Dear Rookie:

“We met I really enjoyed our talk and getting to know him more and eventually things led up to us getting involved and now that he left…  Maybe I gave myself too fast. I’m feeling really lost…  I’m usually a really closed person in the sense of not telling anyone personal things even to friends… and then sometimes I open up to someone in a relationship and they don’t care/ go away…. So, I think that right now I need to figure out better what I want, and how to respect myself a little bit more by taking more time to get to know people and to actually see them and not what I want them to be… deep down I was expecting to get more intimate with him after having physically intimate with him, and it seems that the opposite is true… I used to think that everyone was bad, and people always had an ulterior motive for liking you, like as if it would be an exchange of favors… The funny thing is that the guy texted me yesterday, at first, I felt a little bit angry about him only saying something a week after, but then I realized that in the end he didn’t do anything wrong, he was never rude or bad to me. He did happen to not have me as a priority at all. He just happens not to be what I’m looking for… The real question is am I not being too eager to have that connection? Shouldn’t I be more patience towards it? Sometimes I do feel like I want it too much… The guy contacted me to ask me if we could meet on his way back home (he had a layover of some hours here) and I said yes since I felt like I had to tell him some things… We met, and I told him that I’m looking for a person that doesn’t treat me like an option or a “safe bet” and that accepts the uncertainty of my profession and accepts me as a person who is here learning, like all of us are. He told me what he looked for in a guy (we definitely don’t want the same things) … I felt sad after because I felt like I still haven’t found the connection and intimacy I’m looking for, but I also realized that this good friend of mine who is here and I told you about has been amazing with me and to be honest I never had a friend with whom I had such a good connection… Tell me what you think about it if you have the time, I would like to know what you think  Hope everything is well and hope to hear from you soon!”.

Your last words, “hope to hear from you soon!” were typed on September 24, 2015. I will tell you what I think today, more than 6.5 years later: many millions of people in our world are” too eager to have that connection… want it too much“, wanting love so much that we rush into it with closed eyes, assuming, imagining, wishing, hoping…  not asking questions, such as: who is this person whom I want so much?… not “taking more time to get to know people and to actually see them and not what I want them to be” (your words).

It was only after you got intimate with him that you had let him know what you wanted, and he had let you know what he wanted, and it was then that you learned that there was no match: “I told him that I’m looking for a person that… He told me what he looked for in a guy (we definitely don’t want the same things)“.

When we find out that the person with whom we were intimate is not who we wanted him to be, we get angry at him/ her: “I felt a little bit angry… but then I realized that in the end he didn’t do anything wrong, he was never rude or bad to me. He did happen to not have me as a priority at all. He just happens not to be what I’m looking for” – you assumed one thing, he assumed another, and neither one of you checked your assumptions before getting intimate, to see if your individual assumptions were true and if there was a match of intents and motivations.

Regarding the friend you mentioned in the last part of your last post: get to know him, keep your eyes and ears open, ask questions, notice when you make assumptions and check those assumptions, check intents and motivations to see if there is a match before getting intimate, or before getting heavily invested, emotionally and/or practically.

Here is the advice I gave you back in September 2015: (1) “When you ask him… Make your question as inviting of his honest answer as possible, a question meant to get honest information instead of, let’s say expressing desperation, anxiety, blame”, (2) “Rush it- and it will not happen. Let it be, and it may happen”,

(3) “the more you learn, the more there is more to learn… it is when we see things as they are, that we see more and more. It is delusion… that makes us stuck… Practice patience and learn”,

(4) “Trying to change a feeling any which way or repressing it trying to be positive- is not the way to go. Every feeling is valid, has a valid reason, no matter how negative it feels… find out that valid message… People feel secondary emotions about their (primary) emotions, for example: shame over feeling jealous… stay with the primary feeling and decipher its message… Emotions are necessary sources of information”,

(5) “When you meet a person, if you are in the habit and practice of seeing the truth in you and around you, you will over time evaluate that person and learn who that person is. And you will make that evaluation before you commit to an exclusive relationship with that person… who the person is becomes very important to the question of whether to get closer to that person- or not”.

anita