[LONG] False Intimacy

[Alexander the Great]

[EXTREMELY LONG] False Intimacy

I’ve had a few PM’s with requests for me to elaborate on something I said in the “10 Things you wish you had figured out before turning 30 (or 25, or 40, or 50!) thread:

11. Don't mistake the immediate sharing of her deepest secrets and pains by a girl you're just getting to know for honest trust and intimacy.
Healthy people know this as (unconscious) manipulation by an emotionally unstable person. My excuse is that I was somewhat emotionally unstable myself at the time. Had I not been, I would not have fallen for this trap.

It has taken me some time (I travelled abroad too in the past weeks), but I typed up some additional info on it and it became a bit long (as you can see ). Now, I tried to scale it down, edit out non-essential parts in order to be concise, but then it felt as if there wasn’t enough background to explain things properly. So I decided to just keep the original volume. And since I got several PM’s of people interested to hear about it, I figured more people may be interested, so I also decided to put it up as a thread. Please excuse any rant-ish appearance or any details you may feel unnecessary. I just hope this serves to show a few sinificant things about people (and chumps alike). (Yes, I’m feeling a bit vulnerable revealing myself here like this, hence this apologetic intro. Will somebody please come and hold my hand? )

For those who wanted to know, I’m assuming you guys have had similar experiences? I’d be interested to hear about them. So please post them or PM me if you prefer that.

Anyway, off we go.

In my case, the false intimacy and opennnes was with a girl I stumbled upon on a dating site some years ago. In what she wrote in her profile, she was being very open and honest about herself. In what she wrote, I also recognized myself. These two elements were the big “wow” for me. Of course, she also looked great according to my tastes (that’s why I checked her profile in the first place). So, I messaged her, somewhat extensively but nothing extremely revealing, going into the things she put in her profile, telling how I recognized myself in them. Actually I was already in love a bit. (Yes, this is a Oneitis story, I was a full-blown, desperate AFC at the time, that was the only reason why this has crashed and burned me. Thankfully. I will get into that later a bit.)

Anyway, she mailed me back the very next day. Quite enthousiastic. In that first e-mail, she was very open about herself again, so this time I returned the courtesy. By the second e-mail she sent me, she was already telling me about her problems she had with sex, ex-boyfriends, her personality quirks, winter depressions, you name it. All in a quite innocent, mild, sharing matter, making it seem as if she just knew herself very well and as if she knew how to deal with her issues. (Actually, she didn’t. She just wore them on her sleeve and had made them into romantic excuses of why her life was so difficult, but I only realized that when it was too late.)

By the third e-mail, she spilled her life (his)story, after I had told her to share whatever she wanted to share because I wasn’t sure what she wanted to know from me when she asked me about my history. And when I say spilled, I mean MAJOR spill. Not the genereal lines like you would get with getting to know a new person, keeping it light and fun and innocent. No, details to a great extent. As if I were a confidant. Such, that my first impression was: “Wow, she must really like and trust me”. (Of course, part of why I thought this was because I liked her. Or rather, she appealed to me. Had she not, I would have thought her openness a little strange and premature. In hindsight, I do.)

To continue, she portrayed such openness about quite intimate personal details, that I immediately felt trusted and liked. After all, it’s more normal to go slow in revealing yourself when getting to know someone new. It’s also more normal not to go into the deep end right away on issues in the first place. And because the “slow” is normal, and would have been to me (I wasn’t that open to her at first, and I didn’t expect her to be), the fact that she was so open right away made me think she digged me in a major way. I mean, you don’t spill your guts to just anyone, do you? I don’t. Even if I like someone a lot. But she did. And because she did share herself so openly, I felt compelled to do the same. It felt as that illusive “click”. I felt trusted and close. And from what she said, so did she. And we both admitted feeling a bond soon after the intimate sharing had begun. True,we had a lot of similarites. And I mean a LOT. We even called eachother twins at somepoint (she started that). (Don’t barf please. I already said I was a chump back then. )

Now, it was probably the feelings that I already had, that made me think this girl digged me more than as just a friend. Because she didn’t.

Our first telephone conversation after a month or three was a bit awkward. And while I was more like “Okay, that happens. High expectations, nervosity. Let’s try again. All that chemistry over e-mail is there for a reason”, she was quite the opposite. Try again? Not on your life. She wouldn’t call me and I was too nervous to do so myself. Though she made it seem as if everything was okay when I asked her about it. The intimate messaging continued. A few more uneasy phone calls followed in the months after and then, finally, we met, because she was allegedly too busy with work to get a day off until then.

We went on three dates altogether in the course of four weeks (suddenly she found a way to spend a day and two evenings with me in close succession, where before she didn’t have time for months). But to this day I still don’t know for sure why she went along. Because, I wasn’t dating my long-lost twin or the girl I had had these deep and intimate sharings with. No, I was dating a shy, timid, robot-like person who I couldn’t get to smile if my life depended on it.

If you want to know what hell is like, this is it for me: Being with a girl who looks just like you want a girl to look, with which you’ve had great emotional intimacy with (okay, over e-mail), making you suspect there’s a lot going on (or at least a lot of potential), but she’s all but avoiding your gaze, not returning your smiles, asking questions like it is a script she was reading, giving off body language as if she’d rather be somewhere else, giving you the overall impression that she’s not the least bit interested in you. You can imagine I soon felt as uncomfortable around her as she probably did with me. Well, we probably infected eachother I suppose. (I’m usually not like that, of course, I was nervous as hell because of my feelings, I fully admit that, and she probably mirrored that right back at me. I know this very well, so don’t get started. )

Fast-forward a bit. My feelings had soared despite all this obvious disinterest. Because sometimes, they say, girls that are really into you, go real quiet around you. And hey, this girl was more quiet than a lifeless void, acting timid, went along on every date offer etcetera. Plus we had a great click over e-mail. It’s e-mail, sure, but still. All the factors combined made me convinced that this girl had a crush so hard that she was nervous as hell. Can you blame me? So had I. (And it was probably my projection. )

In an act of, I admit, despair, I confronted her with my feelings. Well, she told me she had never felt the same about me. She was merely confused about why I acted uncomfortable around her. And she was disappointed that we had so little to say to eachother in real life. I was glad, because I wondered about that too. So, I said we should have a talk about that and we did. Over IM no less, because that’s what she felt most comfortable with. (One of her issues, or it could just have been an excuse, was that she preferred IM and e-mail over phone and face-to-face, because she could communicate better over them. Right. Probably just with me.)

Long story short, the way in which that IM talk went, was very, very unpleasant. It was extremely ego-centric on her side. And, because of my feelings, I felt very tricked and used. And for the life of it, I didn’t understand why this girl was seemingly blaming me for everything that had disappointed her. Because that’s how she acted: she pushed every responsibility away from her and onto me (this is typical of women by the way, many recent posts treat this subject). Example: she very coldly stated that it wasn’t her fault that I had feelings and that this was the source of my discomfort around her. True, of course. But come on! Do you say that to a friend? In such a manner?! I don’t. (Yes, we considered eachother friends. I now know better of course.)

Not accepting such a brute twist to what had seemed so promising, not just as man-woman, but for a great deal also as friends (because that’s what we claimed we were, she at the lead, and this wasn’t just LBJF bull**** alone, then again, maybe it was), I sent her a message some time after this talk, in which I held her a mirror, outlining her own behaviour to her and asking her why she was so open and intimate with me over e-mail, and then so closed and seemingly uninterested in the flesh, and so cold and harsh during that IM talk, and more things like that. (Yeah, chumpish, I know. Don’t start. That’s not what this post is about. ) Also, I assumed and stated that she must be shy and didn’t realize this.

 

[Alexander the Great]

(Cont. from above)

That was a mistake. A week later I got quite a frustrated response. She latched onto what she saw as an injust “accusation” of shyness, and used that as a basis to lash out at every statement I had made about her behaviour, again turning them against me as if I was the cause of the way she had acted. As if she had merely responded to me, and that it was entirely my doing that things had went the way they went. (This is why you must always be the Man, by the way. Women aren’t accountable in their view, they mirror you and expect you to lead. If you don’t, the b*tchy ones will use it to dismiss you. Quot Erat Demonstrandum.) As for her explanation of her immediate openness: that’s what she was like. Giving her heart to someone very quickly. Oh, a female friend of hers had warned her about it already sometime, she said (“Slow down or drown”). That was all she had to say about it. Take it or leave it.

I was blown right out of the water of course. Heart-struck. How could someone whom I had shared so much personal intimacy with, a friend no less, do such a nasty thing? A close relative of mine advised me not to contact her anymore. And I didn’t. Well, Not until sometime after, and that’s another story.

Now, in my chumpish confusion about her strange behaviour, I managed to track down and contact her last ex (at the time, their “relationship”, the why of the quotes will become clear below, had ended three years before). I’m still not proud of that, but I am glad I did because he told me a few things about her that in hindsight explained a few things.

When I got to know this girl, she didn’t have much friends, and that was something she lamented. Turns out she never had. What friends she did have, were mostly male. She didn’t really like women for friends, because “they’re usually too shallow” and because she doesn’t like “dumb girl-talk”. (Incidently, the forum has plenty people telling you to watch out for such women, because they are usually issue-laden. It is a MAJOR red flag.) Also, she clinged to this ex of hers, he told me, because she had hardly any friends. She didn’t like sex (really didn’t, I had asked her about it, she told me she thought it was disgusting and rather avoided it when she could, subsequently complaining about all the strive it would cause in relationships. Again, MAJOR red flag. Issues.) He told me she reluctantly had it a few times with him over the course of a year and a half, but when he dumped her because of her issues, she used it to try and get him back.

Now, this ex told me he thought she had issues. Other issues beside those already mentioned. He called her a quasi-borderliner even. He told me she once stalked a singer. She made an attempt to hack his website and the computer of the person maintaining it, claiming that the artist in question had “hurt” her. She had parent issues, who wanted her to do things with her life she didn’t want to do, because she didn’t know what to do with her life in the first place. Having a genius level IQ, she thought she knew everything better than anyone, or any education. Stubborn is what her ex called her. (This genius-level IQ is something I have in common with her and that’s why we clicked so well also.) She was jealous of her sister, whom she said everyone thought was more beautiful. Etcetera, etcetera.

(Incidently, There’s this thread, listing types of women, and you should take the info on The Intellectual (what this girl is) to heart. Expect blunt directness, a black-and-white view of everything, and freeze at all times. Emotional warmth is an alien concept to those who live in their heads (and who weren’t raised with it!). Shallow talk is shunned, it always has to be about something substantial. Hence the loathing of dumb girl-talk. (Okay it is dumb, but for us men. ) )

To finally come to the false intimacy, this girl shared herself so openly with me from the get go for a reason. Not just because there was a common ground between us. KontrollerX has put it succinctly in this post:

Avoid chicks that vomit out some sob story immediately when you first are getting to know them as it is a false sympathy trap they are putting out to manipulate your emotions to draw you closer to them and under their control. They are usually fvcked up in any number of ways mentally.

Yes, this girl had lots of issues. Like I said in the very beginning, she wore them on her sleeve and had made them into romantic excuses about why her life was as it was, why she was alone, why relationships sucked, why sex was disgusting, and more of that troubled nonsense. She sobbed out intimate stories that hooked me into believing we had something going. I believed they were signs of true intimacy because I liked her too much from the get go. In the end, it turned out sharing all that had meant nothing to her. At all.

And, sure, I was a chump at the time too, thinking that people with issues were to be pitied and cared for. But issues need to be solved, not nurtured like this girl did. Like I did with her: accepting them, pitying her for it, trying to “help” her (what is called the Cap’n-Save-A-Ho attitude on this forum).

That was my mistake. Hadn’t I had any feelings, I would probably have been on my guard, as people spilling their most intimate issues and details right away aren’t entirely with the regular program. Healthy people know this and instinctively avoid such people, because it doesn’t intuitively feel entirely normal. That’s why these troubled people become troubled too: no one close enough to talk to and vent their frustrations with the wider world at. Because that’s essentially what they’re doing with their sob stories: venting. To anyone who’ll listen. Wearing your heart on your sleeve may seem hip, but it’s plain dumb. Because it creates a false sense of intimacy, one that’s really completely meaningless and non-existent, because it’s shallow attention-seeking and not intimacy. This drives healthy people away.

Now this girl, she really was a nice, caring girl in her heart. I don’t believe she ever did what she did to intentionally to manipulate or hurt me. She honestly believed that what she did was alright. That’s because it’s all unconscious. With these people, it’s grown on them to become something natural for them. They believe their own woe. It’s become their personality. But it’s dangerous. It’s like people who are always acting as victims, claiming “society” has done this, or their parents have done that. Such people are still in the “blaming” phase, frustrated with what they believe is unfairness done to them. They don’t realize this themselves because they’ve probably suffered from it for a long time already. Like I said: it’s grown on them, become their personality.

Well, this girl was frustrated indeed. Her behaviour to me showed that in every way. We claimed eachother to be friends. Yet everytime things went awry and I tried to talk about it, not shunning putting her bahviour on the stand, she would lash out with frustration and accusations, making it seem like it was all my fault. As if she merely acted the way she did because of what I did.

That ex I spoke of: he called her frustrated too. Hoped he’d never had to see her again. You know what she did after he dumped her? First, she came running crying, confused why he had ended a “beautiful relationship”, while she never wanted to call it a relationship before he dumped her. When he wouldn’t budge, she tried to use sex to attach him to her. He told me they had more sex-with-your-ex in the course of a few weeks than during the year and a half they were seeing eachother. When that didn’t work to get him back either, she sent out a sarcastic letter about him to her sparse friends, in which she had listed everything he had once said to her and categorized it into things like “*******”, “Means it well but rude”, “Blunt Jerk”, “Insensitive”, and more like that. Frustration. Sick. I suppose this is where his “quasi-borderliner” statement comes from.

So, it’s pure frustration with these people, and they’re stuck in a phase where they want everyone to know about it. It’s like when you are done a great injustice (for example, when you’re young and your brother or sister is getting something and you aren’t), and you feel this need to shout it off the rooftops in angry frustration. That’s not unhealthy, and very understandable. But a person who does that for multiple years as a teen or adult, in a mild, subdued form, because that’s how they do it, to everyone who wants to listen because they don’t really have someone to talk to, such a person is just sad and in need of help. It’s become their life. And there are lots of them.

It’s because they were raised in a sh*tty manner, by demanding or unattentive parents, or parents who were cold and manipulative and unsupporting of their children’s real needs, because they had a lousy time in school (bullied), because they feel misunderstood and outcast by everyone, because they’ve had a few boy/girlfriends and it didn’t work out (and they’re the ones getting dumped all the time without them really realizing why), maybe with some there’s abuse (physical or mental) in the relationship, you name it.

 

[Alexander the Great]

(Cont. from above)

I should also mention self-esteem there, or rather a lack thereof. That plays an important part. This girl, she used every opportunity to tell me about how this ex of hers ex had degraded her self-esteem in certain areas, and this three years after their relationship had ended. He didn’t really degrade it probably, he appeared to me as the confident type when I spoke to him, and she probably couldn’t handle his healthy criticism. Like she couldn’t handle mine. And if these people have any self-esteem, it’s usually some sort of arrogance and aloofness that you’re mistaking for it. Not to mention some sort of blindness to themselves and others.

Anyway, if you have nobody to really talk to about your issues (parents, friends), like this girl didn’t have (who had all these aforementioned issues, by the way, except physical abuse AFAIK), then you get a twisted personality really quick.

The immediate openness, which is usually a tale of woe in some form or another, is usually done mildly and so did this girl. It creates a false sense of intimacy and a false sense of trust. While you, the “victim”, are thinking this person must like and trust you a great deal for them to tell you all those intimate things about themselves, they’re just venting their frustration to the next person who’s, finally, willing to listen. And if you like such a person, or think you like them, you’re easily fooled into thinking they like you a lot too, because intimate sharing is what people who like eachother do after all. And if you like them enough, you’re bound to jump on the sympathy wagon with them. That’s the trap and the control they put you under that KontrollerX spoke of in his quote I mentioned earlier. It’s no use trying to be the listening friend for her that she doesn’t have, because it’s really of no use. Wether you want to be just a friend or more than a friend. Because what you forget is that this sort of people, and this girl too, are really so far into a mindset they shouldn’t be, that what they really need is therapy. That’s what this girl’s ex said about her too, in fact.



And with that I suppose the moral of this story is not only to be on the lookout out for false intimacy and openness, but maybe moreso that you beware of investing your feelings in someone too soon. After all, in hindsight I feel that if I hadn’t decided right away that this girl was going to be my wife p) then I would have looked with a more skeptical eye at her, as well as her spilling her guts and issues all over me, and I would not have mistaken this for true and honest intimacy and a genuine feeling of like on her part. I would not have mistaken it for that illusive “click”.

Or maybe her openness and honesty was genuine and heart-felt. Maybe I f*cked up as a man by not being one to her. A man that leads, and is the rock in her Universe. But even if I had been that, it still wouldn’t have lead anywhere; she needed therapy.

Another moral of this story: actions speak louder than words! This girl continuously said how much she liked the friendship, how she wasn’t honouring it properly when she had to forgo replying to my messages for weeks on end, and how she said she missed me after I let replying to her messages slip for a few weeks myself. Aside from it being plain obvious what typical dynamics were at play there, this girl never had time to meet with me, despite her words and despite my urging to do so. If she had really liked me that much as she led me to believe, she would have made time. At the time I chose to believe her story that she was honestly swamped in her work, but I merely forgot to remind myself that she alone was the one allowing this swamping. Nobody’s a slave after all. Again, I liked her too much.

Don’t invest your feelings in someone too quickly. That’s the basis of everything where relationships are concerned I think. And actions speak louder than words. These are the lessons I learned from this. The bottom line is: I didn’t qualify her like I should have. I put her on the pedestal right away and approved of everything about her. And more of the likes. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn’t have fallen at all for what seemed a great match, but turned out to be a severly damaged, and therefore fundamentally incompatible, person.



Before anyone gets started on how chumpish I acted: this is way in the past, I was a huge, desperate AFC at the time. While it may appear that I think she lead me on (I did for a long time), in hindsight she didn’t lead me on of course. I mostly did that myself. My feelings: I did that myself. And they caused me to mislead myself on a great many things.

As for the rest, in that, I do think she led me on, but then again, she’s a woman. For example, I expected a friend to act more honourable and respectful towards me. I certainly expected a more warm approach from this girl in “turning me down”. I expected an honest talk with her too about her feelings not being the same, but she never ever did me that honour, not even when I outright asked for it. I expected all of that because that’s what I would have done had the situation been reversed. Expecting all that from a woman, from anyone, was wrong. I now know that.

Never expect anything from anyone but yourself. Especially not women. Because I did back then, I threw my heart at her feet, and she walked right over it. That’s the reason this whole ordeal hit me so hard and nasty back then. Fortunately, it’s also the the reason I picked myself up, took a long and hard look at myself and changed. Really changed. In some areas (there are more to go ). For that, I’m really grateful, because I truly was a major chump but no longer.

In case you’re wondering: yes, to this day I regret the way things went with this person. I have f*cked up, of course. She was a b*tch too. She has issues (and so did I probably). That doesn’t change the fact that never in my life I have met someone I had so incredibly much in common with and with whom there was so much recognition and a click, and with whom I shared so many preferences, tastes in books, music, movies, life outlooks, hobbies, and ideas. Despite the issues behind some of them. Despite the apparent incompatibility.

I regret losing this friendship. Though I’m probably still a little blind for the way she acted. That’s probably my attitude of trying to see the good in everyone. That can be a death trap if you’re not careful, because even if people are good in their core, some are just so twisted by life that bad behaviour has become their second nature and has replaced their original goodness without them realizing this.



Incidently, about four months ago or so I got contacted by a girl on another dating site. She spilled her guts in a nice and friendly fashion in her very first e-mail, much like this girl of above did. Suffice it to say that I was on my guard this time, but mailed her back, also a bit extensively, but not intimately, interested to see where it would lead.

When I did a bit of Googling, I unexpectedly learned she suffered from Borderline. When she gave her phone number in her second or third e-mail already, I went dead in the water. Not to brag, but this time, not having a depedant, needy mindset, I immediately recognized that her ways were quite needy and unhealthy and I exited.

Another situation I’ve experienced, not long ago, was with an overly obvious headcase-woman latching herself onto a relative of mine in my presence, spewing her issues and frustrations about the world at him (and me) in order to establish an emotional, sympathetic bond. My relative and I immediately exchanged this look and forewent the possibility of having a hot threesome with her; we’re not into screwing headcases (okay, my relative was about to get married too, and he doesn’t cheat. ). Because there was no “like” involved from the get go, her unconscious tactic was overly obvious right away.

The point of mentioning these two more recent situations is, again, that healthy people don’t spill their guts for dear life right away. Not even when you’re dating. The name of the game is slow. And physical intimacy comes first, emotional intimacy follows from it. Otherwise you’re just her girlfriend. Remember this.



Alright. That concludes this bloody essay. This has also been somewhat therapeutic for me (I never thought it would, after all this time, it’s been two years ), so I hope you’ll forgive me any unnecessary details and afterthoughts. Thanks for reading if you got this far. Sorry to hurt your eyes so much, if they do.

Those who wanted to hear some details, I’m not sure if it’s what you were expecting. I hope it cleared some things up for you. If you have questions, ask! If you have a tale of your own to share, do! Don’t be shy, we’re all here to help eachother, right? At least the openness here is honest and we all know we all have issues concerning this, in some way or another.



And for those who recognize the behaviour a bit, maybe this thread is for you: How do you get rid of a BPD woman? The girl this post was about certainly had Borderline traits. In fact, I think all women do. Personally I have become to suspect that Borderline is merely the typical female traits amplified in a major fashion due to a lack of a healthy upbringing. It’s all extremity with them, where other women employ these traits in a very, very mild manner.

Especially the page I linked has many recent replies by KontrollerX on the typical behaviour of people with Borderline Personality Disorder, which describes the behaviour of the girl I talked about above in an very amplified form. So I think that even if it doesn’t apply to your situation, there’s a lot to be learned from it on women in general.


Anyway, thanks for reading and be a Man.

 

[classy broadside]

I expected long, but not loooonnnnngggg...g....

Get to the point already. If this was more of a catharsis for you, great. I'm happy for you personally. Maybe put it in your blog or something.

But you don't need to rehash what you did with that girl in your writing now. I get the point that you said too much. In the first paragraph. That was enough. Now you make the same mistake.

 

[Alexander the Great]

I've altered the title to more properly warn you, classy. Better for you?

 

[Colossus]

Alex asked that I share some of little of my own story--- my catalytic LTR that was eerily similar in some ways to his case.

Personally, I think many guys here have stories along these same lines. In fact, some our most intelligent posters had prolonged entanglements with BPD, BP, or other emotional bombshells that irrevocably changed them---for the better. I don’t know what it is, but there is something uncanny about otherwise very smart men who make horrible choices with women. I guess we have to learn by sticking the fork in the socket.

I don’t really think it’s necessary to go into details. First of all, I have neither the time nor the energy to rehash it; and second, what’s more important is the message.

I did a little reading on BPD, and surprisingly I found that the symptoms were emotions and behaviors that most people feel or have felt at times. What separates a BPD from a healthy individual is that in BPDs it is chronic---they have brooded, internalized, and festered in their plight for so long that it becomes part of personality--- hence, a personality disorder. Research indicates that the majority of BPDs are young women who have suffered some form of abuse, namely sexual and emotional. I have to second Alex’s take: I think BPD is otherwise normal female behavior that is magnified to an extreme degree. Read through some of the signs and symptoms; erratic emotions, radical fluctuations in self esteem, impulsive behavior, irrational thinking, and blaming those closest to them for the way they feel---this is all women. The difference is that in most healthy women it is very mild and they are able to self-regulate these negative feelings that everyone experiences at times. And that’s not to say men cannot be affected, but women are certainly predisposed to it. BPD is clinically much more common than BP or schizophrenia, according to my source, although less well-known.

My own experience was with a girl for ~2.5 years who was eerily similar to Alex’s case. She was beautiful, intelligent, and because of my own AFC mind and the amount of things we had in common, I was totally in love with her. However, she was deeply, possibly irrevocably damaged. Dysfunctional family to the Nth, major physical and sexual abuse by a past bf, you name it. Not a bad girl at heart, but many, many issues that had sort of scarred her personality.
Now I could go on and on about her and the things she did, the way she treated me, and my own horribly shameful AFC behavior; but I don’t think this is necessary. If you really want to read about go back to some of my EARLY threads on SS---and try not to barf.

The point I want to make is that my own state played a huge and necessary part in that trainwreck of a relationship. I had my own unresolved issues; going back to my mother dying when I was a kid, bullying, abuse, and other emotional trauma. These issues precipitated my instant emotional involvement with her, and I got sucked into such a destructive, unhealthy cycle of manic highs and lows that it has taken me years to recover. I sought out therapy, and let me tell you, there is no shame in getting help when you need it. Sosuave is a great place, but some of our brothers need professional help.

Nothing, I mean NOTHING, will bring out your own personal demons like a relationship. For those of us who haven’t internalized and learned in the deepest part of our gut what it is to be a Man, an entanglement with one of these women can be disastrous. Because my self-worth was so closely linked to my success with women, I took everything personally. All that emotional garbage of HERS---it also became mine. By accepting this poison, I became a host to her disease; her emotional wreckage. I made all sorts of wild irrational assumptions, my self-esteem plummeted, and I did things that I thought I would never do.

The good news is that we can recover from this. We are only tied to these people insofar as we choose to be. Look at the successful MEN that have come out of relationships like this: Rollo, Kontroller, Alex, Jophil, Vulpine, myself, and many others.

I hope this helps. Never give your heart to a woman quickly, and ALWAYS remember that her behavior belies the truth of her intent. As my father says---it never lies.

:rockon:

 

[mikeraw]

Holy crap, man... I've met the exact same type of girl. Only that this one is a little worse... this one is a complete lush. She says she suffers from anxiety and will run out of a department store if spoken to... unless she's drunk, but the exact same pattern is there for her.

In fact, halfway through reading your thread I contacted her and cancelled out meeting tonite... she was supposed to help me pick out my halloween costume!

Anyways, this one told me before we even kissed, like the 3rd time we had met (we met in real life from the start) all these personal things about her... rehab, abortions, parent issues, etc...

I kinda fell for it and she's hot, so the following time we saw each other and every time since, it's been wild monkey sex.

She also blames her ex for a lot of her issues. Oh man, and to think she lives in the same building as one of my ex plates that truly is a good girl, well, as good as they can pretend to be, at least.

Thanks for the post... it was an eye-opener!

 

[classy broadside]

Alex, I was just being cute. But I was thinking that the topic could be split into two: the succinct lesson and the personal background.

The lesson is encapsulated in:

To finally come to the false intimacy, this girl shared herself so openly with me from the get go for a reason. Not just because there was a common ground between us. KontrollerX has put it succinctly in this post:

Quote:
Avoid chicks that vomit out some sob story immediately when you first are getting to know them as it is a false sympathy trap they are putting out to manipulate your emotions to draw you closer to them and under their control. They are usually fvcked up in any number of ways mentally.

Yes, this girl had lots of issues. Like I said in the very beginning, she wore them on her sleeve and had made them into romantic excuses about why her life was as it was, why she was alone, why relationships sucked, why sex was disgusting, and more of that troubled nonsense. She sobbed out intimate stories that hooked me into believing we had something going. I believed they were signs of true intimacy because I liked her too much from the get go. In the end, it turned out sharing all that had meant nothing to her. At all.

And the rest is the personal history.

I'm not suggesting that you change the thread at all. Rather, if you want to make a post about the moral lesson of the story, that'd be the core of the issue. But I appreciate the personal and emotional aspect to your story, even if a tad wordy.

 

[Alexander the Great]

Hehe, okay.

You're right, the topic is very splittable. I just felt that the lesson wouldn't really hit home with just "the lesson". To those who recognize the whole thing it might, to those in the middle of something similar it might not. Hence my motivation to give so much background: to provide some context. Though I realize that it's partly due to the (completely unexpected) therapeutic value for me that I also felt a need to include background to that extent. Maybe I've not completely put it aside myself. On the other hand, I'm long winded and love making long analyses, including many details, even if they're not extremely relevant. That's a bit of a quirk of mine that's not always handy.

Anyway! I'm glad you appreciate the whole. Hadn't realized you were being cute earlier. Though I should really say: pics or it didn't happen.

 

[true romance]

Alex

Thanks for sharing your story. There is a great lesson to be learned here. I dated similar chick 2 years ago as well. On 3rd dates she spilled out that she almost killed herself, suicide etc. Drug abused, BF abused..etc. She had a kid at 18...I didn't do enough research at Sosuave to avoid this but I cut contact after 5 months of dating since she is to emotional, probs..etc. She play the victim card. all her ex abused her, self esteem, anxiety..etc. She drag me in to her world of issues..etc.


Lesson learned:
Do not date girls

-No presence of father
-Drug abused
-single mom
-in debt, financially irresponsible



Should be in archive

 

[window]

From day one a guy needs to ask himself this simple question. Am I having fun with this girl ? As soon as the answer is no open the parachute.