about intimacy
This weekend, I was brought up short by the reality of my priorities regarding friendship. Specifically, I don't consistently make friends a priority. I say "consistently" because there are times when they absolutely are my priority - I call, I make and keep plans, I think about them and send little e-mails or texts, I show up regularly, I share my stuff and listen to theirs.
Yet a time comes when I disappear from my friends' lives. They call, I don't return calls for days. Oh, eventually I do, but usually when I know they won't be around. I don't call them on my own. They e-mail, I don't respond for a day or two - even though I am constantly on my computer and e-mailing all the time.
I have made many plausible excuses over the years for my behavior. My friends even believe those excuses and offer me sympathy - because the reasons range from my nephew dying to my parents moving to my being in a lot of pain from my hip and back problems. These are real problems, real issues, real life conditions to which I have to adjust. And thus I train my friends not to expect very much of me consistently.
When I do show up, I am a wonderful friend - caring, honest, fun and funny, insightful, supportive, positive, etc. Everything I wish a friend to be, I am. Until I'm not.
The trigger for these realizations was sharing about ending isolation and deflating ego by talking to someone else about one'sweaknesses. It hit me that I protect my self/my ego by refusing to maintain consistent friendships, by so clearly putting friendship low in my priorities. After all, if I don't show up consistently, how are friends to really know me? And how are they to know the whole me if I disappear during my most vulnerable times?
Two people helped me bring this realization to consciousness - one a dear friend and the other a new person.
The friend has been herself adjusting to a new job and hasn't been in touch as much as usual. When I called, she was with other people or couldn't talk. My parents had moved to Nebraska after 43 years in the same town, and I am missing them terribly. So why wasn't P. calling me? Well, I won't call her! So I spent a bunch of time feeling
abandoned and hurt.
In all that mind stuff is a clue to what was really going on. God willing, I will pay attention to and act on that clue in the future. The clue is that when I feel someone is doing something to me, I need to look to my own behavior to see what I have done or am doing to create or contribute to the situation. "Keep the focus on myself" is a core life principle for me.
Apparently, when I'm feeling vulnerable, I have a lot of trouble keeping my focus where it belongs - on my behavior, not other people's. If I'm hurt, instead of withdrawing, I can tell my friend I really need to spend some time with her and can she see me. Because for me, I'm usually hurt because I'm feeling vulnerable in the first place. So let me be vulnerable, let me allow my friend to see me that way, let me tell her that I need her. To be sure, I risk being disappointed. And sitting here writing, I feel such a resistance to being disappointed. I'd much rather protect myself and say "I don't care, I don't need you anyway!"
I have never been very good at dealing with disappointment. Someone I respect calls depression "deep disappointment" which makes sense to me. I was depressed for so many years because life didn't go according to my plans and desires. And when I take the risk of being vulnerable, I want it to work out my way so I will be able to continue being vulnerable. Yet is it really up to another person to make it possible for me to be vulnerable? Or is that my work, my responsibility? Am I not the one ultimately to make life safe for myself? Do I not have a Higher Power into whose care I have placed my will and my life? Will not my Higher Power support me in this very frightening scenario? How will I know if I do not try?
The new person is someone I reached out to, then pulled back, again reached out and then pulled back. All of a sudden, I saw how hurtful that was, how rude and inconsiderate.
I was behaving as I always do, yet I see now that I've been careful not to be approachable by new people so they won't get caught in my stuff. Guess I must be ready to deal with this defect of character, for now I am hurting someone even more vulnerable than I am. I apologized to her, and am determined to amend my behavior with God's help.
I need friends and I want to be a friend people can count on. I also want to be in a loving relationship, which I've lacked for many years. The cause of that has puzzled me, even as I accepted that I must not want one very much because I'm not in one. Clearly, it's not been a priority. It's moving up the priority list, though. And now I have more insight into what I've resisted. More shall be revealed, now that I have started down this path toward what I think is intimacy.
Yet a time comes when I disappear from my friends' lives. They call, I don't return calls for days. Oh, eventually I do, but usually when I know they won't be around. I don't call them on my own. They e-mail, I don't respond for a day or two - even though I am constantly on my computer and e-mailing all the time.
I have made many plausible excuses over the years for my behavior. My friends even believe those excuses and offer me sympathy - because the reasons range from my nephew dying to my parents moving to my being in a lot of pain from my hip and back problems. These are real problems, real issues, real life conditions to which I have to adjust. And thus I train my friends not to expect very much of me consistently.
When I do show up, I am a wonderful friend - caring, honest, fun and funny, insightful, supportive, positive, etc. Everything I wish a friend to be, I am. Until I'm not.
The trigger for these realizations was sharing about ending isolation and deflating ego by talking to someone else about one'sweaknesses. It hit me that I protect my self/my ego by refusing to maintain consistent friendships, by so clearly putting friendship low in my priorities. After all, if I don't show up consistently, how are friends to really know me? And how are they to know the whole me if I disappear during my most vulnerable times?
Two people helped me bring this realization to consciousness - one a dear friend and the other a new person.
The friend has been herself adjusting to a new job and hasn't been in touch as much as usual. When I called, she was with other people or couldn't talk. My parents had moved to Nebraska after 43 years in the same town, and I am missing them terribly. So why wasn't P. calling me? Well, I won't call her! So I spent a bunch of time feeling
abandoned and hurt.
In all that mind stuff is a clue to what was really going on. God willing, I will pay attention to and act on that clue in the future. The clue is that when I feel someone is doing something to me, I need to look to my own behavior to see what I have done or am doing to create or contribute to the situation. "Keep the focus on myself" is a core life principle for me.
Apparently, when I'm feeling vulnerable, I have a lot of trouble keeping my focus where it belongs - on my behavior, not other people's. If I'm hurt, instead of withdrawing, I can tell my friend I really need to spend some time with her and can she see me. Because for me, I'm usually hurt because I'm feeling vulnerable in the first place. So let me be vulnerable, let me allow my friend to see me that way, let me tell her that I need her. To be sure, I risk being disappointed. And sitting here writing, I feel such a resistance to being disappointed. I'd much rather protect myself and say "I don't care, I don't need you anyway!"
I have never been very good at dealing with disappointment. Someone I respect calls depression "deep disappointment" which makes sense to me. I was depressed for so many years because life didn't go according to my plans and desires. And when I take the risk of being vulnerable, I want it to work out my way so I will be able to continue being vulnerable. Yet is it really up to another person to make it possible for me to be vulnerable? Or is that my work, my responsibility? Am I not the one ultimately to make life safe for myself? Do I not have a Higher Power into whose care I have placed my will and my life? Will not my Higher Power support me in this very frightening scenario? How will I know if I do not try?
The new person is someone I reached out to, then pulled back, again reached out and then pulled back. All of a sudden, I saw how hurtful that was, how rude and inconsiderate.
I was behaving as I always do, yet I see now that I've been careful not to be approachable by new people so they won't get caught in my stuff. Guess I must be ready to deal with this defect of character, for now I am hurting someone even more vulnerable than I am. I apologized to her, and am determined to amend my behavior with God's help.
I need friends and I want to be a friend people can count on. I also want to be in a loving relationship, which I've lacked for many years. The cause of that has puzzled me, even as I accepted that I must not want one very much because I'm not in one. Clearly, it's not been a priority. It's moving up the priority list, though. And now I have more insight into what I've resisted. More shall be revealed, now that I have started down this path toward what I think is intimacy.
posted by julieannerickson at 2:37 PM
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