Dear rookie:

I am not focused enough this evening. If you read this before I am back in 10 hours or so, please add anything that might help me understand more about you. I will come back to your thread tomorrow morning, “bright eyed and bushy tailed” I hope.

anita

Dear Rookie:

I re-read all your posts here. I got a feel that you are a strong person, I got a “feel” of your strength, a certain strong independence of thinking and managing your mind and your life. Not without challenges of course, but good insight on your part. Anything I would suggest for you to consider, you already suggested yourself in your posts here. If you re-read your posts, everything I could possibly suggest is in your own writing.

More thoughts: about the guy, why ge got colder. Part of your feel for his coldness could be your expectation that he would be closer after you were physically intimate. Part of his coldness could be his expectation that you expect him to get closer, which … made him move away. This is all too soon to tell because you didn’t communicate enough in person, and may not be able to because of distance. Did you give yourself too soon, a point you brought up…?

I sense your loneliness, doesn’t take a genius to sense what is so natural for a human, a social animal by genetics. Your distant relationship with your family, living away from country of origin… having been distant from friends, keeping things in… naturally you were lonely and eager to connect oncwe you got in the same place with him, after all the hours of communication from a distance. Naturally you would be eager to be CLOSE.

I would encourage you cautiously getting close to people, selectively, evaluate and re-evaluate everyone with whom you interact, including him. Not waiting for him but continuing to live and practice everything available for you to practice in your life as is, communication with people included, a possible relationship with another man, included.

Anything else- please write more.
anita

Dear Rookie:

I think that deep down inside you- you are looking for love, for connecting with another on an intimate level, more than you are currently experiencing with your good friend you mentioned in the last post as well as with increased closeness with the friends you have. I think you learned through your childhood experience that trying to connect (with patent/s I assume)- backfired on you, brought you negative results. So you learned to recoil from closeness, to not wish it or to wish it away, definitely wish it away at first sign of trouble.

Deep down inside you long for connection of the most intimate kind (genetically based, very human) and you also learned, on a deep level, to stay away from the very thing you long for. And staying away from it worked for you to a good extent, which is why and how you function as well as you do.

I figure that you believe no such person exists (you saying it without thinking is an indication of how deeply established this belief is)- is based on your life experience of childhood. We form our core beliefs based on our personal experience, naturally. Unfortunately, it was your parents’ deficiency or fault for the failure of positive experience in your childhood: you were completely committed then to intimacy with them (biologically it is a live or die to the young deer, let’s say)- they were not.

In real life (and real is all that counts)- there are plenty of people with whom closeness will hurt you, just as your efforts to be close to your parents has hurt you. And there are a few, and all you need is one, that closeness with him will be the greatest thing for you.

Again, cautious selectiveness is the key, approach with caution. Your life experience taught you what is real: that closeness can hurt and can be detrimental to your well being. So caution.

The reluctance on your part to get intimate is not about something being wrong with you. It is about reality.

You are so gracious, rookie: very good at being easy on people, respecting others’ needs. So gentle and gracious about asking for help. This is very … a loveable thing about you. You will be excellent at a very intimate relationship with the right man. The right man is one that you learn about over time, in person, slowly.

What do you think about my input so far?

anita

Dear Rookie:

You are welcome! Further input: regarding above “not OK to be lonely.” Taking literally, it is OK to be lonely: it is OK to feel lonely and whatever it is that you feel at any moment. Every emotion has a valid message- it is about knowing that massage. 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, even distressing, even hateful, jealous feelings. If you find out that valid message behind an emotion you will be relieved, as in: “Oh, I see, I understand.”

People feel “secondary emotions” about their (primary) emotions, for example: shame over feeling jealous of another. Or fear over feeling…. fear or anger. If you stay with the primary feeling and decipher its message…

You will often find out it is about you wanting to be loved, wanting or needing to be taken care of. And it is often a reaction to past events, giving you the message that certain hurts need to be acknowledged, by you. A message can be that you need to assert yourself with a particular person.

Hope you post again on this thread. Will look for new postings, anytime.

anita

Dear Rookie

You’re welcome. Emotions are necessary sources of information about what is real and true and there is a relief when we allign ourselves with what is true. A long term relief and benefit for better and better functioning in life. As to your question about being too eager to have that connection- my answer is: NO. There is nothing wrong or too much about the eagerness you feel for a connection. This eagerness … has a valid message: that you are human. We are genetically built, evolved that way, to be social animals, to connect. Can’t help it. Fact of life, of our natural beings.

How to get into and make win-win relationships is a different kind of question, one that requires more thinking. How do you get the connection that is good for you? 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 or to anything otherwise. You become curious, not only eager. Maybe you become eager to SEE what is there, not only eager to connect. You maintain your eagerness (can’t get rid of what is natural)- but you add an adjective to it: selective eagerness. So WHO the person is becomes very important to the question of whether to get closer to that person- or not.

anita

anita

Dear Rookie:

I went back in time to the very beginning of my participation in tiny buddha, almost seven years ago (May 5, 2015), and came across our communication in September of 2015. I submitted a post for you on Sept 17, 2015, you posted next seven days later, on Sept 24, 2015, but I was not aware before today, more than 6 years later, that you posted that last post. I regret not having noticed it back in Sept 2015 (it must have been busy at the time, unlike recently), and wonder if you thought at the time that I chose, for some reason, to not reply to you. It makes me sad to think that you might have thought that.

I doubt, of course, that you are still following this old thread, but I want to reply to you in the next 24 hours regardless.

anita