 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Sikander
|
 |
Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:23
|
|
Diss & PH,
I was struck by your comments about not being able to trust women who come on to you / show interest. I suffered from the same thing all throughout my childhood and adolescence. This is often a result of one's relationship with their opposite gendered parent, which tends to have an enormous impact on how we deal with members of the opposite sex. This relationship tends to become a template for what we expect from our romantic partners, and often this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When this relationship has problems it can really put a damper on one's romantic life, up to and including making such a thing seem almost impossible. In my case my mother sabotaged my self-confidence in regard to women subconsciously because she relied heavily on me (inappropriately) to provide her with many of the things one would expect of an adult friend or even in some respects (thankfully not sexually) a romantic partner. By sabotaging my confidence she subconciously was assuring herself that I would be available to talk to her etc. She did this by making me distrust girls in general in respect to crushes and romantic relationships. This magnified the typical nervousness most people experience as they navigate the uncharted waters of romance in adolescence, to the point that in my case I was almost incapable of acting on any of my feelings when developmentally I should have been learning how to behave in these situations through experimentation. By the time I moved out of the house at 17 years old I was really mature in most ways, but in romance my mental age was pre-pubescent.
Similarly your parent's relationship with one another tends to become a template for your romantic relationships. If your parents had a bad relationship (substance abuse, affairs, severe distrust, resentment, dislike or even hatred of one another) your own sense of what to expect can paralyze you with fear. Part of you quite normally wants to love someone, yet the expectation of downside is so great that you have a hard time justifying the risk.
It's easy for someone who isn't saddled with these sorts of fears and has developed more or less normally (ie working their way up gradually through late childhood and adolescence into ever more complicated and intense relationships) to see you as weak, indecisive etc., but that characterization isn't exactly fair. By the time you reach adulthood you can be pretty far behind in your development so that you are now in situations where people are expecting you to be able to run when you haven't hardly begun to walk yet. These expectations can effectively cancel any tentative steps you've made along the way by increasing the stakes, and the fear.
Of course there are plenty of women out there who have exactly the same problems. In many ways they would seem ideal candidates for men who also have trust / fear issues around romantic relationships, as both parties are more likely to want to take things slowly and work up from rather simple / limited relations to more complex and intense relations. Sometimes this happens, but there are a couple of things that can go wrong here.
For starters two extremely shy or nervous people simply have a much harder time meeting and establishing that there is an attraction between them. Secondly, there is a tendency for us to be attracted to people who send us signals that we are familiar with. This is fine for people whose relationships with their parents were proper and healthy and whose parent's relationship was good. But for people who were not blessed with such good luck this can actually be worse. Getting together with someone who who suffers from the same maladies as a messed up parent or who together with you recreates the same sort of bad relationship your parents had can be more terrifying than it is stimulating.
What to do aside from therapy? I'd suggest trying to make as many women friends as you can. What you essentially want to do is create a new image of women and / or relationships that is more positive (ie realistic). Pick people to be around who seem to be in the place that you'd like to be next and observe and imitate them. Depending on how stunted your emotional growth has been, this might include hanging around people who are younger than you but whose emotional age is similar to yours. I hung out / lived with a group of girls who were 17 years old when I was 25 years old for instance. It was somewhat embarrassing, but so stimulating and instructive that it was well worth it. Plus girls are really cute at that age. 
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Provost Harrison
|
 |
The farce is strong with this one.
Feb 2000
time: 05:23
|
|
Well I've certainly never had any problems with my mother, although my mother and father divorced when I was in my early teens and they never got along well as long as I remember. Also the concept thereafter of my mother and father ever being together seemed horrible and repulsive, in my mind (and this has been the case for a long time) the concept of them being together has been utterly repulsive to me...
Now I'm not typically 'shy' apart from in this one aspect. Due to the age and lack of experience it tends to be a vicious circle where it is now seemingly impossible. And I know that people say 'just do it' but if I were to attempt it, I just get extremely anxious and feel utterly ridiculous - and this link in with it seeming like 'women are taking the piss'. Whereas one half of my life - social, work, for example, I have complete control and confidence, this one aspect has been a non-starter...I avoid even talking about this side nowadays (haven't done online for several years until this thread) and unless people ask me specific questions, they wouldn't have a clue - some of my friends at work are beginning to guess that life isn't rosy for me in this respect due to, in the time I have worked with them, had no romantic contact with anyone at all.
And don't get me wrong, I don't get particularly depressed about it and can cope. But there is always that biological urge there, that desire, and the whole situation just feels 'wrong'...
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:23.
Apolyton Time is 00:23. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
01-06-2005 12:18
|