75% of the time I am fine being alone.

[itsallgrand]

The thread can't die because I'm enjoying reading the two of yours insights and discussion.

 

 

[waveseer]

thanks...i know...i am truly awesome. hahaha.

 

 

No doubt about it, 90, I've seen you work with people on here, it's nothing short of amazing.

 

 

i think most relationships are unbalanced in a sense. there seems to always be one person that is either expecting more...or who is in a position to give more. i think it comes back to the healing dynamic. there is potential on both ends...but it's difficult to realize the potential hiding behind the more destructive qualities of the relationship. i do admire your strength. it takes something to walk away in love. i don't know what that's like...although i know what it means to be left in love...and to accept that.

 

I respectfully disagree, while no relationship is perfectly balanced (just as there is no perfect symmetry in nature), if the difference in willingness is great enough, the relationship will disband (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly).

 

Did you mean that someone who loved you left you or someone you loved left you? I wasn't sure.

 

 

change...and impermanence. there is strength in that. the ability to let go.

life is full of those opportunities. only when we're able to let go are we open to growth. it's amazing...the things we cling to. and in that needy attempt to hold on...we end up stifling the space that allows something to be. i wonder...if that's how the men in your life have felt...stifled. i'm not suggesting that you're clingy...or needy...only that that may have been their perspective. they felt that they didn't have the space to be. the more you held on...and hoped...the more they slipped away. it's very much counter-intuitive, isn't it. i know i saw that quality in my ex. early on she alluded to the fact that she'd found the man she was going to marry. that one thought (or perhaps assumption on my behalf) always kept me at a distance.

 

 

I stole a line from the movie "The War of the Roses", great movie by the way. In one scene Danny DeVito rattles the ice in his highball glass and says, "There are two conditions which rattle the human brain: How to get people to come closer, and how to get people to go away."

 

I have usually been in the situation of wanting someone to either be present for the relationship emotionally or go away entirely. I don't think people who pull back realize the dynamic they are initiating and perpetuating. Whether we like it or not we are creatures that respond to positive and negative reinforcement and the variable interval of reinforcement produces the most persistent behavior. I was very up front with my thoughts and feelings. Perhaps if he would have shared his thoughts and feelings with me instead of simply accepting mine I would have been able to adjust. When someone allows you to fall in love with them and doesn't run for the hills the message is that it's okay and they are willing for that to happen. I gave every opportunity for him to cut me lose and he chose not to. I was not dependent, I just wanted him to follow his heart.

 

 

i'm not sure i know what it looks like either...only that it's something drastically different than what i've ever had to offer. i wonder if it's something that a woman would be able to observe. perhaps the right woman...one who understands the depth behind relationships...will see it.

 

Any woman who is aware will recognize it when she experiences it for what it is, healthy love.

 

 

learning about ourselves. i really love that. the idea that a relationship can be a shared experience (because often it seems very much about two distinct individuals with no common interest in what is best for the realtionship)...in which you are both moving towards the same thing...a true communion...with each other and with life. it's an inspiring thought.

 

 

 

...and the thread dies.

 

cheers

 

Yes, and I have every hope of experiencing it at leas once in my current lifetime.

 

This thread is not dead yet.

[waveseer]

The thread can't die because I'm enjoying reading the two of yours insights and discussion.

 

 

I wouldn't dream of ending this discussion and I'm glad my internal workings are of interest to you. It hasn't been all that easy to be open on the open forum.