Detail in the Definition

Funny how just a few posts back I said that everyone was at a different stage of their pattern and now, just a short time later, we are all rather lined up quite nicely.

My friends ask me how I am, in respect to feeling sad about the departure of Mr.Aloof to which I generally respond that I am sad and processing the whole thing and trying to move on. Of course, as most of my friends know, sometimes, if one doesn't ask a specific question, one doesn't really get the full detailed answer. Ask a general question, get a general answer, if you want to know more, ask more.

I recognize sometimes, that I have more to say, when the question isn't asked, and then I hold that information inside and consider the answer myself. Sometimes, it is something I haven't consciously considered before. So I've been thinking about Mr.Aloof here and there. About how I miss him. About how of course I want to go have a fantastic play session in the five story Victorian warehouse. Really about how I want him to be the person that I see he has the potential to be, and not the person who he actually is at all.

It's a tricky bit of mental gymnastics to wrestle your brain into paying attention to this finer bit of detail. He is not the person that I want him to be. Yes, there is potential, there were glimpses of that fantasy within the totality of who he truly is. But just because I want him to be a certain way, does not mean that he actually can ever be that way. The trouble with me, and some of my friends is that we think we can achieve goals in other people by modifying our own behavior. When Mr.Aloof sent his parting email he said that although he had tried, he hadn't been able to feel the spark with me that he needed in order to take things any farther. And what was my first reaction? To wonder how I had failed or what I could have done differently to have made that spark occur. My next thought? To be irritated with him for not telling me what it was I was lacking so that I could have tried to be that for him. My third thought, and not at all where it should have been in the priority order of thinking was that of course this was all obvious, and I knew somewhere beneath my fantasy yearnings that he was not right for me either.

While I wanted him to be this person he is not, and hoped for him to suddenly fulfill the potential that I saw within him, that was not his reality. And the feelings I had for him were in many ways for the fantasy I had created around him, and not for who he actually is at all. And in a way, this is a helpful distinction to make. Because while I feel sad and miss 'him', I quickly follow this up with a mental reminder that what I miss is something that I never had. What I long for, is something that he never was. And that it is not my job in life to become anything other than who I am to make someone treat me with respect and consideration. That I did not deserve the crap that he put me through, my tolerance, my forgiveness, or my patience. He, the man who he truly is, is unworthy of me, and is not actually the person to whom I am tied. I am tied to the fantasy of him.

But the processing of this is easier. I am tied therefore, to something that lies solely within myself. And so I ask myself, what role does this fantasy play in my view of myself, that I feel so desperately that I need it, regardless of the real person who is now, in this deeper level of thinking, no longer worth considering? Because my fantasy construct understood me. Wanted to be with me. And on some level, I clearly feel that people don't understand me, and don't want to be with me. Which is why my attraction is so strong. Of course there is more- additional detail and bits of things that I attributed to the man who in no way resembled the properties I gave him. But I had just enough attention from him to make it stick. To make it believable.

The only way for me to get out of this cycle is to not look for things that are absent in me, in others. I know how they say that you can't really find love until you love yourself. And I think that's perhaps an oversimplified version of what I'm trying to deconstruct. You won't find stability while you look for others to complete you, or to compensate for your flaws. You won't find anyone to value you, if you don't value yourself. And why would they? Because it's not that you don't value yourself that's the problem, it's how you behave, or how you allow yourself to be treated because you don't. If you allow people to walk on you, someone will come along and take advantage of it.

Every day now that I'm not getting email from Mr.Aloof I feel the sadness. The dash of the tiny expectation, the extinguishing of the small hope. And every time it happens it reminds me that my sadness in many ways isn't really about him at all. It reminds me that I need to work on me for a while. And only for the very best reason of all. I know I deserve so much more, and I don't want to go through this all again.