The show What Not To Wear has a very misleading name.
The whole point is learning what to wear. If all you know is that you shouldn't wear certain things, how does that help you get dressed or buy clothes? Take the "what not to wear" mentality too far and you might end up running around naked!
OK, maybe not, but you see what I'm getting at here. The subjects get their horrible clothes tossed out, of course (not that I don't absolutely love some of the outfits that get tossed, but that's another story), but then Stacey & Clinton show them what they should be looking for in clothes (especially clothes that someone else pays for...the new stuff they get ain't cheap!) And instead of obsessing that "this makes me look fat" or "that just doesn't work with me", the subjects find out that things they never even tried on before makes them look completely different and makes them look and feel good. It doesn't "stop them from feeling fat/ugly/etc", it makes them feel good/pretty/etc. Big difference. Without that aspect of it, the subject will just get new horrible clothes whose only virtue is that they look different from the first set of horrible clothes. And sometimes they won't even have that going for them.
And in your relationships, the same thing applies. If you're mainly thinking about "what not to say", you'll end up with a lot of awkward silences. If you gain an understanding of what to say and how to say it, with enough practice you'll have people eating out of your hand. And you don't even need all that much practice... at least not any more than a person of average intelligence gets just by growing up.
I think the answer to my question yesterday 'are normal people born knowing all this social stuff?' is "Yes, to some degree, and I am too". Y'all really liked some of the things I came up with to say to my wife, I liked them too, and so did she. The weird thing is that I didn't really have to think about them. I knew how to do it all along, but I was letting fear distract me. Fear of offending her or boring her tells you what not to say... only a positive desire to amuse her, connect with her, and trigger her attraction led me to apply knowledge and instincts I already had to come up with good things to say. I already knew how to do it... I just had to let go of the fear that was keeping me out of the proper mindset I needed to do it well.
So while I may be weird, I'm not lacking any abilities or instincts that normal people have... I just spent most of my life too anxious and nervous to use them properly.
Last edited by Crazy Eddie; 05/31/0705:46 PM.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
Great posts Eddie, you have been gaining some incredible insights - what are those drugs they psych has been giving you and where can I get some
Fear of offending her or boring her tells you what not to say... only a positive desire to amuse her, connect with her, and trigger her attraction led me to apply knowledge and instincts I already had to come up with good things to say.
One of the hardest things I have had to deal with in my M is that my H is very easily offended. And this has led to me being fearful of saying much to him. I'm pretty much a witty sparky type of person that can say things that make people laugh - and some of the time I will be ribbing the other person a little. 99% of people (especially guys) can take it and give back as good as they get. But for some reason my H cannot take it. It's not that he cannot take it from me, he cannot take it from anyone. Sometimes I feel like I have spent 16 years having my natural sense of humour filleted out of me.
You've given me some hope though Eddie, when you say don't be afraid of what not to do, just try and come up with good things to say. What I've been finding seems to work best on H is when he comes up with some doom-laden piece of misery to just take it seriously then take it a bit more seriously then take it so seriously it becomes farcical and all of a sudden he's laughing at himself.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
Great posts Eddie, you have been gaining some incredible insights - what are those drugs they psych has been giving you and where can I get some
60 mg of Cymbalta (which isn't an anti-anxiety medication as far as I've been able to determine, but it did banish anxiety completely for a few days here and there), 36mg Concerta. So far so good. It's a long and frustrating journey, but I think I see the route to the end.
And I'm a compulsive reader, which is bad when your job requires a computer hooked up to the Internet. But I'm learning a hell of a lot about human nature as I read here, finally, and I think I'll profit from it in the end.
Originally Posted By: haphazard
Fear of offending her or boring her tells you what not to say... only a positive desire to amuse her, connect with her, and trigger her attraction led me to apply knowledge and instincts I already had to come up with good things to say.
One of the hardest things I have had to deal with in my M is that my H is very easily offended. And this has led to me being fearful of saying much to him. I'm pretty much a witty sparky type of person that can say things that make people laugh - and some of the time I will be ribbing the other person a little. 99% of people (especially guys) can take it and give back as good as they get. But for some reason my H cannot take it. It's not that he cannot take it from me, he cannot take it from anyone. Sometimes I feel like I have spent 16 years having my natural sense of humour filleted out of me.
You've given me some hope though Eddie, when you say don't be afraid of what not to do, just try and come up with good things to say. What I've been finding seems to work best on H is when he comes up with some doom-laden piece of misery to just take it seriously then take it a bit more seriously then take it so seriously it becomes farcical and all of a sudden he's laughing at himself.
Yes, go with that! And Mr. Hap needs to do the same thing... use hope rather than fear as his motive to get him to his goals, so he can do well and have fun and be happy along the way.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
Now we can gain a proper understanding of the word "self-esteem".
It's not a way to feel good about yourself without bothering to achieve anything. It's a belief that you are capable of achieving something. It's a crucial part of your motivation. Self-esteem isn't a reward... it's what turns potential reward into motivation.
If you don't think you're capable of collecting the reward, that reward will provide you with no motivation.
For instance, I would consider a chance to vacation on the moon, and try running and jumping and playing ball and making love in 1/6 gravity to be a really sweet reward, and I have felt that way pretty much all my life. But I have never undertaken any activity that's remotely related to the construction of a rocket because I don't believe I can build a rocket capable of bringing me to the moon. I have never done anything remotely likely to bring me closer to the successful construction of a lunar habitat... because I would not be rewarded for such activity because I cannot build a rocket to bring it there in the first place if I were to build one. The same probably holds true for you.
If you don't think you can complete a task, you'll have a hell of a time making yourself put any sincere effort into doing any part of it. If you don't think you can attract a woman, you'll find it almost impossible to approach her... and if you try to force yourself to approach her, you'll be acting from the motive of fear of the self-reciminations stemming from not doing it and the fear of making a fool of yourself and most likely fail to attract her.
Whatever it is, if you don't think you can do it, you won't have any good reason to really try. You or someone else might be able to force you to go through the motions, but that's only an ill-fated attempt to push you towards a goal with fear. Your heart won't be in it, and you'll probably fail. Your only hope is if you've misjudged your ability so much that being forced to go through the motions brings you visibly closer to your goal and changes your mind, convincing you that you do posess the ability. But, in many cases, going through the motions will not bring you toward your goal enough to cause you to revise your beliefs, and you will give up at the first available opportunity.
And this can be one of the cruelest of vicious cycles. If you don't have the motivation to act because you lack self-esteem, then nothing can happen to prove you wrong about your ability and give you the self-esteem, the belief that you do have ability. If you force yourself to go through the motions and fail, that can reinforce your belief that you lack the ability and make you less willing and able to put in a sincere effort.
How do you get out of that trap? Maybe "shake things up"... put yourself into an unusual position that makes you question your assessment of your abilities and put them to the test. Maybe let go of some impediment (like excessive anxiety) that counteracts your ability and then put your ability to the test, and pass a few tests along the way until you see your true ability when you're not getting in your own way.
And how do you prevent your children from ever getting into that trap while not excessively protecting them from the hardships and heartbreaks of life? Anybody who knows the answer to that is welcome to jump in here...
Last edited by Crazy Eddie; 05/31/0710:45 PM.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
She lays on her back, he gets on top of her and tucks his legs under him. Then he sits up and she presses her feet against his chest, using it as leverage to raise her hips, adjust the angle of penetration to their liking, and grind her pelvis against his.
(Of course spiked heels are contraindicated. But as far as I'm concerned, a woman should not be wearing shoes while having sex anyway. While she's at it, touching him with her feet is generally a good idea in any encounter.)
He is in the dominant position while she still gets to actively participate, and she gets to adjust the alignment to hit just the right spot inside her. Overall, it offers the advantages of a Liberator pillow without having to buy, store, and retrieve the thing.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
She came up with that while I was trying to position her by moving her legs around. She pressed her feet against my chest and positioned herself, and we went from there.
So much for her sexual passivity. I think most of the time she wants to be almost, but not quite, as aggressive as I am. Being grabbed and thrown over the side of the couch doesn't seem to be what she's looking for, but neither does she want to grab me and throw me onto a couch or bed and jump on top. Not that she doesn't like riding on top, but not in an overpowering or leading way, if you know what I mean. She wants me to lead, and she always wants me to choose the position, but she also wants to be active in that position. Anyway, until I learned to turn up my aggressiveness a bit, she didn't have much room to be active without being dominant, so she tended to be more subdued, which neither of us found very exciting. Or maybe my mild aggressiveness coincided with her decreasing overall insecurity, leading her to "ramp up" in tandem with me.
Come to think of it, this is the biggest variation in positioning that she has ever introduced on the spot. For whatever reason, she's really coming out of her shell.
Last edited by Crazy Eddie; 06/01/0705:01 PM.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
I just wanted to say that you are doing some really really good things. Its great to see you come to these awarenesses and watch you and your W benefit from them.
^5
One thing I want to point out that I noticed from the first day you came, is your inner voice. The most obvious example that comes to mind right away is your screenname (there have been several others) Be careful what you call yourself. Even if you no longer mentally call yourself 'crazy eddie' in terms of pysch crazy, but do so in a jesting way, it can still affect you.
Actually blackfoot, Crazy Eddie makes me picture a guy wearing thick black framed Coke bottles in a loud plaid jacket and flashing lighted tie screaming at me to the point of bulging neck and forehead veins.
Think it must be all those damned local car dealer commercials I used to watch in between Price is Right when I was always home sick as a kid.
The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is the warrior views everything as a challenge; the ordinary man views everything as either a blessing or a curse.
-Yaqui shaman Don Juan-
...and that holds 2x true for nice guy wussies, DJ
I'm a sci-fi fan (say it ain't so!), and Crazy Eddie comes from one of the masterpieces of that genre.
You'll have to read The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle for a full explanation, but in a nutshell:
The Empire of Man meets some aliens (the Moties). The aliens are locked in a cycle of population explosion, catastrophic war, stone-age savagery, rising civilization, population explosion. Rinse and repeat for millions of years. Individuals die if they don't have children, and none of them ever came up with good birth control that works on them unless they take it before they have any children, so taking birth control is a behavior that would be strongly selected against and be eliminated pretty quickly.
So after millions of years of this, most of the aliens are resigned to the Cycles and consider them an unalterable fact of nature. Every so often one of the aliens gets a bright idea to fix things, departs from the fatalistic viewpoint and actually tries to solve the problem everyone else has written off as unsolvable. This mindset is considered a form of insanity among the aliens and is known as... Crazy Eddie. And rightly so, since this form of insanity has never been rewarded with success throughout Motie history.
Of course this is similar to the way that successful humans tend to think, so when humans show up, things start to get interesting.
The name fits me on several levels. First, as someone with a strange mindset by the standards of my species. Second, as someone who gets frustrated by seemingly unsolvable problems and longs to solve them (starting with my own trouble sticking with a particular problem long enough to solve it). Third, as someone who has been known to not get things such as male-female instinctive differences and tried to solve problems as if such difficulties didn't exist, causing my solutions to fail.
I'm not accusing myself of insanity by human standards... just noting that my mindset can pay big dividends if I temper it with a dose of realism, and will tend to fail otherwise.
Last edited by Crazy Eddie; 06/04/0701:57 PM.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
I don't have to be afraid of people or of tasks. But sometimes I am. I need to act anyway.
Can I keep acting anyway for the rest of my life? I don't know. I did find it exhausting and unbearable not long ago, and then impossible. But I've learned, and I've gotten tools and medication, and it's time to go for it again and expect breakthroughs and success.
If that doesn't work, then it'll be time to regroup and try something else. Till then, I'll try proving myself to myself and get hold of some more of that self-esteem. I've already proven myself in many areas that I had once written off as hopeless. I had hoped that this would carry over across the board, but there's still some things that need to be addressed separately.
I love myself, and I want to be happy, and most of the time I allow myself to be happy, now knowing that not being happy is not a recipe for success.. I just need more belief in some of my abilities. Time to pass a few tests. Here goes...
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
