(What is the plural for “anonymous” anyway?)Once more, then I’ll shut up about it all and move on.
I think that my old patterns of falling silent and becoming reclusive, or at least keeping my deeper emotions to myself, are being summoned. I tried at first to stake out a different route this time. I confronted X with my perception of his convenient busyness that just so happened to coincide with my sharing uncomfortable truths. Was he simply avoiding me?
He admitted as much. I hoped to have reason to believe that ours would become an even deeper, stronger friendship. And I still do. But experience teaches me otherwise.
I can’t help but learn that relationships simply fade into history, deflecting awkwardness, when they are presented with uncomfortable truth. As the comments by anonymous(i?) projected, it does seem to be true—in my experience—that people like intimacy so long as it does not threaten the desired status quo.
Tell the truth and you get burned. Or at the least are avoided. It explains a lot of faded relationships in my life. They purport to welcome honest, frank openness, but when confronted with exactly that, there is suddenly a flurry of unavailability.
Some would argue that society teaches us such (in)action.
Society, hell. It isn’t society that teaches me to guard my emotions, to display only what is pleasantly accepted. Concretely, it is X and people like him—not society—who choose to become aloof, who teach me that I lose even what friendship I have and enjoy currently when I bare myself.
But then none of this is about X or anyone else but me. I am learning from this experience more about my own flaws. I don't negotiate the waters of emotions and friendships very well. But I'm learning and hopefully getting better at keeping to myself emotions that are inappropriate to share. I think that will lead to better overall health...for me, first of all, and subsequently in my relations with others.
3 comments:
well said. it's ur fault.
Find the right woman and get married.
Trust me - phenomenal relationships do happen. I know it sounds totally corny, but have you ever read "He's Just Not That Into You?" It's actually an amazing book, and it's basically a reframe of the whole idea of relationships and "being in love." I'd mail you a copy but I already gave mine away.
When I was doing relationship counseling, I always recommended The Five Love Languages, which I think everyone on the planet should read. And when the "Not That Into You" book came out, I started giving them to all of my "single but dating" clients. It has amazing perspective, even if it is written for the popular culture.
Why are you selling yourself short? You are an amazing man, and you deserve someone who wants to be with you, who wants to grow with you, who wants to become a better person with you and who wants to be there as you evolve as well. When someone is "that into you" they WANT to be around you.
You've got a lot to offer, Dennis, and you deserve someone who isn't just there, but WANTS to be there too.
And to the person who said you just need to find the right woman and marry her - yeah, that's a great idea. Just make sure you really hate her before you ruin her life. :)
Maybe God's plan for overpopulation and the preservation of the gene pool is to have gay men marry awful women, thereby putting and end to their long line of ancestry and dysfunction. It could be like spaying and neutering for humans!
(And of course, this is meant as satire. I figure I better mention that disclaimer in light of some of the recent comments by the anonymii...)
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