Lonely in maine, suggest you start your own thread so we can respond to your sitch. Welcome aboard.
Regarding craziness: Between the internet and reality TV, don't y'all think that we are exposed to the interior, uncensored workings of other people's private lives in a way that couldn't happen in the past?
Before the internet, whose internal private life did you really know anything about? You imagined what went on "behind closed doors" in other people's houses, but did you really know? There was that column in Ladies Home Journal "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" (it ALWAYS was saved), which gave a little insight, but even that was edited and cleaned up.
Now, with BBs like this where people post intimate stuff, and dating sites where you can email strangers, and reality TV (including the Osbournes) where the camera reveals everything, we know a WHOLE lot more about people's private lives, unedited and uncensored, than anyone ever did before.
Thus our conclusion that people are crazy. And I agree with Fran, we/they are.
P.S. In 1973, PBS ran a 12-week documentary of "The Loud Family," probably the first reality tv show. The family was filmed in their home going about their daily lives. I never watched it, and frankly, I still don't care for reality tv (except "Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares" ahem ). Read about it here:
Maybe you don't see the following as what famalies are like but it has some similarites as it relates to reality. There was a logitudinal film about 14 Britisk kids that I found interesting.
Wiki The Up Series consists of seven documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child's social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen he can get to participate. The latest film, 49 Up, was released in September 2005; filming for the next instalment in the series, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012.
Lou, ta for the reminder about this series. We've watched some of it and found it riveting, and were just talking within the last month or so about trying to track down the whole thing, but then it slipped our minds again. Until now!
I dunno, Lil. On the internet (especially the social networking sites) there is a lot of self-presentation, IMHO. As far as my limited experience with reality tv, I've concluded that people being safe, sane, and supportive doesn't make for good ratings ... outrageousness, malice, strife, and miscellaneous craziness do. I highly doubt we're getting a more realistic picture of the human animal in public and private from that source. Blogs and message boards like this one, sure, maybe .... but there's always that niggling doubt ... any one of us could be a construct .... an experiment .... a joke.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
RJ, thanks for all those great quotes. Oh, where are the Winston Churchills of the world when we need them? Will we ever have another one?
Lil, I posted those quotes partly because I am reading a Churchill biography, partly because I was sick that day and it kept me occupied ( lol), and partly because I do see relationship problems as a kind of war, with our health and esteem at stake, primarily. So, you can lose the relationship, but win the war, in my point of view.
Here's something from "Fear of Intimacy" - by Robert Firestone adn Joyce Catlett which I think is excellent and really applies to what we have been discovering on this board. Stuff that I've learned from alanon, stuff the guys have been learning in NMMNG, stuff we keep trying to help the newbies understand.
A healthy person has to learn to be "selfish". We have to learn to be honestly selfish, that is, we have to honestly face our needs and our feelings and face what we really want from others in our relationships. The more we face our simple wants the more we can be straightforward in our expression to the people closest to us and to ourselves. We have to give up parental, rejecting, critical, evaulative attitudes toward our simple wishes and feelings. We have to feel what we want and stop accusing ourselves of being babyish when we want things.
When we pursue our goals in an honest and direct manner, without deception, we actually are more moral and tend to have respect and empathy for other people. There is a sense of value for both ourselves and others. Following one's own motives and inclinations, within acceptable limits (with the exception of violations of the other's boundaries), does NOT lead to chaos or immoral behaviour. On the other hand, the hypocritical attitudes and dishonesty inherent in turning away from our needs often leads us to be more destructive or hostile to friends and loved ones.
Another reason why we haven't been wasting our time here. If the relationship ends up breaking down because one half is growing into themselves and either the other half isn't or they are growing but the growth shows fundamendal incompatibility (viz Lil and BF) then that is progress.
MWD does good work, but not all relationships are destined to make it. Many are built on sand. If we learn here how to build a relationship on something more solid than that is a good thing.
By the way the book I quoted is excellent. It is pretty academic in style but I have had more "wow" moments in the first 50 pages than in many other R books.
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
A healthy person has to learn to be "selfish". We have to learn to be honestly selfish, that is, we have to honestly face our needs and our feelings and face what we really want from others in our relationships. The more we face our simple wants the more we can be straightforward in our expression to the people closest to us and to ourselves. We have to give up parental, rejecting, critical, evaulative attitudes toward our simple wishes and feelings. We have to feel what we want and stop accusing ourselves of being babyish when we want things.
IOW- Be strong monkey and bunny and get all the "affectionate man-handling" you want in a straight-forward strong/vulnerable manner. I couldn't agree more. I recently read an article that indicated that people who tend towards depression tend to be more judging of self and others in that manner. Therefore, they may seek out a partner who is more childlike/manic and end up in a dysfunctional cycle of attract/attack. Which is why I am currently avoiding men who vibe like 2bx/House like the plague.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
We've been so conditioned to think that the greatest sin is "selfishness," when so often what looks selfish (whatever that really is) is just a simple desire for happiness.
On this BB you'll read posts where people are reaching for something, feeling their way, but they are stopped dead in their tracks by the big red roadblock: "YOU'RE BEING SELFISH!" End of journey, end of conversation.
Even the Bible says "Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF," but our interpretation of that has been "love your neighbor BUT NOT yourself. (BTW, when Jesus said that, he was quoting the book of Leviticus in the O.T.)
Sure, there's a kind of selfishness that is me me me, I want what I want and I don't care who gets hurt. But there's also a healthy kind that says BOTH of us have a right to be happy, and if I sacrifice myself for you, we are both left with nothing.
Mojo, this
Quote:
people who tend towards depression tend to be more judging of self and others in that manner. Therefore, they may seek out a partner who is more childlike/manic and end up in a dysfunctional cycle of attract/attack
is very interesting. What article was that-- do you remember? This sounds so much like me.
Funnily enough while I'm reading this book I keep coming across stuff that I am labelling "strong bunny". You watch Mojo there's going to be academic theses built around your zoo in a few years time!
Another bit of this book says that when a parent is angry or rejecting or negative to a child the child internalises the parent. So all the negative self-talk stuff is identification with the "good" parent against the "bad" self. When we become close to another person we transfer the bad aspects that the now internalised parent disliked about us to the "other". So back again of course to: we have to learn to love ourselves before we can love another.
The weird part for me is that I absolutely knew all this before I started out in the relationship minefield. But both xBF and H argued against me. They argued against honesty, against pleasing yourself, against loving yourself first. What I don't understand is how I got duped into believing them rather than kicking them both to the kerb early on and maintaining the good ground I already had on coming out of my FOO.
You have to be very experimental I think with relationships. You're in a good position right now Mojo to try out what it's like to relate to different types of men. It would almost be worthwhile to deliberately date men you are not attracted to (physically is OK, but not emotionally attracted to) in order to explore what it's like to hang out with someone that different from your usual type. It seems to me from what you have said about the guys you've been dating that you are enjoying flirting with danger. You are getting a buzz out of hanging with slightly dangerous seeming men. Safety is a turn off. Love is not safe. That is something pretty much all of us here learned in early childhood. It was not safe to love. Therefore when we are with someone safe it doesn't feel like love.
The sense of anxiety is closely associated with love because pretty much all of us were left to cry ourselves to sleep in our cribs - a highly unnatural thing to do to a small vulnerable baby. And it's still going on. We do it to our own kids, we don't tie them to our backs and carry them around with us for the first couple of years. We leave them so we can go out to work. We train them into a sleep routine and are told that they must learn to self-soothe. The prevalence of MB is actually a form of self-soothing which is something most babies have been trained to do. When we meet someone safe we don't feel love. When we meet someone we feel anxious won't stay with us then we interpret that as love. Once we have hooked up with that person we retreat into self-soothing habits such as mb, alcoholism, shopaholism, controlling behaviour, avoidant behaviour (not wanting to want) in order to maintain the distance which maintains the anxiety.
Whenever my R with H gets comfortable I start to feel like it is dull dull dull. That's what happens - it oscillates between agony and boredom. I'm not sure I don't trigger the agony as an escape from the boredom.
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
). Read about it here: