Its been a rough go. Friendships that I once thought I could not live without have dissolved. I fought it, but I had to let go - or, let it ride - as my lunch companion said on Tuesday. She, of course, was right!
Tuesday felt like the first day in a long time that I have gone out and lived life, instead of letting life happen to me. I had lunch at a lovely tea room in Bel Air, with a gal whose stunning intellect is often - and, quite unfairly - underestimated because she also happens to be very attractive. Those who underestimate this lady do so at their own peril. I'm an exceptionally smart guy, and without being too self-inflated, I often find myself in situations where I might well be the smartest person in the room. That never happens in this friend's presence.
Our conversation had depth and ease in ample supply, and in equal measure. This is how I am supposed to interact - equally, and with a reciprocal sense of respect. My friend is happily married with a family of her own. So, there is not the stress of worrying with winning of affections, or having to impress the girl; and, my friend is going to help me better vet my choices of potential dating partners going forward. That will be fun, and hopefully she can talk some sense into me when I start short-changing my own needs in favor of simply having someone around even if it were to be at my own emotional expense. I know I don't need to do that; I'm going to count on my friend to remind me of that fact!
The place we went was really neat. It is a tea room in Bel Air, decorated in the style of an English country house. The tea was really good. The background music was nice. What I liked best about the place is that the entirety of the atmosphere is such that it encourages polite and engaging discourse. I can see the tea room being useful as a first date/date-ette venue. It was definitely something refreshingly different!
Today, thanks to enough time away from bad company, and thanks to keeping the kind of company that seeks to empower and to encourage, I took my first steps back in a positive direction with forward looking momentum.
I have a plan going forward. I am looking to meet a good woman, and I even have a lady in mind, maybe. But, now, I have greater demands of a potential relationship partner beyond simply being mutually available. I am looking for someone who is at least 35 years old. I am looking for a woman who, like me and my friend, could easily get lost in a three-hour, five-pots-of-tea kinda conversation. I am looking for someone who possesses similar values, so as to avoid being unequally yoked, socially speaking, like it says in the Good Book. And, this gentleman prefers redheads!
It is hard to let bad relationships that once felt good die. But, sometimes you have to gentleman up, take the hit, grieve the loss, but ultimately find a way to move on. I think, for me, lunch with my friend started that journey! Hurt and worry, for me, have obfuscated my ability to realize and enjoy the abundant blessings I am fortunate to enjoy. My happiness should never have been about acceptance from others. Self-acceptance is still a challenge for me, but I'm going to try to walk in those new shoes for awhile. Hopefully, it will eventually prove to be a comfortable fit!
"Four Seasons: Spring", Antonio Vivaldi.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
Ch-ch-ch-changes!
Sometimes, I surround myself with the wrong people for the right reasons - a need to increase the scope of my social circle, to broaden my horizons. At first, its great! It feels like what I have been looking for. The unfortunate truth is, these situtations mostly end up having been an opportunistic situation that saw me coming. Popularity has never been my domain. I am, in and of my own general intention, not popular. I have friends who are, but I am - by deliberate choice - not.
I hope for others to see in me qualities I refuse to see in myself. I look for other people to validate for me the man that I am. I give (and practically force upon them) the very best of who I am, I guess, in a subconscious attempt to have them validate the worth of that person as someone to be proud of and to cherish. I go to great lengths to keep that validation coming, often to the point of excessive generosity, without the expectation of any other type of reciprocity. Invariably, this always turns into a situation where my own largesse becomes expected, the validation that I receive gradually dwindles, and I end up feeling used by people whom I thought were, and who may very well have honestly intended to be, my friends. I blame this paradigm shift in my friendships on my own lack of establishing boundaries with others. For me, there are no boundaries. I do not accept myself, so I need others to accept me. So, I pick up tabs, and overlook spoiled plans, and ignore small, hurtful things that are said and done. Then, it gets worse. The friends end up getting annoyed. Once I put them on a pedestal of worship, I subtend my own quid pro quo expectations of the friendship to the acceptance of them simply allowing me to be around them, as though I were some socially inept pariah, and they were some beatific benefactor of social inclusion for me. It seems to me that once I diefy someone, I can no longer exist at an equal level which rightfully seeks out an equal investment into the relationship, which is what I ought to demand from the get-go. When that equal investment is withheld, I feel slighted. This time, it has gone really quite horribly wrong.
A year and a half ago, I fell in with a group who were all, by age or by mindset, much "younger" than I. Inasmuch, these folks haven't taken the lumps in life of someone who has worked in the same career for 15 or 20 years, or taken the lumps that one takes simply along the journey to crossing the threshold of 40 years lived. That is not their fault.
What is their fault, I think, is that at some point they must realize that they have devalued - quite possibly by way of my own actions - my sense of worth in their own eyes and minds and hearts, yet they continue to willfully reap the benefits of my continued excessive generosity toward them. Then, when I have tried to call them down from the pedestal I've placed them on, they get irritated. For the most part, they want to do what feels right for them, without any thought of what I need from them as a friend.
When I try to process with them my lack of acceptance especially in regard to trying to find a romantic relationship (not with them), they casually say things like there has to be some kind of chemical spark of attractiveness which they generally think I do not possess; or, that women are not going to be attracted to someone they consider to be "gross", which is apparently a quality that at least one of these friends from the last year and a half thinks I have a lock on. Yes, that person used the actual term gross.
That always and invariably brings me to the point where I find myself now. A point where there can exist no common ground or reciprocal care, compassion, or loyalty. I am an introvert. For the last year and a half I have tried to take on the persona of an extravert. In the process, all I really accomplished was to don the emporer's new clothes. There were a few manipulative suitors who hoodwinked me into beleiving I had a place of equal standing in their world; but mostly, there are just alot of otherwise and generally good people who clearly see my attempt to "fit in" for the fool's errand that it proved to be. Then when I tried to reassert my true self and to establish the proper reciprocal boundaries among this group, it seems they were no longer interested and would rather make mockery of the folly of my own creation, and would rather laugh at me than to laugh with me - and, I most definitely am not above laughing at myself.
These are not bad people. In fact, I still, in many ways, consider each of them friends. Unfortunately, many of them showed themselves to be more opportunistic than empathic, more using than empowering. The relationships became toxic. I found myself in a situation where the best thing for everyone was for me to remove myself from the situation, and to move on, away from them, and in a new direction.
Now is the time for me to salvage the few, true, undamaged and uncompromised friendships that remain, and to move on to establish a new social presence that, this time, does not rely on trying to cajole other people to buy into my intrinsic worth, but rather relies upon buying into it, and eventually owning it, myself.
To the friends who remain, and to those from whom I now must take leave, I wish to express my ever grateful, and heartfelt appreciation. Although every friendship did not work out well, you all have been a blessing in my life, each in your own special way. I wish every one of you all the very best that life has to offer, and mostly, I just want for you to be happy!
"Don't Come Around Here No More", Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
I hope for others to see in me qualities I refuse to see in myself. I look for other people to validate for me the man that I am. I give (and practically force upon them) the very best of who I am, I guess, in a subconscious attempt to have them validate the worth of that person as someone to be proud of and to cherish. I go to great lengths to keep that validation coming, often to the point of excessive generosity, without the expectation of any other type of reciprocity. Invariably, this always turns into a situation where my own largesse becomes expected, the validation that I receive gradually dwindles, and I end up feeling used by people whom I thought were, and who may very well have honestly intended to be, my friends. I blame this paradigm shift in my friendships on my own lack of establishing boundaries with others. For me, there are no boundaries. I do not accept myself, so I need others to accept me. So, I pick up tabs, and overlook spoiled plans, and ignore small, hurtful things that are said and done. Then, it gets worse. The friends end up getting annoyed. Once I put them on a pedestal of worship, I subtend my own quid pro quo expectations of the friendship to the acceptance of them simply allowing me to be around them, as though I were some socially inept pariah, and they were some beatific benefactor of social inclusion for me. It seems to me that once I diefy someone, I can no longer exist at an equal level which rightfully seeks out an equal investment into the relationship, which is what I ought to demand from the get-go. When that equal investment is withheld, I feel slighted. This time, it has gone really quite horribly wrong.
A year and a half ago, I fell in with a group who were all, by age or by mindset, much "younger" than I. Inasmuch, these folks haven't taken the lumps in life of someone who has worked in the same career for 15 or 20 years, or taken the lumps that one takes simply along the journey to crossing the threshold of 40 years lived. That is not their fault.
What is their fault, I think, is that at some point they must realize that they have devalued - quite possibly by way of my own actions - my sense of worth in their own eyes and minds and hearts, yet they continue to willfully reap the benefits of my continued excessive generosity toward them. Then, when I have tried to call them down from the pedestal I've placed them on, they get irritated. For the most part, they want to do what feels right for them, without any thought of what I need from them as a friend.
When I try to process with them my lack of acceptance especially in regard to trying to find a romantic relationship (not with them), they casually say things like there has to be some kind of chemical spark of attractiveness which they generally think I do not possess; or, that women are not going to be attracted to someone they consider to be "gross", which is apparently a quality that at least one of these friends from the last year and a half thinks I have a lock on. Yes, that person used the actual term gross.
That always and invariably brings me to the point where I find myself now. A point where there can exist no common ground or reciprocal care, compassion, or loyalty. I am an introvert. For the last year and a half I have tried to take on the persona of an extravert. In the process, all I really accomplished was to don the emporer's new clothes. There were a few manipulative suitors who hoodwinked me into beleiving I had a place of equal standing in their world; but mostly, there are just alot of otherwise and generally good people who clearly see my attempt to "fit in" for the fool's errand that it proved to be. Then when I tried to reassert my true self and to establish the proper reciprocal boundaries among this group, it seems they were no longer interested and would rather make mockery of the folly of my own creation, and would rather laugh at me than to laugh with me - and, I most definitely am not above laughing at myself.
These are not bad people. In fact, I still, in many ways, consider each of them friends. Unfortunately, many of them showed themselves to be more opportunistic than empathic, more using than empowering. The relationships became toxic. I found myself in a situation where the best thing for everyone was for me to remove myself from the situation, and to move on, away from them, and in a new direction.
Now is the time for me to salvage the few, true, undamaged and uncompromised friendships that remain, and to move on to establish a new social presence that, this time, does not rely on trying to cajole other people to buy into my intrinsic worth, but rather relies upon buying into it, and eventually owning it, myself.
To the friends who remain, and to those from whom I now must take leave, I wish to express my ever grateful, and heartfelt appreciation. Although every friendship did not work out well, you all have been a blessing in my life, each in your own special way. I wish every one of you all the very best that life has to offer, and mostly, I just want for you to be happy!
"Don't Come Around Here No More", Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
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