Could this be it?

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Few days ago my girlfriend broke up with me, and I was really trying to take a deep look at myself in order to single out some things I can change in order to avoid future situations. I think I am really onto something in terms of the fact that I have to change the outlook on things.

All of my past relationships were sharing one common feature. At first things would go well, the woman is in love with me, etc. I would try to be perfect and make sure everything I do is okay with her. Okay, I know the insecurity in itself is a big turn off for a lot of women. But given that I am concentrating on a minority who DID give me a chance, obviously they are a big exception to whom it doesn't apply, so I have to look further.

Anyway, once things were good for a while, I assume that they will always be good, so I relax somewhat. Then I would "accidentally" make a mistake. At worst it is a small mistake that could be easilly forgotten if I only let it go. At best, it wasn't noticed on a first place, but rather a woman was busy or something and I simply read into it too much and tried to overanalyze everything I did untill then.

On any event once the "mistake" is made, I would look for ways to undo it. In cases of most women, these can be passive agressive ways of manipulating the situation to force her to adress an imagined issue without ever bringing it up myself. Alternatively, I might apologise for it, but if I won't hear a reassurance in just as intence form as I want to hear, this would lead to some form of an outburst. On the other hand, if I am dealing with a needy woman such as my most recent girlfriend who loves attention, then I might take advantage of it and do the opposite: push an issue for hours and hours and not pay attention to when I hear "I am tired of discussing it". On any event, the one common result of all of the above situations is that I turn a tiny to non-existant problem into a huge one that eventually leads to breakup.

Now it is one thing to see a problem and it is another thing to find a way of how to change. I think I finally found a way of logically convincing myself to act otherwise, namely by re-interpretting what is to blame. In the past, even though I fully realized that the biggest problem was caused by my subsequent behavior, I was still thinking that original "small mistake" is to blame. Granted, I knew that the "small mistake" wouldn't have caused any problem if I didn't dwell on it. But still, who cares what is in the other people's head. After all, my head is the reason of why I was acting neurotically ever since and thus causing problems. So, as far as MY HEAD is concerned, the mistake number 1 is what caused me to be obsessive, so mistake number 1 is to blame. In other words, I was thinking that the "strategy" of dealing with my over-reactions is to simply be perfect. Hence, even when the real problem is obsessive behavior going on for weeks, the failure of being perfect at day 1 is still to blame.

Well, right now I realized that it is a wrong thinking. What is to blame is NOT a mistake number 1, but rather my assumption that everything is constant. In fact, lets even forget the whole issue of creating NEW problems. Suppose the other person is infinitely patient and don't mind the fact that I have to dwell on everything. Still, there is one more problem. Namely, one way of trying to undo whatever I did wrong is to explain all of my thought processes back at the time when I was doing it, in order to convince the other person that I did it because of X, Y, and Z as opposed to just trying to be mean. On the other end of a line, however, this might sound like a statement that I am going to CONTINUE to do it, precisely because of X, Y, and Z. In other words, I am not going to change.

Now, I was viewing it as a communication problem and was thinking that IF ONLY the other person had more patience, then they would understand. But now I finally realized: it is not just a communication problem, it is a faulty logic one. Since no one is perfect, lets imagine the situation where I actually ran onto something where I AM in fact wrong. In this case, the only way to change is to admit that I was wrong. Since strict logic is never wrong, being wrong ultimately implies having gaps in my logic. Therefore, if I insist on describing my logic in every detail in order to justify my past behavior, I am forced to insist that my logic has no gaps, and therefore I am forced to insist that I was NOT wrong, which implies that I am planning to continue to act in just the same way.

So, ironically, the MORE I am obsessed about having been wrong, the LESS I am likely to learn from that mistake. And that is the one thing that lead me to constant frustration. On my end of the line I was thinking that I was obsessed about it SO MUCH that OF COURSE I will do EVERYTHING to fix it IF ONLY I will be given slightest chance. But on the end of a line of another person I was given plenty of chances and I never used any, so they are done becuase I just can't change. I was thinking how dare they say I can't change if I am SO obsessed about having to. But actually this very tendency of being obsessed IS the reason I couldn't change!! !

So THIS is what I have been missing. I never viewed myself as wanting to be right. Quite the opposite, I was asking everyone to tell me just in what way am I wrong, just so that I can see a bigger picture. However, whenever I got the answer to such a question, it ultimately lead to rebutals. On the one hand, I was perfectly willing to be wrong, which is why I called for a discussion. But on the other hand, I was NOT willing to avoid the impulse to "explain myself". ANd this very need of "explaining myself" forced me to NEVER admitting any of my mistakes.

Now lets try to step back and generalize it into a life philosophy. Why do I need to explain myself so much? Becuase I am assuming I never change. If I never change, then any and every mistake I ever make has to be eternal. So this means that I have no choice but trying to "undo" it. On the other hand, again since nothing changes, if that was the only mistake I have made SO FAR, I am eternally immuned from any other mistake. Hence, I might as well do anything and everything as long as it gives me a chance to dwell on the one single eternal mistake that needs to be un-done.

On the other hand, in real life things DO change. The change requires an admission of being wrong. Also, the change requires an admission of having logical gaps -- after all logic never changes. Thus, the change requires simply letting go of my mistake and act differently.

Now, lets switch a subject into an issue when, in fact, I am RIGHT and it is another person who mis-read me. Yes, I still say that this is quite common due to my Asperger. But, lo and behold, again it is exact same mistake. The only difference is that this time instead of being wrong in saying that I never change, I am wrong in saying that the other person's perception of me never changes.

Granted, the other person thinks I am guilty of X and I am not. But who is to say that just because they are saying that I am guilty of X at the moment, it means they will be always saying it? Quite the opposite, since I know that X was done by accident, I also know that I won't be repeating it in similar situations. However, since the other person only seen me in 3 different settings, they still say that I made this mistake once out of 3 times, which is quite a few. On the other hand, if I let time pass for them to know me across 1000 settings, they will see that I did X once out of 1000 times, and then they will know it is an accident.

On the other hand, due to my OWN assumption that nothing changes, I am forced to dwell on whatever miscommunication happened. This constant dwelling would ultimately drive the other person nuts and force them to end all contact with me. Then I would blame it ALL on the "little" misunderstanding (after all this is what forced me to be neurotic, right). Thus, the whole experience will only re-inforce my views that nothing changes, and thus make me repeat that exact mistake in new situations.

Interestingly, I have been wondering why do OTHER PEOPLE assume that I never change instead of giving me a chance. So this is a case of "we see the world the way we are". The truth is that I am the one who was assuming that nothing chnages, hence I was the one who acted like someone non-teacheable due to constant self-justification, and ultimately forced other people to treat me that way.

It is true, however, that in some cases people DID judge me too fast. But the thing is taht I asked for it by laying out tones of highly personal information. Why did I do it? Well, if I say SOMEHTING about myself, I better say everything else that logically relates to it in order to give the other person a "full picture" so that they won't fill in gaps a wrong way. But instead of them seeing "more accurate" picture, they end up being "wrong" and thus forcing me to try to correct their misunderstandings, which ultimately lead to a lot of frustration in their part.

What was driving me was the fact that I couldn't get how could other people get inacurate understading when I have given them so many detailes. But again the irony of the situation is that the amount of detailes IS the reason for their misconceptions! For example, an average person who wants to keep his girlfriend from his mom will simply say "things will be less complicated this way" or "this is a personal issue", etc. On the other hand, I felt that I HAD to explain the whole situation about keeping things from my mom. After all, there were few girls who thought I did so because my mom disapproved of my dating non-Jews and this is NOT it. So, I better explain things in detail in order to avoid THIS misunderstanding. However, once the other person understood that Jewishness is not an issue, this opened pandora's box for a number of emotional issues to attribute to either me or my mom that are no longer rationalized away by simple religious belief.

For example, I was perceived as being attached to my mom, even though from my perspective it is my way of keeping distance from my mom (i.e. just the OPPOSITE to being attached). Why is that? Well, in case of SOME families when the parent disaproves of what their kids are doing they would distant themselves. So, if you are attached to your mom you would make sure to stay within her approval. On the other hand, in case of my family, my mom only gets more and more overprotective. Hence, in my case I keep things from her in order for there to be a distance. So, THIS part also needs to be explained, and I forgot to explain it.

So, on a surface my mistake was that I "forgot" to explain the way in which my mom is overprotective. In other words, I should explain even more. However, if you think more about it, explaining more won't solve a thing. After all, when I was thinking that I would avoid misconception of my mom not approving my dating non-Jews, I instead caused a misconception about my being attached to my mom. So who is to say that by correcting the misconception of my being attached to my mom by giving even more detailes about relationship between me and my mom I won't cause some misconception that I can't even think of? In other words, if I stick with a line of though that I have to explain MORE, then I will end up explaining things INDEFINITELY.

There is actually far deeper mathematical/philosophical issues here. I was assuming that there has to be LOGICAL explanation that has finitely many steps. Thus, after I explain all these steps, no more misunderstandings will follow. But what I should know from any math class is that any kind of proof is based on a set of axioms, and these axioms are taken for granted. If I insist on having to explain them, it will only force me to invent other axioms plus at least one more step in my logical proof. And then if I want to explain the other axioms, it will force me to invent yet other ones, etc. Hence, if I want to explain EVERYTHING it will take infinite amount of time, and hence it is impossible.

In math people happened to have the same set of axioms, so thats why it APPEARS like a proof with finitely many steps. In real life this isn't a case. Hence, no matter what axioms I start off with, it will lead to frustration of my finding out that the other person has a different set of the axioms.

Now, as hopeless as it might sound, here is something that MIGHT work. People's axioms are all based on observation. Even in math, the reason we are willing to postulate things like points and straight lines is because we have SEEN little stones (i.e. points) and railroads (i.e. straight lines). On the other hand, the reason no one likes to postulate quantum mechanics is that we never seen such phenomena with our eyes. So, by this line of thought, the axioms that the other person is using in trying to interprete my behavior will change as they observe me across different settings.

But there comes another problem: the interpretation of their observations will be based on their existing ideas. This, in fact, is what was forcing me to explain myself. However, there is a different answer to this problem: simply DON"T GIVE them any "ideas" right from the start. So, if my introduction is super long, then I am right, all of their subsequent observations will be based on how they read my intro, so I BETTER try to fill in all the gaps. On the other hand, if my intro is as short as "hey how are you", then I am giving other people chance to make more objective observations.

True, their first observation might be shaped by their experience with other people. But since I haven't given them any clues of whom to compare me to, different kinds of misconceptions are more likely to "balance each other out". After all, they will be taking the information SLOW, little by little. So suppose today they will mistake towards left. But you see, due to the relative unimportance of the issue, it isn't enough to force them to make the mistake tomorrow towards the left. So tomorrow the mistake is made towards the right and everything is balanced. On the other hand, if I start giving long explanations, then OF COURSE mistaking one part of an explanation towards the left will force to mistake all the other parts of it towards the left, since it is in the same context. So now they have 1000 misconceptions towards the left and none towards the right. So now this basically set a stage for them to mistake things towards the left from now on.

So to sum it up, what I have realized in this whole post is:

1)The MORE I am dwell on my mistakes the LESS I am likely to learn from them (due to self justification)

2)The MORE I try to explain myself in words the MORE I am likely to be misunderstood.

In other words, it goes towards "less is more". Also trying to solve an issue actually makes that exact issue worse. Assuming nothing changes only assures it be the case. Worrying about being misunderstood and trying to explain myself only makes me more misunderstood. So what is another option? Well, speak with ACTIONS, not with words. After all, axioms are based on observation, right? So, if I want to correct some misunderstanding, it will be corrected by my future actions. And I don't even have to try to "manufacture" them. After all, if I know X is an accident, I also know that there won't be any patterns of my doing it, and thus there is no need to make any concerted effort to hide anything.

However, it is true that I am left with some things that ARE a pattern, namely things such as monotone voice or forgetting to say hello to people due to Asperger. So, true, this would push a lot of people before they ever got a chance to get to know me. But still there will be FEW left who are willing to look past that, as I know from the fact that I had FEW girlfriends. So, it might actually be good that I will be left with these few, since that is precisely a reason why I will be able to focus on trying to be less obsessive. And, of course, it will be something more stable.

Why would you post this in the Politics, Philosophy and Religion forum? This baffles me.

I guess because it is very long and convoluted and I am trying to "disject" it to come up with a bigger philosophy behind it.

Oh!

Now, I understand it!

Anyway, I am going to edit the original post and cut and paste the essay instead of giving a link. I just think it makes more sense in light of your comment.

Yes

Thank you!

Well done!