What I Wrote to Someone Else About You ….

(I met Tiffany through an on-line match-making site. And when I first started dating her, I had also already been corresponding with about 6 other matches. But I never closed off communication with those matches, though I did stop writing to them. Tonight, after talking with a good friend and listening to her perspective, I decided to write again to some of my matches and see who might still want to resume corresponding. It may well be time to move on.…)

Hello Lara,

Long time, no hear from me. And so I certainly apologize deeply for that, I have been avoiding my in-box for a couple of months, though I did read your email to me and the article you sent along with it. I have no decent excuse for not writing back sooner. Only an indecent one. So here is the truth regarding whatever happened to me….

The reason would be the usual suspect, of course—I met someone and I started dating her. It was very consuming for me. But it didn’t proceed smoothly. Well, it did initially. She pursued me, charmed the heck out of me, and I was hooked … I was totally vulnerable: I was smitten, infatuated, intrigued, all of it, and I thought I was at the beginning of something I had been looking for my entire adult life. I hadn’t felt anything like this in years. It was that good and right and promising, from my perspective. It made that much sense. And nothing seemed to be forced; everything was natural. And it seemed to be the same for her as well when we were around each other. To me the passion and mutual interest was undeniable: we were totally into each other and it was all over our faces whenever we were together, such giddiness. It was really quite beautiful.

But that was only the reality of what is was like when we were in person. When we couldn’t see each other for a while because of work schedules, or her custody arrangement, things got tense and strange, she became very remote, and I felt it, and I would say as much because I’m a very direct guy who prefers truth and reality to fantasy. Honestly, when she would pull back, it was almost like she was suffering some sort of short-term memory loss and had forgotten had good it was when we were around each other. It just didn’t make sense to me; it baffled me how she could be so capricious and take-it-or-leave-it with what we were like when we were around each other. It was like she had a split-personality, her darkness and her light, Jekyll and Hyde, her ego and her soul. On the one hand, in person she was totally into me; one the other hand, when we were apart, I was marginalized, I was forgettable, expendable, and not that significant; I wasn’t REAL.

So she would withdraw, say things were too intense and overwhelming, and that she needed time to make sure of who she was and make sure she could meet me at my level because she felt inadequate and undefined like Jell-O inside. I thought she was perfectly lovely and adequate and acceptable just as she was, from what I knew of her at that point. From what I saw of her with my heart, she was more than okay and adequate. She was meeting me on every level I could ask for out of a relationship with another human being. It was that good and right.

But she claimed that she didn’t think she was enough for me and that I deserved more. & that she needed to do inner work. Now these two things aren’t mutually exclusive: for a first-rate intelligence (which she has, she teaches this stuff at work) it’s quite possible to get to know someone new and significant and yet still have time for solitude and to reflect and contemplate and grow as a person and do significant inner work. In fact the two alternatives would probably dove-tail and synergize quite nicely. . . .

And so I’ve come to conclude one of two things. Either she was basically full of it and she was making a lot of excuses, meaning she played me, and she was never that into me, and all of the stuff I perceived when we were together never really reached her. It was more like she was just trying me on and trying the relationship on and deciding if she liked me and if she liked who she was becoming when she was around me. (Two things come to mind at this point . . . the 1st is, she repeatedly told me she didn’t want to hurt me. But the reality is that I don’t think she ever actually intended to love me or get to know me as a person. I never felt REAL to her [if you are familiar with the beginning of "The Velveteen Rabbit"]. I never felt that she actually was able to get outside of herself and her feelings and actually care about me as a person, as a human being, and treat me with that level of respect and care. When she had an impulse to pull back self-protectively, she gave into it, choosing that over the more difficult path, and I was collaterally damaged, caught in the crossfire of her fear and self-protectiveness, as a result. The truth is mature love isn’t neutral; it takes a stand; it is something active, not merely something passive and reactive and self-referential. So maybe she’s proving her own point about being Jell-O. But to me it’s more a question of living courageously and from what’s best in her, and not giving into fear. The 2nd is, maybe she did in fact catch a glimpse or an intimation of the person she would have to become in order to be with a person like me over the long-term, and so that has brought up all sort of doubt and inadequacy. But my sense is this is more about her playing it safe and shrinking from her higher possibilities and evading using her courage and avoiding sticking to the more difficult or rarer path, than it is about her giving an honest go about growing significantly as a person. Because the opportunity to really use her courage and grow as a person is right in front of her.)

The 2nd possibility is that she actually was of two minds and that initially she really did like me, but like seeds thrown on rocky ground, whatever we might have had sprung up too quickly, and because the soil in one of us was not deep or differentiated enough (too Jell-O-y) the heat, the passion, the intensity, overwhelmed it, and it withered for a lack of roots and good soil. Or the seeds were thrown among the thorns and weeds, and the thorns and weeds of fear and cowardice and doubt and second-rate thinking grew around it and choke it. Basically her ego, her darkness and small voice of doubt and unworthiness got the better of her and squelched things.

So anyways, irrespective of what she might say to me at this point, to me the writing is on the wall, and I am near certain I will probably never hear from her again. Again, because I was never really REAL to her. (Which is probably what hurts the most, because I never felt like she got outside of herself and extended herself to get to know me as a person. All of these feelings and all of these moments, and it was just make believe. I wasn’t reaching her, she wasn’t letting me reach her, and she wasn’t interested in reaching me. And that’s what hurts the most and is part of my baggage: I’ve never felt REAL to another human being; I’ve never perceived or sensed that another human being was going out of her way to reach me or to connect with me or to touch my center.)

And I also doubt I’ll ever hear from her again because she has seemingly killed off that part of her that was light, vibrant, vital, engaging, full of life, and that first reached out to me. That part of her is dead, which is too bad, because that part of her was beautiful and amazing!

Real Connection - Rumi

Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane,
I spill sad energy everywhere.
My story gets told
in various ways:
a romance, a dirty joke,
a war,
a vacancy.

What is a real connection between people?
When the same knowledge
opens a door between them.

When the same inner sight exists
in you as in another,
you are drawn to be companions.

~~~~~~~~~

Intimacy – Dag Hammarskjöld

Is my contact with others
anything more than a contact with reflections?
Who or what can give me the power
to transform the mirror
into a doorway?

How ridiculous,
this need of mine to communicate!
Why should it mean so much
that at least one person has seen
inside my life?

(from Markings, pp. 69 & 73)

So anyways, that’s what I’ve been up to for the past couple of months . . . just meeting someone new, getting yanked around, probably paying down on some cosmic karmic debt I ran up in my teens and early 20’s, the usual, lol

And, yes, I am raw from this. But given time . . . .

So what about you . . . how are you, Lara? How have you been?

Obviously I hope you are well, and I would obviously welcome hearing more from you again.

Warmest regards,

John

~ by John 24x7 on July 12, 2008.