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stella41b -> RE: in it for what they can get out of it and out of it as soon as they’ve been in it….. (8/8/2008 11:19:01 PM)
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quote:
and grasping what YOUR role is in that demise and why you didn't see it coming is an important part in not repeating YOUR cycles.
I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to the behaviourist theory of human interpersonal relationships. This is like blaming the script for the failure of the performance. It's possible, but so too is bad directing and bad acting. And anyway, what is the use of looking for fault and blame? There's no relationship, just the cold light of day and hindsight, the bringer of wisdom. I prefer to look at this in terms of problems and solutions. I see relationships as a series of interactions, transactions, and it's these transactions and interactions which dictate the behaviour, not the other way round.
Each time a relationship fails I guess there's a period of introspection, a bit of thinking 'what if...?', another bit of thinking 'why did this happen?', and all the way down the line until you get to 'maybe I should have' and 'maybe I could have'. Too late. So what do you do? You put into place a defence mechanism, a barrier, and you keep on doing this each time a relationship doesn't work out.
You don't see it coming because either you've discounted the possibility, examined it with the other person, or feelings have taken over and you have made that conscious decision to put yourself into the relationship and give it everything you've got. Either the person has got round the defence mechanisms, or you've deactivated them yourself in the process. Is there anyone here in a relationship of the mindset wondering or even speculating when or if that relationship is going to fall apart? I doubt it.
Now you can enter a relationship any which way you like, you can steam in there all gung ho, you can be cautious, taking it one step at a time, it doesn't matter because the only surefire way of a relationship working out is being with the right person. If you can state with any certainty after a short period of getting to know someone that they are the right person you are a better person than me, because for sure I know I can't. I can believe it's the right person, I can feel it's the right person, but I don't know it's the right person.
You know I fail to see the dysfunction in the OP that some other people appear to see. I know Prin offline, and I have a lot of admiration for her. It's not easy being romantic, not especially in this day and age, not especially when you're well into middle-age, and not especially when you constantly choose the 'higher path'. It's not easy walking that chosen path, among those who also state they walk the higher path but who in reality do not or cannot, among those angry, scornful voices around her demanding that she be more like them.
This is where the problem lies, nowhere else.. the 'wolves and leopards' of Dennis Brown. If Prin is dysfunctional for her being herself, then okay, so am I, and so too I guess are a lot of people out there. Sure on the surface we can point to oh so many problems, we see them there on the surface, but you know they're only problems because the relationship failed. Had it have succeeded no doubt we would have put it in the 'against all odds' category. Somehow, somewhere, in some way there was a trigger activated, and this is what I feel unravelled the entire relationship.
Not that I'm advocating here a relationship model where you start at the collar and work backwards. I'm not. Sometimes from what I can see it goes hand in hand with 'the lifestyle' that sense of belonging, oh let's play here, let's go down to the club and spend an hour on a St Andrew's Cross. It's as if meaning and common sense are pushed aside in the rush for success, in that you can only actually be a successful slave or Master if there's a collar involved. Oh sure, I can play games of spanky botty with the best of people but this doesn't necessarily mean it's BDSM. Not to me anyway, but here I'm writing from my own POV.
I don't know about anyone else, but pointing out the obvious in such circumstances in my book doesn't really cut it as advice. Playing games of 'could have', 'should have' and 'would have' doesn't really serve any other useful purpose but to create more melodrama out of the melodrama which already exists. If the collar meant something, as did the relationship, both would exist today, but they don't. But the point of a collar being offered by means of deception (or self-deception) and accepted in the same circumstances has already been taken.
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