It's like this weird vacant space in my mind where all worries, concerns, thoughts about someone else are absent. A phantom limb of a relationship, I can still feel the tingles from where I used to extend beyond myself. All that's left behind is this amputated heart, pumping blood nowhere in particular.
I know it's for the best. I'm a paranoid lunatic. Sickeningly insecure for some reason. Females and males all seem to proclaim that I am indeed attractive. I know that I'm the best lover possible, also proclaimed by those I've been with. And I'm fairly smart, considered funny and charming, polite and empathic.
But somewhere after the Honeymoon period (which I seem to speed through, overindulging and overdoing it) I fuck it all up. Self-sabotage? I feel like all I've ever wanted was to be with someone, to find my true love. Expectations are what ruins most everything in my life, and this is no different. I look past character flaws, so eager to please, assume that any problems are solo my own.
I seem to be the best version of myself when I meet someone, but after a certain point I take away the good things, no longer feeling that intense passion. The more rope I give someone and the more they don't reciprocate, the more I withdraw. I hold myself to an insane standard, expecting nothing less than perfection in all aspects of my life.
So then I take offense to small slights. I am wounded by insults, sarcastic jokes, thinking back to years spent feeling like an asshole as I took the verbal abuse of girlfriends, friends, my father. I do have my father's martyr syndrome but with more than my fair share of sensitivity and open wound gushing. You can see the hurt on my face when you say it. That reaction is why they do it.
Why can't I be normal? Introverted yet wanting to be extroverted. I can't seem to shrug off all the inconsequential comments. They linger and feed on my insides. I massochistically whip myself with every awkward moment. I seem to enjoy this, want this, comfortable with this role of victim. It does save me from making others victims to my own behavior.
I have been the one that was insensitive, the one who hurt others and did whatever I felt, all while proclaiming my innocence. I'm not better then the other assholes I hate on that have hurt the girls I've been with. Just another mistake that causes them enough grief. All I can hope is that I'm such an asshole that they realize that they don't need to suffer such men.
Self-growth. That's what I see as the benefit of any relationship, no matter how traumatic. And usually I'm so prepared for the end, having spent weeks gearing up for the final act, that I don't feel much of anything once it's over and done. But now, and one other time, I'm the one that can't deal, that has the obsessive thoughts, that wants another moment with someone that we'd only wind up fighting in.
So it's time I actually learned from this pain. My time to improve myself. I know how I want to be, I just don't know how to get there. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and dissect myself like this and find out where I go wrong and what I need to do to get it right. I've indentified the pattern, and I've done things different so far, so what comes next?
K
I know what you're talking about, man, and I've been there before. It's like, no matter what you do to change things, things always stay the same, right? The same old patterns over and over.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to sound totally stupid, but remember that episode of Seinfeld where George does the exact opposite of whatever his instincts tell him to do? Try it. I swear, no matter how stupid it might be, give it a shot.
When you do, you realize that the same patterns always emerge because you probably exhibit the same behavior yourself, and that behavior will usually garner the same reaction from the world around you, making it feel like an inescapable trap.
So do the opposite of your instinct, and you'll see the patterns break down. To myself I call it "breaking the 4th wall," because that's kind of what it feels like. It feels like you're poking your head out your own little bubble of a world and seeing how the world really works, and how goofy people really are, and that everyone's all running by their own unchanging patterns and equations as well.
It's like 2+2 will always equal 4. So if you're in a 2 situation, you use a two behavior, and that makes the little 4 world that you live in. But if a 2 situation comes by again, and you pull an 8, all of a sudden you'll find yourself in a 10 world. If nothing else it'll show you that you're not trapped in a 4 if you don't want to be.
Ha! That was a dumb way of explaining it! But whatever, you get the point.
I'm up for a trip to the 10th dimension. I just don't know if I know how to go against my instincts. I usually freeze up in any given situation, so maybe I need to just charge forth in a situation and see what happens. Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. And I always identified with George anyways. Maybe I should be a bad boy...
ReplyDeleteIt's good that you recognize the stuff from early on in life. That's the stuff that carries over, the stuff that scars. Your parents, more than most, had no idea what they were doing...they were so young! When we get into relationships we generally try to recreate those traumatic relationships we had in the past so that we can fix them, but we can't fix them unless we're able to literally step outside of ourselves and see our patterns of behavior.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've been working on myself lately...really diagnosing my feelings. When I'm feeling angry, or frustrated I try to break those feelings down to their base components and figure out why. Nine times out of ten it's just some stupid emotional bullshit that can be tossed aside.