Archive for dysfunctions
>Don’t spare the wounded.
>
I’ve just gotten up for the second time today. I was up earlier this morning and had coffee and answered my emails, but I was way too tired still and went back to bed and had a few more hours of sleep. Now I’m having my second attempt at being awake and hopefully I’ll make it this time.
My relationship, if you could even give it that name, with J. has come to an end. I wrote him an email in which I asked for some more things than I was getting now. A date on which I knew he would be by again, longer weekends than just the 24 hours that he came by for, some sort of steady schedule, expressions of love, shared vacations (he was planning his vacation while he was here last), and other tokens of dedication. I got an email back from him saying that he could not give me those things, that he did not want a more steady relationship with me and that he was already having his doubts about the fairness of this one.
I can only say that I feel a great deal of relief and liberation that I don’t have to do this “relationship” anymore, because it felt like a lot of emotional work, and when you are in a dysfunctional situation, you start to behave dysfunctionally, which is something I was certainly doing. You try to make your behavior make sense, but somehow it is impossible, which is not that strange, considering that it doesn’t make sense and that you should get yourself out of the situation. Thankfully, it didn’t take me all that long to figure it out this time. I have stayed in dysfunctional situations longer in the past. Much longer.
I can’t blame him for letting me get into the situation I found myself in. He thought he had made himself clear from the start, but I had read something more into it, being a female and having more needs. I thought I could handle what I assumed I was getting into, but my expectations were just a little bit higher than his and they became even higher over this past weekend when I actually fell in love momentarily, although I knew instinctively that I could not allow it. So, I can’t say that I have been used, although I do feel that way. But that is because of my own gullibility. I have allowed myself to be used.
And really, he had the time to stay longer this weekend, but he did not, which got my hackles up just a bit, because he was so eager to go home, although he had the rest of the week off. But I was ever so nice and understanding and thought he needed the time on his own. If he was seriously into the “relationship” he would have stayed longer, of course, and we could have done some things “normal” couples do. I was obviously not a priority. You see, underneath it all there is some bitterness.
In the meantime, I’ve walked the dog and it was dry, although we are supposed to have rain showers today. It is 9C outside, so it isn’t too cold at all. If it rains, I should go stand out in it and let it wash all over me and be cleansed by it. Although I doubt I’d have the nerve to stand out there naked as I should. Like a heathen being cleansed by the rain gods.
Well, I guess that’s all I have to tell you for now. I’ve pretty much wasted the afternoon on this subject. Well, not quite, I have some time left to do other things. Like clean up the kitchen. Tomorrow I have to do the groceries on my bike, because my sister is in Italy. I’m so looking forward to that. Not! I also have to go to the post office. It will again be the withdrawal of me from society for a bit. The usual crawling into my hole. Playing peekaboo with the world.
Have a good day!
Ciao,
Nora
>One for the road.
>
Well, I managed to do it again. I fell asleep while watching the news and just woke up. I was gone from this world, as they say, and oblivious of everything. I may as well have been drugged and knocked out for all I know. Comatose is a word that comes close. I think a small horde of people could have entered the apartment and emptied it of nearly everything but the sofa and I wouldn’t have known about it. They might even have been able to move the sofa with me on it.
My sister and I took the dogs for a brisk walk at noontime. It was near freezing, but the sun was shining and it was nice as long as you didn’t walk in any shady areas. Still, I should have worn my gloves and alternately put one hand in a pocket. A walk is just long enough for my sister to tell me all that’s going on in her life and I listen and make the odd remark and comment. I tell you, I’m a good listening post. In my next life I’m coming back as a therapist.
It’s always been my job in this life to be a listener to people and to be patient and to absorb whatever is said to me without becoming overloaded. I seem to have that sort of attraction to people because I don’t judge. I just listen and try to understand and not condemn them. It’s always been that way and grew even more so when I gained psychological insight and started to understand the motivations of people, but I have always had this patience to listen and calm people down. Having had complex parents probably prepared me for that role.
It gives me the appearance of being very competent, when in fact I am not always. People have high expectations of me, because I seem to have a lot of knowledge. Nobody knows that I sometimes survive by the skin of my teeth and that understanding and logic applied to other people’s lives, doesn’t mean you can always apply it to your own life. On the contrary, I come up short often when it comes to dealing with my own problems, although I must say that there has been a vast improvement these past eight months since I’ve been single.
That’s a funny thing. When there is nobody else in your life to muddy the waters and to muddle your thoughts, it is amazing how quickly you can put your finger on the sore spot and come up with the right solution. You get to the point where you want to be much faster. When left to your own devices, it turns out that you are more ingenious than you thought you were and far less helpless. When faced with an immediate problem, you have to figure it out on your own and reason it out in your own head without any outside help and you get it done quicker and better.
It makes you wonder how much of sharing the load is really true when you are in a partnership. I wonder how much help the other person really is in soothing your fears and worries. In helping meet them head on. I think in my case I’ve never found the person that really made things better and easier. It may have seemed so at the time, but looking back now, I am convinced that it wasn’t. Looking back, I see that all the so called ‘help’ was only a prolongation of the problems and that there was never a solution or a teaming up together to eradicate the difficulties.
It’s made me very weary of relationships, for me in particular and those of other people in general. All I see is the potential dysfunction of them. I think you have to be very healthy to have a good relationship. Or agree to the degree of your dysfunction and the seriousness of it. Now that I’m single, I feel that I’ve escaped from some terrible fate and I would never willingly go back and take that relationship up again.
At this point, I think I will stay single, because I like it too much to give it up and I do not feel the desire to share my life with anyone. I don’t miss there being a person in my life that is always hovering in the background. Right now, I don’t think I am generous enough to share myself with anyone else. I am too greedy of what is mine.
I have been married twice and both times it ended in a divorce, although the marriages were very different and so were the husbands. In between those two marriages, I had a serious relationship that was also very dysfunctional. I don’t have a very good track record up to now. I think it is more important that I learn to live with myself than that I learn to live with somebody else. At this point, that’s the most important thing and, oh yes, the fact that I get along well with the Überhund is very important too. Hee, hee.
Well, so much for philosophizing. It is late and I will go to bed and sleep for a while. I hope for a long while.
See you tomorrow morning.
Ciao…
Another Splendid Day 