Well.

Post Reply New Topic

Well, this is difficult. About the ex-bf, so apologies in advance for being a bore.

I don't really know how, or whether, to go on being friends with him. This is something he made a big deal about back when we broke up, how important it was to him, how actually he'd only gone along with the relationship this long because he was afraid of losing the friendship, etc.

After a year of mostly-unpleasantness via skype and email, though, it turns out he doesn't really want to see me IRL for the indefinite future, is terrified of people, specifically women, me among them; can't handle the prospect of either a good or a bad visit, is living this grinding, depressing, demoralized, futureless life in which he hates his job and has no social contacts, and is angry at me for introducing anxiety into his life because I said I was hurt that he didn't want to see me. He's also envious of me, my life and abilities, including the ability to enjoy things that I do.

Throughout, he's making what's obviously a painful effort to explain himself to me clearly and make it plain that he has nothing to offer. And he wants no part of my reaction to his own self-assessment, which is, mostly, "Whuh?" Because it seems to me he expects things from himself that are not only unreasonable for him, but unreasonable period given the state of the economy these last, oh, 30 years. The life he describes as a shambles isn't, I think, materially far off from the way an awful lot of people live, including nice, smart, housebroken, college-educated people who didn't win some kind of lottery. Yeah, it's tough and uncertain. But that's how life is for bazillions of people, including me: tough and uncertain.

I do not know how to deal with this kind of shame, self-hatred and envy; it all feels dangerous. I don't enjoy fantasy friendships where there's no real intention of getting together. His notion of friendship appears to involve my just sort of doing whatever he needs, and never criticizing or expressing hurt or upset over anything he's done. I'm glad, actually, that he can't come visit me, because angry, envious guys prone to outbursts are not who I want at my door. And yet I feel this sense of foreboding about just walking away. Actually I don't see things going well either way.

It's very plain -- I mean he's quite plainspoken about it -- that he'd like to feel better and would if only he knew how, but is already thinking ahead to how a therapist would look down at him if he were honest...yeah. Nothing here seems good.

This is the third guy in a row who's sat there beaming envy at me. Not a happy thing.

Isn't this sort of a midlife crisis? When they are young people think "everything is possible", they are going to be rich if they work hard enough or they could become an F16 pilot or famous football player. After a certain time they realise that they will sit on an average income job from 9-5 for the rest of their life (if they are lucky). They realise they ARE Al Bundy!
I read an article a while ago that said that our modern society is too boring and peaceful for men. Maybe that's why they riot at sports events (hooligans), go hunting and stuff like that.

Date someone in a better position?

I am sorry to hear this, but not altogether surprised, given the things you have already said about him.

Still: unpleasant and sad.

The unreasonable expectations and extremely negative self-image sounds like depression.

It seems to me that your apprehensions are not unreasonable. He is on a path toward many negative potentials.
But it also seems to me that you should lay this burden down. He doesn't want your help. He doesn't want your company. You should let him go.

The beaming envy thing is disturbing. Can you hook up with a less damaged person? What is it in you that is drawn to these guys?



Trollcatman, the theory of the boring, peaceful modern society leading to violence was probably cooked up by a self-justifying violent jerk. Roman society was not notably boring or peaceful but saw frequent riots at sporting events (and many of those sports were the most violent imaginable). People have the inate capacity for violence. It comes out when they stop suppressing it.

tarentella64, are you just venting, or are you looking for feedback or advice?

Well, as his friend, I think, the only thing you can do is encourage him to seek professional help for his problems. Tell him that therapists do not look down on their clients. People with problems are their bread and butter. And believe me, whatever he can come up with, they've heard worse.

Either/or, I suppose. General reactions, specific, whatever is fine. And I was venting too, and just writing things out, which helps me sometimes to see the picture.

I agree with all this -- except then why does he keep pinging me, getting in touch? It's like skype is the outer limit of what he can tolerate socially, with specific people, so he hangs on to that as a lifeline. Ever since I've known him, he's talked very deliberately about "getting his social activity", like it's a vitamin that he knows he has to take. And he's (unnecessarily, I think) ashamed of not having a rich real-life social life. He could have one if he wanted to and could stand it, but there are many barriers. In general he just finds friends, even old friends, too perilous and exhausting. And I take it he's had this conversation many, many, many times, how he doesn't reciprocate or show any particular pleasure in friendship, and (turns out) is extremely sensitive to such complaints. I mean he's been hurt a lot -- a lot -- but it's like there's no solid understanding that people are sometimes reacting to how he's treating them, not just being randomly horrible at him.

I mean I recognize that I'm painting a picture here of a wholly unpleasant person, which is not how things are at all (obviously). But jesus, it does seem to be most of the weight lately. Over a long lately. Again, there are plenty of stressors, but he seems to think they're unique to him and everyone else is out having a wonderful, navigable life full of riches he can't have.



It is very disturbing, and in my experience not particularly safe. There's a national border between us, though, and will be for a long while if not forever.

I've wondered that myself, about what's drawing me, and actually I don't think I'm being drawn to damage. These guys present themselves as pretty together and accomplished, with rich family lives, all kinds of stuff, and it all seems highly plausible to me. When I met my ex-husband, he had a great job and had been in it for years, was moving up, seemed to have hobbies, talked a great game. It was mostly lies and fantasy, and he lost the job within a year of our daughter's birth. (It was a tough job to lose, too, the kind of government thing where you have to crash and burn for a solid year before they can pry you out.) He still lies about that one, claims he quit, that they drove him out. And they're all very bright guys with excellent academic backgrounds (actually my ex-husband lied some about his, and led me to believe he had a degree he didn't, along with a bunch of other stuff). I'm sure there are many who'd say, well, if they're really all that, why are they in that crap situation, the story stinks; but I also know a lot of people who really are topnotch and just doing things their own way, and are happy and successful that way. They just aren't conventionally successful -- or they spend the figurative 40 years in the wilderness before some company or university buys them as creative talent.

What's drawn me to all of them is that they seem fun, initially, with interesting things to talk about, and amenable to ordinary friendship, apart from being attractive one way or another. And the most disconcerting thing is finding that actually they harbor this whole ranking system in their heads, and despise themselves and envy and loathe me, and -- weirdest of all -- actually scorn me for all sorts of things. Being a single mom, having to work hard, not having much money -- it's like they're outraged that I don't see my own position low on the totem pole and react with proportionate shame and hatred of the society that oppresses me so. Because actually I've never felt that way. When I have noticed those rules, they've just seemed to me dumb and highly ignorable. And when the guys realize that this is what's going on with me, they're just embarrassed and start talking about how much more secure I am than they are. After a while they hate me for it. I can think of only one who might have had the perspective and sense of humor to skip the hating part -- he was already well into competition and measuring-up and despair over what I'd think of him -- but I'll never know, because he killed himself first.

My guess, actually, is that they're drawn to me because I don't embarrass them as a girlfriend and they believe they're superior to me socially, they're not afraid that way. And I miss that dynamic as it's happening. I don't know that "less damaged guys" have ever been interested in me. It seems to me that in many ways I'm probably outside their world: I show up with no family except the one I made, I'm deaf to or unreceptive to the usual gender-role stuff, I'm tactless and extremely perceptive of lots of things, I don't particularly value all sorts of conventional markers of success, and I've always lived as an artist. As I've gotten older, some of these guys have sought me out as a sort of confessor, maybe because I don't make the sort of judgments their wives do. They seem to find it necessary to tell me that I'm not like other women, that I scare them because I'm so much smarter than they are, that they wouldn't have the balls to live as I do, and that they're not attracted to me. And once they unburden themselves they just want to escape back into their lives with a nice wife who takes care of them, and a large family that helps to protect them from the world, and children who validate their existence.

Yeah. I don't know -- it's certainly not that I go looking for people to take care of, and in fact I spend a good deal of time at the outset of relationships talking about how it's specifically not what I'm after doing. Not to be gender-boring, but I think most of them started out truly nice and decent people, and have been casualties of what men do to men, the insistence that a very narrow way of being is good and manly, everything else to be despised and destroyed.

Oh, I'm done, really. Not only am I too busy and keeper of a list of priorities that come before "new guy in life", there's no one here I find interesting and don't need a relationship that bad. I think when people really get together and stick in midlife it's mostly because what they want more than anything else is a partner, a marriage. Unless you get really lucky, it's too much work otherwise, you have to overlook too much. I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but I think it becomes a lifestyle-choice thing, marriage.

I wonder how many people hook up with someone because it`s better than being alone, even if the person isn`t a positive force in their life.. I bet this happens a lot.
I have decided that I am not marriage material. I can only be a burden. And I'm cool with this. Just it wasn't expected that's all. But I think it is enlightened to know when you can't do something.
Tarantella, you sound like a strong person, don't bother with people who don't make you better. I think that is what coupling is for, to become stronger by joining forces with another.

I agree generally with Adamantium about this one, but in this specific case I can see that there was extra pressure. Comes from a highly romantic family full of hyperactive, extremely bright people, most of whom are quite successful, far above the norm. All his sibs have landed unusually secure and well-compensated lives. They're all nuts, of course, but charmingly so, at least from a distance. (I could do without the emergency 10pm-dinner meltdown-prevention strategy for the preadolescent kid involving having him crash away prodigylike at the piano while the adults are attempting conversation five feet away.) And then they Ivy college where yeah, you're going to have fabulously wealthy and extremely successful classmates. If you can't tear your eyes away from all that as the norm, you're going to be unhappy.

Maybe I read too much Salinger in my 20s, I don't know. He's kind of a pain in the ass, Salinger.

^this. that is, if you plan to remain friends with him, which doesn't sound all that likely. and i can't say i blame you.

not that i can't relate to some of what you're saying when you describe him, because i myself had had to drastically rearrange my expectations after my tendency towards seriously disordered brain chemistry made itself known in high school--though it took me 2 years of college and a breakdown in my first semester of university to really accept that the high-stress lifestyle of a busy career and family was just not meant for me, at least not with the coping skills growing up with my family had left me with...and certainly not until i got my errant neuro-chemistry in order. unless i took the time to learn healthier coping mechanisms (and find the right cocktail of meds), i wasn't going to get much of anywhere in regards to that fantasy "normal" life i thought i was supposed to want.

in the intervening time that i've spent learning how to take better care of myself i have lost a lot of relationships--mostly with family, but some friends too. and most of those losses occurred because the people in my life in many ways were as unhealthy as i was (especially family), but when i chose to address that unhealthiness and try to do something about it, i discovered that most of the unhealthy people in my life were not interested in taking that journey with me. they were too heavily invested in their unhealthiness, in familiar roles and patterns of behaviour, and the changes i was enacting in my own life, in my choices and my behaviour, threatened them for that reason. resentment built up in some cases, or simply a distance opened up and began to grow between who they were and who i was becoming--a distance that i couldn't bridge. eventually, i had to recognise that if i wanted to continue down the road i was on, and they wouldn't take the journey with me, that i would have to leave them behind. i couldn't keep up the old dynamics, the exchanges that reinforced familiarly unhealthy patterns--so i had nothing to offer them anymore but things they didn't want or need (like reminders of how unhealthy their lifestyle is). so i had to let go and walk away--for my own sake and for theirs, too.

the fact of the matter is, no matter how much you might wish you could, you can't make him learn better coping skills if he's not interested in doing the work that is required to do that--and it IS work; i mean, we're talking about basically rewiring your brain, if the unhealthy habits/tendencies are deeply ingrained. that means time, practice, and LOTS of repetition until new healthier behaviours become habitual. for most people this means therapy--if you didn't learn effective coping skills from your family or friends or schooling growing up, then you're going to need instruction on how to develop new coping skills in your adult life. this is the most pragmatic benefit of (good) therapy--you fashion more and better tools for your toolbox, until you are better equipped to handle life's various contingencies.

ultimately, you can't save everyone. he needs to decide whether he is willing to make the effort to save himself or not. this is not a decision you can make for him. all you can do is let him know that you care about him, and that you will be there for him if he decides he's willing to at least try to learn how to take care of himself. let him know there is help out there if he is willing to make use of it--but that willingness is something he will have to find within himself, you can't provide it for him.

no, jeez, I can't practically say anything to him, let alone make him do anything. Even if I wanted to, which I don't. I mean all you get by mentioning anything is a half-hour of vitriol and being told how stupid and wrong you are about the bleeding obvious, not to mention attacked for being punitive and unthinking and for thinking things that never crossed your mind. And then a catalogue of how screwed-up his life is, which, as he's describing it, doesn't actually sound so terrible to me. It just sounds like what happens when you leave careers in midlife and don't have something else lined up right away. Plenty do much worse. If there's a problem, it's that he freaks out and runs away from rather nice situations -- enviable ones, even -- and yes, if you do that three times in five years, each time on a different career path when you're north of 40, without a tolerant spouse and a home base, I'd say you're doing awfully damned well to be employed. If he didn't just bolt all the time, I think he'd actually have much of this stuff he's mourning. Maybe that's what all the agony's about.

Anyway. No, he's got his own patterns, his own cycles.

Every so often he'll ask, bitterly, if I'm saying he's supposed to just suck it up. And in one sense I suppose I am, but I think that's looking at things backwards. The thing is that it doesn't help to think "happiness is a choice" unless it really is a choice. For me it is. I find things like hot running water and breathing to be true pleasures. Looking around: I enjoy it. Driving a momwagon that was a luxury item 14 years ago, wowie. It's slightly embarrassing, the tendency, but it also comes in handy -- I can be enraged at being laughably underpaid, or sad because lonely, or resentful because others have it easier, or I can enjoy what I've got. But if all those impulses are overwhelmed by anhedonia, or hurt, or shame, or anxiety, or if they just aren't there because you don't really know how you feel, at any given time...then yeah, I don't see how it's helpful to say to someone in that position that it's possible to choose happiness.

Just trying to understand, I suppose.

Well, it's your call, but he doesn't sound like great friend material. Especially the vitriol. You don't need that, and he shouldn't think it's acceptable to treat people that way.

I agree, If he doesn't agree to get a therapist to talk to about his issues, then you are under no obligation to continue listening. These are things that paid professionals are supposed to deal with. It is not stuff that you should unload on your friends and expect them to be okay with it.

Right, totally not. I guess...you know, he was so very earnest about how important this friendship was to him, and I probably made too many allowances over the last year for all the stresses in his life, most of them self-inflicted, and many of them, it looks to me, like various forms of self-punishment (like not allowing himself decent living conditions, even though his family is willing to help with money and he makes decent money when he's employed). I don't know. A good deal of the tolerance has been about knowing he's coping the best he knows how. Some of it, though, has been about not understanding, and then not admitting, that there really is not reciprocity involved here. I mean if I want to make him explosively angry I can point out how every single communication mode and relational mode he's demanded, I've accommodated, maybe because if you list them all out, it looks pretty nuts. But it all amounts to "do what feels good for me now because you have to; nothing will come back the other way because I can't."

I don't like to think that "I value your friendship" means "I require you to be an undemanding, on-demand, and above all non-criticizing part of my support system", but it does look like that. Too bad.