John said I'm arrogant, and he's right.
The only thing I will automatically defer to John on are areas which I know I don't know anything about (hard sciences) or any criticisms of me. All pretty much anyone has to do is criticize me on anything--if it rings true, I accept it as true. (Interestingly, a friend of a friend, whom I knew in college, recently dropped by my city and told my friend that I looked "So old. So very old! What happened to her!" And it really didn't bother me. I think I'm aging pretty darn well. But if I had wrinkles, I'm sure I would have been devastated.)
So, how do I deal with this?
The first part is that I am smarter than average. Assuming that IQs measure something, albeit imprecise and incomplete, mine is 154, which is quite outside the standard deviation of a typical the bell curve. (Oooh, I always knew I was a deviant!) Interestingly, I guard that number as careful as my weight, and I think that that number has more to do with being single than my weight. So it's not like I'm going to sit down with Sarah Palin and think that her opinions are just as well formed as mine are. Part of the reason I love Obama is I no longer think I'm smarter than the president, and I'm glad!
I definitely try not to let on when I'm dating. I spent a decade (literally) playing dumb on dates. (One of the things I loved doing with John was playing dumb, because he never, ever took me seriously, and it was both fun and also affirming.) I am very selective about whom I date. Most men, I sort of tune out and go into small talk that feels quite superficial. And then I don't want to seem them again. I really want someone who will match me, whom I don't have to be self-conscious about being weird. In fact, it is almost the same thing with body types. I really prefer to date a guy who is either taller than me or bigger. The only guy I dated who was my height (I'm 5'4", if it matters) was very buff, so I didn't feel like a freak around him.
Next: I have a pretty clearly demarcated comfort zone of ideas, and I don't take seriously people outside of those ideas. (For example, I recently refused to date someone who said that evolution is wrong and has no place being taught in the public schools. I also have never dated a 9-11 truther successfully--when I've asked to agree to disagree, both times I received diatribes about how stupid I was.) I think The Wall Street Journal is about as far as I'm comfortable going on the right, and The Nation is about as far as I'm comfortable going on the left. (Clearly, much, much more solidly on the left. I'm absolutely a liberal.)
The third issue is more interesting. I have a thing for authority figures. Duh. So I tend to very carefully screen my authority figures, and when I find them, I tend to trust them. Paul Krugman, for example, is someone I really trust when it comes to economic news. I used to read alternet until they said that Karl Rove was going to be indicted in the Valarie Plame thing (and I repeated it). When they were wrong, I totally cut them out of my reading. (Interestingly, the NY Times was awfully wrong about Iraq, but I seem to have gotten over that. I think I'm more comfortable with more established media--a major mistake in a blog will impact me quite differently than the Times, or The Economist or the New York Review of Books--my 3 favorite print sources.)
Take fivetwentyeight.com. With the 2008 election, a lot of my friends were talking about how much they loved 528, but I was skeptical. I started going there, but also went to a variety of other sources. Even though their methodology seemed quite sound and transparent, I was skeptical (mostly because it was telling me what I wanted to hear.) However, as soon as the election happened, and 528 came within .1 of 1% of predicting the final percentage, I was hooked. Now, I tend to defer to 528 and I no longer go to the other sources.
I tend to trust my expert authorities more than people in real life.
A couple of examples.
I was on a date tonight and last week the guy was telling me that the Nederlands was absolutely going to win the world cup and I (stupidly) said "I don't think so. I really think Brazil is going to win." And I (stupidly) cited stats. Now, it turns out now, he may right, but I still can't agree with the absolutely part. But why not? Why did I say "It really seems like a toss-up to me--I think German and Spain are really strong too." Why can't I just say "I'm sure you're right?" He's cares about soccer much more than I do. Why on earth am I so obsessed with what I see as facts?
But if I say "I'm sure you're right" I sound condescending. And I tend to only do that with people I don't respect. To me, pushing my point (even though I was wrong last week, and I did apologize and tell him I was wrong) is a sign that I respect someone.
Finally, there's the question of why on earth I want to have intellectual discussions if the people I'm discussing it with aren't going to change my mind. I LOVE discussions where people tend to agree on a lot but have different interpretations or areas of interest or assumed reactions. I love looking at an issue from a point of view I hadn't considered. I really love making connections between seemingly discrete ideas. I love hearing ideas I hadn't thought of before. And most of all, I love it when someone else and I have similar ideas and overlaps, without having the same points of view, and we each add something to build a connection that hasn't really been explored.
I really connect to people on an intellectual plane before I connect on a physical plane.
I'm going on a date tomorrow with a guy, and I know he thinks we should immediately cut spending to deal with the deficit. And I don't. I think we should restructure the longer-term issue, which keeping short-run deficits higher on infrastructure and other quick projects to stimulate spending. I sort of feel like if the U.S. were a family that found out one of its members was really ill and they had lost a source of income, you don't skimp on the short-term medical care bills, but you do restructure the long term balance of spending to income. (Oooh, isn't this sexy? I'm wet already.)
So, he is making an argument I've heard, and disagree with. It is an argument that I don't take seriously because I pretty much by Keynes when you're in a recession, even if I do think we need to take cost cutting and greater regulation MUCH more seriously at the next expansion. But I think the short-term economy needs stimulating. (OK, at least there's a little talk of stimulation. You know, I think I most fell for the guy I dated this year and last during some phone sex about climate change: Oh, I'm so hot. The air. It's dirty. And it's getting hotter. And hotter. And hotter. It's making me wet! Isn't it hard to change? How hard is it? We laughed so hard after that. It was really, really fun!!)
So, my plans for tomorrow are to look for connections, to try and find places we agree and then build from there. I'm never going to just think: poof--you're idea is better than mine. Or frankly your idea is equally valid to mine if it is something one of my beloved authorities has spent significant time on refuting and that argument seems to hold water for me. But maybe I can find a way to be less arrogant.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Homelessness, John and Xanax
This has been the week from hell.
I'm supposed to move into a new house, and the contractor hasn't finished the construction and I was supposed to move in on Wednesday, when they discovered a plumbing problem at the final inspection, and it will be 2-weeks to a month before we can close (goodbye tax credit!), and I don't know how much longer my old landlord will give me because I was supposed to be out on the first. So really a week from hell.
And then John e-mails me. Can you believe it? And at first I tried to be standoffish, but I'm not good at that, and then I was earnest, and that was a mistake.
I opened a huge can of worms I didn't mean to open. I thought it was painfully obvious to him that I had loved him. And it seemed at times that we both had fears about not being lovable. So I said something along the lines of "I really did love you. And I hope you find someone who you can love too," well evidently that wasn't as blaringly obvious as I thought. Although, I really don't know how it couldn't have been obvious. Especially since he read this blog on at least one occasion, and I think more. But I'm a Scorpio. And Jerry thought I wasn't emotionally open enough with him (perhaps because I wasn't in love with him), so I need to take that seriously.
John was quite blunt about some of my many faults. I don't get it. Why can't he just say "I wish you all the best. Have a lovely life?" He isn't even living here anymore. I've been avoiding his area of town as much as I can, and he left over a year ago! I wish he'd told me that much, at least.
John contacted me because he found my ring that he had lost. My ring that I wore on the ring finger of my right hand. He asked to look at it, and somehow, it ended up somewhere in his messenger bag and he didn't find it till now.
Here's the thing that I don't think I've confessed to anyone. When he asked to borrow my ring, I thought it was because he wanted to get the size. It was shortly after he said something about how we were playing for keeps, and how he'd had fast food, but didn't want fast food. This was two chefs planning the best meal of their lives. And later that week he asked to look at my ring. And then it disappeared.
Was it all in my head? Do guys normally borrow a gal's ring and misplace it, if they aren't trying to get the size? Did he care about me at all? Did he just casually ask to look at my ring. Granted, it was a lovely ring with a little Sapphire and 2 teeny weeny tiny diamonds. The only piece of real jewelry I'd ever bought for myself. But it isn't like a pair of earrings or a necklace. A ring on a ring finger is symbolic. Don't guys know that rings mean something? The ex gave me a ring once, but it had lots of stones. And I immediately put it on my right ring finger. And I'm pretty sure I could have turned that into a left finger gift. (He later asked me, on 2 separate occasions, what I'd say if he asked me to marry him. And his ex-wife had turned a birthday present ring into an engagement ring, so his modus operandi seems to have been to give rings as gifts and see howthey were taken.)
Anyway, my ring fell into John's bag and stayed hidden for a year and a half. Or was he getting my ring size, purposefully hid it in his bag, then something happened and he changed his mind and forgot about the ring. I'll never know. A big part of me says 'there's no way he felt that way about you. You're fooling yourself.' But it makes me crazy to think it was all in my head. I hope he did care and I wasn't just making sand castles in the clouds. If he didn't care, he was sloppy about symbols. I don't think I was crazy for thinking that there might have been something behind that.
But looking at his 15 e-mails in two days (yeah--he and I have always been intense with each other), I can't imagine that he actually cared about me with anything more than a passing glance. He was very clear about my faults. I'm arrogant, stupid, politically partisan (that I know about, although I think I'm less so than I was), and opaque. And lack courage.
There are places where his analysis of my faults is absolutely right. And that analysis could only come from someone who knew me so well. "Your different halves are not friends. In some of your modes, you're wishing for the strength of another to gird and encircle you, for another to lead you so that you can be free from presenting an image you don't always feel." Yeah--he hit the nail on the head there. I would love to find someone I could be weak with, someone to protect me, so I could relax. In the first grade, my parents didn't protect me. Blah. Blah. Blah. But I think that little first grader is still looking for protection.
But he also thinks "you're dealing with the wish that you were stronger and smarter by pretending to be." That doesn't ring true to me. I don't want to be stronger. I want someone else to protect me so I don't have to be strong. There are times I feel like I'm not strong enough to get up one more time, but what is strength if not the ability to get up when you've been hit down too many times? And I've never consciously wished to be smarter in my life. I do think that I became more intellectually lazy during the last decade, and he definitely noticed places where I'm intellectually lazy. And I do tend to rely on experts in a way that annoys him. Annoyed him. There's a Freudian slip. I think part of getting a JD taught me to use precedent to support any opinion I had--that my opinion must be upheld by other sources and I do that all the time, not just with the law. And that annoyed him. I'm OK with that. It is different ways of approaching ideas. Like an argument about economics (is deflation a bigger threat or inflation--I drove him crazy with my concern about deflationary pressures. We disagreed, but I don't think he is automatically right. And I would point to the fact that someone like Paul Krugman also think deflation is a huge cause for concern, and that would drive him crazy! I do, however, hope he is right--I think deflation would be more dangerous and inflation is more likely. Thus the fixed rate on my mortgage. Anyway, that's the sort of intellectual argument that I would just LOVE until I'd piss him off by appealing to Brad Delong or Paul Krugman or the guy that writes that blog about economics on Salon.com or the Economist or whatever I happened to read most recently, and then I'd get really upset that I pissed him off (and I didn't even realize what would upset him until maybe this blog entry) and try to find a way to make it better by saying whatever I thought he wanted to hear.)
So, what did I learn:
a) Xanax is a wonderful invention!! Practically homeless (although I keep telling myself it is temporary), and broke (good-bye tax credit) and having John briefly pop up in the same week, and my blood pressure is still normal! A night crying, and, OK, a little tearing up while I'm writing this. But I'm kind of shocked at what good shape I'm in!
b) I can never tell anyone I date about this blog. I think part of the fuck-up is that John never told he 'yes I'm reading it' or 'no, I won't read it.' I specifically asked him if he'd tell me one way or the other, and he refused, so I figured he was reading it. Or would whenever he wanted to know what I was thinking. And so I was perhaps less clear with him because I already felt like I was beating a dead horse.
c) John is not kind towards me. (Or at least not in the way I define it. Maybe his definition is different.) He is honest and perceptive. But he isn't willing to gloss over my flaws. He actually called me arrogant in a long e-mail listing all the areas in which I'm intellectually deficient (Hard Sciences, Sociology, Psychology, Economics and Politics). So, yeah, maybe I'm arrogant (although arrogance isn't how I feel about it--I honestly wish my IQ was in the 'normal' range--I feel a little like a freak. There was an 0n-line quiz of whether or not you'll get married (for women) and they took away points if your IQ was above 140. And I think that's true. But I'd bet anything that John and I had statistically equivalent IQs. One of the things I loved about him is that I didn't feel self-conscious about being a freak around him.) But I wouldn't say he's in the running for humblest person of the year.
d) I don't think I'm 'submissive' anymore. That part of me feels pretty darn dead. And, unfortunately, my sex drive went with it. Isn't it funny? It is SO much easier to date now that I don't crave sex. Men claim they want someone with a high sex drive. But they treat me much better now that I'm more neutral on the subject. I'm open to meeting someone that changes my view on that. But I'm open to meeting someone who loves soccer so much his passion makes me love it too. Possible. But I'm certainly not counting on it!
e) John had me on a many-months audition to be his girlfriend, and then wondered why I wasn't more confident around him. I don't audition well when I care about something. (Ironically, I do audition well when I don't care.) I don't think I could be a professional actor.
f) The mismatch in our interest in the other probably doomed anything from the start.
g) It is possible that I should have been more open with him. I think not having shared my blog with him would have made it more likely that I wouldn't have felt like I was beating a dead horse. I honestly felt like I had made it abundantly clear how I felt and was surprised that he didn't know.
h) I wonder if I 'play games.' I don't necessarily do it purposefully. But with John it felt like I had to give him space in order to find his own feelings. It's like if I'm talking to someone that is a 'close talker' I'll take a step back, and they take a step forward, and I'm always moving away to have some space. I didn't want to be a close-talker to John. I felt if I told him how I felt, it would scare him. I want someone to meet me, not feel like I'm running him down. Maybe that's a mistake. But I don't think things would have been different.
I would have liked some closure. It's funny--years ago, we were walking down the street on a cold day, on our way to a sushi restaurant, and I was wearing a blue scarf with a black wool jacket. I had bought that scarf on the way to the date, to have some color next to my face. And he said "You'd be a hell of a catch." I can't wear that scarf without thinking of that.
But that was before he knew me. Now that he knows the real me, not just my more public persona, I'm just arrogant, and stupid and cowardly and, well he said some nice things too. They weren't fuck-you e-mails. They were honest appraisals from someone who knows me well. But honest appraisals make me focus on the bad parts and want to prove myself. It would be nice if he could write me something like "You know, you would be a hell of a catch; we were on different time frames and different waves. But I do wish you a lovely life. I'm glad I knew you."
I'm supposed to move into a new house, and the contractor hasn't finished the construction and I was supposed to move in on Wednesday, when they discovered a plumbing problem at the final inspection, and it will be 2-weeks to a month before we can close (goodbye tax credit!), and I don't know how much longer my old landlord will give me because I was supposed to be out on the first. So really a week from hell.
And then John e-mails me. Can you believe it? And at first I tried to be standoffish, but I'm not good at that, and then I was earnest, and that was a mistake.
I opened a huge can of worms I didn't mean to open. I thought it was painfully obvious to him that I had loved him. And it seemed at times that we both had fears about not being lovable. So I said something along the lines of "I really did love you. And I hope you find someone who you can love too," well evidently that wasn't as blaringly obvious as I thought. Although, I really don't know how it couldn't have been obvious. Especially since he read this blog on at least one occasion, and I think more. But I'm a Scorpio. And Jerry thought I wasn't emotionally open enough with him (perhaps because I wasn't in love with him), so I need to take that seriously.
John was quite blunt about some of my many faults. I don't get it. Why can't he just say "I wish you all the best. Have a lovely life?" He isn't even living here anymore. I've been avoiding his area of town as much as I can, and he left over a year ago! I wish he'd told me that much, at least.
John contacted me because he found my ring that he had lost. My ring that I wore on the ring finger of my right hand. He asked to look at it, and somehow, it ended up somewhere in his messenger bag and he didn't find it till now.
Here's the thing that I don't think I've confessed to anyone. When he asked to borrow my ring, I thought it was because he wanted to get the size. It was shortly after he said something about how we were playing for keeps, and how he'd had fast food, but didn't want fast food. This was two chefs planning the best meal of their lives. And later that week he asked to look at my ring. And then it disappeared.
Was it all in my head? Do guys normally borrow a gal's ring and misplace it, if they aren't trying to get the size? Did he care about me at all? Did he just casually ask to look at my ring. Granted, it was a lovely ring with a little Sapphire and 2 teeny weeny tiny diamonds. The only piece of real jewelry I'd ever bought for myself. But it isn't like a pair of earrings or a necklace. A ring on a ring finger is symbolic. Don't guys know that rings mean something? The ex gave me a ring once, but it had lots of stones. And I immediately put it on my right ring finger. And I'm pretty sure I could have turned that into a left finger gift. (He later asked me, on 2 separate occasions, what I'd say if he asked me to marry him. And his ex-wife had turned a birthday present ring into an engagement ring, so his modus operandi seems to have been to give rings as gifts and see howthey were taken.)
Anyway, my ring fell into John's bag and stayed hidden for a year and a half. Or was he getting my ring size, purposefully hid it in his bag, then something happened and he changed his mind and forgot about the ring. I'll never know. A big part of me says 'there's no way he felt that way about you. You're fooling yourself.' But it makes me crazy to think it was all in my head. I hope he did care and I wasn't just making sand castles in the clouds. If he didn't care, he was sloppy about symbols. I don't think I was crazy for thinking that there might have been something behind that.
But looking at his 15 e-mails in two days (yeah--he and I have always been intense with each other), I can't imagine that he actually cared about me with anything more than a passing glance. He was very clear about my faults. I'm arrogant, stupid, politically partisan (that I know about, although I think I'm less so than I was), and opaque. And lack courage.
There are places where his analysis of my faults is absolutely right. And that analysis could only come from someone who knew me so well. "Your different halves are not friends. In some of your modes, you're wishing for the strength of another to gird and encircle you, for another to lead you so that you can be free from presenting an image you don't always feel." Yeah--he hit the nail on the head there. I would love to find someone I could be weak with, someone to protect me, so I could relax. In the first grade, my parents didn't protect me. Blah. Blah. Blah. But I think that little first grader is still looking for protection.
But he also thinks "you're dealing with the wish that you were stronger and smarter by pretending to be." That doesn't ring true to me. I don't want to be stronger. I want someone else to protect me so I don't have to be strong. There are times I feel like I'm not strong enough to get up one more time, but what is strength if not the ability to get up when you've been hit down too many times? And I've never consciously wished to be smarter in my life. I do think that I became more intellectually lazy during the last decade, and he definitely noticed places where I'm intellectually lazy. And I do tend to rely on experts in a way that annoys him. Annoyed him. There's a Freudian slip. I think part of getting a JD taught me to use precedent to support any opinion I had--that my opinion must be upheld by other sources and I do that all the time, not just with the law. And that annoyed him. I'm OK with that. It is different ways of approaching ideas. Like an argument about economics (is deflation a bigger threat or inflation--I drove him crazy with my concern about deflationary pressures. We disagreed, but I don't think he is automatically right. And I would point to the fact that someone like Paul Krugman also think deflation is a huge cause for concern, and that would drive him crazy! I do, however, hope he is right--I think deflation would be more dangerous and inflation is more likely. Thus the fixed rate on my mortgage. Anyway, that's the sort of intellectual argument that I would just LOVE until I'd piss him off by appealing to Brad Delong or Paul Krugman or the guy that writes that blog about economics on Salon.com or the Economist or whatever I happened to read most recently, and then I'd get really upset that I pissed him off (and I didn't even realize what would upset him until maybe this blog entry) and try to find a way to make it better by saying whatever I thought he wanted to hear.)
So, what did I learn:
a) Xanax is a wonderful invention!! Practically homeless (although I keep telling myself it is temporary), and broke (good-bye tax credit) and having John briefly pop up in the same week, and my blood pressure is still normal! A night crying, and, OK, a little tearing up while I'm writing this. But I'm kind of shocked at what good shape I'm in!
b) I can never tell anyone I date about this blog. I think part of the fuck-up is that John never told he 'yes I'm reading it' or 'no, I won't read it.' I specifically asked him if he'd tell me one way or the other, and he refused, so I figured he was reading it. Or would whenever he wanted to know what I was thinking. And so I was perhaps less clear with him because I already felt like I was beating a dead horse.
c) John is not kind towards me. (Or at least not in the way I define it. Maybe his definition is different.) He is honest and perceptive. But he isn't willing to gloss over my flaws. He actually called me arrogant in a long e-mail listing all the areas in which I'm intellectually deficient (Hard Sciences, Sociology, Psychology, Economics and Politics). So, yeah, maybe I'm arrogant (although arrogance isn't how I feel about it--I honestly wish my IQ was in the 'normal' range--I feel a little like a freak. There was an 0n-line quiz of whether or not you'll get married (for women) and they took away points if your IQ was above 140. And I think that's true. But I'd bet anything that John and I had statistically equivalent IQs. One of the things I loved about him is that I didn't feel self-conscious about being a freak around him.) But I wouldn't say he's in the running for humblest person of the year.
d) I don't think I'm 'submissive' anymore. That part of me feels pretty darn dead. And, unfortunately, my sex drive went with it. Isn't it funny? It is SO much easier to date now that I don't crave sex. Men claim they want someone with a high sex drive. But they treat me much better now that I'm more neutral on the subject. I'm open to meeting someone that changes my view on that. But I'm open to meeting someone who loves soccer so much his passion makes me love it too. Possible. But I'm certainly not counting on it!
e) John had me on a many-months audition to be his girlfriend, and then wondered why I wasn't more confident around him. I don't audition well when I care about something. (Ironically, I do audition well when I don't care.) I don't think I could be a professional actor.
f) The mismatch in our interest in the other probably doomed anything from the start.
g) It is possible that I should have been more open with him. I think not having shared my blog with him would have made it more likely that I wouldn't have felt like I was beating a dead horse. I honestly felt like I had made it abundantly clear how I felt and was surprised that he didn't know.
h) I wonder if I 'play games.' I don't necessarily do it purposefully. But with John it felt like I had to give him space in order to find his own feelings. It's like if I'm talking to someone that is a 'close talker' I'll take a step back, and they take a step forward, and I'm always moving away to have some space. I didn't want to be a close-talker to John. I felt if I told him how I felt, it would scare him. I want someone to meet me, not feel like I'm running him down. Maybe that's a mistake. But I don't think things would have been different.
I would have liked some closure. It's funny--years ago, we were walking down the street on a cold day, on our way to a sushi restaurant, and I was wearing a blue scarf with a black wool jacket. I had bought that scarf on the way to the date, to have some color next to my face. And he said "You'd be a hell of a catch." I can't wear that scarf without thinking of that.
But that was before he knew me. Now that he knows the real me, not just my more public persona, I'm just arrogant, and stupid and cowardly and, well he said some nice things too. They weren't fuck-you e-mails. They were honest appraisals from someone who knows me well. But honest appraisals make me focus on the bad parts and want to prove myself. It would be nice if he could write me something like "You know, you would be a hell of a catch; we were on different time frames and different waves. But I do wish you a lovely life. I'm glad I knew you."
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