Posts tagged with "relationships"

Psychoanalytic Reflections 01

It’s a full sev­en days between ses­sions, and at this point, my pschol­o­gist is just start­ing to know me. In between, I can nev­er stop reflect­ing. I’ve always believed that I know myself well, but these ses­sions are prob­ing ideas and mem­o­ries I haven’t thought of in a while, and open­ing up com­plete­ly new areas of reflec­tion.

And while I could write for days about these thoughts and epipha­nies, I sim­ply don’t have the time, so I fig­ured I’d briefly touch on them in point form.

  • I need to respect my psy­chol­o­gist in order to accept help from him. i.e. If he was a Freudian and I was a Jungian, I would­n’t be able to agree with any of his meth­ods.
  • I get very anx­ious when I’m in his office. This is because I don’t like to admit to myself that some­thing’s wrong with me, but when I’m in there, it’s a very tan­gi­ble reminder that I have men­tal prob­lems.
  • I’m very con­flict­ed on sev­er­al issues.
    • I don’t want to lose my emo­tions because I need to suf­fer to cre­ate. Yet the emo­tions are bad enough that I don’t want to have them any­more (or have them in mod­er­a­tion at least).
    • I want to love and be in a rela­tion­ship, and at the same time I cling to being sin­gle because I’m scared of being hurt (in addi­tion to the fact that the free­dom is intox­i­cat­ing). I do this by push­ing oth­ers away from me or cut­ting them off.
      • This stems from two sig­nif­i­cant child­hood mem­o­ries, where I felt betrayed in friend­ship, as well as my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
    • I want to be set­tled and have some sta­bil­i­ty (in terms of sched­ule, rela­tion­ships, finances etc.), but the strug­gle to be set­tled is what makes me grow and be stronger.
    • Many of these issues can only be resolved from deci­sions I should make. (i.e. No one else can make the deci­sion for me)
    • Turning to Taoism, which is very para­dox­i­cal in itself, has only helped so much.
  • Without my cre­ativ­i­ty, or my desire to express myself, I’m noth­ing.
  • I don’t want to “blame” my par­ents for con­fi­dence prob­lems or per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, but I’m slow­ly start­ing to find out that they’ve affect­ed me even more than I thought before.
  • As a hedo­nist, my great­est fear is los­ing my joie de vivre. If this hap­pened (and it has once), I would con­sid­er killing myself. This is because the joys of life bal­ance out all the bad and makes it worth liv­ing.
  • I’m depen­dent on oth­er peo­ple for hap­pi­ness. I don’t see my friends often enough for me to be sat­is­fied, and it’s a sim­ple fact of life. They all have sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and I’m the only one left sin­gle. I don’t blame them for not spend­ing enough time with me, but it makes me very sad.

Missing Kissing

I’m fac­ing the very tan­gi­ble pos­si­bil­i­ty that I’ll be sin­gle for the rest of my life. Sometimes I won­der how I’ll sur­vive. The strange part is that I feel like I was meant to be in a rela­tion­ship. Quixotic ideas and roman­tic ideals have always point­ed me in that direc­tion, but either the right per­son has­n’t come along, or they’re tak­en.

At the same time, I won­der if I can be in anoth­er rela­tion­ship. I’ve grown so accus­tomed to liv­ing alone, hav­ing things exact­ly my way, with time to work on my projects. No main­te­nance, as it were. How I do enjoy the free­dom.

One sit­u­a­tion isn’t bet­ter than the oth­er, of course. Both have their pros and cons.

Still.

I miss kiss­ing. More than the sex.

The quick acknowl­edg­ment of love in the form of a peck, or the inti­ma­cy of a make-out ses­sion.

Has the win­ter brought this feel­ing? Has the sight of snow and snow­fall remind­ed me of how frigid the nights can be when you’re by your­self?

Or maybe it’s from being sin­gle for this long.

Feeling Particularly Single

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly lone­ly, but sin­gle.

Maybe it’s because I got accus­tomed to liv­ing with some­one. Coming home to anoth­er per­son in the house. Going to bed with a warm body next to me.

My cud­dle bud­dy has decid­ed that she’s off-lim­its1. I haven’t made out with any­one, let alone had sex, in months.

Dry spells are fun­ny things.

During my last one, I was too stoned to even think about dat­ing. The one before that was more of a chal­lenge.

Being sober and sin­gle isn’t quite the way I remem­ber it.

Sometimes peo­ple tell me they want to “intro­duce” me to some­one, but I’m always antsy about hurt­ing mutu­al friends or acquain­tances.

One per­son even gave me the card of a girl they thought was “per­fect” for me, whom she met while get­ting a mort­gage approved at the bank. “Perfect in what way?”, I asked. “Every way”, she said, “Gentle, polite, petite”. For months after­ward, she would ask if I called this per­son, and give me a dis­ap­point­ed look every time I said no, like a moth­er find­ing out that her son has­n’t borne her any grand­chil­dren. I wish I could meet this girl, just to see what some­one else believes I’m look­ing for.

My friends, who are in seri­ous rela­tion­ships or mar­ried now, talk about being sin­gle as if it was akin to their hous­es burn­ing down. They’ve been in their rela­tion­ships for so long that the idea has become for­eign to them. “I’m too old to date”, they say, “Trying to find some­one new, won­der­ing if they like you, fig­ur­ing out if you’re compatible..I could­n’t start over again”.

I always laugh, and think, “Then where does that leave me?”.

  1. I hope it was­n’t because she thought I was lead­ing her on [↩]

Empty Nights, Waiting for a Realization

I’ve done the math enough to know the dan­gers of our sec­ond guess­ing
Doomed to crum­ble unless we grow, and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ca­tion

—Tool, Schism

I sup­pose I feel it most when you’re not around. Empty nights, when it’s been anoth­er day with­out con­tact.

Part of me miss­es talk­ing to you, but part of me does­n’t feel like it just yet. It’s a con­tra­dic­tion I can’t explain. Not that it mat­ters any­way.

You’re not stub­born. You’re not lazy.

You just don’t get it.

Letting Go of Bronwen

Bronwen start­ed dat­ing anoth­er guy.

It’s fun­ny, my first reac­tion is to think anoth­er guy, as if we’re still dat­ing our­selves. I sup­pose our rela­tion­ship has nev­er been con­ven­tion­al, but that’s what makes it so spe­cial. We still spend our week­ends togeth­er. We still talk on the phone for hours with­out actu­al­ly talk­ing. We’re close enough that I’m com­plete­ly com­fort­able around her, enough for me to let my guard to go down.

It’s made me real­ize how pro­tec­tive I still am of her, how upset I’ll be if she gets hurt. I think of all the things I could have done bet­ter, and hope this guy can treat her bet­ter than I did.

I have all these mixed feel­ings about it though. I’m wor­ried that I may lose my friend, but I’m glad there’s some­one to make her hap­py. In the end, I know I can’t be self­ish. Letting go of her the first time was hard enough.

Doing it again does­n’t make it any eas­i­er.