Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

Double Jeopardy; A; WTH is the matter with women. Q; What is Men, Alex?

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mudpuppy:
Hi Hops,
Our underlying feelings were genuine even if overlaid with new love excitement.
 Regardless, the way to deal with it is to talk about it and make adjustments not run away.
As I specifically said my guy didn't diagnose anything. He suggested she was displaying some mild borderline tendencies. Were I to describe everything that occurred that would make more sense.
Obviously we took things too fast, but we were and are genuinely fond of each other. When she said she needed some space I idiotically pursued her rather than standing still and letting her come back to me. Even so I remain hopeful that if I stand still now, eventually she may find her way back.

mud

mudpuppy:
And just to be clear I don't really have any idea what really happened. That's most of the problem. I didn't really do anything to cause it.
She talked about her hours and her concern for anyone handling her schedule a lot from start to finish including the three major conversations that ended in the breakup. And my mention of being disappointed did start the whole ball rolling.  But I don't know if that was just an out she uses when things get too hot. A mutual friend who is a perceptive woman said she might be a dreamer and when I started making her dreams come true she bolted.
I have no idea if she really has borderline tendencies. If she does they're mild because she never did any of the cra-cra stuff. The evening of the breakup things got a little unpleasant and she said a couple of things which were just not true but they could have been merely said in anger. She was sending major mixed signals in the two weeks the breakup took to complete, but she might just have been as confused as I was.
My guess is, she's just wounded from her last marriage and when she let somebody in after four years and things got serious she got scared of getting hurt again and ran away.
I just hope she goes away for a few months and after healing a bit comes back, because she's the only girl besides the late Mrs Mudpuppy I ever felt this way about. For the first time in many years I was truly happy and looking forward to the future and I thought my long dark night of the soul was finally over.

mud

Hopalong:
A gentle challenge to you, (((Mud))).

Do you remember the young woman you were so intensely determined to persuade to let you stay in her life after she wanted/needed space? You wanted to take her to church counseling so the counselor could help her see her errors. I remember pointing out to you that fundamentally, you were not accepting her No. You had a whole lot of explanations then as now.

I resonate with this so much because in one of my series of unrequited/obsessive inlovenesses, I damn near resembled Glenn Close before I finally figured out that the real problem -- or the only one that mattered and the only one I had a prayer of solving -- was in me.

I submit that this:

--- Quote ---When she said she needed some space I idiotically pursued her
--- End quote ---
may represent a pattern within you, that is about you, and that is not about the woman. A retreat by a woman you desire triggers a WHOLE lot of hyper-inspection of what is wrong with her. Notice that. Turn that microscope around and know it will be painful, but This Way Lies Reliable Happiness.

It could be anxiety about possible loss. And...it could be that you are not convinced all the way through that any woman, at any time, can say No (EVEN AFTER FIRST SAYING YES), and that this can be okay with you. Not without agonies of hurt and maybe some nuanced blaming of her for breaking what you considered an implicit contract.

So that's where I think your answers are. And I totally believe you will wind up happily remarried one day, Mud. I really do. And if there were a shortcut on this, that I could get my hands on, I would send it to you by courier with a bow on it, to spare you the painful journey.

All I can say is, getting there is worth it. Because otherwise, I think this will happen again.

love and comfort,
Hops

mudpuppy:
If we're talking about the same person that was six months after Mrs Mudpup died and I became infatuated with this gal for about five days and snapped out of it. She is and was very damaged and the only reason I became infatuated was I was a mess myself. She still needs counseling as she has a long line of broken friendships whenever anyone comes close.

This present gal approached me and at least equally reciprocated every thing I expressed for a couple of months. Moreover once she asked for space I asked her more than once if she minded if I text her my thoughts and she obliged and I told her if they bothered her or overwhelmed her to let me know. She never did.
Moreover she herself prayed that God would remove this pain from her.

Regardless I have already resolved that if I am so unfathomably stupid as to get involved with any other woman in this lifetime I'm going to stand there like some kind of stoic rock, ala Gary Cooper, dispensing an occasional laconic "yep" to let her know I'm still above room temperature. That seems to be what they're looking for.

mud

mudpuppy:

--- Quote ---A retreat by a woman you desire triggers a WHOLE lot of hyper-inspection of what is wrong with her.
--- End quote ---

Only if there is no obvious reason. If I do something obviously retarded that causes a reaction then there's obviously something wrong with me. If I say something relatively innocuous and the reaction is far out of proportion to what I said then, yeah, I kinda wonder what's wrong with her, especially if she clams up rather than talking the problem out.


--- Quote ---It could be anxiety about possible loss.
--- End quote ---

I have no doubt that contributed to the volume of words I directed to her. I even told her I suspected that was one reason I was talking so much. I also told her I'm still probably too wounded to be in a relationship as I think she still is. But I don't get why so few women like to just sit down and talk it over when it gets weird.


--- Quote ---And...it could be that you are not convinced all the way through that any woman, at any time, can say No (EVEN AFTER FIRST SAYING YES), and that this can be okay with you.  Not without agonies of hurt and maybe some nuanced blaming of her for breaking what you considered an implicit contract.
--- End quote ---

Uh, yeah kinda. I don't tell anyone those kind of things without meaning them and I would expect them to want to slap my face if I just took odd offense at some offhand remark and then withdrew without an explanation other than some contradictory vague bleatings. I would have just broken her heart and she should damn well blame me in a very unnuanced manner.
If you're going to tell someone you love them forever and you're going to marry them you better mean it because there is pretty much no bigger pain that you can inflict than going back on those words. Other people's hearts are not play toys.

mud

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