Self Destruction: Intimacy And Infidelity

[Deleted member 1860]

Here's something else I'll bring up. How picky are you when it comes to accepting the adoration of some guy? Not reciprocating. I mean how many times will you flat out tell them to GTFO, if you will.

I can't.

I've had a number of guys tell me to just ACCEPT what they say is true. They comment on my looks or this that and the other, and I shut them down every time. I don't see it as sincerity, I see it as manipulation.

This thread has become too much for me. I need to leave.

 

[Kefira]

I don't understand why feminism and being off put by traditional roles is being brought into all of this?

Yeah. I also can't explain that one and was frankly rather irritated by it so I took a step back from the thread.

I have a very hard time shutting down men, even if they're horrible and I hate them. It has to be pretty bad for me to get serious.

I'm awful at this. My best friend who later drugged me when I didn't accept his advances once backed me up until I had literally crawled onto my kitchen counter wedged under my cabinets because I wouldn't put my foot down and tell him to get the hell out of my apartment. One of many examples, most of which are more minor. But even with flirting, I'm much less likely to either shut someone down OR to flirt back overtly and more likely to sort of deflect it while leaving it neutral, if that makes sense?

 

[Kintsugi]

@Kefira Roger that. Makes complete sense to me. I am terrible at this as well. Sorry to hear you were drugged. I've never been drugged, but this habit mixed with alcohol for a few months in college, I started blacking out on the weekends, would wake up in my room with one of my guy friends, bewildered. I stopped drinking for a long time after I asked one, "What happened last night?" and he just laughed.

Didn't stop putting myself in potentially dangerous positions with guys. But I did quit drinking for a hot minute. I still don't know what happened that weekend. Don't want to know. I was not in control that night. It scared the piss out of me. That is when this little head game schtick of mine gets real. This is why I don't want to go there again. I'm less afraid of emotional infidelity and more afraid of doing something I can't undo, I realize, the more I write about this.

 

[Kefira]

Yeah. Took me some time to figure that one out. The other things he'd done had actually caused me to finally decide he might be dangerous and start rejecting him. A couple other people were sort of aware of his obsession level also, but nobody thought he'd go that far.

I realize it's potentially playing with fire. I also realize that it's not my fault if someone drugs and rapes me. But at least I can work on modifying the poor choices I've learned to make because of my views of my self worth and how relationships/friendships work. I've been pretty adamant about not having a relationship for a good long while. I actually yelled at one of my friends last night about it. He was doing he "I just think you need someone to take care of you, you'll find someone good eventually". I sort of flipped and was like, "look, maybe I don't think that I need another MAN to fix things that MEN have done to me. Maybe I think I need to take enough time so that I feel like I deserve to keep breathing, and so that relationships don't look like traps". Edited to take out a lot of expletives.

Maybe this is food for another thread when I have the energy to do it, but the other thing I mentioned to him (yelled at him) was that in my skewed version of how relationships work I get that if I never decline sex with my partner my partner can't rape me, but I haven't figured out how to keep my head down and stay so perfect that I don't get hit or abused yet.

One of those things where I know that's not ACTUALLY how things work, but when the filter came off and I said it I realized how much I really do believe that. Along with all my other views on intimacy like that your body is just the payment in flesh and pain that hopefully makes your partner stay with you and put up with you. These are the things where my therapist says "Surely you're too smart to honestly believe that" and after a long silence says "Right, a lot of work to do."

I'll probably make a thread when I feel up to it. For now I just wanted to share my thoughts this morning.
:hug:s If you accept them Simon. Thanks for all the food for thought this week. :)

 

[Powder]

Sorry to those who found my question about feminism off-putting or out of line. Could someone please explain to me why that seemed inappropriate to ask about in this thread (or at all?)? I'll reread and try to understand better, but so far, I can't understand.

I don't understand why feminism and being off put by traditional roles is being brought into all of this? I

It's not being brought in, because I asked a question about it and immediately dropped it when the answer was it was not relevant to the issue. It's clear my question either didn't fit the thread to others or was not understood, which is partly my fault for not defining what I meant by words, which I now see are more loaded than I thought or intended.

I know you left the thread, Solara, if you're reading this, so I'm not trying to be argumentative so much as to clarify that someone can make a miscommunication and move on to try to work through it.

 

[joeylittle]

I wonder if an aversion to being seen as someone (particularly a woman) who lusts after commitment and becomes inordinately attached to a relationship very quickly is another thread here. I know I despise girls and women who become instantly and deeply attached to a romantic prospect. It makes me sick.

Funny that you mention that, as it sort of sickens me, too.

I sympathize because I think many feminists feel some sort of disgust with traditional roles. I would like to hear why this kind of thing is off-putting to you. I don't blame you for feeling sick, only wish to point out it may be offensive.

@Muse, I also thought you brought up feminism in a really off-putting context here. The series of quotes above is how you did it - by assuming that what Simon and Solara were talking about was the same as them saying "as a feminist I feel that..."

You assumed they were taking a feminist stance - rejecting "traditional" gender roles within relationships - when they were only saying that they as individals were made sick by watching other women go after commitment to a single relationship at all costs.

And, as you stated later, things can be loaded. Feminism is probably one of the most controversial and divisive topics among women. What is it, what does it mean, are we feminists by default...hits us where we live, I think.

 

[Kefira]

@joeylittle thanks for that sum-up. I also think that was part of the issue I took with the topic coming up. The other part was that it assumes that women who attach quickly to romantic prospects (and I guess I was inferring the connotation of some level of desperation there which may or may not have been meant) are the norm or "traditional". Because that's really the only link I can see to pull in feminism or "traditional roles" anyway. As far as I was aware, we were discussing from the point of view of people with early sexual abuse how that abuse factors into the ways we find ourselves approaching various relationship components and how we view other relationships we see.

Felt to me a bit like the phenomenon on news sites where something unrelated to politics suddenly breeds a political flame war in the comments section.

This is clearly a matter of personal preference or proclivity, nothing more

I also don't think that's clear at all. That would indicate that we condone, enjoy, or actively choose how we're experiencing all of this. And that's something I haven't seen a whole lot of in this thread. Not to say that we aren't responsible for working through skewed ideas and changing things that we see fit. But speaking for myself and my wheelbarrow full to overflowing with damaging beliefs about relationships particularly when it comes to intimacy, I think it's my own 'proclivity' about as much as my panic attacks and night terrors are.

 

[Kintsugi]

I really, really love @joeylittle 's post above. Part of why I kind of jumped on the monogamy thing and didn't address feminism at all as a topic is because, until about last year, I really despised ( ;) ) the idea of ever identifying as a feminist. My best friend in college and I met because we had to come up with headlines for potential magazine pitches, and we both used "Why I'm Afraid of Feminists" (both of us 17-year-old women) as an example.

So. Yeah. I'm actually all about traditional gender roles in a lot of ways. I think it actually makes this whole situation more dangerous for me in sometimes.

The sort of guys I would go after in this situation (i.e. not in a potetial serious relationship situation) are overwhelmingly beset by some control issue. I don't know why I feel I do this in part for a sense of control if I tend to somehow seek less stable men. Only one of my actual boyfriends (my first) had control issues. But I do know that the value I place on some gender roles in part leads me to confuse masculinity with control. And if not control, definitely instability, the erratic confused with th assertive.

Just writing this post took forever. I usually write five pages an hour. This took a couple. This is hard to admit and increases my sense of self-blame and was also very difficult to describe.