Quote: I guess my brain must be wired to the stone ages.
Well... maybe the Bronze Age or the Iron Age...
Just kidding, Lou. BB goes overboard, definitely. That she should be paired with someone who is so retail-istically conservative is a great irony (and something Jung would love). BB is showing you your shadow-- a part of yourself that you are positive is not there. But she's showing you symbolically-- in code. Do you have your Captain Midnight Decoder Ring?
Maybe somewhere inside you is a Little Lou who wanted things but wasn't allowed to have them, didn't have the money, parents wouldn't buy them... so he taught himself not to want.
My late husband was like this. When I met him, I had to show him how to want stuff... to teach him that it was okay to want.... His mom used to criticize him by saying, "You've got the willies and the wants," like it was a bad thing. And his first wife carried on the tradition. She handled the finances and gave him $10 cash allowance each week for 25+ years. She was a SAHM and never worked outside the home (although she had graduated from college in three years magna cum laude with a double major in math and chemistry ).
It was so much fun for me when we first got together for me to buy him nice things... a leather briefcase, nice slippers, etc. One day we received a check for several thousand dollars in the mail unexpectedly (bequest from a great aunt) and I insisted he fulfill one of the wants he had talked about for years: we built a pottery shop and he took pottery lessons. He became quite a good potter during the last four or five years of his life. But I digress (as usual).
I'll bet all the while Grown Up Lou is annoyed and irritated by BB's irresponsible "getting" and "buying" and denying herself nothing... Little Lou is secretly delighted and envious and wishes so much that he or someone could be so generous to himself.
After my husband died when I reflected on how I showered him with whatever he wanted (not just stuff, but I was committed to making his life wonderful), I realized that while I loved doing these things for him, what I also wanted was for someone to be that committed to making MY life wonderful! He loved me, but he did not express his love in that way. My bf IS and Acts of Service guy... but lacks the sexual interest... and the wheel goes round and round...
). 