Tag: relationships
Well the thing I had been dreading happened. Neptune finally hit the bottom of my chart (representing home) and I had to move out of my house with James, Patton & Slippers into an apartment by myself.
I don’t know if I can talk about this yet because it is too painful. I poured all my love into one person and by the end he would not even allow me to speak in my own home- the home I spent one million hours painting & cleaning, the home where I served him food every day, made him 5 coffees a day, always did what he wanted and tried to please him. But no matter what I did his view of me kept growing darker and darker.
One wrong word from me had become so powerful it would derail his brain for weeks and force him to stay in bed, missing important deadlines. This is why I was no longer able to talk. So I stopped. But that wasn’t enough. In the end he said my very presence terrified him. He wanted me gone. And so I had to move out. That is the bad part. The horrible part. I can’t even process it or figure out what it means.
Based on what others tell me he is narcissistic & discarding me because of his upcoming domestic violence trial. I no longer reflect positively on him and it is easier to get rid of me than to own some mistakes and move forward. Some people tell me he has borderline disorder or might be experiencing psychosis. Sometimes he would scream at me “I’M INSANE- DON’T YOU GET IT!!!!! HOW STUPID ARE YOU!?!?! MY BRAIN DOESN’T WORK!!!”
Some men ask what I did to him to make him this way. Some say he must have just stopped loving me. If there is one area of life in which I applied myself it was as a wife. I did everything I could for him. He used to yell that his stress was due to the house being in foreclosure. “THANKS TO YOU WE ARE GOING TO BE HOMELESS, DON”T YOU GET IT!?!? HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!?!” So I got us in a covid relief program that paid all $18,550 of the debt. It took me 9 months. It didn’t even make him like me for one minute.
He said he couldn’t afford food so I got us foodstamps. He didn’t want to be bothered, so I didn’t bother him. If he wanted cookies at one am, I made them. I *wanted* to make them because I liked doing things for him. He meant so much to me.
He wanted me to run for office and I did. He wanted me to start a cardano stakepool so I did. If he wanted me to do astrology readings for him or his stakers I jumped at it. I would have done anything for him. I enjoyed it.
When I try to think of why he hates me these are the only things I can think of…
- I’m not capable of sleeping in the same bed. I just can’t fall asleep. For a long time, anything hurtful he did would be attributed to how I hurt him by not sleeping in the same bed and he needs that.
- I can’t swallow his cum. This makes me want to throw up. It’s nothing personal to him I just don’t believe in eating things that aren’t foods. Just thinking about it I’m starting to gag.
- I turned him into the police. I didn’t know he would get arrested. I just wanted their help and didn’t know where else to turn. It had been 5 years of him hurting me and in those situations you have little recourse since you are supposed to keep the whole thing private. Him going to jail was my greatest nightmare. I didn’t want that. But he will never forgive me for it. He says I did it out of spite.
- I had a mini-affair. After he came back from jail, he was darker than ever. I didn’t know what to do. He loathed me. If I tried to talk, he would twist a blanket into a rope & hold it over my mouth.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt I’d exhausted all options on the side of good, so decided to try to the dark side & went to second base with a psychopath. In some ways, it helped because it diverted my mind from James, so I could leave him alone more. But it wasn’t long before this other guy was also threatening to kill me and I felt maybe I didn’t want to be a lying cheating whore anyway.
So this could be why James hates me. But he hated me before I did it too. He hated me before he went to jail. He would scream at me that I was a stupid fucking cunt who had ruined his life. He didn’t say how.
If people had watched the last 6 years they would probably not understand why I miss James so much. But I really loved him. His essence and smell, not necessarily the way he treated me. Now that I’ve met more humans they always say I’m funny and that James must like how funny I am. This makes me laugh because, no, James does not find me amusing. At best, I’m a stupid cunt. At worst, a terrifying presence. “PLEASE STOP!!!!! STTTTTOOPPPPP!!!! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!!!???” he would scream on repeat while covering his ears, crying and rocking back and forth if I tried to talk to him about anything. He does not find me funny.
But its more than his essence… I liked how caring and protective he once seemed. How loyal I thought he was and how much I thought he loved me. I liked that he wanted to put down roots with me and create something lasting. I liked collecting things with him and having a house and dogs. I liked it when we cooked together. I liked how he used to help me solve my problems.
When I first met him, I was pretty insane due to living in isolation with a husband who had me be 28 different people. James’s love & his encouragement to listen to myself helped me untie many knots.
But even in the beginning, some problems were there. About every third day would be spent in the closet crying because he would go into rages. I can’t remember what the rages were about. It seems like they didn’t make much sense. My first husband also went into frequent rages about things that were hard to understand. But with James I would block all the bad things out. Because he was True Love. I saw him as perfect and those were the feelings I had towards him. Absolute trust as well.
It was only when he started getting physical that the fog started to lift a little. Because I felt that was crossing a line. As a kid I heard that if a man hits you you must leave immediately,. So I felt I had to draw a line there. But I couldn’t. After jail I stopped trying to draw that line. Cause it felt like me drawing lines was the problem. The problem was that I was a bad wife who had got her husband in trouble. So I wasn’t going to make a deal about it anymore.
But in the end, he wanted me to leave. I was so malicious, so psychopathic, such a lying gaslighting spiteful cunt that he needed me gone so he could function. No amount of silence, service, tolerance, anything made me better in his eyes.
Now when I go to the house to visit the dogs he is neither hot nor cold. Neither happy nor bothered. I’m a janitor wandering in to clean the toilets. No longer a psychopath. No longer a malicious cunt. Just a nothing.
Well it turns out double-saintdom is not all its cracked up to be. Enter the triple-saint.
The triple saint is a defensive position; flower turning into bud. The goal of the triple saint is to avoid feeling angry or hurt in situations that would rightfully make you so in the hopes of neutralizing a degenerative cycle.
Because no matter how much we talk up assertiveness, the reality is that assertiveness will sometimes get you killed. People are naturally going to advocate for themselves when it’s safe to do so. But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you have to bend over & take it without getting broke on the inside. The triple saint is lubed and ready.
The triple saint is for when appeals to sympathy have fallen on deaf ears. You are overpowered, not human, and communication is pointless. You’re in a banana court for a crime you didn’t commit. People want you to swing. Why? Cause they took your money & if you die they don’t have to pay you back. The triple saint is for when you are the scapegoat.
Unlike the double saint, the triple saint has given up on being a pleasing mist. She knows all efforts to appease our futile. She is a pawn and the script has already been written. She is irredeemable & must be sacrificed.
The triple saint is caught in a backwards spiral. This is a relationship dynamic in which the more you give, the more you end up in debt. An example would be a hooker who works 7 days a week but owes her pimp so much money she can’t leave.
In a backwards spiral, you are always guilty, so you compensate by trying to give more, care more, cater more & pay closer attention to someone else so they will stop feeling wronged by you.
But no matter how you try, you just make things worse. All your efforts are either zeroes or strikes against you. And if you ever feel that this is unjust & try to defend yourself, well now you’re on trial for that. Guilty. Of hurting the other person by defending yourself. Guilty. Of being hurt by their actions. Guilty for how you made them feel, for what you made them do.
Backwards spirals occur when there is a power imbalance to begin with so confronting the other person will not succeed. Imagine a slave confronting their master. Any confrontation is a mark against you. Any complaint a grave injustice.
The path of the triple saint involves three steps which are simple but difficult to perform.
- Stop Giving. This is most important.
You must turn off the flow of giving that you rely on to feel safe. To feel in control and hopeful that you might turn things around.
The triple saint must stop believing she can change people by loving them. Perhaps this works with plants, animals and babies but it doesn’t with men. Why? I don’t know. My theory is that God designed life in part to sharpen our wits. He doesn’t want us to be potatoes getting everything we want with hugs & smiles. And so he made darkness & men & the law of the jungle was born.
Anyway, here are the reasons you must stop giving…
a) To give up the dream that you can change people with love. So long as you see yourself as the cause and controller of other people’s behavior you cannot see them clearly. Without seeing your environment clearly, it is impossible to make wise choices.
b) Giving entangles you. You cannot truly feel great about constantly giving to someone who mistreats you. So you will end up feeling upset. This will eventually leak or explode out and become evidence of what a bad person you were all along.
c) Giving entangles you. You cannot truly feel happy about giving to someone who mistreats you. You will want them to change & will eventually express this in some form. This will make them feel controlled.
c) Giving entangles you. The more you give the more you are associated with the person’s problems. The problems you are trying to solve. So when blame comes down the pipe, you will be the first one hit.
d) Giving places you in the parent role. Whatever unresolved parent issues he has will be placed onto you. He starts expecting you to be responsible for everything, including his feelings. And at the same time you will be unappreciated and invisible as a person in your own right. Like a mom. You are a source of support and a place to dump negativity.
e) When you become the parent, he becomes the child. It’s not safe for men to regress into childlike roles, dues to their natural aggression which needs to be controlled through a sense of personal responsibility.
f) Men are rewards driven. When you give in response to bad behavior, you incentivize it. If you try to heal pain, you incentivize pain. If you cater to mental illness, you incentivize insanity.
g) Giving is a drug that eases anxiety. Until you stop, you won’t really know what feelings you are running away from or be able to address them.
f) Giving depletes your resources. And you are going to need them. Maybe you can’t stop the attacks, but you can be strong when they occur. - Give to yourself. Maybe you are the person you can actually change.
You probably fear you will be attacked if you invest in yourself. Maybe you will be. But you will be attacked anyway. Investing in yourself will make you stronger, more able to withstand, and a less appealing target.
Men- unlike women- never treat people well for being nice. They respect power. Having more of it is your best hope for good treatment.
And even if it doesn’t change how you are treated it gives you more options.
Giving to yourself can mean different things. What holes do you have that you are hoping this man will fill? Can you fill them yourself?
Are you seeking romantic feelings? Touch? Money? Friendship? A garbage man? Someone to compliment your eyes your thighs? If you can figure out what you are needing you can start trying to resolve your own neediness. Use your energy to fill your own holes. Stop trying to fill his holes. They might not be what you think they are anyway, since men tend to hide their true needs & feelings while projecting out false vulnerabilities for their enemies to strike.
If you are with him for sex, buy a vibrator. Money, get a job. Self-esteem, start praising yourself. Romance, buy scented candles & lie under a flower bush. - Lastly, what should the triple saint do when attacked? Don’t fight back or defend. Their goal is for you to be bad. They have more power than you or you wouldn’t be here. Any battle is a loss for you.
See attacks as weather. A cold breeze is touching you. A piece of hail falls on your head. Take shelter or curl into a ball but don’t fight. There’s nothing to fight. What’s happening has nothing to do with you. It hurts so bad to be powerless to change things, powerless to make things better. It hurts to have love withdrawn after you have made all life choices around the idea it would always be there. But saints were born to hurt. Just hold on to the idea that there is another world where you are loved. A perfect world. Rest there silently until the storm passes.
Above all I feel disoriented and confused. Of course, this is my normal state. I wish there was some magical way of knowing truth. Then I could have clarity. But life is a collage of feelings, words, half-eaten evidence and none of it ever adds up. And so I become obsessed. Because there is no closure. What is real? What isn’t? How do I make good choices from a position of darkness?
My only comfort is this blog but even then it’s walking on ice cause one wrong step and I fall into bad wife zone. What is okay to express and what isn’t? I don’t know. From what I gather you aren’t supposed to speak of your husband at all unless you’re singing his praises. But then how can you talk about yourself? It’s like a person in a concentration camp writing about their life while trying to leave out the concentration camp part. Especially for females, I imagine, romantic partners take up so much space in our life that if we can’t talk about them what the fuck are we supposed to talk about?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Scorpio & I love having a secret life that is hidden beneath a veil. That’s where I thrive.
But I’ve learned something else. Secret worlds are prone to toxicity. They can’t help it. They are dark, stagnant pools of water. Unconditional love, loyalty and dependence give power to your partner. Power corrupts. And in a finite set one element corrodes the others, like that game rock, scissors, paper. And so a cycle begins. There are no outside elements to mitigate. What happens behind closed doors is nobody’s business.
Christians say marriage is a rope of three strings- man, woman, god. I don’t think this is the right model since God will certainly be defined by the partner with the most power. I believe the three strings are man woman & society.
But human society is not what we think. There is this tendency to de-mystify it because it seems so mundane to us. When in reality it is the color gold & an expression of virtues & idealism that come from a higher realm but demand embodiment THROUGH us. In this way, it is distinct from white spirituality in which higher powers act on our behalf. From what I can tell, gold is the one and only antidote to the toxicity of excessive blackness.
Being cut off from gold is the problem my husband is facing (Am I allowed to say this or crossing a wife-line?). These last 5 years he has been bombarded with Pluto transits which immerse a person’s mind in blackness. Power issues, paranoia. And he is Plutonic to begin with. He wears black. He isolates. He sleeps during the day and wakes when the sun sets. He spends all his time in the darkest room of our house, the one that gets no sunlight. He doesn’t laugh. He brews & stews in his own juices around the clock. And I like dark guys more than sunny ones. But the darkness has gone way too far even by Scorpio standards and begun to take on a life of its own. What I call a backwards black 8 spiral. If you want to see a tv series about this dynamic watch the show ‘The Affair.’ It’s really good. Undealt with childhood issues basically cause a happily married man to unravel until he ends up accidentally whacking off to his daughter & being imprisoned for murder.
James grew up a Jehovah’s Witness and was expected to embody moral perfection or being ‘beyond reproach.’ He wasn’t expected to do anything per se- in fact achievement was discouraged since it’s ‘of this world’- but not making mistakes was critical. A wrong thought, a mispelling, a crumb in your mustache…. all these little errors could potentially drive others away from the Good News the witnesses were trying to spread. This maybe created a dynamic where if he feels he can’t be absolute perfection, he just crawls into a hole and waits for Paradise to arrive. But in the hole the juices pile up, darkening mind & feelings. Men are solar powered.
But obviously it isn’t my choice how connected or disconnected James wishes to be from humanity. I just gotta reach for the gold myself. The last two weeks were desperately focused on learning to make money, pay bills, ride busses and use telephones. But ultimately my survival will depend equally on integrating into the golden arms of society.
Have you read “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus”? It is insane. The author describes my conversations with James word for word. He states the exact words I am hoping James will say, then the exact words James says instead, and explains the reason for the disconnect. It’s incredible.
I was going to share some muggets I learned, but decided I must first read it over and over, every day for an hour or so, until it becomes a part of me. The principles make so much sense while reading, but in real life you get lost figuring out how to apply them. I just need to simmer in this wisdom until it becomes part of my bones.
The basic gist though is don’t wear yourself out doing nice things for men. They don’t like this because it reminds them of their mother. What a man really needs is:
A) Permission to be emotionally unavailable so he can do man things, like think about problems. Men go into robot state to recharge and they must fully recharge before they are capable of bonding.
B) Approval and acknowledgment. But this doesn’t have to be as exhausting as it sounds. Think of the man as a robot. He only needs a straightforward acknowledgment of tasks completed and problems solved. “Thank you for taking out the trash.” No goo, no frills.
The most important mecret though is that men hate criticism. And they hear criticisms in statements which females would find loving. Because their core insecurity, is “Am I powerful? Am I capable? Am I being viewed as powerful and capable?” Females, on the other hand, are wondering “Am I lovable? Am I loved? Do I have care and support?”
For this reason, females love it if someone offers to help them. They share ideas and advice as a form of affection. They like being fussed over. Offering a man help, advice or fussiness, however, can easily be construed as an insult. You are telling him he is a pathetic little boy who can’t do anything right without mommy’s help.
So never offer to help men. Don’t give advice or suggestions, unless they ask. (When men DO ask for advice, however, this means they truly want it, whereas females may ask for advice when they are actually seeking care and affection.) And avoid criticism as much as humanly possible.
Now I’m still not 100% sure what you are supposed to do in cases where you are riding bucket seat in a car that a man is driving off a cliff. Is there some way you can suggest he turn left that won’t mortally offend him and cause him to press the accelerator harder? I can only hope multiple readings of this book will reveal the answers to me.
Still, the good news is- give less. Save your care for yourself. When you make yourself happy, that will make your man happy too, since he will take credit for your happiness. Likewise, when you are unhappy, men take credit for that. Hence, the expression of natural emotions like sadness and anger can be construed as insults by a man. Your tears may be telling him that he sucks as a husband and you wish you had married the neighbor.
This is the other tricky part. Females thrive on expressing the full range of emotions. If we emit happiness all the time, we become frayed and brittle. Negative emotions are our healing waters, where we go to regenerate. They give us depth and wisdom. But to men, they are threatening. And an insult to their competence as husband.
Women talk about negative feelings to heal and create bonds. Men don’t do this. If they express negative emotions, it means they are trying to attack or blame someone. So when they see women being negative, they feel attacked. And they counter-attack. Then women go into shock because they don’t understand why they are getting attacked when they were looking for love and bonding. Degeneration begins.
Now, the book says that if men can truly understand that expressing negative feelings is part of female nature- and not intended as an assault- they can gradually restrain their defensive impulses. They can learn to just listen and even say things like hmmmm, oh really? and tell me more. Then they discover that by simply listening, the female’s negative feelings magically transform into positive feelings, including love and appreciation for the listener. This gives men the sense of accomplishment they crave.
So the real challenge lies in convincing men not to be threatened by female style expression. How to do this though, when there is no chance men will read relationship books themselves? * I don’t know, but it must be done. Cause even if a female does everything right- gives space, appreciation, zero criticism etc- if she can’t express the full range of feelings there is no chance she will feel satisfied. She will either pop or fade away, and the man will be left with the very sense of failure he was trying to avoid.
* I just read this to James and he said you could get men to do this by simply explaining it to them. However, you may need to be patient and remind them over and over that you only need them to listen until they are able to retrain their defensive reflexes.
Recently I have been feeling it is pointless to say anything in dry words (words with no music) because you can never really say what you mean and if you DID say what you meant it would be inappropriate and everyone would hate you. Consider the lyrics of any song and imagine speaking them to a person. Your life would be over instantly. But somehow when words & music combine it becomes okay to say what you really feel.
Still there is a practical limit to how many songs I am able to write so this forces me to use dry words to fill in the gap. In order to record a song, I must ask my husband has to disassemble the microphone from his computer & attach it to a different device so I can use it. Then, I have to get him to move the song from this device & put it into his computer. Then I must ask him to let me sit at his computer for a few minutes to do the sound. So basically I must make three requests of James & separate him three times from his computer in order to record one song. Each request must be carefully timed to avoid conflict. His schedule is quite odd and windows of opportunity are infrequent. Sometimes it takes days or even weeks for me to get up the nerve to ask him. If I could just write songs & post them directly it would be much easier & I would hardly need dry words at all.
There is just something about musicless words that always ends up feeling pretentious. They are so lofty & detached. I always end up getting this weird Butler feeling, as though I am impersonating Oprah. The meaning of what you are trying to say gets warped by the dryness of words and you end up seeming like an asshole.
Plus, so many social rules apply to dry words that do not apply to music. You can write a song called “Please Help Me!” and that is totally cool, but to say it in words would make you a pariah. You can express feelings, needs & desires in music when expressing them in words would make you seem like a narcissist. You just have to be very careful how you use dry words. You must never reveal to much & always follow the rules. There is really no point.
*****
Perhaps though it is the case that dry words belong to the world of men. I have really been trying to understand men these past few years, but I’m not sure I have made much progress except to realize that there is something very, very strange about them. I don’t think anyone really accounts for how differently their brains work & this is the cause of much conflict. Here is the small amount of info I have gleaned so far…
- They are more attuned to survival than women. Their testicles seem to be two extra brains which feed them info related to survival. It is possible that their testicles may be two separate beings altogether who feed information to their host in exchange for warmth, food and shelter.
- They are more attuned to status, rank, respect, & prestige than women, although they will not admit this. Hence why they believe women seek out men of high status, something which, in my opinion, is fairly uncommon for women for whom love is the ultimate attainment of life and not a means to an end.
- They are also very attached to their dicks & sexuality… somehow this ties into their sense of self & power at a core level.
- They think in blocks, which makes it easy for them to work with certain types of info but more challenging to work with others. They don’t seem, for example, to have the same access to feelings and inner states that women do.
- They are less trusting. Women are more geared towards dependency & caretaking while men seem geared towards independence & battle. If you ask a woman how she is feeling, she is likely to see your interest as a welcome sign of concern. A man may view this same question as a potential trap and try to choose his words carefully.
The end result of this is that if you treat a man the way you yourself would like to be treated, he may see you as a foreign invader. In general it seems that maybe women like to be probed, while men do not.
***
When I was a kid my friends were mostly female. We would do creative things together. Then at some point men began to seem more interesting. But still there is a constant friction which feels like an unbridgeable gulf. Your actions are viewed through a lens of suspicion. Gestures intended to heal are batted down defensively. Words are translated through some mysterious lens leaving you with no idea of what you are supposed to have said. The culture tells you again and again that talking things out is the solution even when talk itself seems to cause all the problems.
What is the answer? If a man reads this, will he believe I have insulted men? I hope not, but based on my experience, this seems likely. Perhaps when dealing with men you must stick to facts and figures or be prepared to pay the ultimate price.
***
What if men interpret words in a more solid manner- as pronouncements on the official nature of objective reality- whereas females interpret words more as fluid & subjective expressions of feeling states?
For example, “Men are dumb” could mean “I am trying to establish a permanent belief in the group mind that men are intellectually inferior. Submit to my view, insects!” Or it could mean, “I am upset because I just had a bad experience. I wish someone cared.” Females tend speak & interpret language more through the second lens but I’m not sure men always get that. The language women use to bond, express emotion & seek caring seems to trip off wires in men which relate to power, domination & control.
Luckily, songs are automatically interpreted through this female lens- as expressions of mutable subjective states. Thus we give them a wide berth. Sometimes I wish men would give this same berth to women. To see them as songs rather than barbarian hordes. Then men wouldn’t want to be with elevator women anymore than they want to listen to elevator music.
What I remember about this song is that right after I wrote it I found out my grandfather had just hung himself.
In terms of the song’s meaning, I do think we have a certain number of “chairs” in our life that are meant to be filled by certain people, and if these chairs are filled by “imposters”- people who have nothing to offer us, but just a desire to take- then we won’t have the open spaces to attract the people we really need.
Download MP3: If You Ain’t Mine
I wrote this song in Nashville, during which time I came across this quote from Kahlil Gibran:
“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ”
I interpreted this to mean, quite simply, the worse a relationship is, the better it is.
The dangers of reading things that seem lofty and profound!!
Download MP3: Make Love to Your Horse