In defense of defense mechanisms
Over the course of this year, there have been many occasions where I've returned to this site looking to take an analytical approach to my newfound love life. Some days I came here grateful and optimistic. Many others I came here skeptical that I could have a future with her or any woman.
Having only known singlehood up until this point, any kind of romantic relationship was bound to be a disruptive force to my modus operandi. A solitary life provides fertile ground for being avoidant and non-committal. A girlfriend moving in with you forces you to adjust the recipe for your emotional well-being.
Naturally, deviating from familiar thoughts and feelings creates discomfort, and that invariably triggers old, reliable coping techniques.
In my case, and as my lengthy post history illustrates, I most often feel the need to intellectualize the threats to my comfort zone and bludgeon them with pedantic reasoning. The more you can rationalize a problem and bind it to some factor beyond your control, the less motivation there will be to confront that issue in good faith.
But, there is at least one benefit to creating a barrier between yourself and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: you create an atmosphere for introspection. To find out whether that thing you find disagreeable is an actual threat to your well-being or merely something that inconveniences your predispositions. Should you dig deep enough in your contemplation, you'll eventually hit the root causes of your distress, and once you do you will realize that there are ultimately only two choices one can make.
You can take the path of mistrust and contempt, of solidifying your fears and justifying your cynicism. Or you can take the path of tolerance and compassion, forgiving people of their ignorance and placing your faith in decency and humanity. Every situation is going to merit different considerations for each option, and typically there are few ways of knowing for certain that one path is superior to the other. All we have is our tenuously dependable instincts, which is all too often chained to our past.
To successfully navigate your defense mechanisms, to separate your personal biases from the tapestry of truth and opinion, requires full honesty with yourself. Going from the level of solitude and anonymity that allows you to hide your flaws, to being in a relationship where they are constantly at risk of being exposed, requires you to accept a level of vulnerability that you've worked so hard to conceal.
I have graduated to the reality that I will inevitably be wrong. I will make mistakes, I will be uncomfortable, I will become upset by and upset others, I will fail to achieve things I hoped I could. And so will others do unto me. Not necessarily out of malice or incorrigibility, although it happens, but largely because fallibility is a quintessential facet of human nature.
And so in processing the myriad of minor annoyances and disagreements that would cause me to fall out of love with my girlfriend and back into bachelorhood, I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to be the type of person that holds onto grudges and actively seeks fault in others. I don't want to be the calloused curmudgeon always seeking to validate their animosity.
People suck sometimes. It's impossible for everyone to be aware of everything at all times. Rejecting others for their differences and living with false superiority, while a viable means of maintaining a sense of righteousness, creates a downward spiral designed to isolate you from more and more people. In other words, you become the architect of your own prison.
Now that I have someone to love and someone that loves me, I feel liberated from the need to place arbitrary borders between myself and those who may not always agree with me. I've been healed of the sickness that compels me to shine a spotlight on any critique I can find. Nothing and nobody is perfect. And that's okay. More often than not, our differences don't outweigh the things we have in common.
The transformation I've been able to make since creating this profile and joining this site has been immense. It's not been without difficulty and strife, but all the constant assessing and reassessing of my thoughts and emotions have helped me work my way back to seeing the big picture. To helping me realize, that despite our concerns and grievances, I always have a choice between two paths.
Of course, her and I have moments where we're on different pages or where we irritate each other. The typical relationship always does. But in choosing to ignore my avoidant tendencies, electing dignity and grace over doubt and disdain, surrendering to humility and contrition in the face of my own missteps, and working to find a common understanding, my life has become so much more enriched than I would have ever known possible.
So for whoever needs to read this, if you go looking for negativity, you're very likely to find it. But if you can learn to embrace that contrast and conflict are a part of the journey, and that our differences don't have to be insurmountable, your life might just be better off for it.
Having only known singlehood up until this point, any kind of romantic relationship was bound to be a disruptive force to my modus operandi. A solitary life provides fertile ground for being avoidant and non-committal. A girlfriend moving in with you forces you to adjust the recipe for your emotional well-being.
Naturally, deviating from familiar thoughts and feelings creates discomfort, and that invariably triggers old, reliable coping techniques.
In my case, and as my lengthy post history illustrates, I most often feel the need to intellectualize the threats to my comfort zone and bludgeon them with pedantic reasoning. The more you can rationalize a problem and bind it to some factor beyond your control, the less motivation there will be to confront that issue in good faith.
But, there is at least one benefit to creating a barrier between yourself and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: you create an atmosphere for introspection. To find out whether that thing you find disagreeable is an actual threat to your well-being or merely something that inconveniences your predispositions. Should you dig deep enough in your contemplation, you'll eventually hit the root causes of your distress, and once you do you will realize that there are ultimately only two choices one can make.
You can take the path of mistrust and contempt, of solidifying your fears and justifying your cynicism. Or you can take the path of tolerance and compassion, forgiving people of their ignorance and placing your faith in decency and humanity. Every situation is going to merit different considerations for each option, and typically there are few ways of knowing for certain that one path is superior to the other. All we have is our tenuously dependable instincts, which is all too often chained to our past.
To successfully navigate your defense mechanisms, to separate your personal biases from the tapestry of truth and opinion, requires full honesty with yourself. Going from the level of solitude and anonymity that allows you to hide your flaws, to being in a relationship where they are constantly at risk of being exposed, requires you to accept a level of vulnerability that you've worked so hard to conceal.
I have graduated to the reality that I will inevitably be wrong. I will make mistakes, I will be uncomfortable, I will become upset by and upset others, I will fail to achieve things I hoped I could. And so will others do unto me. Not necessarily out of malice or incorrigibility, although it happens, but largely because fallibility is a quintessential facet of human nature.
And so in processing the myriad of minor annoyances and disagreements that would cause me to fall out of love with my girlfriend and back into bachelorhood, I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to be the type of person that holds onto grudges and actively seeks fault in others. I don't want to be the calloused curmudgeon always seeking to validate their animosity.
People suck sometimes. It's impossible for everyone to be aware of everything at all times. Rejecting others for their differences and living with false superiority, while a viable means of maintaining a sense of righteousness, creates a downward spiral designed to isolate you from more and more people. In other words, you become the architect of your own prison.
Now that I have someone to love and someone that loves me, I feel liberated from the need to place arbitrary borders between myself and those who may not always agree with me. I've been healed of the sickness that compels me to shine a spotlight on any critique I can find. Nothing and nobody is perfect. And that's okay. More often than not, our differences don't outweigh the things we have in common.
The transformation I've been able to make since creating this profile and joining this site has been immense. It's not been without difficulty and strife, but all the constant assessing and reassessing of my thoughts and emotions have helped me work my way back to seeing the big picture. To helping me realize, that despite our concerns and grievances, I always have a choice between two paths.
Of course, her and I have moments where we're on different pages or where we irritate each other. The typical relationship always does. But in choosing to ignore my avoidant tendencies, electing dignity and grace over doubt and disdain, surrendering to humility and contrition in the face of my own missteps, and working to find a common understanding, my life has become so much more enriched than I would have ever known possible.
So for whoever needs to read this, if you go looking for negativity, you're very likely to find it. But if you can learn to embrace that contrast and conflict are a part of the journey, and that our differences don't have to be insurmountable, your life might just be better off for it.
31-35, M
