old man sutton

The adventures through life and spirit of a single father, lover and man.

I know I’ve been coming out with a lot of negativity lately.  Anger, depression, a sense that maybe I’m just ready to give up.  Yes, I have these emotions just like everybody else.  I tend to process things out loud.  I’ve always had the best of luck figuring out the things I can’t seem to wrap my mind around, by bouncing them off others.  Sometimes, whoever I’m talking to doesn’t even have to say anything.  What really helps me, is getting it OUTSIDE of myself.  By saying it out loud (or writing it down as it were), I can then hear or see it as an observer.  You know the saying that some situations are easier to see the answers for those outside of them?  It’s like that.  Well, it’s like that.  It held true back when I was employed as a software engineer.  If I’d spend hours running in circles with a particularly difficult logic problem in my code, and couldn’t seem to find the answer no matter what I was thinking, I’d often corner a co-worker or boss, and tell them about it.  Often, just the act of saying what I had tried, would suddenly make it obvious.  By putting things in terms that somebody else can understand, and saying out loud, you really have a chance to HEAR yourself.  How many times do people come to us for advice, and we see so obviously what the solution is?  By asking out loud for advice from others, it does much the same thing for me.  I hear what I’m saying, as if somebody else asked it, and suddenly it’s just so OBVIOUS!  Half the time, I end up answering my own questions and solving my own problems, just by voicing it aloud.

Anyways, this is the way I work.  I CRAVE understanding.  I have a highly logical frame of mind, and I seek to know the reasons behind any problems in my life.  I ask questions, try to establish facts, etc.  It’s not to say that I’m some kind of data collecting robot who just analyzes what he knows, no.  I also am able to use intuition to a great deal to skip a lot of the logical steps and arrive closer to the heart of the matter.  However, the more facts I have, the more I can either support or deny the accuracy of my intuitive findings.

I’m thinking this morning about how others perceive me.  I don’t often stop and think how others see the ways I behave.  *I* know what I mean, and I often assume that others will too, but that is so rarely the case.  All my life, I seem to push people away or piss people off, because I can come off as arrogant and condescending.  I can seem pushy and clingy.  I’m really not any of these inside.  If I know the solution to somebody else’s problem, I’m quick to offer that to them, figuring people would like to move past the problems by eliminating them, and tend to forget about all the emotions that must be dealt with for them to more effectively do so.  I hate seeing people in pain, so I continually try to cheer them up when they’re at their most low, when I need to just be listening.  I love doing the things that make me the happiest, and when those involve another person, sometimes can’t see that at that moment, what they’re really craving is some space and and alone time.  As intuitive as I can be, as empathic, as logical…. sometimes I’m just bloody clueless.  So then I start asking questions, trying to get a read on the situation.  I don’t want to be clueless, I don’t want to hurt my relationships with others, so then I become overly cautious.  Asking questions, trying to understand.  I do this from a place of compassion, but it’s often perceived of as clingy and needy.  And that always blows me away and hurts.

The thing is, the things I do, while they make sense to me, where I see myself doing them out of love, empathy, caring, etc… oftentimes they’re not seen that way by those around me.  There’s a big difference in how I perceive myself, and how others perceive me.  Yet, at the same time, there’s often a big difference in how I perceive others as well, as opposed to how they perceive themselves.  Nobody can really look at me and understand what’s going on inside my head, they’re not mind readers.  And the same holds true for me.  Despite the empathy, despite the sometimes intuitive leaps to the heart of a problem, despite all that, I’m just not a bloody mind reader.  I know this, so when I just can’t seem to understand, I start asking questions.  And what’s upsetting to me, is how often this is perceived as a bad thing.  I ask questions, out of a desire to understand someone, because I care, and want to not upset them with my lack of understanding.  And by doing so, I end up driving them away because it’s perceived as being too pushy.

It’s a lose/lose.

The thing is, this always starts out as a positive.  A desire to communicate, to have openness and honesty with each other, the basis of good, healthy relationships, be they friendships, romances, familial, what have you.  And somewhere over time the doors of openness, honesty, of communication itself start shutting, and I’m left rattling the doorknob, seeking to understand, confused as  to what happened, while others have formed this opinion of me that I just can’t see.  I know this opinion isn’t true, but by seeking to understand what caused this, and trying to fix it, I just end up doing more damage.  How can we better ourselves if nobody is willing to tell us the hard and brutal truths that we can’t see for ourselves?

There are many things I can see in myself that are more negative, that I do have answers for, and I know what causes them.  I can get overly jealous, when there is reason to be jealous.  If somebody is in love with me, but telling me she may end up looking for love elsewhere, then yes, this comes to the front, and it spreads to jealousy everywhere.  Show me love and loyalty, and I have no reason to be jealous, and I’m not.  I can be demanding of others time, if we never get to spend time together.  The less time I’m given, the more I crave to find ANY time.  The more any positive is taken away that I once enjoyed, the more negatively I react.  This is why I think communication of the why’s is so important.  I need that to keep the snap reactions at bay.

I know I’m a good and wonderful person.  I know I’m special.  I know I’m beautiful, and smart, and sexy, and that when I put my mind to it, I am capable of the most amazing things.  I know I’m funny, I’m interesting, and that I’m a good conversationalist.  I know my heart is in the right place.  I know I’m a good person, and worthy of being loved in return.  I give love freely to everybody I meet, and I open myself bare to strangers, in the hopes of furthering that love and trust in humanity that we all need and have lost.  I know I’m a good person, but sometimes, I’m just at a loss why others can’t see it.  I have this perception of myself internally, but if it comes across negatively externally, is it possible I’m doing something wrong?

I’m not looking for hugs and “of course you’re a good person, don’t ever doubt that”.  I know I am.  (Well ok, you can give me that too if you want, I don’t ever really get tired of hearing it)  What I’m looking for here, are hard truths and brutal honesty.  I’d rather hear a hard and painful truth than an omission or pleasant white lie.  I’m at a loss as how to bring my internal motives, intentions, and view of myself across in my external relationships so that others see it as well.  I’m asking for advice today, because even after voicing this aloud, I’m still not finding the answer.

Edit for Disclaimer: I’m in no way trying to paint a negative or misrepresented picture of anybody here, this is just the perceptions I’ve had in my mind lately, and the thought process I’ve been through today. Like any story, there are more than just one side.

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I have a problem right now with insecurity, that has grown larger in recent weeks. It’s gotten a little out of control, and well… time to confront this. For me, that means exploring it. Writing it down, talking about it, getting it out in the open. I’m just writing as I go, and posting it raw. No editing. No spelling corrections. Open-mouthed “bleeeeeaarrrrrgh-plop” to quote someone. I just need to get what’s been inside me out, drain the poison, so life may flow back.

I recently broke up with Lyon, as the situation we are involved in has been preventing us from growing as a couple, has actually been regressing us. I hope this isn’t forever, that after all this we have a chance to see about us, but she needs to be able to figure her situation out on her own, and I need to not be involved for my own mental and emotional wellbeing right now. So I finally voluntarily stepped back. We started out open and honest, sharing anything and everything. I won’t tell her story, that’s her’s to tell. The main point is, while dealing with her divorce, she hasn’t had a lot left over to give to us. And being able to give in a relationship is important… no… imperitive for a healthy relationship. And the lack of this openness, honesty, of communication, and of certainty, brought out my insecurity to a level I haven’t seen it at in a long, long, long time. I own responsibility for how I handled that.

I’ve been pondering this for a few days now. One of the things that triggers this insecurity, even jealousy, that is to be expected, is hearing about the ambiguity of feelings she has left for her husband, and pondering what to do there. NOT a help for a guys feelings of security with the woman he loves to be sure. But more surprising, is a trigger that is to be less expected. She’s made some new friends, and she’s an affectionate person. But when I see her calling them by pet names that I had only seen reserved for me, seeing how close they are when I’ve barely seen two words spoken between them… wow.

Am I threatened that she has friends? No. Am I threatened that she can be affectionate? No. I’ve been exploring this, and I find I’m threatened because she’s growing so much closer to other people, and finding affection and openness with them when she doesn’t have much for me. While I was shown less and less, they were shown more and more. Soon, the only terms of endearment used to me were the ones being used with everyone else. Again, not good for feelings of security in a relationship. And another part of feeling threatened here, is that… I hear nothing about these friendships in the day to day, no, “I was talking to my friend about X today, and our discussion ran along these lines”, no indication that there’s any sort of friendship at all, nothing shared with me, until it’s already to a point where one need to rave about how fantastic and close these people are. Do I care that she’s doing all this without me? Well….. kind of. I don’t care that she has a life outside of us, but I DO care that she has a life outside of us that I NEVER HEAR ABOUT, that she feels she can’t share with me. Secrets were never really our thing, and when suddenly they start stacking up, even if they’re not intentional…. yeah, I feel threatened, and I feel insecure. Especially with the tenuousness already inherent because of the situation of being in a relationship on the heels of divorce. Secret social networking sites, friendships with people I have barely ever even heard about, getting to a level of that much closeness, and… it’s hard. Especially when I saw her drawing further away from me. It’s not that I’m not doing the same things with her, it’s that she can’t share with me afterwards. How do you NOT feel insecure?

Perhaps my past plays some part in this. The girlfriend I gave my virginity to, who insisted I too was her first, had a girlfriend in the romantic/sexual sense on the side, that I never knew about. She didn’t see anything wrong with that. She didn’t feel it necessary to tell me, didn’t understand how it could possibly be cheating. It’s taken a long time to get comfortable with how close women can get and still JUST be friends. It’s been a long and rocky journey. But when suddenly there’s the closeness there, and then the closed off as well … maybe my mind wanders back to another time when secrets and girlfriends were an indication of something else.

This isn’t about sex though, or being hurt in the past by a surprise girl/girl romance. Don’t get me wrong. I trust her. I know she wasn’t being untrue, that these are innocent friendships. This is about sharing an important part of ones life with one’s lover. I think if there was more openness, more sharing, that this wouldn’t have even been such a trigger in the first place, that any twinge from the past could have been handle with a laugh, a shrug, and a modicum of reason and thought. I have friends, I have close friends, of both sexes, that I can be affectionate with. And they are part of who I am. Just as hers are part of who she is. And this is where I felt insecure. That somebody became a big a part of who she is, and she couldn’t share it with me. In our relationship, being able to share ALL of ourselves was the cornerstone. What we built the whole thing on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her or that I suspected her, that caused the insecurity. It was that she had time and heart in her enough to grow and evolve and be close to new people, take a chance on opening to strangers…. and she couldn’t with me. And maybe I needed to be more compassionate too, and not react directly off the triggers. I own full responsibility for how I reacted, and I’m sorry. It doesn’t excuse anything knowing what contributed. But it didn’t help either.

I don’t know. When I was littler I had a bigger problem with insecurity, because I didn’t understand how anybody could love me. And through age and time I learned and accepted and KNEW, that I was worth loving, and why. I’ve held onto that. Now, I find myself coming from the other direction… I know why I deserve to be loved, and it’s hard to accept that anything could hold her back from doing that. That where once we shared and were open about even our deepest, darkest secrets, now she can’t even share something so simple and innocent as making and growing close to new friends. Why can’t she share something innocent and light and positive like THAT? It’s positive, it’s a good thing, right? That’s something worth talking about. This isn’t another negative “it takes too much out of me” emotion from the divorce, this is positive! It’s supposed to be. If it’s not something worth being insecure over, why is it so hard to be open about something as mundane as that?

These are the things I wonder.

A lot to think about for me today.