In High Gear

ladytinkerbelle wrote a recent post about being at a loss over a crush. I know what she means – I have much the same problem. It seems, probably, that I’ve had enough experience dealing with guys that I have all the right – well, protocols, for lack of a better term, and defenses – so that it’s very easy to figure out what’s what, what it means, and what to do about it. I’ve got the maps to The Friend Zone, The Friends With Benefits Region, and Commitmentville.

With women it’s different, and I’m mystified. My understanding is so poor, it’s like a landlubber to the sea – it seems such a huge and treacherous environment fraught with beauty, awesome power, and potential devastation.

Hm, might be a bad metaphor – even experienced sailors will tell you never to turn your back on the sea, for the very reasons above. That may not apply to women.

I’ve rarely had close women friends, and those few I had proved to be untrustworthy, so I have very little close experience of honorable women, and previous bad experience has made me paranoid. It’s hard to see around my defenses.

I’ve had several women friends over the last few years who, I am sure, must be wonderful people, but they are not close friends because I haven’t let them be. That’s all my doing. I haven’t been able to relax.

And I suffer from crushes. Attraction and terror. Once, I discovered that someone who was the object of attraction was also attracted to me, and it became blinding terror. We talked about it a little, and I believe she understands. I see her about three days a week, and she gives great hug and she’s terrific in every way, but I don’t know the first thing about how to overcome the terror part.

Then there’s the crushing power of my self esteem, centered around body image. My mom did a pretty good job of letting me know just how un-beautiful I was, and I pretty much bought into it for a long, long time. Then, I discovered that, miracle of miracles, some men think I look pretty good. I don’t agree with them, but I’ve since learned that for everything there is in this world, there is someone who likes it. So, I can feel secure in the knowledge that while I don’t see much beauty in my own appearance, they do, and I can trust their honesty about that.

However, being a woman, looking through my own eyes at myself, and having believed what my mother said, it’s a lot harder for me to wrap my head around the same principle about women. I’ve discovered, to my horror, that I’ve bought into cultural stereotypes about women being image-obsessed and despising anything that doesn’t portray beauty the way they recognize it. Ergo, I must be hideous to women. Stupid, I know – I’ve had people tell me that it’s not the case, and with such sincerity that I believe them. With my head. My guts still need some convincing.

The way I see it, maybe my experience with guys will translate in one way; I relate to guys at first entirely in The Friend Zone. Any lover I’ve had with any amount of success has been a trusted friend first. So maybe that’s the way here – more time to know and learn to trust, as a friend. If I would spend more time with women friends and let the barriers down some and forge closer friendships, maybe the terror will subside.

The more I think about this and re-read what I wrote above, the more obvious it becomes that I don’t have many close male friends either. I make friends with men very easily, being so much on the same wavelength, but even so, only a couple make it past the great barrier into widely trusted territory. Even then, they may not make it all the way in.

Maybe it’s mistaken to think of any of that as a male-female issue. The situation is common with each right up until the point of possible mutual attraction. That’s the point at which divergence occurs. Even with a guy I don’t trust so much, there can be action based on erotic attraction. I don’t do that with chicks. I’m very confident about taking a guy into friends-with-benefits territory if the attraction is good and strong and if it doesn’t disrupt my family. I’m not at all confident about the same thing with a woman.

God, I’m such a fucking ball of angst.

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