Come Valentine’s Day, many unattached people, or people in less-than-fulfilling relationships, may be willing to accept less than they really deserve, just to have a few crumbs of “romance.” Sarah Strudwick writes that perhaps it’s time for a change. Read:
Happy pathological free Valentines Day, on WakingYouUp.wordpress.com.
Yeah, good point you are hinting at, Sky, that just because someone IS physically affectionate doesn’t mean they are a good person or a good match for us.
That’s the thing though, big love could be physically affectionate on some level… it wasn’t totally absent… just not up to par to my level, not a cuddler. His lovemaking was the most gentle and touching I can ever remember. But he also loved to comb my wet long hair for example, and he could totally get the knots out without me ever feeling a thing about it.
Trouble is that not only is it very difficult to match my degree of cuddling nature, it’s also hard to have that intellectual connection. Spath sure never had that with me, and it’s the reason why from the start I knew he couldn’t be much of a true inspiration to me. It’s the intellectual matching that makes me passionate about someone, and then I need to feel at liberty to express that passion as freely physical as I can.
I agree, I don’t want to settle either…. What I’m wondering now is: ok, so I need to feel free to express that passion in my physical way. The question remains, now that I have a deeper understanding of other communications, do I need to receive it the same way?
Sky and Star,
Yes, that’s what I realize now too… BTW I used to say that ALL the time to spath… what a team we made! And it was based on the physical affectionateness. It gave me a team-feeling. He didn’t really seem to comprehend that concept either.
Darwinsmom,
I love the way you are questioning what you want and what you are willing to compromise on. I know your questioning will lead you to the decision that feels right for you. It’s hard to comment, not being in your position. I think if I had someone I loved deeply who loved me, I wouldn’t expect him to live up to my past lovers or to be perfect in every way. I would relate to him on his own merit. Look at all the energy I put into my neighbor. He doesn’t even know how to kiss! On the other hand, if you choose someone who is not physically passionate, you may always miss that and idealize the past lovers who were. There is a reason you broke up with big love in the first place. It’s easy to look back and remember the good times and forget the reasons you left in the first place.
Anyway, I don’t see why it has to be all or nothing, and why you couldn’t spend some time around your ex to see how you feel, without closing yourself off to other opportunities. The thing is, if you still feel insecure by his inability to show affection in the way you need, I don’t know how you can change that in yourself.
I’d love to sit here and tell you never to settle and to hold out for everything you want. But at 51 and single, I’m not in a position to say that anymore. I think now that we just go with the best choice we have and commit to it 100%. The commitment itself takes away the unhappiness of uncertainty.
Star, but that’s the whole thing… He broke up with me, never I, and in a way I never left him at all. There never have been reasons for me to leave. I learned to move on based on only one thing: I had to, because even after 2 years I knew I loved him like day 1, but he would not turn back the clock…. I moved on because so is life: you can’t turn back the clock of unfortunate misunderstandings.
And it’s not easy to see whether he’d make me insecure now… He lives in California and I in Belgium.
I do know though that I actually left my insecurity behind years ago. I’m always affectionate in my communication with him. First imagery I described spontaneously in my first reply this week was sitting beside him at the campfire he set ablaze again for me to talk, take his hand and lay it against my cheek. I’ve been describing my physical affection in mails to him for 8 years without reserve.
He sounds like such a special person, darswinsmom. How wonderful that you have had this kind of gentle love and affection in your life. You have had many other life experiences since then, and you are healing and growing. This will attract all kinds of men and experiences to you, and possibly old flames, too. You never can know in what directions that will lead you. It may lead you to reconnecting with him in a more loving and mature way. But since he is the one who left, if I were in your shoes, I would not fill in the blanks for him, but let him do all the reaching out and the traveling to see you. Sounds like the distance alone is a huge obstacle.
Darwinsmom and Star,
Fear of intimacy is a common problem in men (and some women) and from what I understand, it is the cause of cheating in spaths. From what I’ve read, the spaths cheat because they don’t want to be controlled. It is part of their oppositional defiance disorder. Love is tied up in their heads with being controlled. They want to control others, not be controlled themselves. It’s part of their power addiction. So part of the reason they have to hate us, is because they feel themselves becoming vulnerable to us.
But I’m not saying fear of intimacy means someone is a spath, just that many people have it and find different ways to deal with it. You can observe the symptoms if you stay objective. One thing you will notice about people with FOI, is that they choose to have relationships where the other partner is unobtainable. They might live far away, or they might be married.
It will seem bizarre because the person seems to care deeply in every way except that they sabotage the potential for more. And it gets worse, the closer you get to them.
I think that depending on the severity of the problem, the FOI person actually begins relationships with a move to sabotage from the beginning. It’s an amazing thing to watch them moving in two directions at once.
With spaths, it’s the most obvious. They tell you that they are interested in you, while they slander you behind your back to everyone else. WTF? It’s like they are buying an insurance policy in case they get in too deep. Always have an exit strategy – that’s their policy.
But none of these people actually see that this is what they are doing. They most likely see themselves as being duplicitous and predatory. They don’t realize that the person they are most duplicitous with is themselves.
I’ve heard that people can be treated for FOI, but I’m not sure what the treatment entails. In a spath, I doubt it would work because the lies they have told themselves are so deep that they would have to peel back layer upon layer upon layer and when they finally got to the core, it would be empty.
Yes, Star, you are right… I feel the same way. The distance is a huge obstacle. It was already to his mind, when it wasn’t for me, and I’ve outgrown any sentiments of wanting to move to another country long since. He knows that.
At the moment romance is far from his mind I think, or he might use it as a fantasy to escae his pain. He needs to heal from the rejection by people so important to him, and learn from the mistakes he made to cause them to do so. Romance is never a real healer for this. For the moment though he can seek me out in cyberspace by mail to lick his wounds and find inspiration to get back on a path. I am safe from hurt, since the hurt is long in the past and I got through it.
We’ll see then, and if he were to see me differently than when he did when he left me, yes, he needs to do the reaching and traveling. I don’t think that out of “it’s his turn”, but because it is his shield and wall and only he can bring it down. He’s like a catterpillar getting out of its cocoon, and he has to do that all by himself.
Darwinsmom, I had that special feeling about the guy I met in Costa Rica. He is the ‘one who got away’ in my life. Every 6 months or so, he will contact me, and it stirs up my feelings again. But he is not interested in rekindling a romance. In fact, I think he’s married now – I doubt happily but married nonetheless. I think he just reaches out when he is bored or lonely. But he hasn’t been consistently in my life, so I don’t consider him a real friend. Everything I feel for him is based on the past or on a fantasy of how it could have been.
I know he reaches out when he knows I’m either struggling or he is. No, we’re not a constant presence, but we’ve helped each other through each storm in life in as much as we could and give the right inspiration to each other. It’s why he’s contacting me now. He mentioned not being able to find the resilience by himself to pick up his life. He’s hoping that just by communicating in our unique way, I’ll probably intuitively say exactly the things that he needs to hear and inspire him once more.
What I feel is based on both the past, seeing him again two years later with the intent to move beyond only to realize that this marvelous person was still as marvelous to me (and why I know it’s not a fantasy of mine), and the communication since then: basically he’s been an inspiration to me since day 1, and has been that over and over again.
Skylar your post really resonated with me!
My ex spath was only physically intimate with me in the first few weeks of dating–and we dated for a little over a year. When I would ask him about it he gave me several different excuses. He would let me serve HIS needs but he would never do anything for me, so I just stopped doing anything sexual for him the last six months of our relationship and it was as if he never noticed.
We lived together in a sexless relationship. There was hugging and a kiss when getting home from work or before bed and cuddling every night while falling asleep but it was just so bizarre. Sometimes I wondered if he is gay. This tough, angry guy being gay seemed really counter-intuitive though.
Very early on in the relationship when this was popping up a red flag for me and I asked him about the lack of sexual intimacy one of the excuses he gave me was that he was used to just hooking up with women after going out to a bar and he could not equate sex with love. And the only times we did it in the beginning was when he’d been drinking.
He drank a lot when we first went out but stopped. I thought drunk him was more relaxed and fun than sober him, in hindsight.
I cannot say for sure but perhaps when he gets close to someone he cannot relinquish that power and control sexual intimacy requires. When I would ask if he had regular sex with his ex-gfs he would just respond, “well every relationship is different” and I never got a straight answer.
He even dated a girl who was bi and she had a girlfriend on the side and he seemed OK with it when talking about that relationship!
Just so BIZARRE.