Have you ever made a situation worse because you didn't want to get too close to someone?

It’s called being passive agressive and I try to avoid it when ever I can. It’s not productive or mature. (I’m pretty old.)

I find that we do this a lot. We strive to hurt people that we care for becuase we need to keep our wall in place. If anyone watched “Sports Night” (an excellent show on ABC 10 years ago) the character Dan was talking about it. He liked this woman and she kept picking at him because she was unavailable (She ended up getting back together with her ex-husband). He called it “The wall of tears and pain.”

Hell, yeah. It’s because I don’t deserve to have anyone be close to me, so if they start showing it, I have to drive them away. I’m pretty good at it, too.

@daloon I’m sure that’s not true…

@jo_with_no_space: don’t make me prove it. I really don’t want to. I’ve been doing so well. But the wall between me now, and me like that is paper thin.

@daloon- I’m so sorry you feel that way. My last boyfriend used to get upset with me when I told him I thought he was wonderful. He struggles with similar stuff as you. I didn’t understand this for a while (because I’d never dated anyone who felt like that before), and it broke my heart when he ultimately pushed me out of his life. I still care and worry about him a lot. It’s hard because I feel like I can’t really help him, or at least I know he doesn’t want me to.

@daloon It’ll get thicker.

@chicadelplaya: We inhabit a kind of inside-out Alice in Wonderland world. The problem is that when you don’t feel good about yourself and you care for other people, you have to keep them away, because you really don’t want to hurt them. A little pain now is better than a lot of pain later.

It is difficult to feel positive or to even hope when you feel like this. It is dangerous to hope. So it is better to assume things are bad and getting worse, and anyone who says different just doesn’t understand, and that makes us angry.

WHy can’t you get it through your thick skull that, despite the fact that I want to be loved, I can’t let you love me? Shit! I hate writing this stuff. It reminds me of…

THe best I can do, is just let it be. It’s there, and it hurts, but I don’t have to pay attention to it. WHen I don’t pay attention to all that shit I think about myself, I look fine, and really, I am fine.

The moment someone directs my attention to it, by complimenting me, or asking me to evaluate myself or someone else, it all comes tearing back, irresistably. The horrible part is that I want to be told I’m doing well. But it ties me up in knots when it happens, because I want it, but I don’t believe it, but I should believe it, but I can’t be around people who create this turmoil inside.

It’s not your fault, and you’re not doing anything wrong. We each have to find our own way of coping with it. My way is to try to desensitize myself. Maybe @jo_with_no_space is right when she says it’ll get thicker, but I can’t afford to hope for that or think that. If it happens, it’ll happen, and I’ll have to not notice it happening (while knowing it is happening). It’s this delicate balancing act of not-noticing.

Make sense? Probably not. Well, they don’t call me nuts for nothing.

@daloon- Thank you so much for your response. I can see it is painful for you. I hope that through the pain, you are somehow also pushing through it and becoming a little stronger each time. Thank you for helping me understand a little better.

Not exactly. But, it’s definitely been done to me… :(

No. Not in my memory anyway. I might have when I was much younger, but as Judi says “I’m pretty old”. :^> I’m a pretty heart-on-my-sleeve kind of person. I tend to verbalize all sorts of things so I don’t get to that point. If I didn’t want to get close to someone I’d most likely tell them that. But I don’t see not wanting to get close to someone as a likely motivation for me.

I could see not doing something to end an argument if the thing I could do just wouldn’t resolve the argument but put it off where it’d come up again later. I see putting things off as pretty pointless, so I avoid avoidance. :^>

@daloon ~ I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here, and are possibly nearing a breakthrough. Please do all you can in this moment, and then the next one, to keep down that path. One day you’ll possibly look back and hear us all cheering you on. Hang in there, and remember: hope floats. You just gotta hang on to it, and not let go.

Yes, I probably could have stopped an argument that ended a friendship.
It’s difficult to explain though, but to skim the surface, they are Borderline
and I got tired to repeating these cyclical and unhealthy patterns of behavior.

Fixing the argument would have only been temporary.
Our real issues ran much deeper than that.

It’s difficult to trust someone who prided themselves on never being constant.

@daloon, today on NPR I heard a 2006 Terry Gross interview with Leonard Cohen and thought of you. He was saying, apropos of love and loss, that when we are loved we always think that some concession is being made. It struck me that he was expressing a theme (in his poetry and in the interview) that is actually true for many of us, even though most do not articulate it the way you do.

@Jeruba: I don’t understand. Can you explain a little more fully what the idea that “when we are loved we always think that some concession is being made” means, and how it is related to what I said?

He was saying that we never think we fully deserve it. Good interview, worth listening to.

Oh, crap. If I had to wait until I thought I deserved loved I’d be truly fucked—and not in a good way. I always liked Mr. Cohen. Can you provide a link? I’d appreciate it. Cheers.

Here, this is it: Leonard Cohen interviewed by Terry Gross.