That's what she said.
So much of my reading lately concerns the deflection of feelings. Why do people do that? The IFS people say that we are wounded or damaged by traumas, growing up. Listening to or reading some of these IFS people, their claim is that most people, world-wide, receive insufficient nurture while they are children, typically, because their caregivers are damaged people who make mistakes in trying to nurture them, mistakes consisting of abuse, neglect, or abandonment (broadly defined, emotional or physical). So, people become scarred or wounded. Gerlach says there are essentially six types:
- Personality fragmentation. (Everybody apparently has this one, as nobody's childhood is entirely trauma-free.)
- Excessive shame or guilt.
- Excessive fears or neuroses.
- Excessive trust or distrust.
- Reality distortion
- Difficulty feeling, empathizing, or bonding.
I would think though, that "trauma" is a sufficient but not necessary condition to explain deflection. I mean, physically, laughter feels much better than sorrow. How much work does it take any child no matter how well or ill-nurtured, to conclude that if one can laugh instead of cry it will just plain feel better physically? How much more incentive does anyone need?
Laurel and I were exchanging text messages on Skype.
For me the feelings about us feeling possible as a couple...the feelings about that drifted away.
She followed that with an sad emoticon:" )-:" She always makes her happy/smiley icons with two parentheses for the mouth, like this: "((-:" I wonder why she does that? I never thought to ask her before.
Really? She needs a sad emoticon to punctuate a statement like that? So, is she telling me that she was fooling herself? Was it that she went looking for reasons not to get involved with someone, after telling me that she was "getting her emotional needs met" in my company, rather than that of the guy with whom she was really certain, kinda sure, not quite convinced, she'd broken up? Yeah. I'm the confused one in this couple. Right. Why is it always me, who gets into these things head-first? Women are always telling me that they've got their hearts and feelings all figured out, thank you very much, but these are the same people who change their minds, chicken out, run away. Strength much? Well, there are all kinds of strength. Crystal had strengths. Laurel has some very impressive strengths. Beautiful, and I mean it sincerely, but I'm wondering about a pattern here. Women have their intimacy issues as well as men. Why do I fall into this kind of a relationship?
Why do I give a damn whether she remembers to do her estrogen treatment before she goes to bed? Why do I care if she's getting enough sleep or not? Why do I entertain a niggling worry for her safety while her plane flight is in the air? Why do I care whether or not she's been feeling sad lately and had a reaction to a Stefan Molyneux video she watched? Why do I want to know what's bothering her? Why do I care? Why do I want her to know that I care and kind of understand? Why do I want to see her healthy and smiling? Why do I want to hold her, make love until the sweat beads up on her body? How in the hell do I get myself so damnably entangled with her while what she was feeling about the prospects for connection between she and I just "drifted away"? What kind of mess is that? Why do I keep ending up in situations like that? How can I stop, when simply resolving that I won't allow myself to bond or connect with someone at all is a monkey's paw solution I don't want? Well, I wasn't feeling it before. I just felt frozen and kind of numb. Asking these questions cracks the ice and sad bleeds out of it, so I guess that is something. The thing is, I'm thinking about stuff like this at work and I can't afford it here. Losing one's composure at work makes one look incompetent.
"If a man wants a woman who doesn’t want him, he cannot win. His neediness will undermine any possible relationship, and his woman will never be able to trust him. A man must determine whether a woman really wants him but is playing hard to get, or whether she really doesn’t want him. If she doesn’t want him, he should immediately cease pursuing her and deal with his pain by himself."
- David Deida