Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Kaith, I’m glad you found my post supportive.
Quote
“I’m curious though are they (emotional manipulators) bad people? Are there bad people at all?”That depends on what bad is for you. I’m sure a fly would call the spider a bad guy indeed. But the spider has to set his traps in order to live, he is like any other spider and he is not bad among his species. Yet he is a creature of nature animated by simple instincts deprived of the concept of bad and good.
As animal have their ways, also we, as humans, we learn skills and we find our way to cope with the needs of life. Some of us could appreciate some principle of fairness and respect (through empathy or logic) and developed enough self-discipline to abide to it. Maybe they were lucky and were born in a comfortable environment where people were mostly fair among them and did not have to watch their back to spot others who were not respectful of their feelings. Maybe they followed a more complex path of personal growth. On the other hand, some other of us could find no use for such a principle but making it a cover to be accepted in certain contexts. Maybe they had to fight in life like it was a jungle and they had to rely only on themselves. Maybe they realized riding on someone else shoulders was the quickest and safest route. Maybe they were not taught any other skill and had to resort to lying. Maybe they learned that giving the fault to others is the only way to feel better when they fail at something, because nobody encouraged them to persist or appreciated them.
Nevertheless, even when people accept some principle of fairness, they may have different ideas about it and look bad one to the other. For example, a manipulator may think he is fair, he may say that everybody else is completely selfish and just using their principles to cover their own selfishness (because after all they do better when they follow them), actually he may say that the other are trying to manipulate him with their principles. He is just taking care of himself like everybody else. The manipulator may not be a bad person, but you cannot defeat that thought alone, everything you say or do may be interpreted as a way to manipulate him, a way that needs to be defeated.
Quote
“I used to think we might behave bad towards someone because of our own troubles and weaknesses. But can it be that people might happen to be simply bad?”If we have troubles, we fight hard to solve them. If we are weak, we try hard to develop our strengths. If someone give us a way and a hope, and we have none, we consider it. If we trust the person or we like the suggestion, we follow it. We are repeatedly rough to someone only if we think he/she is the source of our illnesses. (or maybe we want to force them out of their confort zone, so that they will help us). As I said above, a manipulator may accuse others to be the cause of his own failures. Maybe it’s easier, maybe it is automatic and he does not even think about it, maybe he has some responsibility toward them and has to find a way to not feel bad because he did let them down. In any case, he does not acknowledge the fact that he should start working on himself. It is his way to feel better with himself, although his way may not be that effective or positive for him or the persons around him.
I do not know whether you want to discuss about it, however, what manipulative behaviors does your boyfriend show?
Hi Yanmei,
Five years of relationship are really a long time and his sister was there already. You have already accepted her in the past. Maybe you implicitly assumed that the marriage would pull them a bit away. That was your core belief: when a person forms a new family, it seems natural to make the old one come in second place. Did you discuss this belief with your boyfriend? I imagine not. So you endured it all, waiting for the time to be the first in his life.
So, what is that you have to accept?Do you want to accept the fact that a marriage does not bring siblings apart and that their bounds is preserved even when they start a new family?
You may reflect on the fact that such a deep bound cannot be broken from one day to another. This is true for every pair of siblings. However, marriage is a big step indeed, it is a change of life that brings new needs and new duties on the table. That is when one may realize he/she does not have all the time to keep in touch with his/her siblings as once he/she used to. Hence he/she draws the line. This is what may happen naturally. Your boyfriend is not married yet. Nevertheless, under the pressure, he may actually decide that the time he dedicates to his sister is OK even after marriage. If this is what you are fighting to accept, try to imagine that spending time with his sister is your boyfriend’s hobby. When he is away, imagine for example he went to watch a car race or went to see some other show you dislike. He is going to be much happier when is bad. Wouldn’t you let him go? Or is there a difference?This leads to my second hypothesis.
Do you want to accept the fact that your boyfriend will keep in touch and help a person you are not in good relationship with?
He is your boyfriend, yet he goes out and helps and listens to a person that talks bad about you and maybe also tries to sabotage your relationship. It is not a nice feeling indeed. However, there are plenty of situations when your boyfriend may hear someone talking bad about you or may benefit from the fact he was single. Imagine, someone offered him a job somewhere and they really needed his skills, wouldn’t they try to take him away from you if you were a problem and hindered his performance? Such things are not under your control and you have to rely on your boyfriend to be honest and fair about it. I suppose you’ve talking to him about what was bothering you: the fact that his sister is not nice to you. I further suppose that he also reassured you that nothing his sister would say or do will make him change his mind about you. But a request you can make to him.
Tell him that when his sister calls you with names or uses some other bad tone, she is emotionally undermining the appreciations he has for you. Due your experience of fighting hard to be accept in social circles, that is something you are very sensible about. You fear that the bad feeling she puts in those words is really a mine that may explode when he least expects it. Cite some example from your past. Then ask him what he thinks when his sister call you with those names and reflect together about why such bad feelings injected from the side will not hinder your love. As a first hint, observe that five years make quite a strong bound. As a second hint, try to detect what “defect” of yours his sister is trying to highlight by calling you with names, and reflect about why that “defect” is not important.
So expand your concept, when someone attacks you, you do not have to attack back or run away, you may just simply keep constructing your fortress, so that the stones they will throw at you won’t make a dent in the wall. Well, maybe the stones will not make you sleep during the first nights, but you will get used with time. Moreover, keep the doors open, you never know the poor guy will get bored and think that joining you for a dinner at your fireplace is a better idea.Hi Yanmei,
I apologize for my late reply, but I could not read your post earlier.
Both you and your boyfriend have a need to belong, to feel cared and loved, to express care and love, to nurture a friendship, to create a family, to have someone close in the night. Your boyfriend had and have part of these needs already met thanks to the presence of his sister, they have a great bound of friendship they learned to trust through ages. That’s an automatic response from their heart to look for the other in a moment of need and an automatic response to comply.
On the converse you never had such needs ever met and expected that one day that you would find a person you would completely trust, a person that loved you above all else and that you could love as much without fear to be left out or be spoken at the back.I’m sure your boyfriend considers you a very great friend, but his best friend is his sister now. You cannot possibly beat everything they have been through together, the bound of blood they share, the care they showed one for the other. Imagine for a second that during those times you had to fight hard alone to be part of the popular group you actually had someone that supported you, wouldn’t you feel tempted to go back to him for advices and consider your boyfriend later? In the present, your boyfriend and his sister will remain best friends even if they not talk to each other, they will still have that feeling.
In the future, as you and you boyfriend walk the path of life side by side, your bound will become stronger. It may match or even pass the bound he has with his sister, but my advice is to not rely on it or make it the quest of your life. If you leave it to fate, it may never happen. If you try to break the bound, it will be like trying to break him.There are three things you may do.
Your first way is to expand the concept of your boyfriend. A boyfriend is not only a single person but also the set of all the relationships he carries with him. Bend your boyfriend’s boundary of existence so that they include his sister as well. In other terms, he won’t be him if he did not have a sister, he won’t be him if he didn’t care for her. Consider his sister like a second mind of his you have to relate to. Consider them to be emotionally one. When you ask him for something, think that you are asking THEM for something. When you offer him something, think that you are offering THEM something. Even if he is the one actually acting or receiving, it’s because they somehow agreed to that. Talk with them both, define expectations with them both. In further other terms, you should love both of them and felt loved by them both. You are not his best friend, you are their best friend. You are one big large family.
Your second way is to expand the concept of happiness and relationship. Take example from him: you do not have to put everything onto one person to be happy, your needs of love and care do not need to be met by only one person. Talk with your boyfriend and define what you expect one from the other, give him time to think and to even agree with his sister if that is important to him. For example, try to define how much time a week he is going to dedicate to you without thinking to his sister, how much time you are going to spend together, what you are going to do together. Once you set your rules, find something good and relaxing to do in your spare time. Consider looking for a person you can call best friend indeed.
If the two above solutions make your stomach turn. You should start thinking that he is not the boyfriend you were looking for after all. Part of him exists in the interdependence with someone else. Even thinking to break it, it is like thinking to break him. You are looking for someone who does not have already a deep connection with anybody else. So, why do you hope to find it in a person that has a best friend who’s going to stay for a very long time? It’s because you have him and maybe he is your best friend (even if you do not feel you are his best friend). Is this enough for you? Please, be sure to consider that most people may already have some degree of connection with someone else, be it a sibling, a parent, a teacher, a friend or a priest. So, take into account that finding someone who has absolutely no connection with anybody is going to be very difficult (and you may not even like him). Try to define a reasonable level of existing connection you are going to accept. How much should depend on your age (the longer we live, the more bounds we make). Who knows, you may find out that your boyfriend’s bounds are reasonable. Unfortunately I cannot give you any accurate statistics on the matter, but maybe you can look by yourself, if you decide to look for some new friends.
I could not sleep tonight. I have to take back what I said in the previous post about not replying to this thread anymore.
Quote from Inky
“To be honest, I skimmed half of what you said because the defensiveness is so heavy. Did you come here for advice, opinions or to argue?”No, I’m not doing anything wrong by asking more questions, developing the consequences of one’s statements or trying to make sense of it all. So, let’s apply Tir’s advice in the previous post and let’s part from this conversation that is leading us nowhere. Tough, I thank you, Inky for your attempt to enlight me. Feel free to consider me an idiot.
“To love our enemy is impossible. The moment we understand our enemy, we feel compassion towards him/her, and he/she is no longer our enemy.”
Thich Nhat HanhHow true…
Quote from Tir
“Compassion isn’t about allowing or accepting bad or questionable behavior but about feeling peace and calmness as we evaluate a situation and/or a person and can determine whether or not they are who we want to journey with in this life. The two souls you were referring to made each other sick, or depressed, therefore the compassion would come with letting go of each other. Had they wanted the same things, and valued the same things and were both invested in a comparable relationship, the sickness would have been replaced with communication, trust, inter connectivity, and the desire for a future together. Relationships are like a river..too many stones and the water no longer flows, therefore the river is no longer a river.”Let each other go… Jerry couldn’t let her go, because he could hardly accept he had invested so heavily on nothing. He felt angry and tried his best to not let his rage ruin everything. He did not hurt them both by breaking suddenly. He proposed a way to restore the trust. She demanded that trust was restored through forgiveness. He waited for her either to accept his view or to part. He was drained in the waiting, because he wanted to stay true to his commitment. She eventually parted.
Surely Jerry could have told Martha they were not meant to be one for the other, that their differences of value would push them away eventualy. Jerry could have decided the road they had to follow and not wait for Martha to take a decision. But how could Jerry know Martha’s values? He had a different view of her up to that point (after one and half a year), it took time for him to realize how false it was, and Martha did not validate Jerry’s view on her. Jerry thought it would have been a betrayal to look for someone else advices and tried to sort things within the couple. Maybe the law of attraction hindered Jerry’s rationality…
When Jerry’s realization became more clear, he had already invested three years of thoughts in the relationship. It was his first relationship and he always dreamed he could have just one everlasting. He looked a failure to himself, he just couldn’t take the decision to kill it all. He let Martha decide. After all she was the strongest, she had 12 years of previous relationships at her back. Moreover, if their values were those Jerry thought she had, it would have been much more easy for her to part ways, especially when Jerry would look so weak and lousy that Martha would not have any advantage to be with him anymore. So she left him when he was more weak, and hopefully she did not suffer the break-up because she was not leaving that much of a man.
Would have been better that Jerry took the decision to part up front or was it ok for him to let things slowly decline and let Martha decide? Maybe are those the same things? Maybe Martha realized where Jerry’s heart was going anyway. Wouldn’t have been easier on Martha that Jerry took a decision and slowly left when he was healthy and strong rather than letting her decide and leave him when he was frail and weak?
Sometimes people, especially young one, do not know what they want or have an hard time putting it in words or may deny to themselves that they want it or simply have unconscious rules that forbids to look for what they want if some conditions are not met.
He may actually be in love you and nourish great feelings for you. However, he’d like to learn how to manage them and make them coherent with the picture he has of himself or the man he would like to be for himself or the others around him. Maybe he thinks that the best way to handle them is to ignore them, and act cold with you so that they may eventually pass. Maybe he does not want to be a slave of passion, or maybe someone or even you said something that change how much he enjoys the relationship. What is his parents or friends told him he looked so lousy when he spent time with you, what if his friends were beating him easily at some competition because he was daydreaming about you, what if you put great expectations on him by mentioning a relationship that could last forever? There are things he may not be willing to discuss, because he is ashamed of them in front of you, they make little sense in front of you, yet they are important in other context. He is at crossroad, he is putting other needs in front of the need to stay with you. One can barely discuss them, they are not real reasons, because you can always find a way to move past them, it is just his decision to not put effort into changing his ways for you.
He mentioned he had an exam and needed space. What if during that week he just could not concentrate on the study and was daydreaming all the time about you? He may have noticed his weakness. He also admitted it somehow by telling you that his feelings were quite strong. What do you do if you cannot do both things at once? You have to choose. Maybe he is secretly angry with you because he sees you as the cause of his “sickness”, a love that makes him feel pain and does not allow him to do anything else. You did nothing wrong of course, such “fatalities” just happens, and he knows that, that’s why he act cold and he is not showing anger. You know his choice: he’d like to sort his feelings out.
So there is a choice for you to make as well: you may wait for him, think about him, tell him that you are actually waiting for him to sort his feelings out, that you are patient, that once he knows what to do and feels better you’d like to be friends or maybe lover again if he so desires, tell him that with time he will manage to handle his passion. Mind you tough, if you follow this path, be alert that the thing that keeps him away from you may actually be another girl (like many posts above said), hence know your risk. You may mention to him you’d like to know whether there is another girl so that you may step back. If it is no problem for you that he may be spending time with another girl, tell him that it is not a problem he is undecided. Maybe you can look for someone he trusts and may talk to for an advice. (sorry you may not be good enough to give him advices, because he’d like to keep a peer to peer relationship with you, and he is proud)
The second option is not wait for him, forget about him and look for someone else who may fill the emptiness he left. It is easier said than done tough. But you may actually find someone who does not have these problems and be happy with him in the present, rather than waiting for a future that may never come. Actually, if you find someone else, and you share this experience with him, he may learn from that person.Why does Jerry live in the past? Everyone has one, and he should be happy someone wants to have a relationship with him in the present.
I suppose the reason is that the future is the projection of the past. Jerry should have been happy to have someone in the present if that was his need. However, suppose that Jerry wanted one and only one reliable person in his life, a person that assured him she would remain. Assume that Jerry was more willing to be friend with Martha rather than be in a relationship with her if she could not be that reliable. Now it happens that Martha had omitted a fact. So Jerry is scared that she may again still hide things that may hurt him one day, even her promise to not leave each other starts to be less believeble. Jerry is in a trap, whatever he does, he suffers: if he breaks the relationship his needs are not met and he will lose Martha even as friend (he knows things cannot be back the way they were and she will also suffer), if he stays a doubt that she actually care about him will arise, a doubt about whether she will actually remains. Jerry knew this could happen long before the relationship started, that’s why he asked Martha to be truthful. He feels she did not respect him with that omission. On the converse, Martha believes that not everything should have been said, she says that she wanted to spare Jerry the pain of that knowledge. She feels she was right and way better than many other women.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 