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- This topic has 189 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 1 month ago by XenopusTex.
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June 24, 2016 at 7:31 am #108097AnonymousGuest
Dear xenopustex:
I see your point about finances and dating, and you driving the same car means to me you indeed don’t like to show off and maybe you are not very materialistic, maybe a bit frugal, I don’t know. Be the person you are, according to the values you hold dear. What I suggested when mentioning the attraction to lots of women is that it is reality. In real life you are possessing a big attraction to a lot of women. If you didn’t think much about this in the past, it is something to think about and be aware of. I always promote seeing more and more of what there is to see, of reality.
Regarding your last comment about it being refreshing to see somebody with a sense of direction, you are referring to the 27 year old? If so, and her being so attractive, why… this is a reason to ask her for a coffee date or a brunch date in an outdoors coffee house or restaurant on a relaxed Saturday or Sunday, isn’t it? In the late morning/ day time (something casual, less intimidating than the more suggestive of a date at night time)?
anita
June 24, 2016 at 9:13 pm #108174XenopusTexParticipantCould do coffee or lunch, assuming that I run into her again. In any event, she seemed more interested in a law student who was interning than me, so, eh… Don’t fully understand, but he is obviously younger than I am.
Have also discovered that I really have a happiness problem. Found a book called learned optimism. Will have to read it.
June 25, 2016 at 6:38 am #108178AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
Your comment about having a “happiness problem” makes me think of something I read and agree with, don’t remember the exact words, something like: we are not born to be happy; we are born to survive. What this means to me is the fact that indeed, every living thing in nature is there to keep living, at least until adequate reproduction. Animals are not born to be happy but to survive and reproduce. Having evolved from animals, and reproduction no longer a must (thanks to our brain thinking), still, we are not born to be happy.
Being happy, or mental well being is a great benefit and very desirable of course. But the reason we are not happy, and most people are not happy at any one time, it seems to me, is because we had to do something to survive and that something does not make us happy, but has kept us alive, surviving.
For example, and I will be guessing because I don’t have the facts of your childhood, only that you were raised by your grandparents and your mother worked and lived a distance away, your mother is living with you and makes negative comments regularly. You were not close to either her or your father (who intended to disinherit you later). That’s all I know, if I got these few details right. So I will be guessing (the following is therefore fiction, but let me know if anything happens to be true):
Living with your grandparents, they instilled in you a strong value of being industrious, of working hard and you took on that value, working hard, going through law school, and spending countless hours, most of your life in your legal career. Your grandparents also talked to you about honesty, integrity, honor… only they didn’t walk their talk in the relationships in their lives: maybe they gossiped, punished, bitter.. manipulated, hid the truth.
And so you focused on being industrious but the rest, you were confused about and wanted to simply avoid. If honesty, integrity and honor with people ends up in the dysfunctional relationship you saw between your grandparents, between them and their adult children, relatives, others… better stay away from all of that.
Later on, as a prosecutor, seeing the lack of honesty, integrity and honor day after day made your jaded self even more so.
And now you are indeed, pessimistic. That is an unhappy state of mind and you want to be happy, optimistic and so you want to learn how to be optimistic, how to be happy.
Let me know, if you will, if my fiction has a non fiction element for you, correct where needs to be corrected, elaborate if you’d like and we can take it further, in the search for happiness, perhaps.
anita
June 25, 2016 at 4:07 pm #108244XenopusTexParticipantYou have a pretty good handle on some of it. Not really even sure what happiness looks like anymore. Closest I can imagine is the state where I felt great and actually wanted to get up in the morning while things were going well with that gal.
Get lied to quite a bit on the job. Not just defendants, but attorneys as well. Simply stated, tend to not trust people.
To a certain extent, my grandfather and my father were similar. I went to the wrong schools, etc. My last contact with my grandfather was in a nursing facility where he yelled at me and accused me of being worthless. He died a few days later, interestingly, he was so problematic that I think the staff waited for some hours to even check. He tended to be verbally abusive and could be physically abusive to my grandmother. They were from a generation that didn’t get divorced. He was, despite bragging about things, not very astute. Her adoptive father was a very well-to-do gentleman farmer in Illionis who had offered to buy up tracts of quality land down in Florida to provide investments for them. My grandfather didn’t want to be indebted to him (ironically, my great grandfather would probably never have missed the money). Needless to say, bad call.
Had some serious stumbling early on in my working life. Looking back on things, I can see that my problematic people skills really hurt in academia and the workforce. Needless to say, I did not make the most of going to an excellent undergrad/grad school.
Have been reading that book on learned optimism. Never realized how much a lack of a sense of control over one’s life can really mess with you.
Kind of turned to work as a means to get successes, and, it would seem, to hide from other issues. The sad thing is, I don’t really get joy from the successes there anymore. Come to think of it, life is pretty much devoid of joy.
June 25, 2016 at 7:19 pm #108248AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
What kept you going all these years? What motivated you…?
anita
June 25, 2016 at 8:24 pm #108253XenopusTexParticipantMostly a sense of duty and obligation. I had a job to do. People were counting on me. Joyless existence or not, there was a task to complete. That got me through a lot.
June 26, 2016 at 6:28 am #108294AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
There is always a payoff, some satisfaction, some kind of pleasure that keeps people going. We can’t go on and on by “duty and obligation” alone. There must be someone patting us on the back for doing our duty and obligation; must be some good feeling. It is important to know what it is, to know what keeps you going and has kept you going all these years, so that you stop “scratching head” (title of your thread).
Here are my thoughts about what the payoff may be, what the good feeling may be:
You wrote how your grandfather made the .. not astute decision to turn down your great grand father financial offer and has lost an opportunity to have lots of money. I am thinking this story was probably repeated in that house, where you were a child growing up with your grandparents. You must have heard it again and again. And that made you feel strongly about you not making that mistake. Made you react with the resolution that you will make money and not waste it.
Earning money and not wasting it may be your motivation, seeing the numbers grow every month, that may be your good-feeling, the motivation- used to be my own. Not an uncommon motivation. Maybe, it is difficult for you to part from money, for the purpose of psychotherapy, or dating. Maybe your feeling of security, of well being is in making money and not wasting it, so much so, to such extent, that this motivation is keeping you stuck, living ineffectively.
What do you think?
anita
June 26, 2016 at 9:27 am #108296AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
I have the time and the interest this Sunday morning, so I am back to your thread. I re-read your original post. You expressed interest in the concept of Emotional Intelligence. You know you possess the other kind of intelligence, the Rational Intelligence and you are curious about the other kind.
You already have it, emotional intelligence about firearms. You wrote: “Strangely, there is one area in which I do tend to go with “feelings,” and that is, of all things, in the area of purchasing firearms. Call me strange, but just by picking up a weapon and cycling the action, I can tell if I have confidence in the weapon or not. Has nothing to do with the cost of the weapon, it’s just a question of whether it “feels right” or not and whether it feels high quality.”
This paragraph is very meaningful because if you make the connection, then you know- from personal experience- what emotional intelligence is about.
You know a lot about guns rationally, I have no doubt. But in addition to the rational knowledge of guns, you also trust your own knowledge. You feel confident in your knowledge and that trust and confidence in your rational knowledge of guns make you comfortable evaluating, assessing and handling guns.
If you had emotional intelligence regarding you as a person, you would feel as comfortable being you/ in your own skin as you feel with guns. If you had emotional intelligence regarding other people, you would feel as comfortable interacting with others as you do with guns.
Almost as comfortable because guns are straightforward, no pretenses, no lies.
So I should correct myself: you can feel much more comfortable around people than you do now, if you had that emotional intelligence about people. If you did, you would be able to evaluate people like you do guns, determine their value, just as you do with guns.
People are more tricky than cars as well. You wrote that you research the safety reputation of a car before buying it. Unfortunately, no such research available about a particular individual. And even if the individual is famous, who is making the evaluation online needs to be considered.
So indeed emotional intelligence of people is more complicated than that of objects and pets. But it can be learned.
The experience you had with the woman you liked, when you suggested dating her. I may be able to help you gain… emotional intelligence kind of understanding of what happened there. Would you like that? If you would, do share what happened: where did you suggest dating her: was it in a restaurant, elsewhere? Describe the place and event of that evening. What was the conversation about before you suggested dating? What did you say when you suggested dating? What did she say in return, what were her words?
anita
June 26, 2016 at 3:20 pm #108303XenopusTexParticipantWas lunch. Had exchanged phone numbers. I had asked that if we could ethically date given our professions, would she be interested. I don’t do the dinner thing. People sometimes have additional concerns/expectations in that scenario.
I had been asking about what she looked for in people, etc. Dhe had referenced liking museums and I had suggested a Canadian city about 180 miles North of here. She expressed in making a weekend trip up there with me.
When asked about dating, she said that she had just gotten out of a relationship and needed time.
Since then have had a bunch of mixed messages. She will avoid me at times and then ask questions. She showed up in my office one day in an amazing blouse and thigh-length skirt combo and striking poses while we were talking. It was absolutely to die for. The next day cold as ice. Later she was all chatty, interactive, etc. while wearing a black and white thin strap low neck-line body conforming dress. Next day cold as ice. Back and forth and back and forth stuff.
Like I said, just don’t get people.
Working my way through the learned optimism book. Experimenting with meeting people. At least I got to two lunches with the on/off gal, so far have been stood up by the most recent gal I asked to lunch.
June 26, 2016 at 3:41 pm #108305AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
Not enough information for me to figure out anything. If you want, reconstruct some of the conversation you had with her that lunch time like a movie script:
You said: “..
She said: “…
you said: “…of course doesn’t need to be verbatim. Paraphrase but keep it as true to what it was as possible. (add comments like: she ordered this and : the waitress brought the bill… she looked into my eyes.. things like that)
anita
June 26, 2016 at 4:11 pm #108307XenopusTexParticipantI wish I could remember those details. Not trying to be difficult, but I just can’t.
June 26, 2016 at 5:17 pm #108310AnonymousGuestDear xenopustex:
We have quite a lengthy communication on this thread. You may want to re-read it. Maybe consider or re-consider some of my input. If you do, and if you think I may be able to help you in some way, please let me know how I might.
anita
June 28, 2016 at 12:53 am #108401XenopusTexParticipantI will re-read the posts, and comment after.
June 28, 2016 at 8:15 am #108413AnonymousGuestLooking forward to your next post then, xenopustex.
anitaJune 29, 2016 at 4:12 pm #108531XenopusTexParticipantSorry for so long to write back. Been busy.
I learned more about the gal I had been considering. She had just gotten out of a relationship with a guy who wanted to enter into a bigamous relationship. At the time, she did not know of the wife and family back home. She also hadn’t know at the time that he had cheated on her with a local woman. I remember her talking about not liking the philosophy of the locals about relationships/families being man and woman. Wondering if she is kind of giving up on men.Long story short, I think that there are a lot of issues. Pretty obvious that she got used for sex. This does explain a great deal of her apparent beliefs. She has become extremely moody and depressed after the whole asking to date thing.
Will look back more at my posts.
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