merry christmas”, knowing very well what it could be like to meet the happy happy family …
it is as it is – comparing with some kind of non-reachable ideal is what causes lots of pain. for example comparing your own body with a photoshopped puppet, that is thin like a ten year old. if you look like that in real life, you will attract only pedophiles.
I smiled about the vagitator term
some people need to flirt all the time to gain reassurance, it has no meaning, even if they swear you how much they like you.
I think it’s really about detecting the psychological/emotional setup of a potential partner…and mostly this is done automatically by the back of your head – so it is important to have the correct setup of your own back head
the correct setup is: I am very precious and need to be treated with wholeheartedness and respect.
Somehow this is not helpful, although I’m sure you mean to be.
Notice that I didn’t cry over Ted, I cried over the feeling of being an eternal fuckup and that neither I nor my life is “perfect.” What I hear when someone says that, whether or not you mean it, is “No matter how much work you’ve done, the back of your head is still fucked up and not perfect, and you will never get what you want until it’s fixed.”
What amazes me is that the world is full of “fucked up” and “imperfect” people who haven’t done HALF this work, who have managed to be in relationships regardless (and live with some degree of success/money).
Two months ago I’d reached a point of inner peace and joy I thought was out of my reach forever. My old coach (who made a rare visit) was able to see what an incredible accomplishment this was, because he watched me struggle for years. Jamal couldn’t see it because he’d just met me, but it was still arrogant and ignorant of him to piss on my progress. I don’t need that, and to say so I think is to at least put some value on myself.
Sorry to hear that your year is off to such a disappointing start. Don’t you have a birthday coming up as well? Here’s hoping for some good cheer.
I wish I had some new advice to give. How’s this? When thinking about the family and their religiosity, just pity them–that’s likely what they’re doing on your behalf, y’know. Seems to work for the Christian crowd, might make you feel a little better, too.
As for Ted, I suggest Rohypnol. You’d think someone his age would’ve learned long ago that there’s some you can ‘tate, and some you clearly shouldn’t. If he doesn’t learn his lesson after the first application, feel free to keep at it.
That probably doesn’t make you feel any better either, so let me tell you this one: I got out of the UW film program in ’93 at the top of my class, having directed a 16mm film project that was very well received. Straight off, the guy who wrote the script wanted to get some people together to do a full-length film, he had $50,000 in a trust fund, and I was the first one he recruited, to be his First Assistant Director, as well as Script Supervisor. His favorite movie was ERASERHEAD, and it showed: his (constantly revised) script was a phantasmagoric jumbled hash of bizarre imagery without much of a plot, and even less character development. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t very compelling, and it quickly became apparent that although he liked my organizational and motivational skills, he didn’t like my creative input. In a few months, I was off the production.
I stopped in at Tower Video, my old haunt, to tell the shift supervisor, my friend Joe the Ex-Coke Dealer, the news. I still remember what he said, all these years later: “Fuck that guy, you don’t need him. He wants to be a David Lynch rip-off? You can be a Tarantino rip-off. All you need is a camera, and some guns. And I can get you guns.”
One of my friends just posted this quote in her feed: “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.” I wouldn’t call Erma Bombeck my favorite quotable humorist of all time, but that pretty much hit the spot. Thanks for making me laugh, Russ. And thanks for remembering my birthday. It’s next Sunday.
Apropos of what’s in the back of one’s head, I’m wondering if everyone has seen this story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8228192/Political-views-hard-wired-into-your-brain.html
They don’t know if the “conservative brain” started out with a larger amygdala or not, but I find it interesting to contemplate whether what was encouraged in my developing brain left me with a greater vulnerability to fear and anxiety (including a crippling bout of agoraphobia in 2007) and an uphill battle when it comes to courage and optimism.
It is good that you set borders against me.
I don’t know everything, and often illegally link you to a person I know in real life while you certainly are very different.
The know-it-all attitude can be annoying, but there was enough stuff in your post to trigger some pattern recognition in me regarding low self esteem.
It is not your fault if your family did not properly implant that in you, it is a steep mountain to fix that as an adult.
That does not at all mean you fucked anything up by your own fault.
A quote from borderline therapy: “You didn’t cause your problems, but only you can fix them.”
Looking forward to your writings in 2011
I enjoy your English word choices sometimes…”borders” instead of “boundaries.” Every person is a country unto themselves, no?
The interesting thing to me is that the person to whom I *believe* you may be referring already has a wonderful man in her life who loves her no matter what. Am I right?
I keep looking up at those origami love-cranes suspended from the ceiling in the (Feng Shui “relationships”) corner of my room and remembering my friend Patrick’s quote about the catastrophe of one’s personality being beautiful again. Patrick himself is a bit of a catastrophe, but it appears as if he’s in love again. Surely I’m not more fucked up than he is.
It seems like I cause myself suffering when I regard myself as a problem to be solved or a broken thing to be fixed. In fact I think in doing so I love myself less. It is extremely hard for an ex-Christian to forgive herself for not being perfect.
oh, thank you
Ok, I understand – I don’t want to call you fucked up, broken or a problem.
I think I just fell in the annoying advice-giving trap again.
I think it also is a problem with what we identify, and a big big fear of not being perfect. Nobody is perfect – isn’t that true? It’s the parents that never ever seem to be satisfied – but the true reason is not imperfection of the child, it’s fucked up emotionality of the parents (and I’m not getting tired to repeat that…). Of course you can trace the problem back to the grandparents and probably to world war II or something similarly traumatic.
And so, what is our identity? What are “we”? Are we our potential, or are we our quirks?
Somehow, as an entity of live, we *are* perfect…
let go the rope
A Facebook friend of mine (a talented artist and attractive woman I’m pretty sure was one of Sonny’s other heartbroken conquests) posted this today. When you have time I’d recommend you watch it, it’s really apropos.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html
“the courage to be imperfect”
“To love with our whole hearts even though there’s no guarantee.”
yes, that’s it – thanks for the link.
a belated happy birthday to a wonderful, gorgeous woman and excellent writer!
Hope you had a decent time, after the short-days-Christmas-birthday-tension-massacre…
“The courage to be imperfect” – I was wondering if even that wording might create pressure: you are imperfect because you are not courageous enough? So “the courage to be not courageous enough”?
Even the rope-metaphor can turn into a monster maybe: “why are you again grabbing that rope? Shouldn’t you know by now you are standing on the ground? You silly girl, everybody is much smarter than you!” ?!
I once even wrote it to Russell, that not for every one it is so easy to “just let go”, to get out of their minds, into their lives (see Stephen C Hayes), to get off the shelf – it is not so easy if you were drill-trained to the opposite all your life, especially during the time-slots where your psyche hardened.
So, instead of “finally just let go, stupid” it could be “yes, there are some fucking problems which you did not cause and they sadly won’t just vanish easily, maybe never – but we have some tools in our hands to try and manage this situation in the best possible way, and this management might enable us to not suffer” – letting-rope-go-management
And one more: I am strongly suspecting that the demonizing of the parents could backfire too – it is a sad sad feeling – why can’t I have normal, loveable parents? I see a light at the end of this tunnel too. I have read about psychologically handicapped parents, e.g. Asperger mums, who have been educated how to treat their children – and the observed effects where positive. That means, the emotional deficits could be balanced by instruction. This *could* be possible for parents, you just have to understand the magnitude of the problem (big!!!
and then realize that the roles are definitely reversed in the sense that you need to be more mature than them, you need to invest more emotional intelligence (because they just can’t) – just as you would have to do if they were senile already, with Alzheimer: you need to treat them like little children, giving them instructions “like for fools”, explaining things that you deeply feel shouldn’t have to be explained, because they should be clear – but they are not.
This might work if the parents are rather disabled than downright evil, and if you find a way to place the instructions non-patronizingly, which admittedly might prove difficult.
hope this makes sense, written in a mentally exhausted state…
and, because all this is way too serious, some humor to finish:
How Rumi Gained His Sense of Humor
and Became a Great Poet
Rumi finally surrendered to the will of the Beloved.
“I am ready My Friend.
Have your way with me.
Make me light-headed and giddy.
Be prodigious and wildly untidy
As an overgrown garden.
Booze me!
Soothe me!
Abuse me!
What can you do me?
Schmooze me?
Amuse me?”
Touched by Rumi’s playful plea, the Beloved shouted,
“Yes!” I will send to you a Muse!”
But, as you see,
The Beloved was very generous
And he sent – three!
And Rumi has been amused ever since.
Thank you for the belated birthday wishes, bm3. It was a nice if quiet day…snowy here…Greg, that good friend I’ve talked about (we call him my ‘gay boyfriend’) took me out for brunch, and a girl friend had me over later for hot chocolate and a movie. Got close to 70 good wishes on Facebook.
Self-criticism can certainly degenerate into a sort of infinite regress. I know that’s where my brain goes. I’m still trying to figure out how to talk to my own parents, but the thought of treating them like little children is amusing.
Who were Rumi’s three Muses, do you suppose?
The thing I’m beating myself up about tonight is Ted. I’ve essentially shunned him lately, actively avoided him at work and created some real distance, which HAS helped me stop thinking about him and craving him when he’s not around…but I know he’s wondering what the hell is up, why I never even meet his eye or talk to him anymore, and I feel terrible about that. I feel like I’m acting like a small child myself. I just don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how else to protect myself.
This feels like a playground defense mechanism, frankly…when the other kids rejected me I went off into a corner and did my own thing, “and fuck all the rest of you, I don’t need you, I’m happy alone.”
It seems no matter how I deal with this, I’m just repeating unhappy history one more time. I do care about this man. Now I’M being a jerk. And that DOES make me suffer.
the muses: I have no clue, but now have asked the poet.
I like the idea of being sent muses and be amused, though.
I’m walking on glass now, but…maybe…accept your insecurity…
you care about this man, don’t avoid him. because afterwards you blame yourself for avoiding him (“was my fault”).
if you don’t avoid him and he rejects you – certainly that is not nice,
but probably the only way is to learn how to stand that – there could be millions of reasons, all not your fault.
Probably it’s much more complex. I’m even more exhausted today than yesterday, so I recommend not to rely at all on my genius
more brainstorm advice:…examine him more closely…what makes him tick? what issues does he have? keep eyes open…breath slowly…
i try to follow this advice too
“Walking on glass”: that sent me back to Annie Lennox, and she was just who I needed to listen to tonight. “The language is leaving me in silence,” she sings in “No More I Love Yous” — a ploy of the helpless, worn out by the demons of desire and despair: silence and disappearance.
Ted confronted me today, wondering what was going on, but it was in a fairly public place (on the call floor) — not that I would have known what to say if it hadn’t been. I flushed, froze, and shrugged it off with a shake of the head, non-answering. I wasn’t expecting him to do that, to be so direct. Perhaps he is less of a game-player than you thought — or than I am. I feel even more immature now. I had (and still have) no idea what to say to him. It’s like my relationships age is only six years old.
Later he tried to get a smile out of me. I looked up and there he was, gazing at me with a faint grin, trying to cajole me, and I confess my heart skipped about three beats. I forgot to breathe. A call came before I could react or respond.
Just when I’m getting my cravings for him to lessen, the dude can re-enamor me with one look. Such a fierce wave of something like homesickness overcame me, of missing whatever it was we DID have. For a second it felt like nothing else mattered but that connection.
I have never swum so hard against the current of my own feelings…never tried so hard to practice the disciplined recovering-addict austerity of the “no” rather than the easy “yes” that makes me feel ten times more alive but that I’ll suffer for eventually. I’m just so bloody tired of history repeating itself. I want to win sometimes. But how do you win at this tricky and delicate business of relationships when you’re all of six?
disclaimer: I am absolutely not sure if what follows is sound advice – read at own risk
excuse my bad memory – was Ted the guy who was married and never mentioned that to you? If so, then from my distance it looks like he wants to keep it that way – that leaves only potential room for an affair, which could be nice in theory, but I think your alarm bells are damn right here to ring – you don’t have to be a prophet to work out that you will suffer.
so, avoiding seems to be a good strategy here – and maybe it would be the easiest, if he confronts you again, to say that you feel attracted towards him and point out that he is married, so it’s impossible , so you need to avoid him.
Should he say that his marriage is not an obstacle then you need to be strong and tell him that an affair is not possible, because it would cause you to suffer. I think he should easily understand that and his respect for you would increase, he should feel good as he is the target of desire,
and understand that a feeling being needs to protect herself.
I made the experience that this kind of less fear, more honesty could save you a decade or too…
Imagine the worst that could happen: you tell him you feel attracted by him – and he turns red, looks another way, and tells you that he just received an emergency call.
Or would it be worse if he kindly explains you that he himself does not feel attracted by you? But instead only by younger and dumber females? Or “I only like blondes”?
Or he proposes an affair and you reject – that should be easier anyway…
If he is not married all the same applies, instead you point out that you assume he is not interested in a real relationship.
I think you could survive all that and then feel that you mastered the situation.
I don’t have much time this morning, but I had to respond because you’re clearly mixing my story up with someone else’s…or something. I had to take exception to it because I have never in my life had or pursued an infatuation with a married man. That knowledge alone usually de-eroticizes them for me somehow. Back in 1993 I had a wonderful married friend (let’s call him Owen) I would have married MYSELF if he weren’t taken, but I realized he was very taken (and so did he – he loved his wife). We managed to be very good friends for years. But he didn’t exactly tease me or yank my chain, either. And I felt fairly certain that Owen would want to be with me if circumstances were different. So I didn’t feel rejected by him at all.
Ted and I had a moment at a party back in November (might have been in ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’ or the post before) where I essentially confessed I had some feelings for him. He laughed and blushed and confessed to seeing someone with whom things had been on and off, and now on again. Recently he’s been acting more like a free man (or so I thought), but then I overheard him talking to another guy at the holidays (above) about something he gave his “girlfriend” for Christmas. Which pissed me off and made me try to distance myself. Clearly it isn’t working.
I guess it’s at the point where you’ve got to tell him *something*, though you don’t necessarily have to paint the whole picture. I’m not clear about what your comfort level of confiding him with things, but I’d suggest that at some time when you’re alone, you should tell him
-that this is a defense mechanism
-that he hasn’t done anything wrong
-that you’re not angry with him
-but he’s a lot/too much to take
My thinking here is that, if nothing more than in the interest of working alongside each other, he ought to know at least the last three. However you want to convey that, your own mood and the given environment may determine. You could tell him everything you’ve told us, or you could try quickly doing it in 50 words or less, or anything in between–you could even do my OCD thing of simply ticking off your points on your fingers, counting them out, then excusing yourself and walking away (this is usually considered poor form, but I’m socially just this side of hopeless, so I do what I can). If he wants to pursue the matter, you can get impatient and say “Not now/not here”. Chicks have a lot of leeway in setting the terms of discourse, I’ve found.
If this is actually terrible advice, remember that my own track record in this area is even worse.
You’re so funny, Russ. And I know you’re right…but at the same time, it’s not entirely true that I’m not angry with him and I don’t feel he did anything wrong. But interpersonal dynamics are so nebulous and subjective I don’t suppose I have a leg to stand on. Anyone can effectively deny toying with your emotions.
Having stayed up too late reading past posts, reviewing the intentions I started out with, and being reminded of Ben Zander’s “giving of the A,” I realized what I needed to say to Ted by way of explanation.
That one doesn’t know what to do when one hits a wall. That I’d realized I’d driven away an attractive young suitor (and god knows who-all else) who was really into me because my emotional and sexual energy is stuck in a place where nothing is moving, and nothing promises to move anytime soon. This is not what I intended or wanted. I just want to be unstuck, to be open again to receive. I think Ted will understand what I’m talking about.
am in a hurry…
thanks for explaining patiently about the marital status – sorry that I confused that.
what you write about explaining that you don’t want to be stuck – I think that sound very good.
Thanks. I like it because it doesn’t say too much or too little. It’s truthful without interpreting the situation too much. It doesn’t push an agenda by saying I want or don’t want him. It just says nothing is moving where all my energy is, and I don’t want to be stuck.
did it work?
It hasn’t happened. But I’ll have a full update up here in the next day or so. Have had trouble making the time to write again, even though the act of writing is what helps keep me sane.
ok, will check the update…