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Heisenberg
Learning
I think we have similar views on the exquisite vulnerability which is genuine love. It is almost a form of sacrifice. I do think it is the natural way for the woman to choose the man and if people examined their own relationship they might find it's true of them too.I have to be the one to initiate it or it infuriates me, honestly, and I've felt that way my entire life. I like to choose and pursue and then I like when the person flirts back, after I've already decided on them and made my intentions and hopes obvious. I cannot stand feeling stalked, pursued, or manipulated, particularly by a man, and that's how I feel when someone else intitiates and then doesn't back off when I am clearly not interested. As soon as my current partner had his breakdown and pushed me away, all of his friends started trying to hit on me, even the married ones, and I felt like I had been thrown to the wolves and I'm still sick over it. I see men as overwhelmingly predatory and opportunistic and they rarely prove me wrong (and I'd say that a majority of women who were sexually assaulted and abused feel this way). Men act like I should be flattered by their attention when I just want to be left alone and then they keep bothering me after I've made it clear that I'm not interested, trying to get me into bed with them when they know that I am vulnerable. It's like they think that I am stupid and they need to pounce on me while I'm already heartbroken and 'weak' and there's a race to see who gets to me first. There's one guy that isn't even that close to my partner who, after I rejected him, told me something like, "Your partner told me that you're his crazy ex-girlfriend and he wishes you'd just leave him alone and you're humiliating yourself, so why would you be trying to hold on to someone who just disrespects you and doesn't want you at all?" That is a cruel thing to say and I knew my partner wouldn't have said such a thing to this man in particular because they aren't even close (and, when I asked my partner directly, he denied it and was furious and wanted to know who said it). I ghosted all of these guys on Facebook, literally just stopped signing in, and now one of them downloaded another app to contact me on and sent me a picture of himself twice and keeps saying, "When am I going to get a picture back?" and asking me to video chat, and I still haven't been responding, but he won't go away. And I'm in the horrific position of not wanting to burn all of these bridges in case my partner gets better and wants to stay together, but then again, he wouldn't want to stay friends with any of these people. I shouldn't be having to deal with any of this, though, and it's amazing how insensitive these men are being, but sadly not surprising. A lot of times a man is like I'm flirting with you, I'm pursuing you, you should be grateful for my attention, and it's terrifying and it's harassment and there's nothing enjoyable about it at all. I feel forced to respond and I know I'm not going to respond favorably and then they are going to freak out. I flatout told a man that I'm not interested in him or dating at all recently and that I don't consider myself single and he called me a "stupid bitch" and was like, "You'll learn your lessons the hard way, stupid Taurus. I won't fight for someone who won't fight for me." That was someone that was a 'professional' acquaintance at best. Men don't like to take no for an answer and they act like they're entitled to you as a person and they don't handle rejection well. I hate all of it. If my partner and I never get back together, I have no plans to date again. I used to tell my partner that being in love was terrifying because it's like you rip your heart out of your own chest and put it in someone else's palm and beg them not to smash it or drop it and just try to trust them. It was an uncomfortable feeling for me, being that vulnerable, and I won't repeat the gesture anytime soon. If my partner does want to stay together, I now need lots of therapy and we would need couple's counseling to work through how much his sudden abandonment has destroyed me as a person.
Anyhow. I liked it when my partner and I were good together for the 8 years before his breakdown. I liked him complimenting me and flirting and touching me. I did choose him, though, and felt an odd love at first sight feeling with him. When I trusted him, I felt positively about him flirting with me. I would not like it if any man just started flirting with me, though, and I'd feel suffocated and scared. One of the nicest things about being with my partner was actually that when we were together, no other men dared to approach me or try to flirt with me or even look at me. It contributed a lot to my feelings of being safe when I was physically with my partner. That is sad in and of itself. Like, as a female, I feel the need to have a man to protect me from other men.
Question... when you went to hug your girlfriend and she interpreted it as assault, was she already having a panic attack or did she try to push you away or did you refuse to let her go? Or was she simply triggered by you approaching her at all?
I've definitely had moments where I would do anything to get away from a man and out of his arms. I wouldn't call the cops on him and lie about him assaulting me, but if someone tried to hold on to me and not let me go, I would start fighting and I wouldn't be able to tolerate them. Feeling trapped by a man is definitely a huge trigger to me.
I hope that something here answered your question or made sense. From the perspective of someone who has CPTSD from being sexually abused.
What happened regarding the hug?
The landlady had not gotten back to her after the oven broke and stopped cooking properly. It had caused us to both have food poisoning a few days before. She started showing all the signs of an impending explosion so I hugged her and gently put my head against hers. She pulled away and started swearing and saying really nasty things; now all directed at me not the landlady. I let her go and asked her to stop her verbal attack as this is one of the boundaries. She carried on with the verbal assault (sorry, but it is the only way to describe what happens) escalating the anger by the minute. I asked her to stop and when she didn't I said "Please stop behaving to me like this or I am going to have to ask you to leave the house until you can treat me in the way you like to be treated". I remember saying it calmly and clearly. She then totally lost her shit and called her son to pick her up and take her back home. I was arrested three days later.
A month later she wanted to meet and was extremely apologetic and admitted I had done nothing. We met at the house and I told her I didn't blame her even though I am still on police bail. We stayed together for a wonderful weekend. On Monday I called her, having spoken to a magistrate friend who told me she needs to tell the police she is unwilling to give evidence as she knows nothing has happened. She wanted to know what he said so I told her. She completely freaked out at this and didn't speak to me for two days. Something similar happened a few days later and she blamed be for pretty much everything from the meteor that killed the dinosaurs to the assassination of John Lennon. She has calmed down by the next weekend when she came to see me but kept telling me she was in a bad mood and wanted to tell me all the things I had done wrong then decided not to. She left Sunday morning and her son has upset her so I got the usual attack over the phone. Tuesday she ghosted me and I texted her saying that everything that was happening was making me feel less secure in this relationship than I felt was okay and could we please communicate better. She called and lost her shit again. It started happening almost every day from them and by the day before yesterday I had enough...
That's interesting. I did feel that she sometimes considered I was a soft touch. But then she would be perfectly loving, maybe for as long as two weeks...the popular consensus among my pros is that "transference" is what causes me to attack other people instead of the people i'm REALLY mad at. innocent bystanders are far less likely to hit back than the blatantly guilty. innocent bystanders are more likely to be helpful, as well. the attacks are a cry for help. works in progress on finding more civilized ways to ask for help.
for what it's worth
i have 10 siblings. of the ones who stayed with the family circus, i often wonder if they stayed because of the addiction factor. in general, humans don't gravitate toward what is good for us. we gravitate toward what is familiar.