Someone romantically close to me recently pointed out that by putting her on a pedestal I implied I was worse or less valuable myself. It doesn’t make for a very equal relationship nor does it really project confidence. I think the tendency to hold others up above oneself has some useful functions, however, which is probably why it’s been a mechanism for most of my life:
1) It keeps my ego in-check, and makes sure I never I become out of touch like my mentally-ill mother. My hyperactive happy or subject-engaged states make me miss emotional cues (the mind reading I’m so very bad at that is the expectation or need for many introverts or people who have anxiety issues). Over-focusing on others helps to prevent this.
2) Like it or not most of us derive a degree of validation, income or purpose from interactions with others – what they think of us and how much they bother with us contributes to our construction of self-esteem – even if we don’t like people all that much. In COVID this effect is amplified: I live alone and nobody (besides maybe my family) is going to care about me if I don’t reach out to them and care about them first. Most people I know in the world have more people who care about them. It’s hard not to see that as a kind of evidence supporting the possibility that they are in fact better and more deserving. If they weren’t they wouldn’t get the attention and effort they do. I can’t blame people for not caring enough about me to ever reach out or initiate – so many of them are lost in their own internal struggles or care for pets or children, why should or would they have time for me? I am empirically not worth it.
3) Affording myself the same compassion and patience I give others is harder than it sounds because it doesn’t map out evenly – I don’t give my family enough benefit of the doubt and I give [potential] romantic interests too much. In the world of online dating where most women I’m interested in are swamped with too many men to handle even the smallest error will result in me getting cut-loose. It’s hard to not be hard on yourself when that’s the stakes. Sure, I can choose to think they should treat me better and instead invest more in friends and family, but this leaves me without physical intimacy in my life.
The result of this, when I’m in a positive state of mind, is that I thrust an enormous degree of energy outward to connect: compliments and gratitude and attempts to bring others together for events. Many of my conversations begin with an apologetic format in an attempt to imply that I recognize my intrusiveness, despite my attempts to curtail such habits.
Except that’s still not what people want much of the time, certainly not in COVID. Fact of the matter is in the romantic world I still don’t know what most women want. Coy one-liners and someone who always knows the right [concise] thing to say or do? Openness to commitment and love mostly seem to scare the shit out of folks. Sex and security become relatively low-value when so many others in line can offer different or better. I’m pretty easily able to be vulnerable and am eager listen to stories and find countless ways to connect to or care, too, but that’s insufficient. See them for who they are, make them feel heard, right? Except the harder you try to do this the worse you do – dating is perhaps the only occurrence of this paradox in the world? It’s too bad I can’t just meditate to find inner balance and suddenly women will want to shag me for more than a week.
Actions often go unobserved, words become superfluous, it’s like some mythical invisible emotional energy I just don’t exude in the right way or something. A lot of my hobbies are obscure or nerdy so it’s just easier to find common-ground with theirs – after all, I do really enjoy learning and have found I can appreciate a great deal in the world. Yet another coping mechanism.
40 romantic failures so far in 2020. Without the pedestal strategy I wouldn’t have had the dozen that at least had mixed results.