Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Heist on Something....
sKePTiKal:
Tag teaming off Tupp's brilliant insight. Even if it's not quite on target for you Hops.
I heard what you said Hops, about using the sexist angle to explain why you didn't have to smile and pretend to be cheerful, when you're clearly not feeling it. (100% with ya on this, for a lot of personal reasons about honoring our own feelings.)
But I wonder if maybe you're using that as "experts say..." justification for just being YOU? Like presenting evidence or a court order, that gives you permission to turn his request to smile down? (nitpicking, I know - but the parallels to what Hol's going through are still intense for me) Because you are important enough; your feelings are real enough - it's life, to have feelings; that you don't have to pretend anything to suit anyone else. Pffft. I'm going to dismiss my own idea/nitpicking... still waffling over that...
but I do feel that it's important for us to claim our power to just feel how we feel and to hell with what other people want us to be. And just stand on that claim and declare it - and go on. It's kinda of a boundary to me. Especially because of enmeshment issues. No one can tell me how to feel. F you and the horse you rode in on, if you're trying to. The only way some of us can get to a "solution" - or a reconciliation to - a situation... is just let our feelings run their course. They always do.
Resisting the feeling, stuffing it, stifling it or avoiding or pretending otherwise... JUST.DOESN'T.HELP. Especially, when it's a feeling from the "grief category".
And neither does the number of dark, overcast days we're having this spring. It's been a really long "winter" around here and I'm really starting to feel it now.
Hopalong:
You guys ARE brilliant. Thank you so much.
Lighter, I particularly appreciated your calm suggestions to not come down hard and to not take it personally. Your post helped me imagine moving through this while not losing my balance. Of course you are right. B is probably feeling all sorts of things that are not pleasant about me calling him on that comment. You're right that he's entitled to feel however he feels, as am I. Hmmm. Entitlement is just such a tricky tricky devil.
And back to Tupp's insights about me kind of going "academic" in my response to B (well observed) instead of just feeling, responding or not, being real and centered in the moment, without the intellectual approach. I guess I feel that I'd better use whatever tools I have, because his sheen of power, will and entitlement is pretty strong. I feel braver in the brain than in the heart. And maybe what it means is that there's something about that exchange that's rippling and reminding and waking me. I hope I perceive well but keep my balance. (Perhaps there's something about a tall, powerful man trying to suppress me--which is how I see it, although it's a MILD example--that's very triggering in a personal way. Not just because of our culture...but because of my brother.)
It'll be painful if I need to let go of the shared life dream. But his impatience for me to "get it over with" or "go back to Stepford smiling now" was concerning. B does have many years of experiencing the world and others catering to him, and that's the result his successful life has produced. He relishes being catered to, being served, and always has an extra demand/requirement/tweak for a restaurant server, a store employee, and now I gather...unsmiling people anywhere. They're disturbing his bubble of pleasantness. As it seems my pain over my D has done.
Ahh, well. Cloudy spring, as you say Amber. I know all will change because that's what life is. And if I can be open and curious about how it goes, instead of fearful, that'll be better.
Nice spring freshet just opened up.
love
Hops
Hopalong:
Well, called B to ask if his day of golf worked out -- and because I didn't want this little tempest to fester. We had a long talk. He doesn't agree at all, not a bit, with any point I raised or any article I sent him raised about telling women (including strangers) to smile. I explained how I see it. Then I told him, "My heart's hamburger right now" and he said that made him understand how I was feeling that evening.
I mentioned gently, you know, if we need to become friends instead, that's okay, and I won't stop caring about you. He seemed really agitated and said "I've been through a lot with my wife." I said I get that. Then he said he felt a lot better and kept trying to end the topic. At the end of the call he was clearly agitated but wanted to schedule our next date. I could tell he was drained (by my emails, his reaction, this conversation) so told him don't worry about the calendar right now, just have a good sleep and we'll talk soon. I asked him gently, "You okay?" and he gave a big sigh, but said yes.
An hour later I heard him on my answering machine saying, "I want to thank you for our talk tonight. If you were here right now I'd want to take you to bed, not to make love, but just to hold you and appreciate you. Thank you for that call." He sounded emotional and genuine. I don't really understand but was glad he wound up feeling good about it. My truthful reaction was I am glad I wasn't there, as he always wants to express everything physically, I can feel physically smothered by him, and I sometimes wish he would understand things and be able to verbalize them, not just act them out. But that ain't who he is, and I'm still in the midst of trying to discern how that would feel long term. We're both getting older.
Mystifying. It was a difficult confrontation (the whole thing), but I'm not sorry it happened. I felt I hung on to my integrity, without anger, but also without apology.
I don't know that I'll ever feel entirely comfortable with him but I don't think he's misogynist. (Unthinkingly sexist but not misogynist.) It's just his whole way of seeing other people -- as beings to be managed and corrected by him because he always knows what needs correcting -- that troubles me. He may not intend it to but it feels arrogant. I am strong enough to push back, most of the time. But I wish I didn't have to. I wonder why he doesn't understand much about how he comes across? I guess he's been so busy and active that he hasn't spent years with his head jammed up his navel the way I have. I have thought and introspected so much that I think I just have a whole different reference of experience, my personal encyclopedia. And he does too.
So that's the latest.
Men are strange. Women, of course...not at all....
love
Hops
lighter:
I think he's lacking a good deal in the emotional intelligence department, Hops.
I'm so dealing with that very thing right now. The proximity problem. The physical, mental, emotional boundary challenges sans any awareness at all....just me, hyper alert, hyper aware, hyper vigilance.... and I'm drained over it fairly consistently. The introvert in me flails to re charge.
And the Archie Bunker re runs.....oy. In some ways it's familiar.... So much like my father. Sometimes it's protective of me. Sometimes..... it's just proximity challenging.
Some people have very little awareness.
Reassurance and attention seem to make it better, ime. I try to remain curious. I try to walk in other people's shoes.
Lighter
Hopalong:
((((Lighter)))).
Reassurance and attention make sense. Thank you.
I'm paying attention to what happens next. The tempest
in a teapot may have sunk us or friend-zoned us. Or not.
I hope this day goes more gently for you. If the man/men
who are on the island with you are not more considerate now,
given what's happening with your father, well....blockheads.
And your father is an Archie Bunker type? One can love all
sorts of people anyway, barring viciousness, in my experience. Not
your fault and in a what-he-was-taught way, probably not his. That
does make it harder to grieve but the cosmos can make sense of it all.
Hold on to your self-care and don't be perfect, hear?
Hops
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