Response to Blavid

On July 23, 2007 1:23:00 PM ADT, Blavid wrote:

So.. is this a matter of retaliation, as you have hinted at many times? Or, is this a matter of fighting for someone you love? I really don't think there can be both.

That's not quite true. One can't pursue both goals, but one can have elements of both feelings in one's heart.

Have I ever wanted to retaliate against Riin? Of course I have. I'm Human. I've been hurt. It's perfectly natural to feel an urge to strike back. Vengeance is one of our most primal instincts as a species. Even Riin has fantasized of hurting me. Some of her feelings and fantasies are actually darker and more violent than my own. This is normal, provided one has the emotional control not to act on these impulses.

Do I intend to retaliate? No. If I was going to retaliate, I would have done so by now. It's not in my nature to willfully hurt people any more than it's in Riin's nature. I'm just as non-violent as she is, in both the physical and emotional sense. I see no benefit in "retaliation." Sure, making the other person "feel your pain" might make you feel good in the moment, but it solves nothing and, unless you have no conscience, it won't make you feel good in the end.

Riin would undoubtedly doubt my motives. She'd probably use my fascination with fist fights in movies, my interest in WWE wrestling, my fascination with space battles and my never back down attitude as examples to demonstrate how "violent" and "abusive" I am.

Then again, Riin mentions quite a few comics she likes in a recent blog posting. If you follow the links to them, you'll find that she seems to have a rather strong predilection for comics about cute, fuzzy creatures who commit acts of extreme violence. She also wrote a short screenplay which ends in the brutal murder of a character based, in part, on me, by a character based on her (not on things she's done, but on feelings she's had...).

Does this make Riin a violent person? Not at all. These things are simply Riin's way of dealing with the violence she carries in her heart. It's the same violence we all carry in our hearts as Human beings. My interests serve the same purpose for me. We must have a way to express the violent parts of our nature creatively. If we don't, they eventually overwhelm us and we end up acting on them. This is probably why the violent tend to be the unimaginative.

Never have I committed any violence that harmed anyone seriously, and what little violence I have committed has been the result of physical provocation. In other words, I've never ever struck anyone unless they struck me first. Riin doesn't think she'd ever strike anyone. Then again, she's never had anyone punch her in the face. I hope she never has to experience that. I submit, though, if she's never experienced it, how does she know how she'd react?

Based on what I know of her deeper psyche, I'd be willing to bet she'd go totally ballistic on someone if they ever struck her. Then she'd regret it later and wonder what the hell had gotten into her...

However, like myself, no way Riin would ever strike anyone unprovoked. Given that, her belief that "[my] abuse would have eventually become physical if [she] had moved [here] as [she] had planned" makes no sense. Unless she planned to try to turn the end of her screenplay into a reality, I would never have hurt her any more than I would ever hurt anyone.

That being said, I honestly can't blame anyone for not believing that. There have been far too many stories about jilted men hurting their "loved" ones. Just recently in The Cape Breton Post there was an article about a man who set his ex-girlfriend on fire. How can someone do something like that to someone they ostensibly "love?"

It's men like that that make things all the more difficult for men like me who are merely trying to make a legitimate attempt to solve a problem peacefully. In fact, just being the man in a relationship problem is automatically a strike against you. If our gender roles had been reversed and I had broken up with Riin, I probably still would be seen as the "bad guy" just by virtue of being male.

Is it fair? Absolutely not. Even the police I spoke to admitted that (she called them on me once only to have them tell us both that our situation "isn't a police matter" since there are no violence or threats of violence on either side). Unfortunately, this prejudice against the man in relationships gone bad is a fact of life. One too many psychos leaving their wives dead on their kitchen floors have pretty much made all men look like the bad guys in these situations.

It's too bad I wasn't female...

You're a man already dead, John. You're caught in a world of stasis and anti-stasis. Time is chronologically confused for you.

Interesting. A similar theme was explored in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Emissary."

In the story, Commander Sisko is trying to teach these aliens, who have no concept of linear time, how we as Humans perceive time as a linear progression with a present and a past and a future. He uses the example of playing a game of baseball (Teleplay by Michael Piller, Story by Michael Piller & Rick Berman):

                                     SISKO
                      The rules aren't important...
                      what's important is--it's linear.
                      Every time you throw this ball a
                      hundred different things can
                      happen in the game... he might
                      swing and miss, he might hit it...
                      the point is you never know... you
                      try to anticipate, set a strategy
                      for all the possibilities as best
                      you can... but in the end it all
                      comes down to throwing one pitch
                      after another... and seeing what
                      happens.  With each new
                      consequence, the game begins to
                      take shape...

                                BATTER ALIEN
                          (grasping the meaning)
                      And you have no idea what that
                      shape is until it is completed...

                                SISKO
                          (beat)
                      That's right.  In fact, the game
                      wouldn't be worth playing if we
                      knew what was going to happen.

                                JAKE ALIEN
                      You value your ignorance of what
                      is to come?

                                SISKO
                          (acknowledges, driving
                           home his point)
                      That might be the most important
                      thing to understand about humans.
                      It is the unknown that defines our
                      existence.  We are constantly
                      searching... not just for answers
                      to our questions... but for new
                      questions.  We are explorers... we
                      explore or lives day by day... and
                      we explore the galaxy, trying to
                      expand the boundaries of our
                      knowledge.  And that is why I'm
                      here.  Not to conquer you either
                      with weapons or with ideas.  but
                      to co-exist and learn.


            JAKE ALIEN

            studies him curiously for a beat...


            SISKO

            waits hopefully for a response... reacts as he looks
            down at...


            HIS HANDS

            bloody and burned as they were at the Saratoga.


            INT. SISKO'S QUARTERS

            and he's back on the Saratoga... his quarters in
            flames... his wife dead... his son unconscious...
            standing with the Tactical Officer...

                                TACTICAL OFFICER ALIEN
                      If all you say is true... why do
                      you exist here?

That was the problem he kept running into. Every time he'd try to explain the idea of linear time to the aliens, they'd keep dragging him back to the memory of his wife's death and, every time they did, they'd tell him, "you exist here."

Eventually, he figures out what it is they've been trying to tell him:

               During the above, Sisko is beginning to make a
           realization...

                               SISKO
                     I've never left this ship...

                               JENNIFER ALIEN
                     You exist here.

                               SISKO
                     I... exist here.

           The Tactical Officer leads Sisko #2 out... Sisko steps
           slowly forward and moves to his dead wife taking the
           place of his double... picks up her hand...

                               SISKO
                         (to the aliens)
                     I don't know if you can
                     understand.  I see her like this
                     every time I close my eyes... in
                     the darkness in the blink of an
                     eye, she's there... like this...

                               JENNIFER ALIEN
                     None of your past experiences
                     helped prepare you for this
                     consequence...

           Sisko shakes his head sadly.

                               SISKO
                         (softly)
                     And I've never figured out how to
                     live without her.

                               JENNIFER ALIEN
                     So you choose to exist here.

           He nods, unable to speak... she moves closer...

                               JENNIFER ALIEN
                     It is not linear.

           And of course it is so simple in its truth...

                               SISKO
                     No.  It's not... linear.

That's what you're trying to say, isn't it? "You exist here."

Yes. I exist here.

There is one big difference between Sisko's situation and mine, however. Sisko's wife was dead. Riin is not. In the absence of profound betrayal, and there was none on either side here, there is always a way to fix a broken relationship if there is a will to do so.

So long as Riin and I both live, I'll never give up trying. She means too much to me.

She needs not to be sucked into your obsession with collecting the opposite sex.

I have no such obsession. If I had, I would have probably formed quite a few more relationships during the time Riin and I were together. I did not. I simply believe that romantic love and friendship are the same feeling, the only difference being that romantic love is expressed sexually while friendship is not.

Basically, I'm open to the possibility that any friendship I have with a woman might some day blossom into something romantic. That is, in fact, exactly what happened with Riin and I. We started out as friends and is blossomed into more. However, I do not seek for that to happen. It either does or it doesn't. I simply follow my heart where it leads me.

Right now, there are four women in my life I'm in love with. Only one is romantic right now. Riin was romantic, but is no more. The others have always loved me but I don't see any romantic possibilities in those relationships. I'm content with that, so long as I always have their love as friends. I've never tried to change those relationships, but should either of those women ever fall for me, neither would I discourage it if it happened.

This is the heart of my relationship philosophy.

Roads end, sometimes.

Yes and, when they do, you have three choices:

1. Turn around and go back.
2. Build more road.
3. Trek on into the underbrush hoping to find a new road.

This journey is too important for me to turn back, and Riin thus far has been unwilling to help me to build on the road. So for now, until I find a way to build more road, I choose Option 3.

In situations like this, what I usually do is go to someone both myself and the person I love trusts and get them to help me build more road. The problem is, I really mean it when I say that Riin has pushed everyone who loves her out of her life. There's literally no one left I can go to for help that Riin hasn't already driven out of her life. So my only choice, short of giving up, is to blaze the trail alone.

As Jen in The Dark Crystal said as he set out in his quest to find the Crystal Shard: "All right: alone, then."

Now you're just wandering through the sparse woods down by brook just beyond the dead-end street looking for a single strand of her hair that has long washed down through the viaduct and into the pipes-like-veins of the city.

True. Fortunately, I've always loved walking in the woods...

And who knows what treasures I may find there... ;)

---

On September 7, 2007 2:15:31 AM ADT, Sue wrote:

Excuse me, but it is neither narcissistic NOR juvenile to ignore someone AFTER YOU HAVE BROKEN OFF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM.

Ignoring a person completely is always juvenile. Breaking off a romantic relationship does not mean it's right to completely ignore the person, particularly when they did nothing to warrant the treatment. Also, as I pointed out, blogging is a narcissistic act in and of itself. Riin had a "blog" before there were blogs (her old web page served the same purpose: to get her opinions out into the world). By that measure, she's far more narcissistic than I.

Your choosing "persistence" toward your petulant and childish goals, over choosing to accept the breakup in a dignified and respectful way (regardless of whether you feel that you've been treated in such a way yourself) is in my opinion the very epitome of "narcissistic."

I disagree. However, even if you're right, it's irrelevant. After all this time, my depression is finally lifting. I've let go of my anger. All I want now is a peaceful solution that Riin and I can both live with. I know what I have to do for the first time since this mess started.

I'm sorry that you do not understand. I'd like you to but, ultimately, it doesn't matter if you understand, or Blavid understands, or Jan understands, or anyone understands. I simply must do what I have to do regardless what anyone else thinks.

That's why I'm taking away comment ability on this blog. This blog was a way to sort out my thoughts. Allowing comments, whether I liked them or not, helped me organize my thoughts. I should actually thank you personally because your comments, though often unpleasant, really helped me sort out my thoughts and feelings.

Now I know how I feel. Now I know what I need to do. I no longer need a "sounding board." So, there's no longer any need to accept comments here.

Thanks for coming, though, and thanks for everything.