[Deuce]

Originally Posted by wolf

Deuce, how are you doing?

You can see enough of other's viewpoints to extrapolate some pretty deep stuff ... you see some of your value through others eyes, how's about through your own?

Hello wolf, all.

Thank you for thinking of me and asking about me. Today's a good day. I'm not trying too hard, mostly just coasting along, trying to avoid situations where conflict might be likely. A respite of sorts.

Counselor (pedantically) repeated his suggestions for how to be happy (paraphrasing). Frankly the last session was a waste of time and $200. Another chorus of "you can only take care of you" and "when you let go of attachment to outcome, you'll be free from pain" and how to get in touch with my core spirit, and how acting and being outside that core is bad and how to get back to that center.

Here's my disconnect with his viewpoint. He says detachment from outcome frees me from the pain of disappointment, inevitable disappointment. (I'm not really explaining it very well. If you're having trouble following along, it's not you... it's kind of screwy and I'm telling it poorly. Sorry.) To me that means, "don't care" how things turn out--he says no. The difference is lost on me.

When I was younger, I read a great book by Zig Ziglar See You At The Top. Among the positive impressions the book made on me, was a story about the value of setting goals. There were two illustrations that have stayed with me. Imagine a basketball player shooting a free throw. He takes the ball, lines up, he shoots, he scores! Easy peasy. But now, take that same fella, blindfold him, turn him around twenty times put the ball somewhere on the floor, what do you have? An absurd example, sure. But the point I took from it was that to hit the target, you have to have an idea where that target is. It's helpful to see the target, and to have the ball, and to shoot it. The other example was of a mountain climber. No one, *ever* looked around, startled and surprised, to find themselves on top of Mount Everest. To get to the top, you have to plan, and work. It will not just fall into your lap, "whoa! where'd that come from?!" None of my goals will happen that way.

So when I'm counseled to abandon my .... attachment to outcome (? wtf?!), it frankly doesn't compute. I *know* what I want. I'm not vague about that. I am also flexible as to the method by which I arrive at that goal. I dont' care if it's a blue highway, or surface streets or whatever. Give up my attachment to outcome? Like, just get in the car and drive and *hope* I wind up at work? I wonder what his take on abandoning attachment to outcome would be if I was indifferent about bringing his fee to the appointment.

I want a happy marriage. I'm willing to work, work hard, at that noble worthy task. I want good communication. That can be hard as well, but I'm in for that one too. But each of those goals requires a similar commitment from another person. *That*, my friends, is out of my control. And that is a problem. I can't control another person. Frankly, despite the lies in the press to the contrary, I don't want to control anyone else. I have a hard enough time controlling myself. I want an equal. I want a partner. I don't want a mommy-surrogate, or a pet, or a toy. An adult whose goals and commitements are aligned with my goals and commitments. An adult whose priorities resemble mine. That is my goal.

The path I have been following toward that goal has been with my wife, naturally. But, needless to say, I have not reached either of those goals. I haven't spent much time enjoying either one. Neither is a finish line to cross, more of a ... zone, a space. And I've been absent from them, no, alone in my labors in whatever space I have been in.

So for the last several days, I have been striving and failing, rinse repeat. God, it's tiresome. So I gave up. I invited my wife to have dinner with me and my mom, for her birthday last night. W never sees M, maybe two or three times a year. Hemmed, hawed, passively declined. "Oh, I have some club stuff to do". Whatever. "Invite her grandson." So I called home, only to find out that they had planned a trip to the mall, and I just declined to invite. I can't compete. I "let go of the outcome". Sure enough, after dinner with mom, I got a ration at home as to why I didn't ask the boy. I said I was tired of getting turned down and didn't want to compete with a shopping trip. "Oh, but he would probably have said yes, if only you'd asked him." *sigh*

I'm rambling.. and whining. Two of my least favorite things, on either end of the transaction. Sorry.

I'm ok today. At the counseling appointment, he asked what I did to make the conflicts I had with other people worse. I thought for a little while and said I could identify two aspects of my behavior that made (the inevitable) conflicts with those around me less smooth than they could be. The first was a tendency to do more than I ought to in a given relationship. Spoiling kids, for example. Over-pleasing. His take was that this was an innocent but misguided attempt to get love or approval of the other person. There's the ring of truth to this. He said actions inside my comfort zone were just part of my good nature. Sure, I'm a people pleaser. But that actions outside my comfort zone, especially as they got bigger and bigger without generating the desired approval / reciprocity / love from the subject of my actions would accumulate a certain amount of resentment.

And that that resentment built up until some day when the cap is left off the toothpaste... POW! To the moon, Alice! Ok. I understand how that could flow. He dovetailed it nicely into the second aspect of my behavior that I suggested made my conflicts worse, and that was high rigid standards.

He connected A to B neatly saying if that little boy inside me didn't get the love he sought, that he deserved, especially after the foot massage and the pony, that the tantrum that followed was inevitable. Hmm. This I followed, but didn't buy. I'm not talking about a tantrum. I have been disappointed, yes, but I'm a grown man, not a child. Let me ask you (as I asked him), does this sound like a tantrum? Like rigidity?

I want an equal. I want a partner. I don't want a mommy-surrogate, or a pet, or a toy. An adult whose goals and commitments are aligned with my goals and commitments. An adult whose priorities resemble mine. That is my goal.

His key point in this whole millieu is that the striving for love and approval is the action of the ego, and doomed. It doesn't come from one's center. And being off balance by definition will wind up in the ditch. Furthermore, each other person is working from *their* ego and similarly unbalanced. On top of that, the little boy inside seeking love and comfort and security (he exists, but he doesn't run the show) can not be satisfied by some outside source of the love he seeks, for two reasons. One, he's a hole with no bottom (and everyone else is too, in their ego-centric way). And two, that no one has that to give. A deadly combo. He proposes this solution. Return to your own center. Realize the needs and the potent delusion of that little boy, but live act and think from your center. Where your soul is, where your strength is, where your backbone is. Return to that center by breathing. By meditation. By giving yourself permission to feel [......] negative feeling.

About this time I'm hearing the little finger cymbals in the background and the oooommm mani padme oooommmm.... I don't mean to disparage it completely, but ... that's not, seriously NOT what I'm looking for when I came in. I was looking for some tools to help me communicate with my wife. Some somethings to help us get out of the ditch when we drove into it (which happens a-l-l the time). No gots. Shit.

Then he hits me (again) with the punchline, that abandoning attachment to outcome, acting from my center, the power of an open heart, would make me exactly the thing she would want to be around. Uh-huh. Rite.

Strangely, last night, after my dinner with my mom (alone, not with wife or son), I took my resigned self home and did a little computer work, and kept to myself. Wife made a number of conversational gambits. !! But they weren't very fruitful. Being disconnected from outcome did relieve some of the anxiety, but being off, disconnected, aloof. What's the damn point? I'm a living passionate man, I don't want to be shut down. I don't play hard to get. I'm plain spoken, and being unconcerned about the outcome just doesn't sit well with me. I am not uncaring. I do care. And caring more risks more and hurts more. Don't get me wrong. I'm not making some ongoing emotional cost benefit analysis. I simply am a man with strong feelings. Ones I can't turn off. I can exert a measure of control over them, but I can't deny them. I can't not have them.

I do have that little boy inside. He does want love and approval. So does the man that is in my soulful center. I'm not seeking to be validated only by external sources. I do have a strong sense of my own worth. It is true that that vision is sometimes clouded by pain and despair. Those are the times when the feelings are the dominant drivers of my thoughts and actions. It's like hydroplaning on the highway. I have to just hang on and try not to exacerbate the out of control situation. No big motions, no wild overreactions, in a minute (if we don't hit a tree) my head and hands will be in charge once more. Today, my head's in charge.