Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Double Jeopardy; A; WTH is the matter with women. Q; What is Men, Alex?
Hopalong:
--- Quote ---I didn't really do anything wrong in the relationship itself other than pout a little bit for a few hours.
--- End quote ---
Mud, I believe what happened during those few hours was that a switch flipped within her. I don't believe it was a process, but a woman's sudden intuition about what would be unbearable for her, emotionally. (In honesty, I'd have had the same chandelier flip on. Not because you're "bad" but because that kind of stuff triggers a powerful desire to flee. Not that you intended it, but to the recipient of "pouting", it can feel like emotional manipulation instead of mature communication. Red flag.)
I don't believe you were "wrong." I reject the whole idea that you are "bad." But FWIW (hey, it's free) I do think the key to understanding what happened is not in her personality diagnosis or her reasoning process or what she said before that moment or after it. Not in focusing on her. She experienced in her own inner world whatever she experienced, you can't make her un-experience it, and it may not have to do with all these different causes you're guessing. You are guessing.
I think the key is in YOUR internal climate, your thinking, and your mindset during those hours. Your only alternative is to dig deeply in therapy into what "pout a little bit for a few hours" was all about. It may be very uncomfortable but I think that's where you'll begin to know yourself better. Be on your own side and treat yourself with compassion as you explore it. Don't call yourself "dumb" or "idiot" as you do this work; self-loathing isn't the point. Insight is. I think you're not quite there yet.
love,
Hops
mudpuppy:
--- Quote ---I really think we need start to bending those rules... patterns and even design something totally suitable for the situation borrowing this from over there, maybe a little of that... and oh, THAT might be fun... and throw out the expectations left-over from our 20s and do things differently.
--- End quote ---
A lot of the baggage I brought with me was exactly that. I'm not the same guy I was almost 30 years ago when I married Mrs Mud anymore than the new gal was Mrs Mud. I felt a false sense of security in the relationship because of Mrs Mud that didn't exist with this very different lady and didn't guard my heart or hers very well because of it.
--- Quote ---Mud, I believe what happened during those few hours was that a switch flipped within her.
--- End quote ---
That's exactly what happened. My hope is that with the passage of time maybe she might consider turning it back off.
--- Quote ---I think the key is in YOUR internal climate, your thinking, and your mindset during those hours. Your only alternative is to dig deeply in therapy into what "pout a little bit for a few hours" was all about. It may be very uncomfortable but I think that's where you'll begin to know yourself better.
--- End quote ---
I already know what it was all about. Without going TMI, I expected to spend a little "quality time" with her and she was too tired to do so. So I pouted selfishly and acted, yes, like an idiot the next day by complaining how the weekend went.
I did the same thing at the start of the relationship with Mrs Mud, but she was patient or unwounded or something enough that she let me realize what an ass I was being and accepted my apology. After a couple of stupid episodes I got over it, just as it would have with this woman had she let it. I suspect it may be because I'm still insecure in the relationship or perhaps I'm feeling too secure. Not sure which but it's a short lived and mostly thoughtless phenomenon. As soon as I'm completely comfortable in the relationship it goes away. And I'm only talking about a time or two in any event.
But the point remains, not only did I say, as I was explaining what the problem was, that I figured she had done nothing wrong and I was just being a fool, I immediately recognized I was and apologized. Now, when I have made certain promises of love and connection and vows of affection for all time to someone, unless I find some dead bodies in her crawl space or some live ones in her bed I'm not going to push her away the first time in the relationship she says something wrong and declare it over without at least talking to her and trying to resolve the issue.
I can work on myself til the cows come home but I'm never going to perfect myself and so eventually we would have hit a small bump in the road as every relationship does and I suspect whenever that happened the result would have been the same. She seemed to be waiting for the first sign I had feet of clay to confirm I was going to be like the other guys.
I freely admit I made a mistake and I freely admit, being a fallible human being, there is no chance I will ever be in a relationship in which I don't. I also freely admit I overlooked a few things she had said that bothered me too but that's generally what you do if its something minor in the larger picture of how great the relationship is.
She didn't, so even if I grind myself down to the nub on the great grinding wheel of self improvement the reason we broke up will still exist where it started, somewhere within her, because what happened was not worth breaking up over absent that pain she admits she harbors down deep in her soul. I love her and so would like to see if we might try again in a way more likely to help her heal from that. If she doesn't there's nothing I can do about it. But because I still love her I would be betraying how much I care about her wellbeing if I didn't try.
I may not be communicating things too well but, while I am not even slightly reluctant to admit what a bonehead I can be and my many faults, I treat the women I love amazingly well, especially compared to the rest of the guys out there. I am hopelessly romantic and brought her roses all the time of only the colors she loves best, I wrote her a lovely poem [well I think it was lovely anyway], I always opened her door and held her hand and left her little notes, even one so corny as three post-its with an eye, a heart and a picture of a ewe. I was always cheerful and fun and loving and sweet and kind. She had a laundry list of projects around her house she wanted done and I was eager to do them. And I don't mean like hanging a picture. I mean like a new laundry/dog room and a new bed and bathroom and garden and driveway. I love doing that stuff and there is very little I can't do. I cooked for her [and I'm a very good cook] and did thoughtful little things all the time and even fell in love with her old cur...and I mean literally, her dog is a Mountain Cur. We loved doing the same stuff, like kayaking and hiking in the mountains. We disliked the same stuff too. Our texts back and forth, from both sides, would put a diabetic in ketoacidosis in a heartbeat. She had picked out May 4th next year as our projected wedding date 10 days after our first date which was May 4th of this year. Two days before we broke up she was thinking about eloping because she didn't want to wait for a wedding. We were perfect for each other in a way that very seldom happens and something that should not have broken a relationship that well matched up did and it was not me that let that happen. And it did it utterly without warning sign, fight, blow up or anything else.
So, if I want to discover what happened so that if we do try again we have a chance of making it this time, I'm pretty sure I have to understand the person from whom sprang the reaction that was out of all proportion to the stimulus. If we by some chance get it right then we will both have a great life together so it's worth taking a swing at. And I'm not sure I'm taking much of a swing at things if I concentrate on me who not only didn't break us up but didn't really do much wrong.This isn't meant to sound conceited or hard but it seems to me to be just recognizing reality; I have a track record of treating a woman, whom everyone who knew her considered exceptional, like a queen for 23 years and keeping her exceptionally happy. I know how to love someone and how to make them feel loved, respected, honored and secure. My present gal does not have that experience and has picked and given her hand to two bums to marry and then runs me, a non-bum, off for almost nothing. If we're going to have any hope of solving what broke us up the first time we better do as Willie Sutton did and look where the money, or in our case, the issue is. I have wounds that are healing. She has one she shields from healing and only briefly acknowledged. If she won't open up to let it then nothing will ever work. I can't do that for her obviously but I'd love to be at her side if it helped her to open up and let God and her work it out together.
mud
Hopalong:
--- Quote ---the reason we broke up will still exist where it started, somewhere within her, because what happened was not worth breaking up over absent that pain she admits she harbors down deep in her soul
--- End quote ---
I respect and appreciate your honesty, Mud. Truly. I'll just carry on bluntly telling you a thought or two which, of course, you can evaluate on your own...all are discardable. And despite how firmly I express all this, I'm not thinking it matters. The big ole universe rolls us along with it and we have our age-old human arguments. I'd still want you in my lifeboat.
What I hear are two things:
#1 You declaring repeatedly that her personal choice to break up is invalid, or not justified. That's not respectful. (Prostrating yourself by calling yourself an "idiot" doesn't provide any insight into what you're actually doing--refusing to respect her autonomy.) Not just pretend respect, but the kind of respect for another you can feel all the way inside. You can dismiss another's experience, even with the most detailed explanations, but that has consequences. She sensed your desire to override her choice. Her No. To her, that WAS worth breaking up over. You can't decide that for her. You can judge it all you want to console yourself, but that doesn't make this thought pattern right or good for you. It won't help to decide she was just wrong because she's broken.
#2 You identifying that she has pain in her soul may be accurate. But who anointed you the Certified Healer of This Particular Soul? Maybe it's not your place. Ouch, I know. (I was Florence Nightingale on steroids in a couple romances so I'm being brutal hoping to spare you a repeat.)
Back to the pouting. Again, I truly respect that you're honest about what it really was. You wanted intimacy and she did not, hence you sulked and thus made her "pay for it" for hours. Raht thar. That's entitlement. You acknowledge too that this happened more than once.
I can't identify with you this time, but with her (easy enough). If someone pressures me even for a kiss I'm not wanting, I'm soon outta there. It's the pressure. Cajoling, begging, remonstrating or retreating in a childish way are all pressure, but you've minimized those behaviors nonstop with cute euphemistic vocab like "pouting" or saying you were being "dumb." Double respect that you fessed up. When a man pressures a woman in that way...it is related to everything about women's experience in this real world that will cause many to retreat and lose trust. Even if you'd never force or rage, there's still an edge to it, of entitlement. And I know, without doubt, that you didn't WANT to convey this and ruin your hopes. You just...did.
If you ("you" hypothetical man,not Mud) are going to badger me and sulk when I refuse, I won't want to be with you any more. Period. My body belongs entirely and without exception to me. I do not owe any man anything physical, even a spouse. That shared gift has to be utterly voluntary and every time. (I'm preaching to myself because in some relationships including my last one...I forgot this truth about myself. When I remember it, I'm okay again. Not angry --I know what this culture teaches men, it's hardly their fault when they can't see it-- nor a victim, just clear. I value my inherent freedom and being pressured is bondage.) That clarity feels more beautiful than anything.
Yielding to pressure isn't freedom. It may be preached or dogma-ed that way as "submission", but it isn't good. It's not good for anyone in a relationship, when that is the ask and the way it's delivered. It doesn't look like, sound like, or feel like freedom. It feels like being trapped and suffocated under expectations, no matter how many rose petals initially get one there. You need to understand that spirit. Admire it. Yield to it. Respect it and not just in lip service. Not worship, respect.
I'm hammering away on this because I like you, Mud. I've benefited from your attitudes at times, and know your desire to be protective and a helper/healer is the flip side of your unrecognized male entitlement. Which is cultural, permeates our world, and not your fault. (Once you learned about it and owned it, then you have a whole bright amazing future that may involve no rose petals at all.)
This stuff is really hard. I guess I keep challenging you because you'd make a GREAT feminist if the light came on for you after reading deeply about it. You'd find your own liberation, too. That would be amazing, but I tend to go on hopeless crusades too. So I don't expect it!
Plus, I'm fired up about an incredible woman's funeral today. Aretha.
Likely, we'll never fully understand or agree with each other, Mud, and I'm not humble when I talk about feminism. What it truly is. But that's okay.
In the hope something good might grow for you, I offer this tiny seed anyway.
Hugs
Hops
lighter:
Mud:
Hops explained this better than I ever could, but I've said it on this board, and I'll say it again...
when a man tries to change a woman's NO into a YES, it's a huge red flag.
Any conversation you have with this woman, that includes asking her to change her mind about anything, esp the relationship, will be interpreted as another bomb, IMO.
Healing, in this case, will be about your respectful acceptance of her NO, IME.
Respecting her wishes, as much as you respect your own, is what will make her feel safe, Mud. Does that make sense?
Lighter
mudpuppy:
I say this in the heartiest good humor and good faith, but it's like you guys hear nothing I say.
--- Quote ---You can dismiss another's experience, even with the most detailed explanations, but that has consequences. She sensed your desire to override her choice. Her No. To her, that WAS worth breaking up over.
--- End quote ---
That's an excellent theory but it never happened. I was perfectly sweet and supportive before she broke up with me. As I said, we discussed nothing. She said she needed space and time to think. I gave her five days of it and then we talked and she had already decided we were done. Zero pressure from me. No attempt to override her choice. She sent me a text a couple of days later thanking me for being so patient and supportive and how it showed my character etc.
--- Quote ---You acknowledge too that this happened more than once.
--- End quote ---
No I didn't. I said I did it with Mrs Mud a couple of times who wisely let me figure out what an ass I was being and get over it. Regardless, if a guy pouting because he didn't get sex is a relationship ender then there would be no relationships because every single man has done that and not a few women.
--- Quote ---I'm hammering away on this because I like you, Mud. I've benefited from your attitudes at times, and know your desire to be protective and a helper/healer is the flip side of your unrecognized male entitlement.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, the problem is that is an ideology and ideologies are generally useless methods of looking at and politicizing human relations. My ex girlfriend, who I know better than you do, would probably even more vehemently state that your theory is not applicable to our relationship whatsoever. It is especially not applicable because I had convinced myself, as I was pouting, that it was her schedule that really bothered me and I didn't even realize or mention the sex root of the thing until after we had already broken up, so fairly obviously it could not have had anything to do with her decision. And that demonstrates why looking at human relations through any ideological colored glasses rather than as individuals leads to myopia.
--- Quote ---But who anointed you the Certified Healer of This Particular Soul? Maybe it's not your place.
--- End quote ---
What part of this;
"She has one [wound] she shields from healing and only briefly acknowledged. If she won't open up to let it then nothing will ever work. I can't do that for her obviously but I'd love to be at her side if it helped her to open up and let God and her work it out together."
says I have appointed myself the Certified Healer of her soul? Doesn't it say exactly the opposite of that, that I can't heal her, but that I would like to support her if she ever did try to heal through her faith in God [or however she chose for that matter]?
--- Quote ---when a man tries to change a woman's NO into a YES, it's a huge red flag
--- End quote ---
If you're referring to the week after she broke up with me then I couldn't agree more. In fact I think I have mentioned several times already how foolish and counter productive that was. It was a product of me not wanting to lose her and doing the only thing I knew how to prevent it which was exactly the wrong thing. But of course by then we were already broken up and I had already lost her so it obviously had nothing to do with us breaking up.
We did have a wonderful relationship for a time and so I hope that in a few months she will be in a place where she has already decided that she would like to try again in a more Godly way, since we are both Christians and we both felt we didn't do so the first time around. When I suggested a couple of times in the middle of the breakup that some day we go back to the place we had our first date and have a second first date and do things right this time she thought it was a great idea. Now, maybe she won't down the road. Maybe she will. I'm not trying to force her to change her no into a yes. I've never tried to force a woman I love to do anything [or any other woman for that matter]. I'm just going to ask her if she'd like to try again from scratch with both of us a little older and wiser. If she doesn't then there's nothing I can do about it. If she does, yippee.
I have to say this again; if I was a woman who came on here with this same story, I'm almost certain I would get a whole lot more Amazon support and a whole lot less, "forget about him, he sounds pretty good to us, but you honey, you're a total mess and you need some deep therapy to get yourself fixed".
Talk about invalidating someone's perspectives and POV. I come here with a story about someone you've never met and know nothing about and you dismiss or deride not only my theories about what happened but many of my factual eyeball and ear drum observations. Maybe your guys' perspectives are more out of whack than you know and you ought to work on yourselves a bit?
Maybe the sisterhood is just as cockeyed as the brotherhood. You pay lip service to the fact women have the same blind spots as men but that doesn't seem to slow down applying the blanket solution and in so doing you talk right past me and ignore things I plainly state.
I'm an individual and so is my ex girlfriend. We deserve to be treated as real individuals not actors in some Mars/Venus play. A woman's perspective is different and appreciated but not if it decides it's a tribal thing before she answers and assumes I'm Alley Oop but just don't realize it. I described our particular hurts and baggage and challenges that pertain to our particular individual experiences and viewpoints. I came here looking mainly for individual insights and perspectives and what I heard in return was mostly either stereotyping, criticism, dismissal of my perspective or blaming of me. Thanks. I'm in such a better place now.
I already saw my head shrinker about her. Now I'm gonna have to go get my head shrunk over you guys helping me. :P :roll:
I'm not ticked off but I am a little perplexed. I'm a guy and a human being so i have my share of faults. But, as you know women better than me I know men better than you ever will. As hopeless as I am [I ought to be the lowest common denominator] I'm a veritable prince among men. I don't even like guys they're such bums. If you had any clue how bad even the best of them is when there aren't any gals around you'd probably all be lesbians. Could I be improved? Sure. But, I'm not the problem in this relationship. I was perfect for two months [as was she] and then made what would have been a fixable boo-boo had she made even the slightest effort to resolve and talk about it with me. I acknowledge that to her it was not a small boo-boo. THAT IS THE PROBLEM! Because she has been wounded, what to a non wounded person [AKA Mrs Mud] would have been a small bump in the road, instead to her crashed us into a bridge abutment.
Because I care about her I'd like to see if we could get past that problem down the road some day, even if that is a small possibility. I got almost no practical suggestions to actually help me do so, just a lot of suggestions about what a clueless dope I am who needs oodles of work to ever have the remotest chance at finding the real love of my life.
I'm feeling a little voiceless.
mud
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