Saturday, January 26, 2008
Although Jeremy likes to blame himself for my complete lack of any sort of love life, I've come to the conclusion recently that in fact, Freud was more right. I now blame my mother.
I was talking to someone about my lack of romance and all of the reasons why I don't think I'd ever want to get married. The reasons actually boil down to a few key items like privacy, independence, control over my resources, and sex.
Now the sex thing I attribute more to church beliefs in how I was raised though some very awkward conversations about masturbation and condoms with my mother growing up and the shame implied in those couldn't have helped me much.
The others, however, I feel my mother was a large contributor in. She is very assertive and very often does not know that no means no. If I say no to her about something and she thinks it is in my best interest, she will still go behind my back to do it. Oftentimes this involves invading my room or my car or in other ways violating my privacy and property. This clearly leads to a lot of trust issues since I cannot trust her to respect my space at all. She also never maintains any kind of balance of control. She also feels compelled to express her opinion on literally everything and she presents her opinion as fact and then on many topics proceeds to judge the hell out of anyone who believes differently. She often holds family meetings or discussions under the pretense of them being democratic and then she proceeds to disregard anything anyone else says and implements her own plan. When we are put in charge of other tasks like cleaning the pool, she constantly interferes with it behind our backs to get it done the way she wants. Now in a parent-child relationship some of this is to be expected, though it should be less so with me as an adult offspring of hers, but it isn't. But disregarding even this is the fact that she has treated both husbands of hers in very similar ways.
So, I guess my fear is that if I were ever in a dating relationship with someone or married to someone, I'd have to deal with all of this again. I'd have to worry over the security of my possessions and my money. I'd have to worry about who I am and what my dreams are. I'd have to worry that my entire life would be micromanaged to the point that I am powerless. If all of this happened, then what the fuck would be the point of the relationship? I'd be insane to willingly enter into that.
So, I got to thinking, if I met someone that I could actually trust and who would actually accept me for who I am without judging me, maybe it might work. Then I might feel safe to let my guard down about my things and myself. My privacy would be a little less important because I wouldn't have to feel defensive about as much. It could then actually be a safe and relaxing place to be to escape from the world rather than being a burden of yet another thing I just have to work to maintain exhausting myself. Now, I have my doubts about whether I could actually find someone like that that I was actually attracted to and even if I did, I'd have the whole physical intimacy hurdle to get over, but Samantha assures me that my mental blocks on that would melt away if I got into the type of relationship just described.