Susannah's Going to Stop Trying to Control Things .....Tomorrow

The trauma model is generally invoked by people who believe in equality at the soul level. It doesn't account for the concept of some souls simply being darker than others. Darkness consumes and destroys as its basic nature, while people of light in the same or worse circumstances create and heal.

 

A primary trait of darkness is deception. Darkness will pretend to be "coming around," "changing and growing," and "overcoming," while continuing to energy-vampire off of whatever light life form they can parasite off of. It's a con. The basic nature will never change, any more than water will become sand or the sun will become the moon. A thing is elementally itself.

The test for light souls in such a situation is to finally refuse to serve, support, or aid and abet evil in any form.

In my view, those with the brightest lights are the least aware or self-aware about this, because they project their traits onto others and have a hard time grasping the nature of evil (since it isn't their own nature). And they are highly unlikely to recognize their behavior as serving or cooperating with evil. They believe that putting energy towards darkness is a good thing to do. It isn't.

 

Beautiful and haunting truth. This should should be published somewhere: an Op-Ed piece in a national paper, perhaps? So many of us understand this instinctively about our culture, but no one calls it out. It's as though we don't know how to confront it: Rom-Com movies and sexy movies always star 20-30 something year-old women. In Hollywood, 40s shows the audience perhaps an older, hotter mom. 50-60s+... entirely different (non-sexual) roles. One of my biggest motivators for fighting to be clean all these years was the realization that if I didn't figure this out and stop P, how could I ever be sexually attracted to my wife when we are 50,60,70,80? And how weird would it be to sexually desire someone who one day is my daughter's age (or younger!)? I have been working on attaching desire to a specific human being not a specific age/shape. And I will tell you, it is an all-out war (against society, culture, art and media) that requires all my energy and attention to keep fighting...I don't mean to excuse his wandering eyes, I'm simply saying the sexualization of young women to sell product and direct male behavior is ridiculously out-of-control. I'm watching large swaths of men be destroyed for the profit of a select few.

On another note: I didn't realize until reading more closely that your hubby was drawn to such young girls. For me, (1) I went to an all-boys parochial college prep school for H.S. and (2) I was a virgin by choice until I got married. So high school and college "experimental years" were blank for me. I noticed that even as an adult, I always preferred watching "coming of age movies" and the corny "let's lose our virginity before graduating" movies, and also the "hot, single and traveling in Europe" movies etc. etc. For me I was trying to "fill in the gaps of what I thought I missed." (I didn't know many girls as a teenager!) I still have to (though much less frequently) make conscious efforts to let it all go, realize I have the intimacy I always wanted, and to enjoy the life I have, not try to (re)live the experiences I think I may have missed.

It does seem the molestation of the 9-year old when he was 15 plays into his pain. It's hard to imagine that he himself was not a victim at some point prior...

 

The nature of darkness is ultimately subversion and sabotage. Darkness will take whatever is whole, healthy, and strong, and weaken, twist, pervert and destroy it. It is anti-life. Destruction is the entire point.

 

Yes and thank you very much. I'm sure that was an effort and you were very forthright. Once again, I find this very admirable.

I'll try to explain my motivation for the questions by starting with question #2. Not sure that this is the right word, but one of your "platforms" that's been repeated in your journal entries is that our culture disregards (sexually) women of a certain age and that men are shaped by culture and thus ruled by this societal law. I think it's generally accepted that our culture puts a lot of it's sexual value in youth. Biologically it makes some sense to do so, but our culture does seem to turn those few inches into a country mile, yes. But when I saw the platform repeated often enough I started to wonder if you believe that all or even most men subscribe to this. I started to hypothesize:

Maybe Susannah's dad left her mom for a younger woman when she was a child. Lil Susannah developed a belief (conscious or subconscious) that all or most all men disregard women sexually after a certain age. So her behavior worked to serve a confirmation bias: She marries a man who's sexual desires abruptly cutoff when women reach their early 20s. Confirmations of her bias is in steady supply in her home whenever she needs it. But why does she need it?

Obviously I was wrong about your parents marriage. But I still wonder about the belief and if it's being used as a confirmation bias. So new current theory: She needs the confirmation bias to keep her from putting herself at risk of being in a relationship with someone she can't control - she's afraid of repeating her mom's mistake(s). But how does the confirmation bias help with that? It allows her to carry anger, shit tons of anger. Anger is powerful and without that anger she feels terribly at risk of being taken advantage of like her mother, of being overpowered. Exhibit A: Her furious outburst at the fast food place about the sexualization of a young woman on a magazine cover last week had an ultimate result: Her husband weakly and meekly agreeing with her, in contrast to his own preferences. She has successfully evaded being controlled like her mother by doing the controlling herself, through anger, like her father. Exhibit B: Max wanders into her journal and sprinkles some benign, polite compliments. Her two responses to him were reinforcements of the age difference. His expressed polite fondness for her was a threat to the confirmation bias, and thus a threat to her source of anger she uses to soothe her deepest fears. So she reminds him of the age difference and chases away the compliments with teasing. The confirmation bias is now safe once again. The "security anger" isn't in jeopardy.

I would like to take this sentence to say that I, real name Adam, have this working hypothetical theory at this moment but this has no bearing on what I think of "you". I think you are kind-hearted, brilliant, creative, loving, supportive and the bee's damn knees, even if everything I just guessed at were true. I say this because I know judgement is a concern, likely because of this:

Judgement is a proof that you've been noticed, so I can understand why you may be conditioned to go unjudged. What I've written is not an assessment of you the person. It's a theory about some conditions you may or may not be in, based on my arbitrary personal hunches which are rooted and steeped in the conditions I absolutely am in. Long story short, please don't take my wild guesses as a personal attack. You are awesome and I will not be convinced otherwise! I'm also deathly afraid of your judgement.....

Ok now let's go back to question #1, pertaining to your husband:

A quick recap of the haystack we can't find this needle in:

That last one is interesting because that puts your husband at around 10 years old the last time he saw his father - roughly the same age as his first molestation victim. What happened around age 9-10 in your husband's life that he was no longer in contact with his father? Was this his own personal wish? If so, was this wish maintained by him for the duration of his dad's life? Did this non-contact go against his wishes, possibly creating an anger or hatred toward his mother, a resentment?

Me quoting all that stuff came off as kind of patronizing or sarcastic, so I want to point out that you absolutely did mention all those things in what you wrote here:

Just cooling my jets before I start getting smug like I'm inventing the wheel.

There is likely an ENORMOUS guilt about the molestation of the cousin, which might be why he's so desperate for approval from young girls - a way to temporarily suspend the guilt. This young girl doesn't hate me so I can't be that bad. I'm safe, right? Right???

Whatever happened when he was 3 is going to be tricky to evaluate or comprehend. This molestation of the cousin is significant. Underneath it is the bullying and some mom and dad stuff to resolve, but on top of it has to be a MOUNTAIN of unresolved guilt, shame and self-hatred. That mountain is where I'd place my shovel to begin uncovery. What actions can he take to begin to forgive himself for a crime he committed as a juvenile? He may have spent decades trying to uncover justification, but his efforts might be better spent working toward delivering his true remorse to the victim, if even in the form of a letter. That would be monumentally scary, but there aren't a host of better options to "pay for" something like that. Perhaps the victim may have a suggestion? There are a whole host of worst-case-scenario outcomes of taking this approach in apologizing and expressing his deep remorse to his cousin. As with all of us here truly working recovery, he may need to face his life's deepest fears head on, including all the worst-case-scenario outcomes, in order to recover his life from the grips it is in.

With all of that said, I am really nervous about everything I just typed. I suppose it all comes down to intent. I'm confident the intent is there, I just wish I had ways to deliver my intentions without risk of offending or hurting people. A work in progress...

 

I've been squirming quite a bit about the audacious post I wrote here yesterday. You aren't the first person here to receive an unsolicited, back-alley analysis like this from me. Each time I've found myself motivated for something like that I begin to cringe, and each time I carry out with it nonetheless. It doesn't feel compulsive, at least not in any way that I've ever known. But I always wonder about my motivations behind it, because it's usually a bit surprising I'd imagine to be on the receiving end of it. It's like I'm inspired to paint portraits but I zero in on things that aren't usually flattering to the subject...but I'm making the painting for the subject. It's crazy.
Am I trying to hurt people? If so why? And why my favorite people? Is this some type of intimacy avoidance, subconsciously designed to keep people at a distance? Am I trying to impress people with how special I am, like I believe this type of psychological profiling makes me really talented? Am I trying to "break people down" if I put them on too high of a pedestal?
I don't know, but when I'm doing it it doesn't feel malicious. So I end up just feeling crazy for it and searching for answers why. It's gross and I'm sorry. You didn't ask for or deserve to be the subject of my weird projections. Maybe it's how I've been self-soothing? I project all the things I'm guilty of onto someone else to feel better about my own issues?
And the aftermath is like quicksand. Anything I say or do seems to intensify the situation. Apologizing feels like I'm playing the victim. "Have pity on me, for me."
Sigh. Hope I haven't tarnished your Hope Hope Hope.

 

Wow, what a thought provoking back-and-forth: your question @Strength And Light, your answer @Susannah, the analysis, and the meta-analysis. Amazing.

 

This is so well put. It is shocking to me that the weeks of crying, months of depression and all the damage to my sense of self and reality that resulted from the first d-day weren't motivation enough for my husband to do everything in his power to never put me through that again. It is extremely demoralizing that after a period of time, it all apparently went out the window. Only an idiot would not take that as a genuine reflection of a lack of deep love, respect and caring....

 

I'm almost certain this "sickness" you are trying to account for was the driving force behind my unskillful, accusatory posts. It might be a mechanism I installed long ago to try to "save" people from the type of unpleasant existence that my dad had that resulted in his suicide. Like in the way that the daughter of an alcoholic becomes a nurse. "Saving" people becomes a way to temporarily override feelings of low worth, a dependency of it's own. How absurd then to try to save you from feeling sick by delivering you to feeling attacked.

I'm sorry Susannah. I could have saved you a lot of discomfort by simplifying to just this: Is it possible you've stayed with him all this time because his low self-worth makes him less entitled to act like your father and trigger fears of taking advantage of you like your father did to your mom?

Boom. Easy enough question. I added in all the charts and graphs and video still frames and finger pointing and arm flailing and dramatic Johnny Cochran bravado because I needed to be right. It's my own co-dependency: the savior needs someone to save. I needed those things to be true because it makes me sick to not have control over saving someone from feeling bad. Fuck.

That was a big realization I just wrote out that brought immediate tears. It's movement. I'm sorry it unfolded in your lap, but thanks for allowing it to fully unfold. Maybe this answers my question of why I only do it to my favorites. Because my favorites are the ones who are safe, the ones who will likely understand. THANK YOU.

Switching gears. It's interesting about your husband and about @Trynagetbetter both sharing desires for much younger women while both also sharing experiences in their youth of being unable to date females of those ages. I have always been attracted to females right around my age - my wife is less than a year younger than me. As I've aged, so has the age of women I'm attracted to. Kind of like my taste in music. The stuff I liked as a young man just doesn't appeal to me in the same way that it once did. Important note: I've always had girlfriends, my entire post-puberty life. So I don't share this "missing out" factor. I can understand the appeal of clear youthful skin and body, but IMO your husband is probably right that there's got to be another element in play. I'm not saying @Trynagetbetter is a creep, not at all, but when he says he's using all his might and energy to try to transform his preferences, it's hard to believe that's all based on visuals. At least in your husband's case, it has to do with receiving intimacy without having to actually connect. This is done through power and influence. Much the same way a john uses a prostitute to receive intimacy without having to connect. It's done through the power of money.

@Trynagetbetter I love you brother! I don't mean to associate you with someone who's an admitted child molester. Anyone reading this please don't make that leap!

I've typed too much so I'll shut my yapper. Susannah thanks for your understanding. @Trynagetbetter you have a friend in me. @Max Fisher get back on your tricycle and beat it punk!

 

None taken. I felt like I got to sit at the cool table at lunch for a few day.

Its a scooter these days grandpa...I have snapchats to do anyways.