@Gaat, It's just the posts in F&F that bother me. So, some guy is behaving like a total douchenozzle (my favourite new insult), and yet some woman not only insists on loving him, but comes on a surviver website seaking ways to heal and help him. I've had fantasies in which some girlfriend of mine posts in F&F saying as much about me. It's almost tempted me into the direction of misoginistic attitudes, or even convinced me to hier a prostitute sinse I found myself reasoning that if a woman can logically acquire a relationship whenever she wants, any woman who remains in an abusive relationship or works as a prostitute must do so because she desires to, even if such a desire is necessarily a product of an unresolved issue. Accept that unfortunately both my empathy and the fact that probably %70 of the friends I've ever made have been female directs me away from that style of logic, not to mention my own suspicion that no encounter with a prostitute could work out for the best, sinse the idea of physical without emotional is just something I find disgusting!
Still I can't deny it makes me feel ridiculously inadequate that some guy who is abusive or sneaky or unpleasant or acts in other ways that are just beyond thinkable for me is worth so much more in relationship terms than I am, that someone wants! to be intimate with that sort of guy but not with me.
Of course, I'm well aware I'm far from perfect, I have plenty of faults which I understand, indeed a tendency to castigate myself for those faults is one of them, however deliberately causing harm is just not something I could do to someone, which is again something that tempts me away from myssoginistic logic for all that the part of myself I think of as Shadow might feel sometimes.
I'm not sure on the thing on women, what I've always fallen in love with has been a form of interaction I've had with a friend more than anything else. It's not even that I fall for the wrong people or people who need healing or people who are screwed up, the people I'm attracted to have all unquestioningly been the right! people for me, people I have a distinct connection with, who are independent and even if they have issues they know who and what they are, they just don't feel the same way. I've had friends who were different, friends with problems, but I just don't feel that level of attraction. It's not all just about mutual support either, there is a lot of positive stuff I want to share with someone just to have someone to share it with, indeed just like I did with friends when an undergraduate.
Today I had a woman from a cleaning service turn up and clean my flat, she commented that we were about to have a thunderstorm, and I said "oh good! I love a good thunderstorm" very enthusiastically, she was then highly confused, when i explained I enjoyed watching them her response was "---- mmmmm, right" in clearly a "humouring the weerd man sense. Yet, I'd love to explain to someone how much I do! enjoy thunderstorms, indeed I spent half an hour with my head out the window just smelig the air cleared by rain, listening to the cracks of thunder roll across the sky and hear the lightning. why! can't i have anyone to share that with?
When i was doing my degree I had friends who I did share such things with, ---- but not anymore it seems.
The problem is the entire unseen subtext, dating and phone numbers and invitations thing just is so alien to me, I really can't play any of the games even of basic attraction, I just want someone to say "I like you" or "could we be more than friends", hat is all, really not much?
Last November I met a girl I'll call J on the train who was in her twenties (I'm 32 myself, not that it really matterrs sinse as L proves attraction isn't particularly age based. she initially turned up to talk to my dog and we spent the journey together. I did something that was very! out of my comfort zone, on the basis that my councillor had told me that dispite my own paranoyed fear of looking like a creepy stalker and several nightmares where I'm! accused of abusing someone, I asked for her phone number, indeed I was so appologetic about it I think she probably wondered what I was about.
We swapped numbers and she said she'd ring me, then to my utter surprise she did the next day. We had a great chat for two hours, which only fell off when she happened to casually mention she needed to go because she was on a date with someone! I don't know why, but that was that.
Was I madly in love with this girl? no, I barely new her, we'd hardly spent three hours together, however she made it pretty clear she was not the least interested in me in a romantic sense, and while we might have been friends things just seemed to peter out. We exchanged another phone call a week later, and then never spoke again. I phoned her a couple of times but she was out, and she never phoned me.
Similarly At one point a few years ago, a girl called C from my light opera society offered to do me some work assisting with reading and research. My parents were convinced she was attracted to me, sinse they saw her on several occasions, but I just didn't get this. we spent a while together and got on, indeed my parents surmised she was quite lonely in her own way sins she'd just broken up with her boyfriend at the time. again I was not madly in love with C, she was a friend, but if she'd offered to become closer, if she'd said she liked me I'd have considdered it, I just find it takes a great deal for me to even admit to being attracted to someone. Unfortunately, she never said or did anything that indicated she wanted more than friendship, and finished by going off to Australia. I contacted her again last year sinse I heard she was back and we had a conversation, I even got more forward than I usually do and admited I'd missed her, ---- however again she's disappeared off the map entirely and didnt' bother contacting me back, so so much for my parents' suspicions. The sad thing is C, really is someone who personality wise could've worked, but if she was the least bit interested as my parents thought did she give a hoot? Did she say anything? hell no! and that is how it usually goes, unless as happened with L I'm stupid enough to actually fall in love which has only happened this badly five or six times, always with the right! people, always with people I already know well, but never any way that works.
Back when I was 18, a girl called Emma, the first of the people I fell truly in love with and actually the person who made me realize it was possible to feel something more than friendship for another person, had me admit on the last day of term how I felt. I knew she had a boyfriend and didn't feel the same way, but I had to say something, she gave me a kiss on the cheak and when I told her she was the first person to ever do that she replied "I won't be the last" she genuinely believed that I'd find someone and made me believe it as well and that is the one of the five or six occasions I've felt this way that I came out of it actually feeling any sort of hope at all.
Part of me wants to track her down (probably married now with kids), and say look! look how wrong you were! Look how you tried to make me hope for something and just made me fall harder!
And yet part of me realizes how deeply unfare that would be sinse she did probably exactly what I would've done if our circumstances were reversed.
It really is no wonder I'd so much rather be female, at least in a social sense, indeed if I was vaguely at all attracted to men I'd probably go and have myself surgically altered just on the basis that the female position in relationships would suit me so much better and be so much easier for me, ---- hell genophobia is no problem if your a woman!
As to my body, and not being destroyed, well it depends upon what you mean. I'm not exactly fit, I'm around average, though I have exercised in the past. I unfortunately have a tendency if I have nothing in my cupboard and am not up to going shopping and facing all the social shenanigans and being ignored to order take away, however I limit the amount I do this to stop things from going too far. As for alcohol or drugs, well actually the worse I feel the less! I want to indulge in anything that will mess with my inhibitions, indeed if I decide to drink a glass of someething it is usually because I feel in a good mood and think i can take the loss of control in return for tasting a decent wisky or a good cocktail.
That is still more true on the occasions when one friend of mine has treated me to spiced coffee (aka coffee laced with cream or butter infused with cannabis, I'd never smoke the stuff sinse i like singing too much and the smell of cigarette smoke is a huuuuuge trigger for me, but in coffee it works), yet I wouldn't risk being stoned when I don't feel up to it either, sinse the loss of control (not to mention the come down), would make it worse over all.
I will say I do far more enjoy the pure sensation of being stoned than drunk, but it's not something I'd want to do too often and it's something I can live without.
My addictions are few, I have a miner chemical attraction to coco, but coco very specifically, so I tend to use high content coco chocolate as a self medicating anti depressant, but this is actually not bad for you at all. What my worst addiction is is isolation, sinse I do tend to find that social contact is so dam hard, being ignored, waiting for someone to speak to me, that there are times it's just far easier being alone. This is again another reason I'd like to have someone, just someone who I could rely on being there, sinse it would stop me from too easily falling into the pattern of behaving like robinson cruso, hell before I had my dog Reever there were points I'd literally not leave my flat for four or five days at a stretch, though now at least Reever does insure I do need to take a walk a day.
Reever does make things much easier, and stop me feeling quite as alone and I'm definitely about as close to her as it's possible to be to a dog, ---- particularly sinse she is literally responsable for my life being a guide dog so we spend 24 hours together, however obviously the amount of intimacy you can have with a dog is limited for all there are occasions I've found myself wishing that she was human sinse certainly she's the only girl who has ever wanted to spend hours curled up with me on my settee.
heck even with Reever things weren't easy sinse when i first got her in 2011 she was absolutely not! interested in being anywhere near me and just wanted to be with her trainer, and there is nothing that can make you feel more rejected than when you try to stroke a dog who walks off and lies by the door just wanting to go back to someone else.
