Of Psychos and Seers
I am fascinated with the human psyche.
I always have been.
Everyone has a special talent. Mine is to see people. To understand them. I've commented before on how well I read tarot cards but there are moments I ask if there is no magic to it and I am just that capable of reading the person over the cards. Even a stranger - I can start to sum them up in a few short breaths. I don't know how. I could never explain how. I just know that I have always been able to see into people I meet.
When I was a kid, I used to wish I could step inside of someone else to see how they thought, lived, breathed and perceived things.
With what appears to be a dramatic change of subject - (but isn't) - if you asked me which TV show character I would be most likely to fall in love with I would tell you Dr. Gregory House from the hit show House.
Have you seen it? He's a ruthless, selfish, emotionless, cold-hearted bastard.
Hmm. Something's clicking here for me.
I realize I am drawn to men who are unreachable because I haven't been able to figure out how they work. I think they represent the one 'person' I haven't been able to undertand fully and I am driven to know them. To learn them. To reach them.
The scenes on House where he appears momentarily vulnerable or responsive to a woman are erotic to me. The tension, the thrill of contact with the distant soul - it lights up my nerves.
Breaking love down to bare science, it stands to reason that I tend to be repeatedly drawn to men who are difficult to reach, hard to get close to and impossible to love easily.
Hence Jeff.
The reason for my lingering self-enslavement to Jeff I believe stems from failure. I thought that I had reached him. I believed that I had connected. To feel as though I had accomplished that and to be relishing and cherishing the relationship I felt I had hard won and then have him tell me it was all bullshit is almost impossible to swallow. It crushes me. I'm not saying it wasn't real love - in my way it was - but I am saying that I felt like I had succeeded at connecting with the elusive creature I had spent my life in search of only to have it turn on me and maul me.
Rather than run or give up, I imagine I am drawn to the idea of having another path to connecting. If there's one thing I am not, it's a quitter. I am a fighter through and through and if you put obstacles in front of me, I spend my time searching for paths around them.
I need to be able to find a connection with Jeff again on some level. I know that I can not be with him in a relationship. It's like loving the scorpion - you know you will one day get that fatal sting. But I still find myself needing to find a solid connection on any level.
I would go further and suggest this: Jeff's psychopathic/sociopathic nature and my 'seer' nature are naturally drawn together. For all of his belief that he doesn't need or want any sort of connection he is still drawn to me because it fascinates him that I can see into him just as much as it fascinates me. It's as though he is a foreign creature and has found a translator. Like a ghost who finds the person that sees them. He doesn't always like it, and in fact it often irritates or scares him because he wants to be seen and doesn't want to be seen all at the same time. He doesn't want me figuring him out, but he remains connected to someone he knows 'gets' him because he can drop pretenses with me when it suits him and open up on a new level for him.
But he'll always fight me. He'll open the door, welcome me in, enjoy me for a time and then when I strike the nerve or when I see too much, he'll throw me out, brutally try to drive me away in ways that should keep me from ever coming back and essentially hurt me again and again.
Likewise, I am drawn to that connection. I'll walk into his open door, enjoy him for a time and then suffer when I get close enough to touch something new and he strikes out at me.
Comfort levels are a challenge for Jeff. Each time he and I reach one that's new to him he'll push me back. It's the old two steps forward, three steps back theory. I make a new path, get a little closer to the real Jeff and he throws me back. I can retrace the path and try again, I can start a new path and get back to where I was and possibly manage an additional step forward but I have to be prepared to know he'll only throw me back again.
It hurts less to understand him than it does to realize how drawn I am to the quest. Even in fiction, I have always been most responsive to this scenario. The unreachable man who somehow lets a woman in and then battles it. It is the epitome of romance to me.
Which means I am as doomed to suffer as he is. Because I am chasing that which is guaranteed to hurt again and again.
A man who let me in willingly or opened up entirely would never manage to hold my interest. That would be the man who would be easy to love and would be good to me.
I am as damaged as he is.
The irony is that it makes he and I the soul mates I once thought we were. The tragedy is that it's an impossible relationship on any level.
As I promised, there has been no communication with Jeff today. Yesterday my first email from him was early.
He won't contact me today because he's in holding pattern. If I were to contact him, he might respond but his response would be distant. He hasn't pushed away yet but he's in neutral gear for the moment. He has no use or need for me today. He knows I won't be seeing him today. To contact me would be weak. It would show a desire to communicate that he doesn't want to have.
He probably won't contact me tomorrow either. That one's iffy. He may want to retain his hold on me and might reach out for some non-essential but random communication that wouldn't be warm but would be just enough to keep me in the game. Friday he is supposed to return something to me. That's an obligation on his end. He doesn't like obligations. Friday could go either way. He may reach out to me to fulfill a different need - sex, entertainment or distraction but he'll also want to avoid me because seeing me would mean repaying me.
It will come down to which need is greater.
If he sees further use for me beyond this favor, he'll reach out. Establishing that trust of repaying me will mean he'll think I'll trust him more for a larger favor next time.
It's all so calculated and complicated.
Still, I bet I'm right on this one.
6 comments:
Frankly, sounds like a lot of justifications to me. Been there done that.
I would tend to go a different way altogether. I would suggest that for him (and for you as well) it is simply the "thrill of the chase." One isn't happy until they have gained and conquered. Jeff gained and for a time conquered, but then you left him. You drew the line and said enough - and walked out. He had to "chase" again - because he hadn't truly conquered yet. When he gets you in his grasp again (which for all your denials - it has happened) - he will then drop you again, crush you again and start this never-ending loop.
On your side, you like to think that you are in control of your own fate. Your instincts as a mother require that you be in control. Yet, you allow yourself and your emotions to be swayed day-to-day on impulses and factors outside yourself. You allow others feelings for you, interactions with you or lack of attention to you determine your daily emotional state. Until you are CONTENT in YOURSELF and yourself alone - you will always feel that you are at others mercy. And you are. You have not made the choice that you can be happy without a man in your life, without male attention, without being the center of someone's world, when in fact you ARE the center of someone's world - your daughter.
No one is a better manipulator of your emotions than yourself. This isn't just you, as in Christine, but you as in people in general. No one can manipulate, hurt or sway your convictions other than yourself.
And before defensiveness kicks in - all I know is what I've read and what I've lived through in my own life. You and I are very similar, however I am about 5 years ahead of you in recovery. I could be completely and totally full of BS and it is what you say it is.
Ok, enough of the blogside analysis - back to regular scheduled programming.
~Kristen~
Kristen, right on. Very well stated.
Jeff is human garbage. That's it. There's nothing deep, nothing special, no undiscovered secret soft core. He is a using, abusive man. He will only hurt you. Sure, he may be nice now and then to reel you in. But remember how you felt while you were in that relationship. Remember how you felt at the end. It's easy to look back and the good times and ignore the bad - especially when you're unhappy with your current situation - but you HAVE TO remember the bad. Remember the hurt and the tears. Remember your daughter's sadness. THAT is what he can bring you - nothing more.
You are strong enough to be you. You don't need a man, especially not one like him. All anyone can do is be there for themselves and help loved ones who deserve it. Your daughter deserves your love and attention. Jeff does not and never has. Don't give him the chance to hurt you even more. You need to live for you and work to make yourself happy - you cannot be truly settled and content until you are happy enough in yourself to not need the validation and attention from another - especially someone as dangerous as him.
Please take care.
Your words say one thing, yet your actions prove otherwise. You say you can never be with him again in a relationship, but when you write, it is almost like you are attempting to talk yourself in to it - to justify the price you will have to pay eventually to be with him.
The problem with this situation is that you say it's just sex, when in reality it is not just physical on your part. You are emotionally involved with a man who has come out and told you he did not care about you and that he had used you. No amount of love you feel for him will turn him in to something that he is not.
You take the things he says to you and try to turn them in to something that is comfortable for you. You say you wonder how much of this is a wall … none of it. For the most part, men do not use their words on an emotional level. He was brutally honest with you, he has a history of this type of abuse (and really, let's call it what it is).
The biggest concern you should have here is for your daughter. She has opened up to you about her feelings when it comes to Jeff. No matter how much you try to hide this, it's going to come out into the open sooner or later. Your daughter should never feel like you chose anyone over her happiness. Remember the despair you were in as your relationship with Jeff was ending? Should your daughter have to experience that again, knowing fully well that you put yourself, and by default her, back into that situation? Please also remember that your daughter will learn from the relationships you build and they way you allow people to treat you and she will use this knowledge to build all of her future relationships.
As adults, we have to make hard decisions. Sometimes this is the hardest one. Turning away from someone you love - even when you know they are bad for you - is like walking away from a drug. You will struggle with it every day until you come out on the other side better for the experience and stronger than you thought you could ever be.
All of the words and advice everyone is giving you is nothing new. While it's all GREAT advice and true attempts at helping you, you already know all of it. I'm not going to repeat it.
What I am going to do is suggest that you look into support groups for battered and abused women. A few posts down, you spoke of wishing that your problem were more similar to alcoholism because then you would have a support group of people who won't judge you, someone you can call. The more you speak of your feelings that still exist toward Jeff, even though you KNOW how bad he is, and even though you KNOW you can't change him, the more I think you would find that you DO have a support system out there waiting for you. You don't need people preaching at you, judging you, or telling you all of these things that you already know. You need people who will help you.
Look into it for me. You don't have to commit or even go to more than one meeting. All I'm asking is that you think about it and look into it. If we lived closer together I would hold an intervention and drag you, kicking and screaming, to a group for abused women. Think about it.
Remember, Bonnie got shot down with Clyde too. Jeff is like a dangerous animal which can't be tamed. If you play with him long enough, you're going to be permanently maimed emotionally. You are already completely on the hook. The only question is weather he'll throw you back or keep you for awhile. There are plenty of intriguing men who aren't nearly as dysfunctional. Its your life. Don't give it to someone who doesn't appreciate it.
I'm puzzled by your destructive behavior. It’s fascinating to watch you circle the flame getting closer to the inevitable outcome. My first impression that it was a needs based booty call but now I’m no so sure.
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