For me, dating that is pretty much intuition-free is utter bullshit.
I have a friend who would have loved for me to have dated more and told her more about it. A s much as she loves and supports me, she has occasionally let slip that she seems to make negative assumptions about what kind of person that I and her other friends will attract, not to be catty but to prepare herself using assumptions that are not about or because of me. The source of that is past pain and possibly self-doubt. That said, her words grab the attention of the fearful voice in my head and elicit classic internal reactions of the Shannon I used to be. Our individual negative opinions are not about one another.
In this post, I’m gonna dig into both
cynicism and the Law of Attraction. Wanna come along?
As I’m sure you know, we can have
friends and family who are incredibly supportive of our well-being while that
support is influenced by their life experiences, so about each of these people,
you could say, “They support me but they’re worried”, and I get why that is. They’ve
been hurt in the past and still bear wounds from those emotions. Combine that
with societal conditioning and they seem to assume you’re going to be hurt in
the future. Of course…you might be making that same assumption.
[looks pointedly in
mirror at self]
The website
PsychAlive refers to the judgments this way: The nagging “voices,” or
thoughts, that make up this internalized dialogue are at the root of much of
our self-destructive and maladaptive behavior.
I
bring this up because in one particular friendship, I’ve had tests quizzes
come up to challenge the way I’ve been developing my thought processes and
emotion regulation as of late. This past Friday, Violet and I briefly discussed
my ex Tom and she said something along the lines of, “Please pick a better guy
next time”, which was an interesting enough response to deserve filing away in
temporary storage, and later that day, when I had more time, I delved into it:
Cynicism. Violet is such a romantic that when we were high schoolers, some of
her stories and gestures of affection in relationships made me want to vomit.
These days, love life-specific cynicism is part of her armor, a result of past
bad experiences, including a happily now-defunct marriage, and she seems to
expect most people to be the same combination of naïve and optimistic about
dating and to be clueless about what one’s intuition can tell them about
another person.
After a bad
experience with a guy last year, I told her something along the lines of, “I cannot
have that happen; I can’t be the person who lets someone treat me that
way”, and for all I know, she may have walked away from that conversation with some concern and
hope for me, but I’d say I was probably worried and, more importantly, determined. I wanted to
heal my anger and shame about it, change my thoughts, and start meditating my way into a different personality
where I’d have a lot of self-respect, because I meant what I said on a deeper
level: I do not want to be that same person anymore. Some of us want to make
changes on even a neurological level.I haven’t told any of that to Violet, though overall, discussing things with her, considering our different viewpoints. In the past, there have been a couple of moments when she tossed out a scenario in which she described a boyfriend of mine, real or imagined, hypothetically saying or doing something to me, and she would then inform me of what she assumed she would do to bring the hammer down in response. The whole story was intended to display her loyalty to me, but each time, I couldn’t help noticing that the scenario was always negative; my boyfriend’s behavior would be disrespectful. Did my friend have pessimistic expectations for her people? At the end of a recent conversation about relationships, I reminded her that I’m not willing to settle, to which she replied with something like, “Well, you’re gonna be waiting a long time”, a phrase I find annoying in that context, because
A)
I already knew that.
B)
I already did that.
I already F-ing
waited for years. One could easily infer that what I said in my ‘Don’t Call Me
Your Best Friend’ blog post about the across-the-board permeating effect of my
distrust pertains also to my love life, and it certainly does! When I have
dated, my attitude has never been to find out whether or not a deep connection
could be forged, especially one that would last for decades or the rest of my
life, and that attitude was driven partly by fear of vulnerability, sure, but
also by knowledge passed on by my intuition. I have, so far, known within
seconds of meeting someone, whether or not it was a great, spiritually guided
idea for me to have this person around (romantically or platonically – either way),
and using that, I didn’t have to take ,multiple dates or months or years to determine
that none of the guys I’ve met or associated with have been mainstays. knew,
every step of the way, that all of those MFs were temporary.
I have moments in which I think that
maybe my love life could potentially have flown under the radar (hers, that of
a couple of past friends, even my dad and grandmother) if I had been a good
actress and had pretended that when going out once or twice with this guy or
that one, my hopes had been up about attraction and respect and a future. For
years, I’ve cared far too much about what others think, while also only kind
of trying to assimilate, to appease. One thing that makes me stand out is
being honest about the lack of connection with a guy, because it seems to make
me look stubbornly pessimistic. If I had lied, my loved ones might not have
worried as much that poor little Shannon was missing out, though in some cases,
I presume that what I’d miss out on is the experience of blindly leading with
brain chemicals my conscious adult mind, having little feelings for at least a
handful of different people.
With all of the good will Violet
brings to the myriad of relationships in her life, platonic and not, she
doesn’t listen to her intuition much and can’t relate to my statements that
around this person I “got a bad feeling” and avoided them or that I “just knew”
that I should give someone else my number in order to have a really beneficial
short-term thing. I’ve been telling her more, in recent months, about the
development of my abilities, just for the sake of giving our friendship
intimacy a fair shot, even if I do find it F-ing scary. I appreciate that she’s
so supportive of me as a friend despite not being able to relate. That said,
it’s interesting listening to the occasionally voiced unpleasant expectations
she has for her friends’ dating decisions, wondering if that is just her own
self-protective defense mechanism. The duality of her hope and skepticism
intrigues me only when I remind myself that, to some degree, she’s been like
this for years and that such a duality is considered normal not just for
her but for a lot of the people I’ve known.
Younger me didn’t know that the Law of Attraction is real. I didn’t know that I could have manifested a male friend I could go out and make out with, have no real romantic feelings for each other, so there I was, putting my all into driving people away, thinking that distrust, no matter how distancing, was safer. There wasn’t anyone among my family or friends who could have even tried to show me things like manifestation, the purpose of life and the Law of Attraction. I have come to believe that it was through self-shaming that I got genes in my body to express a certain way and develop health concerns I’ve had, in addition to often succeeding at my goal of not attracting real men for real connections. I knew that someday, I would be ready for a commitment, but I wasn’t aware that much of my situation was self-made, and if, in the past, I had known what I’m learning now, hopefully choices would’ve been different, whatever that could mean and I hope you can relate to how I’m reframing my outlook.
If
a person wants to, they could manifest a romantic thing that really suits who
they are at that time or multiple fun, respectful f**k buddy situations for the
sake of, like, sexual exploration with relatively compatible people. If you
lead with fear, though, you can’t have nearly as much enjoyment.
About Violet, no matter what goes through our heads, the most important fact is that she and I each respect and care about the other and we’re currently trying to luxuriate in the good parts of life, teaming up for the bad. I can choose to look at her cynicism as a helpful challenge, but one thing is for certain: that opinion, that headspace – it isn’t for or about me. Violet isn’t trying to lob a tennis ball at me, love. No. That back-and-forth is between herself and her memory-pocked point of view. I’m not an opponent who has to respond, keep up and win. In that way, her doubts are not my business. When someone else's doubts come flying at me, I just shouldn't let them stick.
