Where did you get that I was getting at you? LOL Seriously you were in no way the target of either the alpha male remark or the one about grovelling being a manipulative display.
I was totally with you on your reply to Cobra and just saw a little antler-locking going on between Cobra and Phase3. Anyhoo I think it looks like that is cleared up now between them. As Heather says it takes a little while to get into Cobra's style (as it probably does for many of us). I know I can come off as a little blunt sometimes. I think it is because it does take a while to read through people's threads, think about their sitches and by the time I come to compose a thoughtful reply I'm looking at the clock and think -sheesh. So I tend to cut to the chase.
I think Cobra suffers from the same thing, just says what he thinks and leaves it at that, without embellishment. But it is fine as his ratio of wise words to flannel is high
As for the stuff about being remorseful and showing it: I had not been thinking of your reply to Heather when you said you had done this yourself - so you weren't the target of that. And I think both you and Heather did this as an instintual gut reaction immediately after the event. What I was taking issue with was Cobra's (and others) idea that it would be a useful strategy as a way of re-enmeshing. In other words that someone should do it deliberately. It would just come over as phoney.
Quote: I can honestly tell you that not once during my groveling display of remorse did I think "what a wonderful person am I."
No of course you didn't Chrome. You just felt absolutely terrible. And your emotional outburst was in reaction to feeling that way. What you have to ask yourself though is "why did I feel terrible?" I am not directing this at you Chrome - not at all. I am directing it at any of us that has felt terrible about something they've done and wept and torn our shirts about it to the person we have let down. An interesting radio discussion I heard with a former nun went into the idea of guilt. In the order she belonged to guilt was discouraged. The idea being that guilt is the horrible feeling we get when we realise we are not as good as we think we are. The point is that we are human, we do make mistakes, and we are sorry for those mistakes. And that should be the end of it. We should not go around carrying a burden of guilt and remorse about it. If you do something you shouldn't most decent people either felt they were not in a position to do otherwise or hadn't really foreseen the consequences. 99% of us were not thinking heh heh heh and twirling our moustaches while we carried out the evil deed. We were just following our instincts and doing the best we could with the set of circumstances we were in. When we find we have done wrong we are remorseful, we are sorry, and we should resolve to try not to make the same mistake again. But there is no use beating ourselves up with guilt, or showing over the top displays of remorse in the hope of having that burden of guilt lifted.
So sorry if I upset you, I'll try not to do it again, and I'm not going to go round feeling guilty about it
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
