Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
New thread for flirting, opposite sex relationship stuff
Hopalong:
Hear, HEAR.
You're feeling really human and really fragile.
How to step forth and also be safe.
You're also so smart that you're BORED with your circumstances.
I think boredom + stress is the worst kind.
Hops
sKePTiKal:
--- Quote ---Even at my age I'm afraid of rejection or to use a better less used term I'm afraid of losing love, of not being good enough, of some guy deciding that somebody else is easier, prettier, richer etc. etc. But I've got some kind of deep wounding related to this that makes me like a crazy person with issues because I really feel unlovable.
--- End quote ---
Good insight, Boat! I think you've just about got your "knot" of tangled emotional yarn sorted and wound neatly into individual colors. That of course, is one of the tasks before creating something new from the old yarns. You'll probably start getting some ideas about what to "make" before that's completely all done.
Some things, I believe, we'll never know for sure... I mean, being able to connect present difficulties with past "programming" and experience. I don't know about you... but I certainly hit areas of deep fatigue - where I just didn't care anymore (for the moment) about sorting it all out. And good lord - don't you know that itself was another friggin' "symptom"? Another bit of perverse parental programming to undo? I needed someone to teach me how to take care of myself. As an adult.
In that, since my emotional needs didn't ever show up on my mom's radar screen (unless I was physically ill, I didn't show up - period - except as a "problem") ------ since my experience was that no one cared about my needs, I didn't even have the ability to say what they were, what I needed... and almost zilch awareness that I was experiencing a "need". My T had to teach me how to recognize my own needs; in my late 40s, for cryin' out loud. Then, we worked on convincing me that I was allowed to have those needs... that it was OK to ask to have the needs filled... that the answer isn't always "no, not now - go away - you're bothering me" or "So, you think you deserve that, do you? Well, here's what I want you to do for me first... and I'm not promising I'll take care of you in return; you're just making up this emotion anyway; KIDS DON'T HAVE THOSE KINDS OF EMOTIONS..."
I thank Hops for pointing out the website that described "Invalidation" in such clear detail, it smacked me upside the head with the realization of just how far my mom objectified me... I might as well have been a doll, for all she understood that I had independent thoughts, feelings, etc. The dog's need to go out was more important than my existence or what I needed. No wonder I went through a phase where I believed I had the superpower to be invisible...
And every single thing I had tried to "be" -- hiding my own real feelings even from myself -- every attempt I made to be good enough, perfect enough, that surely this time she'd see and actually care about me... see what I was sacrificing for her... so that she'd love me...
FAILED. And so, I believed that this meant I really wasn't good enough; I wasn't even able to hide my own "crazy"... because that's what I called those jacked up conflicted feelings & needs & anxiety & trying to be what she needed all the time (throwing myself under the bus in the process) - things I didn't even have words in my head for... I didn't deserve the relationships and connectedness with other people, because I was such a freak not even my own mom cared about me**.
I DIDN'T MATTER. Not even to me. Because instead of mattering to myself, I'd made an obsessive crusade about getting my mother - or even someone else, instead of my mother - to love me. I really didn't know... that I was allowed to matter to myself and that I could love me; take care of me. When I got comfortable with that, I realized that "love" and caring about someone didn't involve competition... tricks to "win"... power struggles... it wasn't a transaction at all (like I learned from my mom). It was something completely outside of that kind of definition.
**At least, being a sarcastic and junior cynic at the age of 12/13... that was the conclusion I came to in my "Kid Emotional Logic". And guess what? Very few people tried to change my mind or tell me I had it just a bit wrong... That the conclusion that I was so scarred from that awful relationship with my mom that I was now unlovable... was wrong. But, believing something about yourself for 30+ years... takes a long time to shake that thought/feeling habit... I've needed years of reminders and am only now getting close to believing something that's more true about me... than that old warped, kid-logic idea.
Of course, I do tend to cling to my old ideas - won't just let it go - because I've always defined my Inner Identity with what I think I know... about me. Operative phrase "think I know". I've come to appreciate those moments when I find out: everything I think I know, is wrong. Sometimes, it's really really really really good to be wrong. But my mom will never know that because that possibility simply doesn't exist in her reality -- her loss; not mine.
---------------- Sorry for the personal slant to the reply, Boat. That's the shortest way I know how to explain - say - make the points; pass on the ideas... that might matter to your "yarn sorting". Not everything in my experience will apply to you - and definitely not the same way it did for me... but I do know that this idea of the power of this kind of invalidation, when we are little trusting naive kids seems to cause a lot of the same "symptoms" in people. That in turn causes a kind of suffering - not the Buddha-kind - because a NEED is not the same as a DESIRE. N-Ex #2 tried to brainwash me into believing that all emotions were a type of "ego" - therefore BAD - and we should never, ever allow an emotion to be important enough to become a "need"....
... I didn't my T to teach me what the smell of bullshit was. But Ns do this alot - they will BS a whole philosophy of life or religion or spirituality to support their N-ness.
Hopalong:
--- Quote ---I realized that "love" and caring about someone didn't involve competition... tricks to "win"... power struggles... it wasn't a transaction at all (like I learned from my mom). It was something completely outside of that kind of definition.
--- End quote ---
Thank you, (((((((((((Amber)))))))))))).
Really.
Good reminder and great timing.
love,
Hops
Meh:
I have friends from highschool who have married and are living normal lifes not (alone and pathetic and gyspy like) THEY DID NOT AGONIZE or think deeply about their relationships. I can't believe how easy it is for some people and so it makes me think LOVE is not meant to be for me because it isn't this hard for everybody and if it's this hard it means there is something really really wrong with me.
(one person I knew since 8th grade lied and told me her father was a meteorologist) Her father was really an accountant.
She said she was going to marry a doctor. Well she is now married to somebody who has a PhD in mathematics and he studies weather and atmosphereic events. Isn't that strange? She is not particularly academic or anything and it just makes me wonder why did she so easily find what it seemed she was looking for??????? She also thought that I was a lesbian...(nice right).
I mean I know it's immature of me but something makes me ask "what makes her lovable and me not lovable?" What makes her able to predict a good future for herself and NOW she is living it. It's no longer a conceptual future.
So relationship stuff. Was reading a dating site tha said something about long lasting commited relationship blah blah.
My mind juxtaposes this concept along with the concept that I feel and in reality it is true (therapists confirm this) that in life a person really doesn't have as much control over our lifes that we would like to or that society says we have control. So I guess there is this sense there are uncontrollable elements and somehow this long lasting commited relationship stuff is contingent on out of control factors. Somehow it's opposed to the basic concept of real love isn't it.
So many conflicts about what people say love is an can be and the reality of what it takes to get and create this love.
ALSO the concept that being commited to having love in ones life is = to really loving one Self.....??? This stuff sort makes sense but doesnt add up totally in my demented mind. I wish I had thought about this stuff when I was younger. I feel like it's sort of late in the game to be paying attention to it now.
Thinkin out loud here that's all.
Hopalong:
Yup, I agree.
I remember when I was younger I read all these magazine articles that were trying to help women recognize what they needed and didn't need. I think, in a way, those "silly" exercises were helpful. I remember one was to have a simple index card in your purse (that you prepared BEFORE you met someone). On that card were 3 columns (that had required being serious about your own happiness).
Must-Haves
Likes
Deal-Breakers
Any verbal imaginative person can really create a massive list of the fantasy mate. But if you're limited to an index card, it gets a lot simpler. And then, I think, the rest is Releasing the Outcome.
For me:
A) Must-Haves: Honesty, Kindness, Humor, Monogamy, Financial stability
B) Likes: Flexible, Fit, Enough shared interests for meaning (compatible spirituality and community) and pleasure (e.g., music, travel, animals, art), education
C) Deal-Breakers: Lying, Addiction, N-ism, Non-Monogamy, Major Health neglect, Mysogyny, Major sports addiction, critical spirit
I think if all the As are Present and a few of the Bs (plus surprises)--and I just keep creating opportunities for myself to meet as many people as it takes who have those, and patiently say No to anyone who reveals one of the Deal-Breakers, eventually there's a chance I'll meet someone with all of A, a few of B, and then...chemistry might happen too. (That's the unknown, and that has to be okay with me, or why bother.)
Hmmm! Glad you asked since that gave me a chance to think about my invisible "index card" again.
I actually remember women checking out their cards in the ladies' room, just to make sure they weren't getting overexcited about a date and leaving their brains behind.
xo
Hops
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