"Nobody else ever wanted me" old tape

[gratitude28]

Hey hops,
I don't doubt that you saw the sex as loving and healing... but guys just don't spend their evenings at the fire chatting about what a far-out romantic and moving night they shared with anyone... Wasn't trying to be a pin... I just think that guys and glas see it differently, no matter how much we try.
Love, Beth

[Hopalong]

I'm sure you're right about that, Beth...

My memories about it are mine though. Theirs are their business.
It was more about what I thought of myself that I was concerned with.

I was verbally sliced & diced so much as a child that by young adulthood
Other People's descriptions didn't worry me...I had learned my own strength
with words, and that was not fearing them. Poets have a peculiar
kind of nakedness. You can write and read aloud to strangers some pretty
intense and revealing things. If you craft it well, it's received well. And after
a while, you realize you can stand in a floodlight with your flaws in your
palms, and keep breathing.

Now when someone I love says something cruel, ai yi yi. Arrow in the atrium!

You're not a pin (or a pain), Beth. I appreciate your sharing what you think.

(((Beth)))

Hops

 

[gratitude28]

I'm glad I'm not a pin. I'd hate to be one of those. Oh Lord lately I make so many typos...

Yes, hops, perception is the name of the game. I need a perception-booster lately 

Love, Beth

[Hopalong]

Wow.
Beth.
An old memory just popped up.
Once after grad school I had moved to an isolated shore. Worked as a bartender, then a carpenter's helper. I helped build a squab barn on an estate. Proud memory...but that's not the one.
(I used to get depressed, think oh, I need to be in a more rural place--since I was homesick for that/this beauty--and then I moved first 20 minutes from everyone I knew, then half an hour, then 45 minutes (no cure)...then all the way across a gol-durn bridge.

Anyhoo, I wasn't recognizing that I was lonely. Since as a new poet back then I had to spend a lot of time alone in deep awareness anyway, I didnt think to ask the question. Then one day a fellow I knew came to see me, and wanted to apologize for some mean things he'd done to me when we were in a shared house once. It was complicated group dynamics, but anyway, he'd sort of demonized me for no reason (and it really had hurt me). I forgave him immediately but what I just remembered was I said to him, you can sleep with me if you want. He said, really? And I said yes, I'm so lonely I'll ___ someone just to get a hug.

Wowsa. And here I am 30 years later writing sermons about loneliness!
Holy moly.

I'm not upset at all about that...I just mean, I'm kind of shocked to realize how consistent that is.
Loneliness is the predominant feeling I remember from my childhood.

I'm not, usually, now, at all. Lots of wonderful people in my life. But when it comes to visit, whoa, are there layers.

So...there's a different kind of memory about one of those encounters. Hmm.

Hops

[pennyplant]

Hops, that memory of yours.  So honest.  With him.  It sounds like he responded in a normal way.  I was honest with the N and he responded in a weird way, especially over time.  He judged me a lot, too.  I hated that.  Him judging me for something he started and said he wanted to do as well.  He was also patronizing at times.  Kind of ironic coming from someone who is about 8 years old inside.  I guess they can fake anything.

That sickening feeling.  It makes me think that there are far more kinds of emotions than I can name.  Or else various ways to feel the same ones.  I don't know.  I do hate that sickening feeling.  It rarely crops up now, of course.  I truly thought that consumating the affair would fix that feeling.  I thought it had something to do with missing him or not getting what I wanted.  Probably that is not what it was.  And I would have found that out in short order if things had gone the way I wanted them to.

Soon enough, I won't be seeing  him hardly at all.  The extra work I have been doing, which brings me to his turf a couple times a week, will probably be ending before Christmas.  I think I will have all the information I need by then to find my answers.  Or enough information anyway, to truly move on.  I was hoping for a big aha! or to see him have to suffer some consequences.  But I guess you can't have everything you want.  Where would you put it  ? (I love that winking guy!)

Pennyplant

[Portia]

Hi PP

I think my wanting sexual flings was about doing something that feels really good.  I thought it would "complete" me.  In each case, both times, I had met someone that I wanted that kind of connection with.  I wanted to know each of them in every way.

So it’s definitely not just sex! (some would say women can’t do ‘just sex’ but some would beg to differ.) If you’re looking for someone to complete you, you’re looking for mother, usually, or maybe father. Does that idea take the edge off the appetite? Superimpose image of mother over subject of attraction. Gender differences don’t matter: it’s about returning to being a baby and being one with mother. So I've read...And your attraction only applies to some people, you wouldn't have a physical fling with just anyone?

It can work I guess, the 'completing' couple. It can make for a lifelong partnership, if the two people change together.

He judged me a lot, too.  I hated that.  Him judging me for something he started and said he wanted to do as well.  He was also patronizing at times.

Unless you’re ready to unquestioningly adore and worship some people, they don’t want to know. If you present any indication that you are independent and capable of critical thinking about them, they’ll run. Because they too want enmeshment, but in that enmeshment only they survive: they absorb you and you become them. You disappear.

What first attracted you to your H? Does he have similar fantasies/yearnings for affairs? Just wondering!


Hops,
I’m not going to ask but I’m thinking it.

[pennyplant]

Hi Portia,

So, it's kind of Freudian, right?  No, it is definitely not just sex.  My friend who has been with lots of men said I should just go to a bar and pick up someone and get it out of my system that way.  But I have absolutely no desire to do that.  There are actually very few men I am attracted to enough to sleep with.  It has to be everything or nothing.  So, of course, it will be nothing.

What first attracted me to my husband?  Well, the very first thing will sound so N--but, he seemed so happy to meet me.  He couldn't stop smiling.  I had never run into that before.  It was very noticeable.  And felt very warm.  He just glowed with happiness at meeting me.  We ate at a fast food restaurant and I noticed how carefully and neatly he ate his food.  I would think that is an odd thing to notice but I have heard some mothers tell their daughters to pay attention to how clean a guy's hands and fingernails are.  So, maybe being neat and polite with a meal means something beyond the surface.  He also had a sense of humor and seemed more practical than me.  We were driving around and the car window was open and blowing my hair around and I said, "Does anybody mind if I close the window?"  He immediately said, "What do you want to do?"  It had never occurred to me that I could close the window just because it was bothering me.  Seventeen and I had just met my first breath of fresh air.

Sometimes I wonder how it would have been for us if I hadn't gotten pregnant right after high school graduation.  We are both very late bloomers.  Early parenthood was a challenge that set us back in so many ways and for so very many years.  I do recognize now how much worse it could have been if he had been N or any other personality disorder.  But it was still a challenge that almost broke us.

This parent angle is something I'll have to think about.  I think there is something to it.  The N co-worker is always looking for his parents, too, especially his mother.  The other emotional affair, that guy did not get along with his father at all and I think he missed him mother a great deal as he moved away from home very young, right out of high school.  My parents were never there for me.  Not in any consistant way.  So, it makes a great deal of sense now that you mention it.

The N-co-worker said at the very beginning of this that he could handle anything except someone saying mean things about his dead parents.  That comment came from out of nowhere but it makes a lot of sense now.

Thanks, Portia.  I'm getting there.

Pennyplant

[Portia]

Hi PP, there's no defined route and there's no defined 'there' to get to really i think. We're all different and very much the same in bedrock ways. 

The N co-worker is always looking for his parents, too, especially his mother.
Big red flag! Alert! This man is a child, a mere boy and once he has a woman, he'll want to turn her into mother and once he has, he won't have sex with her, he'll look for an affair. Well, the one I knew did. being a mommy to an adult male is no fun. So I stopped doing it

Does anything here resonate with your thoughts or feelings?

As unpleasant as it may be to admit it, adult sexuality is largely based on infantile needs to be received, accepted, and satisfied. When a person feels intensely received, accepted, and satisfied, then he or she is “in love.” But sooner or later that intensity will be broken. The break doesn’t even have to be the result of malicious neglect; it can simply be the result of a need to attend to other obligations in the world, and, in the person feeling neglected, intense jealousy can flare up. From http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sex_love.htm

People who have not been given "voice" in childhood have the lifelong task of repairing the "self." This is an endless construction project with major cost overruns (much like the "Big Dig" in Boston).  Much of this repair work involves getting people to "hear" and experience them, for only then do they have value, "place," and a sense of importance. However, not just any audience will do.   The observer and critic must be important and powerful, or else they will hold no sway in the world.  Who are the most important and powerful people to a child?  Parents.  Who must a person pick as audience to help rebuild the self?  People as powerful as parents.  Who, typically, is more than willing to play the role of power broker in a relationship, doling out "voice" only insofar as it suits him/her?  A narcissist, "voice hog," or otherwise oblivious and neglectful person. 

And so it goes.  The person goes in the relationship with the hope or dream of establishing their place with a narcissistic partner, only to find themselves emotionally battered once again.   These are not "oedipal" choices--people are not choosing their father or mother.  They are picking people they perceive powerful enough to validate their existence. 
From http://www.voicelessness.com/repetition.html

[pennyplant]

People who have not been given "voice" in childhood have the lifelong task of repairing the "self." This is an endless construction project with major cost overruns (much like the "Big Dig" in Boston).  Much of this repair work involves getting people to "hear" and experience them, for only then do they have value, "place," and a sense of importance.

Much of your post resonates with me, Portia.  This idea of getting people to hear and experience me really resonates.

That must have been going on when I met my husband.  Didn't even know I was looking for that.  But he met that need easily.  Still does for the most part.  We are now working on giving both of us voice.

When I met the first emotional affair person, the thing that bowled me over was he would ask me something every day and listen to the answer and then argue with me if he didn't agree.  That was huge for me.  Nobody had ever taken that kind of interest before.  Really listened to what I said, so much so, that it made him think of responses.  He actually made a point of getting to know me.  And I was just fascinated with him.  I think I got drunk with that whole thing.  I missed him so much when he was gone.  It was incredibly painful for quite awhile.  Now I can see it was even bigger than I realized.  Somehow I had let him right into my heart without realizing it.  Right where all the pain of my whole life was.

This is such hard work.  It will be worth it, though.

PP

[pennyplant]

THE REAL "GOLD "IT IS FOUND WITHIN THE UNITY OF ONE'S  MALE AND FEMALE ASPECTS OF SELF.

MOON

Moon, I'm still figuring out the various aspects of myself.  Still identifying what they even are.  Unity is a ways off, I suspect.  As I find parts of myself, I am working on accepting them as okay.  It's all still so new with me.

PP

[Hopalong]

If all the girls who suffered with this while young could have met and been friends with each other, like a "Stand by Me" kind of thing.  One of the worst things about being unworthy and unwanted was truly believing that I was the only one in this position.

PP, this is sooooooo true.

Wouldn't it be amazing if in schools there could be a whole movement of STAND BY ME clubs, where any kid at all could go unannounced to a regular club meeting? Schools could organize these as regular clubs, just like the French Club, Music Club, Drama Club. And the underlying philosophy could be: these clubs are for anyone who is being bullied. We'll help. (And the school psychologist could facilitate a lot of group circle discussions that could give them some tools for self esteem, and the very fact of the club would tell them they're not alone.)

Ever the dreamer but I feel like writing a letter,
Hops

[Hopalong]

This is such hard work.  It will be worth it, though.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((PP)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I hope you're really respecting yourself for what you're doing!!!

love,
Hops

[gratitude28]

You know what's funny... as an adult, I think I could enjoy sex just for sport. As a young person, it was so wrapped up in mystique and taboo and seemingly what was expected of me (since I was always accused of it). And it made me feel powerful in some way, because I could give it to a guy and he (mostly) would come panting back for more...

Thanks for all the deep revelations, all. Hops, I totally understand and empathize with your story.

Penny, I know what you mean about someone being attracted/interested in you being a way to fall...

Love, beth

[pennyplant]

Thank you, ((((Hopsy))))).

I think it would take a very gifted facilitator to sponsor a "Stand By Me" club in school.  When I was still in high school, they started a peer mentor or peer mediation group, I can't remember now which one.  But it was run by hand-selected popular girls.  It was intended to "help" kids who were in need of help with getting along or with their lives.  I never in a million years would have gone to such a club meeting with those kids in charge.  There certainly was no intention of supporting kids in being okay as who they were.  I believe they thought the popular girls would "raise up" the other kids.  There was also a youth center in town.  But the kids who attended that were kids who had bullied me.  Too bad I wasn't interested in church.  Might have gotten some love and support there.

I think nowadays such a club would be more workable.  It seems like there are more ways for kids to "be" now.  There were about three ways for kids to be in my school.  Popular, jock, and all the rest which included, smart kids, band kids, partiers and most of the rest.  At my kids' school it seemed more fluid with more choices of how to be.

I'm working on that self-respect.  There is just so much to learn and absorb.  I can see how my "Big Dig" really might just take an entire lifetime.  It is somewhat satisfying already, though.

Well, I have a very early day tomorrow, so it is time to hit the hay.

Thanks all!

Love, Pennyplant

P.S. Beth, just read this--sex as sport.  I think I know a couple of women who have done just that!  I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle it.  I wanted the other stuff along with the sex.  I wanted to be sure he wanted me.  So, there had to be the attention and the words and all that.  Boy, I sure hope I now know how to pick out a N ahead of time.  Better not to even get involved with them in any way, shape or form.  This was a crucial learning step for me.  But life is too short to get stalled on that step.  No more Ns for me!

[gratitude28]

And now you know the warning signs and will take time to know the person fully before jumping into anything!!!! Live and learn.... Better than those who live and never learn, you know??????
Love, Beth