But my perspective also shifted somewhere in these thoughts, and I began to reflect on ways I had been wronged by others, mostly romantic partners. I hardly ever think about that, really. I am constitutionally set up to blame myself for everything (which I have sometimes confused with the very real and necessary "taking responsibility" for my own actions). I realized that my default setting is to consider myself the bad guy. I tend to think of other people as innocent victims of my bullshit. They are instantly exonerated in my mind and I am on the hook for everything that went wrong.
There's nothing necessarily bad about that within reason. For one thing, it has made some of the step work in AA and CoDA a lot easier, since much of that is framed around looking exclusively at one's own role and one's own actions and putting aside the blame and anger toward others. I have known other people in recovery who are the opposite, and whose default is to be the good guy and for everyone else to be at fault- and that is much more difficult to work with and more of a stumbling block to progress. My oldest brother, for example, who, in his mid-60's, still rants about what an asshole our father was. It's very sad.
Always and never are almost always problematic and almost never helpful- except when they are true, which is almost never.
However, it occurred to me that, of course, I have been lied to, manipulated, betrayed, abandoned, duped, taken for granted, diminished, used, judged incorrectly, ignored, belittled, not seen nor worth the effort of seeing, unjustly blamed, criticized and gaslighted. It was wild to have a moment of seeing all of that very clearly and allowing it to be what it is, without rushing in to silence myself, or tell myself "yes but you also did all of that or worse" or "yes, but it won't do any good to think about all of that" or whatever.
To be disposable, unseen, forgotten and taken for granted is probably the most annihilating thing we can experience, especially when it comes from someone to whom we are attached. And I recognized in this train of thought my own capacity for incredible denial operating to try to protect me from the truth of not being loved, admired, paid attention to or valued. It is far easier for me to beat myself up for being an asshole and let other people off the hook- that way, I do not have to look directly at the plain fact that there have been times that women have been indifferent to me, taken me for granted, used me, lied to me, manipulated me and even outright hated me. It's somehow more bearable to see myself as a bad person. It's more painful to realize that I have been disposable.
Disposal of me can go some different directions, though. I can let the sting and stab of those experiences live forever like plastic or I can work on letting them be biodegradable. I feel like the main difference is in acceptance, being real, cutting through the denial and feeling what's in there. Getting real about how I felt about what happened and cutting the act of being above all of that. There's the "forgiveness" that is superficial, expedient and rooted in denial and contempt, and then there's true forgiveness and letting go, which in my experience requires more heart, skill and presence.
A lot of this comes down to varying degrees of being skillful. It's a clear and helpful conceptual framework that Buddhist meditation uses around harm- being harmed and causing harm- that is simply about skillful or unskillful action. In this framework, drinking, for example, is a way to alleviate pain, relieve boredom, fix childhood trauma and find the divine- it's just that it's an unskillful way of doing those things. It is unreliable, self destructive, a cul de sac, and is a strategy that exacerbates the pain one is trying to medicate. In this framework, becoming sober and learning how to live sober are about becoming more skillful- using skillful means to address suffering and to find acceptance and peace, if not happiness.
But even before getting to a place where I can simply characterize, without judgment, that women have been unskillful with me, I have to get real about how I feel about that. And I feel sad, a lot of grief, and a shit storm of rage and outrage, both. Clearly, I have been with highly unskillful women. Women prone to playing the victim, hating themselves, blaming me for their unhappiness, having revenge sex and revenge affairs, disposing of me when I became difficult, criticizing me without understanding me, rejecting me when I failed to live up to their ideal, playing right into my desire to be the bad guy by agreeing that I am the bad guy, and generally being unskilled at compassion, understanding, attention, generosity, presence, tenderness, interest and honesty. Without regard to my own behavior, or my own unskillfulness, these things are quite simply facts.
And all of these years, probably 99% of the time, I have been dismissing all of that and taking on the blame myself. No no- in fact- a lot of those women were fucking assholes who did not get me and who used me, lied to me, betrayed me, abandoned me on a whim, and were in fact abusive, cruel and caused me harm. They did not, in fact, love me. Some did not even like me much. When I became useless to them, I was discarded, as was the plan the entire time. Not even when I became flat out useless, but when I became simply inconvenient. Not worth it anymore. Too much trouble, Trashed.
And a great many times, they took full advantage of my self hatred to blame me for all of it, and enjoyed watching me take the blame without much complaint toward them.
For example, with A, I sank into a terrible depression- the one that finally got me some help- and she hated me for it. She pursued the majority of her sexual and romantic affair with her new man while I was at recovery meetings. She rejected, judged, misunderstood and even mildly mocked aspects of myself that are important to me. Yet- after she had violated all of our agreements, treated me cruelly and without compassion, and revealed that she was selfish, narcissistic, ignorant of who I really am and interested only in herself, I *still* characterized the situation as being mostly my fault. How easy it has been for women who were so inclined to use that doormat style, self loathing, blame taking aspect of my character to fucking dagger me in the heart repeatedly, with my full permission.
It's good to be noting that a lot of the women I've been with have been unskillful. I have a feeling that, when I integrate this into my understanding of myself, it will help me be more skillful when I am getting into a partnership with a woman. More discriminating. For example- how does she talk about her ex? Her co-workers? Herself? Quite simply- is she emotionally intelligent and compassionately skillful at living? Because I have sometimes almost entirely let women off the hook out of my codependent desire to rescue them. The more unskillful, self loathing, shut down, childish and fearful she has been, the better, at times. It all gives me a whole range of reasons to be needed. Never mind the fact that I am sick in all of the same ways and being useful for her is only going to distract me from the healing I need to do- in fact, that's the unskillful strategy.
A friend of mine in CoDA asked me the other day what I most value in potential romantic partners and it was an interesting list: spirituality, kindness, compassion, intelligence, humor, open mindedness, the capacity for grief and emotional authenticity, a strong sense of radical justice, direct and present communication skills, a desire for growth, the intention of self-love and self-acceptance, sexually and romantically creative and exciting, curious, enthused by the weirdness, absurdity and wildness of life, attentive, generous and honest. This friend of mine said "Those sound like things you value in yourself, also- like a set of principles you are trying to live by- it's great that you are thinking about finding someone trustworthy to spend your time with." I was quite taken aback by that outside perspective. I hadn't seen it that way. I realized I have not often taken seriously how important those fundamental aspects of character are to me, *in other people*. I have focused on how important they are to my sense of self- as an ideal, of course, one that I fall short of daily. But somehow I had not seen clearly that I want to spend my time with a woman who is also interested in that ideal. Again, in a thoroughly human way, with all of the realities that go along with that. The pain of things the past couple of years has been around having found a person with a lot of those same values, but trying to navigate (unskillfully) through a circumstantial bottleneck. Harrowing.
One of the promises of CoDA is: "I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those who are trustworthy."
I know that part of growing in this direction involves getting real about the unskillful women I have been with, and the true ways in which they harmed me, and the process of grieving that, including being enraged by it, and moving eventually to acceptance, a deeper understanding of my own unskilled behaviors, forgiveness and letting go. I have not allowed myself this process in the past in any effective way. In order to avoid feeling the fullness of being rejected, betrayed and abandoned, I have usually blamed and hated myself more than them.
I'm not interested in that unskillful strategy anymore.
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