The following is more of a vent than a question.
So, essentially against my better interests I got involved in a relationship, of sorts, from the Dyspraxia forum. I was quite happy to simply be friends (this was back in November) but she suggested, or asked if it could be more. Feeling a little depressed about being single - and thinking that, at least unlike previous times I had got to know her in real life first - this might be safe, I decided to go ahead with it. We met a couple more times. She wanted me to meet again only a couple of Thursdays ago. As she got back from her home country though things seemed to change. She was ill on the Sunday, and then suddently on the Tuesday announced she'd split up with me. I guess I was kind of indifferent at that stage - and it later become obvious it was because her friend/housemate had told her not to bother with me, but concerned that I had hurt her with that attitude, I decided to apologise. She accepted the apology but proceeded to launch a litany of things I need to change. Much of it is sensible. I need to feed myself better (not just eat out) - I'm in debt as a consequence - and save money doing so. I need to budget. I need to get my depression sorted out. This whole sorry incident has, I suppose, given the impulse to do that. When I get determined I do things. And I am sick of having no money and living off cold food for weeks at a time.
All that was fair enough... but she also heavily castigated me for not presenting a good enough side of myself and having no initiative hugging or kissing. There is a good reason I didn't - because I find the embarrassment of getting the timing wrong too much to bear and I've overdone it before and induced a breakup. I mean, it is almost impossible to read whether you can or should and being conservative seems the safer option. And as for presenting the best side, well, maybe it is the depression speaking, but I don't like presenting a false picture of myself. I have far more bad traits than good and what good traits I have are hardly attractive in a conventional sense. This was in the context of telling me why I should not think to myself that her rejection at that specific time was some kind of blanket rejection by everyone - which was fair enough, except insofar as she then elucidated the reasons precisely why it was kind of a rejection on the universal level with reference to habits, or traits of mine that frankly I don't see myself ever being able to eliminate.
Which kind of makes me wonder why I allow myself to be harangued so. For her own health, by her own admittance she need to lose a lot of weight - and I have actually managed that without ever being critical to her because I have got past it. She has dyspraxia and probably has managed better due to a different personality style and parenting, which I guess gives her the feeling she can effectively being quite harsh - in spite of the fact that she has blunted stated she would kill anyone who did the same to her. Why do I allow myself to be some kind of unfettered target for these kind of responses or just being left out to dry for what is basically my social awkwardness. I kind of hoped with someone who was also dyspraxic/autistic it might be different, but it would seem this was a vain hope. She was pretty smart too, and not in a way wholly different to myself.
Oddly enough I'm kind of wondering - given the multiple barriers of my lack of social skills, my way of thinking (or if I am to be a bit arrogant my intelligence), my clumsiness and lack of organisation all kind of combine to make it essentially impossible to get close to anyone, and I sort of wonder now, for the sake of my own ego (certainly when depressed, maybe even when I'm not) I'm best at both extinguishing any desire to have a relationship and equally deliberately preventing anything nascent that will, with some certitude blow up in my face and leaving me in a depressive hole. The question comes to mind because I am meeting a female friend of mine (with a P.h.D in geograph) in a couple of weeks who I have met a couple of times before, who, though probably unlikely, could end up asking a similar question of me, and I'm not really sure if I should just close down anything in the circumstances.
20 Jan 2014, 2:38 pm
