Romantic style

I am beginning, at the ripe old age of 1 billion years basically, to realize and accept my romantic/sexual relationship style. In the past, I have done a lot of fancy footwork to try to change this fundamental style, or manage it, or restrain it in the face of the indifference of a love interest, or, at worst, think seriously about killing myself over it. 

Now, however, in the light of my recent sex and relationship inventory, crushing depression, months of counseling and the revelation a couple days ago about power, I'm basically feeling this: fuck it. 

It seems to be who I am, simply. It has been unchangeable for decades, no matter what I have tried to do about it. 

So what are the basic features?

When I fall in love with a woman, and yes, I do mean fall in love, and I am weary of the general cynicism about that experience in our culture— I have a whole style of acting it out. And in regard to the HSO, my most authentic self assessment is I've never been in love in any way shape or form even close to this experience, which is especially surreal, considering that whole 1 billion years old thing combined with a long history of romance. Nevertheless, so much seems true. So whatever my usual style of acting out being in love with a woman, let's just say that this experience has raised it to the nth power, and some complications have arisen as a result. More about that later. 

Now, look. If you are one of those bitter, heartbroken, disappointed, cynical haters who think falling in love is dumb, keep it to yourself. I myself have been there repeatedly and in fact I was fairly well cauterized in the cardiac region after the whole A catastrophe. But the meeting with the HSO and the dam-bursting wildness of all of it along the way to now changed all that. It's weird to be on the gurney and come back to life on the way to the morgue. So to speak. 

Anyway—my style—

Wide open, unprotected, effusive, devoted, generous, affectionate, enthusiastic, attentive, sentimental.

That's me when I am smitten. It's okay as far as it goes, and it's a style that has mostly been appreciated and welcomed by love interests, if not always reciprocated. 

However, there are aspects of it that are problematic. It can sometimes bleed over into treacly sap. Or it can be altogether too ardent and bowl people over. Or it can be rejected outright as just too intense. Or it can be ignored (intentionally or unintentionally), in response to which I can be very sensitive and resentful. I set myself up sometimes-- poring over Amazon or somewhere looking for just the right gift that captures some sentimental line of symbols or something, then giving it, and if it doesn't seem appreciated to the degree that my ego would prefer (which sometimes is a ridiculously unreasonable degree), being hurt and resentful. This is an ugly dynamic, bordering on quid pro quo transactional romance, which I find ugly and sad. 

My sponsor tells me: "Stop writing checks you can't cash." So now, before I think about giving something to the HSO, I do an inventory. If she were to not seem very taken with the gift, how would I feel? This has been helpful. Can I just freely give and let go? That's the goal. 

The other complication (it occurs to me there might be a lot of complications from such a fiercely romantic and dramatic approach to things, especially in our current cultural context) is that my beloved starts to take me for granted. Because when I fall in love with a woman, I have in the past made it clear that I am seriously devoted. I am reliably available. And it seems, just by human nature, this invites a sort of withdrawal on the part of the beloved, where she can rest assured that I will always be here when she returns, so off she goes. It also has made certain women lose respect for me— these were women who honestly found unavailable men more interesting, and interpreted my wide open generosity as weakness or at least as boring. If a woman is the type who enjoys pursuing, I am usually not for her. 

What usually happens if things take that turn is I'm gone, ironically, since that suddenly makes me interesting again. Except that I pretend to still be there. But I am suddenly emotionally withdrawn and only going through the motions. This is really not good. In fact, I could characterize most of the work I have done on this dynamic since I got sober as being the search for balance. Maybe tone down the gushing floods of sheer adoration a little bit, and, in turn, be less sensitive and suddenly fiercely self protective and dishonest when the beloved pulls away. 

One project that has helped reduce these extremes and make me more capable of just chilling the fuck out has been to dig deep into my first falling in love experience and the course that took and the heartbreak at the end of it. This all happened when I was 17, and I had long assumed that it was no longer affecting me, haha, right. In fact, as the counselor, the sponsor and I have painfully uncovered, I've been in a re-enactment compulsion around that primal trauma for decades. 

Anyway, more about that another time. Suffice it to say that my "sane and sound ideal," as Bill W so memorably puts it, is to love the beloved with reliable actions of love and work on moderating my intensity and my expectations, at least enough to provide breathing room and some semblance of stability, endurance, reliability and peace. I want to be nearer unconditional love and less prone to hurt feelings and withdrawal caused by codependent attachment. 

I never expected to fall in love the way I have this time. If someone had asked me back in June or even up to and including the morning of July 13th when I was going to fall in love again I would have belted out a hearty evil laugh and said fuck that noise, that foolish shit is for suckers, never, ever again. Ever. As I drove across the causeway off of Long Beach Island and headed out into the next three days or so of travel back toward Arizona, I honestly felt absolutely astonished, petrified, flummoxed and knocked on my ass repeatedly as I slowly realized I was falling in love. I had no idea then how deep it was going to go, of course. I had no idea that eventually, further relating with this person would result in my feeling like I had met the love of my life, a concept I had long ago dismissed. But even without that extraordinary certainty (and I do mean certainty, oddly enough), "catching feels" at all for this person was utterly unexpected. 

Exactly how my wide open romantic style navigates the equally real landscapes of power remains to be seen. It's fraught, it seems to me, because the effusive nature of my style can easily be mistaken for me completely and totally surrendering the entire territory. Giving my power away, as they say in CoDA. 

I look forward to understanding this dynamic more clearly. It seems I am in the perfect learning situation, currently.