Jekyll/Hyde
Aug. 18th, 2003 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayA few realizations, today, largely unrelated.
For some combination of reasons, I've been depressed, almost despondent at times, since we got back Friday evening. And this has spun off my usual depression-parasitic reactions... increased insecurity, defiance, self-putdowns, clingyness. Strangely, my spirits were hugely lifted in a Krispy Kreme shop tonight when the counter guy handed me a warm doughnut... "you look like you could use this." Not on my waistline, perhaps, but that little act of kindness brought me out of a funk. Thankfully, my down periods rarely persist for more than a few days, and soon I'll be back at work (which tends to drag me out of a hole).
At work I feel in charge of myself, competent, capable and I have a track record of accomplishments. Self-confidence. I know my value, and can measure my past impact in a couple of fields. And I enjoy it -- I feel passionately about what I do, and learn. All of those things collude to bring me up and make me fully-functional again.
Personally or socially... I feel adrift, incompetent, and fairly unattractive. Like I have no accomplishments, and nothing much to offer personally. Left idle at home, or without positive external social reinforcement, I'll tend to damp down and gnaw on myself. And I'm not fishing for compliments here... I'm stating my mindset, whether or not it matches reality. One reason that I avoid planning a social calendar during the workweek is that subconsciously I associate it with this mindset. Brian-the-scientist doesn't want to think about turning back into Brian-the-geek, come Friday evening, or the possibilities for failure and rejection therein. Kind of a Jekyll/Hyde flip... and at the same time, I feel internally compelled to go out and find friends and be social. I can't just hide away until Monday morning.
Another realization, coming out of a 2-hour-long chat with my dear friend EA, is that my courting behaviors, manners, and attitudes are much closer to what girls are apparently taught than boys. I wait for the other person to make the first move. I dislike pursuing... I worry about harrassing or annoying women if I show much interest. I'd much rather wait until someone shows some signs of interest, then reciprocate. All of my five past-and-present sweeties kissed me first, probably after running out of patience (wry smile).patgreene claims that I moved first, but she's wrong ;-).
The same thing is true of casual touching... even with partners or close friends. I don't want to seem forward, or make the other person uncomfortable. I almost never reach for anyone. If someone takes my hand, fine, then I can safely assume that that level of touch is welcomed from then onward. But if I touch a woman who doesn't want my touch, I'm a bad person, a boor.
Even in the bedroom... I'm reluctant to be demanding or to impose anything on my partners... so I don't approach my partners unless they first seem interested themselves. Even if I'm really frustrated, myself. Unless I'm running out of time on an LDR visit... (reminisce).
Inculcated belief structure: approaching is aggressive. Aggression is bad...
EA's response was that she was confused, that these are things that women are often taught in this culture... and teasingly asked me what gender I was born ;-).
For some combination of reasons, I've been depressed, almost despondent at times, since we got back Friday evening. And this has spun off my usual depression-parasitic reactions... increased insecurity, defiance, self-putdowns, clingyness. Strangely, my spirits were hugely lifted in a Krispy Kreme shop tonight when the counter guy handed me a warm doughnut... "you look like you could use this." Not on my waistline, perhaps, but that little act of kindness brought me out of a funk. Thankfully, my down periods rarely persist for more than a few days, and soon I'll be back at work (which tends to drag me out of a hole).
At work I feel in charge of myself, competent, capable and I have a track record of accomplishments. Self-confidence. I know my value, and can measure my past impact in a couple of fields. And I enjoy it -- I feel passionately about what I do, and learn. All of those things collude to bring me up and make me fully-functional again.
Personally or socially... I feel adrift, incompetent, and fairly unattractive. Like I have no accomplishments, and nothing much to offer personally. Left idle at home, or without positive external social reinforcement, I'll tend to damp down and gnaw on myself. And I'm not fishing for compliments here... I'm stating my mindset, whether or not it matches reality. One reason that I avoid planning a social calendar during the workweek is that subconsciously I associate it with this mindset. Brian-the-scientist doesn't want to think about turning back into Brian-the-geek, come Friday evening, or the possibilities for failure and rejection therein. Kind of a Jekyll/Hyde flip... and at the same time, I feel internally compelled to go out and find friends and be social. I can't just hide away until Monday morning.
Another realization, coming out of a 2-hour-long chat with my dear friend EA, is that my courting behaviors, manners, and attitudes are much closer to what girls are apparently taught than boys. I wait for the other person to make the first move. I dislike pursuing... I worry about harrassing or annoying women if I show much interest. I'd much rather wait until someone shows some signs of interest, then reciprocate. All of my five past-and-present sweeties kissed me first, probably after running out of patience (wry smile).
patgreene claims that I moved first, but she's wrong ;-). The same thing is true of casual touching... even with partners or close friends. I don't want to seem forward, or make the other person uncomfortable. I almost never reach for anyone. If someone takes my hand, fine, then I can safely assume that that level of touch is welcomed from then onward. But if I touch a woman who doesn't want my touch, I'm a bad person, a boor.
Even in the bedroom... I'm reluctant to be demanding or to impose anything on my partners... so I don't approach my partners unless they first seem interested themselves. Even if I'm really frustrated, myself. Unless I'm running out of time on an LDR visit... (reminisce).
Inculcated belief structure: approaching is aggressive. Aggression is bad...
EA's response was that she was confused, that these are things that women are often taught in this culture... and teasingly asked me what gender I was born ;-).
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-08 12:04 pm (UTC)Fair enough. I think everyone needs that. It's what makes putting up with people worth it. But I think we've a fundamentally different view of how to measure that. I don't think I could ever be happy even trying to measure my fulfillment from a relationship by the other person's other relationships or interaction with others.
That doesn't stop me from noticing when a bunch of my friends are regularly going out [bowling] and I'm not invited. But if it's something I'd like to be doing, especially if with them, then I ask about it. (As you said you've worked lately to do as well.)
But it's important to me to not let what (my friends) A & B (who are also friends of similar importance/intimacy/duration/etc) do when they're together change my perception of my relationship with A or with B. I suspect that operating in your model, I would take it as a snub or rejection when they increased their frequency of get togethers from monthly to weekly while I stayed on roughly monthly terms with each (or either) of them. But it seems perfectly contrary to (what is at least for me) one of the core tenets of polyamorous identity - the believe that my relationship[love] with X does not diminish my relationship[love] with Y.
And in my view, E's bowling excursions, even with random strangers visiting from Indianapolis, should not diminish E's relationship with me, even if I'm not invited to participate in said bowling excursions, or don't manage to go bowling ever with E, as much as I may adore going bowling as much as I do E's company. I feel the same way about being on sexual, kissing, dinner, bdsm, road trip, late night IM, and even lj commenting terms. It may seem a pretty extreme level of abstraction to put all of these things on the same plate; but in my view they are.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-10 01:40 am (UTC)But their other relationships/interactions provide the only valid, independent metrics and calibration for that person's behavior. What does a kiss mean to them? Or volunteering to babysit? Or going bowling? Without these external metrics, I have no way to figure out where I currently stand in a given person's favor (or not).
And symbolism is critical to my self-esteem, in relationships and friendships. I need to be treated as the equal of B, with respect to A, if B and I are supposedly at a similar level of relationship or friendship to A. Not everything has to be identical, but there must be balance overall or I'll feel taken-for-granted.
would take it as a snub or rejection when they increased their frequency of get togethers from monthly to weekly while I stayed on roughly monthly terms with each (or either) of them.
Sort of... I'd interpret that my relationship was now less relatively important to A or B than the one between them. Which is likely to be true, in that case. It might leave me feeling reduced and thence rejected-in-part, or just as likely neutral or compersive (if my absolute position hasn't worsened WRT A and B individually).
I don't decouple each relationship or friendship from others... we don't exist in dyadic bubbles, but in dependent, ripple-prone networks. The eigenvectors are complex. (smile)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-10 02:26 am (UTC)I still don't get why these tokens need to be interpreted in terms of what they mean to A or to B rather than in what they mean to you? Why does it devalue to you a sincere offer to babysit if you know that similar offers are made to others?
I imagine that following your system I'd spend a lot of time paying attention to ranking everyone else's behaviour and being jealous of all the ways in which I wasn't ranked as highly as I'd like and generally dissatisfied with all of my relationships rather than happy for what time, attention, and affection I was freely given, and the ways in which that nourished and fulfilled me and thankful to my friends for providing that. I hope that's not the case for how it works for you - but that's why I can't make sense of your approach.
Glasses at half capacity with water and all that.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 01:26 pm (UTC)(grin) it doesn't! That's not my context. My context is: if offers to babysit are made to others, but not to me, then *I'm* devalued (not the offer) with respect to whatever set of others, in the network of the person making the babysitting offers.
If the given person makes babysitting offers to a stranger-with-kids he's just met, but I'm supposedly a close friend of his and he's never offered (or refused my past request), then my estimation of the value of my friendship in that person's eyes is placed lower than that of someone he's just met -- i.e., practically zero.
In a third-grade context... (grin)
If mommy gives all the other kids a cookie but won't give me one, that means that she must love all of them more than me... If she gives one to the new kid that just moved in down the street, but not to me, then she must not love me at all, because she doesn't love the new kid at all (and I'm even less important that he is, because he gets a cookie and I don't).
That's over-simplified, but how I feel about symbolism... especially for publicly-displayed things. The "cookie" may be unimportant in itself, but as a token it conveys information about the state of a given friendship or relationship.