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4lorne2 · 1 year

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We got together in person and since that day the relationship was never the same.

I thought it went fine. I was tired and stressed from driving. I think that I talked too much and listened too little. I didn’t reveal any of the carefully guarded secrets about myself I had imagined doing. I didn’t ask the questions about her that I wish I had. But it was fine.

Since then, though, it’s as if whatever was driving the relationship mutually came to an end. It’s not like she was in any way lesser than what I had hoped she would be. I wonder if she thinks that I was somehow disappointed with her or didn’t like her. That’s how I imagine she felt about me.

Probably the whole process just made the friendship feel more significant than anything it actually was. Getting together felt “normal,” even “mundane.” Was that a let down for her? For me?

My pattern is to get too attached, to get swept up in my fantasies and longings, likely at the expense of any connection with others. I feel so frustrated with my propensity to fall in love so quickly. Maybe it makes others appreciate me to some degree. I’m so giving and appreciative right off the bat; it must make other people feel validated. It probably also comes off as a bit desperate. Even more than that though, I think it keeps me from actually connecting with anyone. The stakes become so artificially high that I can’t risk my feelings getting out into the open.

It just feels impossible. I feel everything in that early period too acutely. Small joys become large and minor absences and disconnects gnaw at me. Love is a heightened state, but the way I experience it is maddeningly isolating. The feelings are just such a burden. They’re so disproportionate to anything that would be reasonable to feel. They become a source of embarrassment and pain. And it just feels like as long as my social life is so scant, this will never change. My feelings will always be out of proportion to the actual relationships it’s possible for me to have. My desires will always overshadow the reality and make me at odds with it.

And so, after feeling too much, after being in pain and resenting my own predisposition to put myself in this state I pull back. I stop giving the little, guarded parts of myself and the excessive whole that comes with them. I retreat and I heal. I need it. I come back to myself. Only, now I’m alone again. Now there’s an even bigger gap than the one I’d been maintaining in our interactions in the past. It all comes to an abrupt end. I feel ok again, but I’m left wishing more fervently that this wasn’t the path I was forced to take.

Look. The truth is that she was never very giving towards me. I mirrored some aspects of her aloofness, but I do feel she never wanted to give that much to me. I wanted to much, but she also gave too little.

It wasn’t a good fit. Even if she’s exactly a person I’d like to try to love, there needs to be a shared commitment to building something common? How much further could I have gone? What could I have revealed? What could I have asked for?

I keep it all in reserve. Better to be nothing than, a brief detour in an otherwise full life, than to be an obstacle, to insist on my presence and make demands like a troll under a bridge who set foot on the piece of land that is me. Better to hurt myself than to hurt someone else. I can carry the pain and longing and sadness. I can be the one who allows others to walk all over me. Like the giving tree, I can give up my existence so that others might live in my place.

Why shouldn’t I live? I don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want to make life, which is already bad, worse. I’m not worthy of love. That’s the cliche, right. Only by letting myself be weak can others live lives free of my foolishness and imbecility.

Why am I unworthy? Because I don’t want to be worthy. I don’t want to try to live up to any standards. So I’m just nothing.

Of course, I do want to live up to standards. I just don’t want to try. I just don’t want to fail anymore. I just can’t do it. I just can’t keep torturing myself. I’m just waiting for my life to end. Whether that’s tomorrow or in 50 years.

Small things do give me joy. I do dream about making something I can be proud of. I can’t let go of the wish to be in love. But I’m just too ashamed of myself. And it’s because I’m ashamed of myself that I’m not worthy.

I’d like to stop being ashamed. To be able to boast loudly about being stupid, and ugly, and weak. It’s not too late but I won’t do it. There’s no one who’d be worth doing it for in my life. Especially not me.

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4lorne2 · 1 year

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It’s interesting how I’m both very self indulgent and very disciplined. With my media habits, with pot, maybe less so with food. Interesting contradiction there to explore

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4lorne2 · 1 year

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So the answer to all my theoretical mumbo jumbo is just to try to meet people and see what happens, but with dating apps feeling like my only option for that it all seems kind of pointless. Anyway, I’ll indulge myself regardless.

How do I square a desire for an intellectually stimulating, mutually admirational, self-enriching relationship with a desire for domineering, objectifying sex? Presumably in a perfect world you could have both, or you could get them from different places. But I’m not sure I know how to want 1 without the other and that seems to pose problems for my ability to have either.

The weird thing is that in me, these two forms of desire have become coupled despite originating from entirely separate sources. The former has always been at the center of my actual relationships with people, while the latter is firmly entrenched in pornography fueled fantasy.

And although there’s nothing overtly gender specific about the former desire, it seems totally wrapped up with gendered desires and physical attraction to women. It’s based on the former that I develop a crush and start desiring the latter.

I’m at the point where I’m fighting against myself, trying to embrace the possibility of fulfilling my desire for the former at the expense of letting go of its coexistence with my desire for the latter. Even as I should be happy about meeting someone who can satisfy the first desire, the disappointment that she won’t satisfy the desire for the latter gnaws at me. Perhaps I shouldn’t jump to conclusions about this, but holding onto the blind hope that this relationship will facilitate the latter seems reckless at best.

The solution seems to be to go out and look for this kind of a sexual relationship in another context, but that bumps up against my own lack of confidence with that level. The intellectual connection is the one that I’m much better suited to make. If that could help me connect with someone, building the trust to explore my feelings about sex, that seems like it would be ideal. But those kind of intellectual connections have been exceedingly rare in my life. We’re talking about a small handful of girls (prob more to do with my withdrawn character and selfish lifestyle more than the availability of women who would meet my standards, but still a major obstacle).

Leading with the sexual desire would be like trying to lead with my weaknesses rather than my strengths. I’ve never succeeded in connecting with anyone on a primarily sexual level. Plus, it bumps up against my own shame about the way that I experience sexual desire. It’s hard to lead with something where you have no experience or comfort level, but I guess that’s what I’d have to try. I want the emotional connection. Maybe it could be fulfilled this way, not in the way I’m used to.

And as for my discomfort with the sexual desire itself, how do you pursue something where shame and embarrassment overwhelm the desire itself. It just feels impossible and like I have no recourse, no source of support or help to address this. That’s why I want the intellectual connection to be able to have someone to discuss this with, but can discussion without the possibility of physical intimacy actually make a difference? I can “discuss “ these things in writing and it hardly makes a difference.

So instead I’m left with the prospect of going on dating apps and trying to be sexual first and foremost, something I’m not at all comfortable with. And why can’t the sexual relationship have the intellectual component? But leading with the intellectual is just going to narrow the pool of possible partners. Something that already feels like a major issue.

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4lorne2 · 1 year

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I feel like when we interact too much it actually makes me sad. I just feel like I have nothing to offer beyond tennis. And that’s the person I’ve made myself into.

I want to be impressive, desirable, attractive, but I also don’t. I want to do things for myself, not for anyone else, but other people still make me feel sad.

If my sadness was worth something, if it was getting me somewhere, but it’s not. What’s the point in forcing myself to feel this way. It’s almost like I’m torturing myself. And for what, a couple hours together after months of unease and anxiety. I just don’t get how it could be worth it.

It makes me want to call the whole thing off. You don’t need me. I may want you, but it’s a nonsense desire. As soon as I let it get this far it was just going to cause me pain. And for what? Why is some ideal worth suffering for? Some ideal that I’ll always be inadequate for.

I really want to be in love. I want someone to be in love with. Some of my desires are about you, but a lot of them are just pure loneliness and selfish desire to possess another. They’re desires where who you are almost doesn’t matter. I just want someone to be enamored with to be able to open up to.

I just don’t get what can be done with these desires, these desires that are totally unmoored from any real person. I’ll never have that person because they’re not a real person, they’re an ideal. And yet I can’t stop feeling them. And how would you find someone to love if you weren’t starting off with some abstract desires that push you towards them.

Still, I guess at some point you have to build something on that ideal foundation and maybe what hurts me is that I can’t do that. I have nothing to build with. I wanted it that way, but it’s also crushing. Letting that ideal desire in just makes me feel worse.

I’m thinking of giving up for good. It’s better for me to go back to being alone. Suffering for nothing, being too weak to do anything about the fact that ur suffering, that’s the part that makes no sense. I give up

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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When people talk about their dreams, what I want to know is not what they dream, but how they dream them.

I’m not referring to literal dreams, but rather figurative ones. To the possible futures they desire. To the moments of imaginary pleasure encased like the houses inside a snow globe.

Do others dream take story form or are they still lifes? Do they control their dreams, entering and exiting at will? Do they conceive of the premise before or after?

My dreams take me by surprise. I do not know that I am dreaming them. It is only when an idea has flashed by me: her working for an NGO, me at home taking care of the kids, that I catch myself wondering what was that?

Was that a stock image implanted in my head? An outfit to try on and discard? Or, do I really want that?

Does everyone dream like this? Do they know there dreams as dreams, or only as nightmares?

What if the voice in our head is an agent of our dreams. Insisting on them before we know to want them.

I’m past having anything interesting to say, but I don’t think I used to dream this way. I don’t think I dreamed at all. All my dreams are about you.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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In bed, thoughts swirling. Words spoken racing through my head. Interactions revisited over and over again.

I’ve done this many times before, but not quite like this. It’s less butterflies in my stomach and more buzzing in my head. It actually might be too much, talking with you.

I couldn’t focus on the tennis match after our interaction yesterday. Couldn’t see connections or patterns, just awash in the swirl of my feelings.

And what are these thoughts that swirl in my head. They’re corny and cliche. They flit by and exasperate me. I dismiss them with a sigh, but can’t discount their existence. Being a stay at home father for our kids. Rehearsing a story of our meeting on social media to tell to others. These aren’t things that I want, but apparently I desire them. They bubble up to the surface and I pop them. But that they’re there at all is mildly exasperating. I don’t actually think it’s that I want these things. I think they’re cultural ideals. I think that they’re romantic possibilities that swirl in my head because they’re the more obvious facets of what love makes possible. I think less relevant than anything is the fact that you inspire them in me like no one else. I’m not going to have these hallmarks of a “normal” romance, but the pleasure and shame of wanting them for an instant is gripping in its own way. It’s just the way my mind spins and jumps in circles like an excited yippy dog. It’s deeply strange and uncomfortable, but also enthralling.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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I’ve been feeling something like the moral weight of being in love. It feels “wrong” to me that I think about this person as much as I do and have allowed them to take on a staring role in my desires.

Why does it feel wrong? For one, it feels like I do not know them “well enough” to justify my feelings. It would almost be better if they were someone I didn’t know at all. At least with a celebrity crush the entire thing is based on projection and there’s no chance of actually developing the relationship WITH that person. In my situation, there’s enough we share to hold onto some kind of belief in growing something together. But it’s still very remote and thus my hopes that I can’t quite suppress feel like an unnecessary burden. Paradoxically, the actual possibility of being with someone else makes me feel more lonely. I think it makes me moodier too. There’s real jealousy and bitterness that I can’t help but project onto them. I imagine them “living it up” and it tears at me, even tho it has nothing to do with me or any of the prospects. I’ve been holding onto this chance to meet them, a date when it might happen, for well over a month, anticipating it more than I feel I should be. Looking at it from a distance it feels stupid, like I’m setting myself up for disappointment, but I can’t help but imagine it. My desire just runs rampant over all good sense and the fact that I can’t control this desire, even as I see it taking me down a dangerous path, is uncomfortable and even a bit scary.

The other reason why my love feels wrong is less about our circumstances and more about mine.9”

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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Sometimes I wish I had poetry. I dream of being able to spin something that glitters and sparkles, instead of a dull, gray coil.

I’ll try with my fantasies:

We’re sitting on the ground, cross legged, warming ourselves from the light of the screen, a laptop placed directly in front of us. We’re in your friends apartment and we’ve found a corner to watch tennis together after the rest have gone to bed.

It’s a brisk fall day in Boston, but in Guadalajara, where the woman play deep into the night, it’s warm and bright. I’ve been wanting to watch tennis with you as long as I’ve known you. Or maybe even before then. Did I really know you, or were we just passing superfluous notes across the digital classroom?

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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So, Gravity’s Rainbow is legit about the relationship between ballistic missiles and erections. Seriously, lol. It’s pretty good I guess, although I’m not reading with enough purpose to be able to tell you the actual point.

It’s sort of about control/intention versus randomness and chance. And it is interesting to think about sexual desire along that axis.

Like, it does seem like art and criticism eschew this topic, don’t take it seriously. Or else just deem it too opaque to actually explore. Everything is about sexual identity, which is really about making our sex lives acceptable to others. Or, it’s safety and control: safe-sex, consent, etc.

It’s never about desire and the random arbitrariness combined with the socially overdetermined nature of it all. Like, nothing about what we desire is natural and it’s all so hyper specific. It makes the concept of sexual identities seem way to broad.

I mean, I get it. I’ve never felt desire for a man, so it seems to work pretty well in that respect, but just saying that I like women seems pretty far from the mark too.

I get trying to make it legible for others, but these things make your sexuality opaque to individuals when they’re all the culture educates us about. And they totally fail to get at how what turns you on is so situational, it can hardly be generalized in that way.

Like, I was never interested in overweight woman. But then I was with an overweight girl, and now I am. Was that always there in me? Was it a result of our relationship? And it’s not all plus size women either. There’s specific shit, preferences about appearance and body type, and a lot of it is totally different than the way she looked.

Then there’s the way fantasy intersects with reality. The sense that what turns us on isn’t something we actually want, just an image in our minds that holds it all together, but if we try to make it real the whole system falls apart. Don’t even get me started on how confusing that is to actually act on.

The hardest thing with all of this is reconciling cause and effect with chance. You like this because of that, but you weren’t looking for “that” at the time it just fell into your lap. Desire is always a moving target. How do you hit something that only becomes clear after the fact. How do you pursue desire without making an ass of yourself. How do you take responsibility for your desires when they’re so far out of your control, or even your knowledge of them.

There’s a bawdy song in the book and the refrain is basically about thinking that your penis was your own, only to realize it’s not. It’s animated by something else, and you’re along for the ride. It just confounds intentionality at every turn.

Mass media, particularly porn, play such a big role in shaping our sexuality. And I find the hardest thing to be taking responsibility for it. Nothing feels farther from who I am and what I want to share with the world that the porn I watch.

Some of it is porn in general. It’s seedy. It’s often exploitative. It’s opaque in terms of its form and content, as well as the conditions of its production. You could track all that info down, and maybe you should, but I really don’t want to. Maybe it would ruin the “fantasy”, maybe not. The larger point is that I don’t want to think about porn for a minute longer than I have to. That’s something that makes sex work so dangerous and exploitable.

Some of that unwillingness to learn about it is clearly me, but more of it is how these topics are talked about in media and society. Where is there to go to learn about porn that isn’t a gross place on its own terms. I know there are loads of crappy documentaries. Maybe I should try to watch them. But what are those sorts of content really about? It feels like its all there just to titillate in its own way. Like a fantasy of an industry, rather than something I could actually grab onto and embrace. My own failings here for sure, but maybe not only them.

Then there’s the content of the porn itself.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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Why is sex so tied to shame? Sure, there’s all the religious puritanical BS: purity, virginity, etc. but that stuff all feels like it’s mostly directed at women to control their bodies. Ironically, what I feel is totally the opposite: the shame of not having enough sex, of not being confident and vocal about sex.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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I’m trying to make the best of it this time. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a real crush, and this is honestly one of only a small handful that have been based on sustained interaction with the person in question. Yes, the interactions have been over the internet, vis a messaging app, but since I tend toward personality based attraction, rather than physical ones, that’s not that surprising, even though it is new.

In the past, I’ve tried to modify my behavior to facilitate a different result, but things have never ended well. I’m still so hung up on actually sharing my feelings, I’d like to do it, but it seems inappropriate based on an entirely internet relationship. What would I want it to mean, to lead to? Just because I have feelings doesn’t mean that I should share them. I’m trying to be as honest and affectionate as possible without making any demands on her, and she’s been consistently reciprocating in her own way. What more can I ask for than that.

She’s said she wants to work with me on something. This could be an attempt to set boundaries, or it might not be. She’s previously expressed how strongly she feels about the concept of a creative partnership. I don’t have enough to go on to make sense of it. It’s also a much clearer statement about what she wants out of our relationship. She’s the one who suggested we meet. She’s the one who suggested we work together. I haven’t made any statements about what I want, both because I don’t really know and also because what I want is a lot, more than the current bounds of our relationship can allow. If I’m going to go down this road, although I “want” her: romantically, physically, socially, what I want most of all is someone I can admit things about myself to.

Most of my life I’ve been deeply averse to the thought of telling anyone else how I feel. There are a lot of things I’m willing to tell others, but I think what I’m really talking about is someone to talk about my insecurities with, particularly the ones related to sex, love, and interpersonal relationships. It’s just weird because talking about that stuff is almost too vulnerable for me to want to do on the internet. It also comes with a lot of additional pressure. How do you share those kinds of things with another person without making your relationship about those things. Would I like to have those things with her. Yes, but I’d rather just be able to talk about those things and feel like I could trust her to do that with me. It’s just a difficult thing to tell someone else that that’s what you want. I just can’t talk about these things casually either. They’re just wrapped up with so much shame and self-loathing that I just casually drop them, and it feels like a pretty sensitive thing to go the other route, which is, instead of talking about these things, to talk about your desire to talk about these things.

Of course, the other thing I could do is just to make it all as simple and vague as possible. Part of me just wants to tell her that I want her so badly, more than I’ve wanted anyone in years, and leave it at that. The sheer boldness of doing that is appealing to me. I’d desperately love to see how she’d respond to that, even though it’s also terrifying. Ultimately I don’t know that it’s the right approach, especially over the internet, but probably in person too. The biggest problem with it is that it gives her all the power to define what the relationship means. Saying “I want you” means everything and nothing. In a sense it means, I want you any way you’re willing to be had. That’s fine and all. There’s an elegance to that I like. I don’t mind being submissive, but it’s not that simple. There’s something to be said for taking a stand for what you actually want, not just being prepared to take what you can get. Especially because we don’t actually know each other that well.

So ultimately I think it’s more the right move to lead with the more specific sense of what I want. Honestly, what I’d want most is to be able to show her these journals. Sharing these would kind of be the epitome of what I want. It’s a blend of my emotions and desire for intimacy, but founded in my abilities as a writer. These entries are vulnerable, but more than that, I think they’re full of genuinely insightful things that I have to say about my life. I want to share them with other people. But they’re raw, and just not something I have the audience for. I guess that’s what I want in a way. An audience that I believe will appreciate me. It’s funny to put my desire into a desire for an audience, but it’s probably fitting given that in my life I’ve been an audience member so so often. It feels like the form that some of my most intimate and personal relationships have taken, and not in a way that I’m ashamed of, or feel was lacking.

And yet even as there is something distinctly intimate and flattering about wanting someone else to be your personal audience member, it’s also fundamentally a way of keeping them at a distance. Although you might have particular desires about who your ideal audience member would be, it’s often been said that artists, entertainers, and educators imagine their own audience and bring them into being through their work, there’s also a sense in which an audience member could be anyone. It’s not a deeply personal arrangement. There are many things about a prospective audience member you do not need to know and do not intend to ask. It’s also deeply one sided, at least in its typical form. Although you want to find particular qualities in your audience, you do not actually expect anything back from them. It’s not entirely one way, but what exchange there is is centered on the performer’s desires.

However, even with these caveats, I still think that the desire for an audience is the right way to articulate my feelings. It accounts for how I can feel so strongly while only knowing relatively little about her. It corresponds to my desires about being able to share myself through a juxtaposition revelation and artistry. And, most importantly, it leaves room for something more that I want that exceeds the metaphor.

I do not envision an audience as someone purely passive. In fact, how another responds to being cast in the role of the audience is perhaps what I desire to see most. I want to put up that barrier, but with the knowledge that it is as thin as the movie screen that characters sometimes rip through in fits of cinema induced delusion; as non existent as the barrier that separates actors on stage from their audience in the seats. I want her to break the tacit agreed upon rules. I want her to break the illusion. I want her to reveal that after all I am human and so is she, and that she is not content to simply be my audience. I want her to want to become involved. To interject in ways that are inappropriate.

It’s not just a fetish. It’s very close to some of my deeply held convictions about people and the bonds between them. Ultimately, there is a distance, a desire to be understood along with its impossibility. And yet for another person to desire to understand, to show that they feel the need to, and to do what they can to put that desire into action, to make it into the basis for a shared commitment to building something together, which, given the distances between them, should not be able to exist. This is ultimately the form that the ideal relationship takes for me.

Perhaps she wants to be my collaborator in that sense. She can’t know though. Can’t be thinking of performance and reception in quite the way I am can she? Maybe she can. I don’t know.

But there is one further point to make in all of this, which is that, in the first place, wanting her to be my audience is more than just a general desire. It is something she has specifically brought on in me. This is not to say that the desire is unique to her, but it is shaped by her presence specifically.

I began by saying that in the past when I have had these kinds of feelings I have focused on modifying my behavior. But today, I am trying instead to be extremely aware of the specifics of my desire and to control what I can control. Specifically, this means being aware of how her presence in my life has made me feel and learning to appreciate that without letting what I think that I want supersede what I have.

In the past, I have felt these intense feelings, the anxieties, the frustrations, and I have looked to move beyond them, sought to get to what lies past them, what I thought to be love, companionship, intimacy, etc. But what I think now is that my ideas about what these feelings could lead to are foggy at best and deeply prescriptive and naive at worst. I think that I rendered myself unable to appreciate this state. Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but it is also deeply activating, opening me up to feelings and ideas that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to. There’s a sense where some of these feelings are not so far removed from the ones that I feel for my favorite tennis players. Anxious, sensitive, frustrated, ready to succumb to the inevitability of frustration, but also deeply life affirming. Alert and aware to myself in the world in a way that sometimes make other sides of experience feel numb by comparison.

Yes, this can be too much. It can filter over into other aspects of life. I cannot watch a movie or read a book about love, and sex, and desire without being drawn back to the intense feelings within me. The art only forces my gaze back on myself. But there is also real potential in these feelings. For the first time in years the conditions of my life don’t feel quite as settled. Small as it may be, there is a chance that there could be something different for me. And I want it in this moment. Even if I know it is unlikely. Even if it’s only because of the way that I feel now.

I don’t want to feel this way forever. I do often reflect back on my life just a few months ago, before these feelings were known to me at all. Before I made an unfamiliar step out into the world and found her out there. I wasn’t struggling in quite the way that I am now. Didn’t have her words replaying in my head. Didn’t have to agonize over all the things that I both want and don’t want to say to her. But instead of getting upset. Instead of wishing I could go back or obsessing yet again about how badly I want to ho forward, I’m trying to be present in this, in my thoughts and feelings as they are now.

In these journalings, I am trying to wring every bit of reflection out of this moment that I can. When I first spoke to her, I described my attitude towards relationships as selfish. I told her that I didn’t mind disclosing things about myself to her because I got something out of it too. The chance to reframe and reiterate the circumstances of my life, the chance to try to make sense with them for myself. Even if I never share these things with her. Even if she never becomes more than just an audience member, in the most general and anonymous sense of the word, I’m still going to try to be grateful for the opportunity to know myself better because of her. I might want more, but really, this is all I can ask for.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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I can sense the pattern repeating.

I have a problem with affection. I am drawn to people that I admire, but as I get closer to them I begin to feel inadequate. I feel pressure to prove my worth, to show value with my achievements. It’s not a position that I want to be in. I want my work to be fulfilling in and of itself, not for it to be my only means towards validation.

I get jealous very quickly of what people receive from others. I feel left out. I feel insignificant.

I tend to be enamored with one person at a time. They’re enough for me, but I never feel like I’m enough for them. Nor should I be. It’s not fair to expect someone to make time only for me and they likely wouldn’t be the kind of person I’d admire if I did. But when something comes along that makes me aware of how little they need me and how much they are getting from others, it makes me feel really bad.

The feelings way me down. It’s harder to find joy in our interactions. It’s harder to believe in myself. And so I retreat inward. I lose the desire to socialize altogether. I turn to games, movies, sports, whatever I can throw myself into without recourse to the outside world. It makes me happy, but it doesn’t change anything and it doesn’t help me maintain my friendships.

And I don’t really know what happens after that. In the recent past that’s where the relationship more or less ends. The dynamic sours and it doesn’t turn back around.

What are you supposed to do when interactions with a person that were bringing you joy, suddenly only make you feel self conscious and jealous. How do you overcome that dynamic and get back to enjoying their company again? Is it even possible? Honestly, I don’t know.

This is where the thought creeps in that I have to tell them how I feel. That all my talk about continuing to be there and leave the nature of the relationship open amounts to remaining in a situation that makes me feel unhappy.

Why can’t there be a middle ground? Why do my feelings have to be so strong? Why do I have to get so attached so quickly? It would be beyond unreasonable to expect anyone to get attached to me the way I do to them. I just want a relationship/friendship/whatever that makes me happy, but it never feels like it can be that way.

Maybe if I had more friends I wouldn’t get so attached to every new one I make? But I struggle to make friends generally. It’s true that I don’t need every friend to be perfect. Maybe I expect every relationship to make me fall in love. I set the bar too high and end up with nothing. But I don’t even know if relationships with people I like less would solve this problem. Sharing an interest with someone you basically like, but aren’t crazy about is fine, but would it change anything about how I feel with someone I really do like?

And what would I tell them? I know we don’t know each other well yet, but I already feel so attached to you and it hurts me to feel like I’m less important to you than you are to me? It may be true, but it’s not fair. It makes no sense for someone else with so many more options to want to protect my feelings. It all feels ridiculous. It makes me feel pathetic.

But I guess I am pathetic. And it’s just my pride standing in the way of admitting it, exactly what I wanted to avoid. But even if I did admit it, what would be the best case scenario or even the most likely scenario? What am I actually asking for?

It feels like what I need is to feel that there is a balance, and that’s why I pull away to try to level the field. But that’s not the way to maintain the friendship, or to be particularly fair to the friend.

All my disclosures. All my vulnerability. They only create expectations that go unfulfilled. They only make me feel worse. But what else can I do?

I can keep going the way things are going and allow the emotions weigh me down. I can pull away and risk undermining the friendship. I can admit the truth about how I feel in all it’s selfish, impotent, glory. Or I can simply admit the pattern, say I don’t know how to overcome it and that for now I have to follow it.

What’s the best option?

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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Tell Them How You Feel

But how do you know when and how much to tell? I’m attracted to you? I have a crush on you? I’m in love with you?

In theory, it’s never too early. Why wait? Time is of the essence. You don’t want to miss your chance.

But how do you know how you feel and what do you hope to achieve by sharing it?

By making this sort of disclosure, you put the ball in their court. You give them the power to respond, but you also force their hand.

A relationship is like a dune buggy cruising off road in the desert. It can go anywhere. But by making this disclosure, you’ve placed an obstacle in its path, they must react, or you will both crash.

And for what? What is attraction and where should it lead? To bed? To domesticity? To dependance?

Instead of sharing how you feel, you could share who you are. Use feelings of affection as an opportunity to expose yourself.

You’re the one who should bear the burden of disentangling your feelings and making sense of, not them. Do the work for yourself and share the fruits of your labor.

After all, what do your feelings say about you? It is flattering to be told that someone finds you desirable, but it’s also fleeting.

What makes your desire different from anyone else's? How are they to know from a confession of feelings alone. Only you have the tools, the access to the fuller picture necessary to answer this question.

This difference is what you want to try to share with them, but first you need to know it for yourself.

So instead of telling them what you think you need to say to make them yours, tell them what they need to know to think about who you are.

They can decide for themselves what they mean to you.

Show them that you trust them. Show them that you believe in their ability to make sense out of you.

Don’t rush them. Don’t force them to decide. Let the answer dawn on them. Let the search for what your relationship could be be the catalyst that keeps the relationship going.

Instead of telling them how you feel, tell them stories about how you have responded to these kinds of feelings in the past. Give them context, not a choice.

Be brave, be vulnerable. Share hopes and fears. Take your time, there is no hurry.

Can you outlast desire? Or, does it grow and change inside you? You will not lose them, the bond will only grow thicker, like branches intertwining.

For no bond can be more enduring than the one we cannot name. No relationship more fully realized than the one that is irreducible to any particular aim.

You want them, but you cannot have them, so give yourself instead.

They may not be receptive. They may reject you slowly, instead of with a single cut. But at least they would be rejecting you, and not the idea of having this or that kind of relationship with you.

That may seem like a greater loss, but it is also a greater truth. A fuller knowledge of what you meant to them. A fuller knowledge of yourself.

Isn’t that better allowing someone else to decide the meaning of your feelings, of your life, for you? Someone else who may not know themselves at all?

They too may be expecting to find another who can make sense of who they are for them. You will never be able to do that.

Two beings, each looking to another who does not know themselves to find out who they are? It is a special kind of madness. A misunderstanding of the greatest magnitude.

Two questions arise. One of pleasure and one of reciprocation.

Where does physical intimacy come into this. Knowing someone carnally is distinct from knowing them spiritually, and the one usually is thought to follow from the other. You tell them how you feel to get them into bed.

But I do not think that this can or should be the model. Desire is in the mind as much as it is in the body. And we fail ourselves most often as human beings in our ignorance of who we are sexually.

All the more reason to try to establish this through language rather than through touch. Experience matters, for how can we know without having done. But sexuality is a language as much as it is a pursuit. Learning to speak it is so often neglected.

As for reciprocation, what do you do if you are sharing yourself, but they are not sharing themselves the same way with you?

You must try to shed these expectations. Human intimacy cannot be quid pro quo. If they continue to choose your company, they continue to give you the chance to know them as well.

You cannot put a clock on disclosure. It will come or it will not, but they will choose if they are wiling to share. You do not need to push them.

Just be aware of what you are giving to them. Are they taking anything that you do not offer freely? Are they asking for things without offering anything in return?

Give of yourself on your own terms. All that is at risk then will be your pride. And if they do not care for you, only something else that you can offer them, you will be able to tell.

That is the balance you must seek out. Give them power over you, but not power to control you. And do not seek to control them.

Whatever the relationship can be will follow of its own accord. If there is no destination there can be no end. Only a search for yourself that you share with another as long as they are willing to join you on the ride.

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4lorne2 · 2 years

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Jealousy, my old friend. It shot through me like a wave with just a casual admission on her part. It lingered in my mind long after that initial shock passed.

A cacophony of thoughts and feelings: frustration as the patterns of my affections repeat again despite my efforts to deviate from them; frailty brought on by my self imposed confinement and lack of connections with others; fear about the consequences of opening myself up to more painful feelings with little potential payoff.

I weigh the costs and benefits. I consider all relevant variables. I try to convince myself that desire is not a zero sum game. That her liaison does not make her off limits to me. But I worry about the calculated nature of such an admission. Is it a signal to back off? Is she setting a boundary by telling me this, as if to say, “I’m only telling you this because you’re in a different category.” You wouldn’t tell someone you were attracted to about intercourse with someone else would you.

The reality stings that I have always been the more open of us two. That this is the sort of insight I was seeking, if not the one I wanted to hear. She is there and I am not. Fixating on me makes no sense for her, but it makes all the sense in the world for me in my isolation. That is the unequal standing that our relationship is built on after all.

I am trying to tell myself not to label it. That she still wants to talk to me. That we can be close without being “close.” It’s foolish, but it’s also the only way I see to break my pattern. And when we come face to face there will be chances for intimacy that others don’t get to have. She respects me and values me. That has to be enough.

I have never been able to figure out what to do about the fact that I am attracted to people I admire. Admiration is by no means an equitable ground for love. It smacks of “pedestals” and elevating the other beyond myself, but what can I do?

The only thing I can think to do is disclose even more of myself. I am still reticent to tell her how she makes me feel. It feels premature and would necessarily shape the course of what’s to come by putting pressure on her to take the burden of those feelings on.

There is no “natural” way for the relationship to develop, but there is one where I keep my disclosures running parallel with her life, rather than allowing them to intersect. Intersecting can come later, if it is meant to come. In the meantime, I can continue to make myself known to her and hope she will do the same for me.

I recognize that she has shared much less of herself with me, but what do I have to lose by being open with her? She cannot hurt me if I lay myself bare. I am not asking to possess her, just gifting her with more and more of me. I have no reputation to damage. No ego to preserve. If I can let those things go, perhaps I can be loved in whatever way she sees fit.

It’s scary to relinquish all this power. I fear her getting bored of me. I worry about missing a chance. I despise the thought of having so little control and power in the relationship. The thought of giving it all to her is scary, but maybe that’s exactly what I want to feel. If I remove the time table, along with the expectations, and give her the freedom to react to me however she sees fit, I can give her power. I can try to wait desire out. If it fades, it will be a more palatable way for our relationship to end than a straightforward rejection. If it endures, then I will know that she has allowed it to grow, without ever being forced to.

The conventional wisdom is to rush in head first, tell them how you feel, don’t wait. But I have never been one to readily accept common sense. Who is to say that I understand my feelings. How do I know that I know what I want.

I will wait, for love is not unrequited unless we define it as such. For now, I will allow it to remain a desire to disclose myself to someone I admire. That feels substantially different from how I have handled these situations in the past. Especially when I have let my anxieties and pride keep me from revealing myself to another.

Our feelings are not ourselves. I will try to tell her about myself rather than about how I think I feel. That seems to me the better path to an as yet undetermined relationship. One that is not ruled by preconceptions or assumptions about what I want. To me it is this approach that I think is more likely to make me happy in the end.

Don’t Tell Them How You Feel, Show Them Who You Are

The Right Kind of Relationship Will Occur On Its Own

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