From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Subject: Re: All mind and no heart?
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:14:53 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.113732.15002@midway.uchicago.edu>, mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures) writes:
>Matt and I are
>arch-thinkers and arch-communicators, always trying to help and to
>have a good influence as a fundamental part of our love.  Sometimes
>this is tough, as our girlfriends are both people with a poor
>self-image, shy, and often depressed.  Both possessed of a precious
>energy and intelligence, however.  But there is much to be helped.

>I see problems
>and disagreements as opportunities for growth and imporvement.
>Whenever we talk about such things she gets unhappy and hurt.  Having
>talked about a difficult topic once she doesn't want to talk about it
>again.

>A friend of mine once asked "Matt, you're very good at the being-
>shared-with of pain.  But don't you have any pain of your own to
>share?"  I replied that no, I have no hidden resevoirs of tragedy, no
>scars of my heart that would make me vulnerable to others just as they
>make themselves vulnerable to me.  Truly, all of the people I've ever
>known well are still alive.  Have you guessed that I'm an only child?
>No sibling fights of enviousnesses here.  No oppression nor injury.

>When I do experience emotions directly it's fleeting, soon a memory.
>Am I really just an unusually emotionless person, or, as I suspect, is
>it that my emotions are so well-knit into the fabric of my own
>experience of life that I don't consciously grasp their weave?

>Should I just try to assert the true me as I experience it in my
>relationship with Judie, on the theory that if things go awry then
>that's as it should be, because it wouldn't be at all good for the
>relationship to work in virtue of self-supression?  I really want to
>take the stand that I will not accept certain self-destructive
>features of her as aspects of a long-term relationship.
>
>Intuition (I have a great supply of this) tells me I should do this.
>
>Or rather should I, on the realization that I can't possibly be of
>constructive help to a feeling-person (not by tring at least) let go
>my helpingness and just live and love with her?  Weather and accept
>her black depressions and minimal self-esteem?  I'm told you can't
>ever fight others' battles for them, that they can't learn their
>lesson through relying on an outside force.
>
>My intuition also tells me to do this.

Speaker-to-Minerals suggests, "Your problem here sounds, to me, like a lack of
empathy, though not for lack of trying on your part.  It sounds like you simply
haven't had to deal with the sorts of problems your girlfriend is dealing with,
and therefore can't quite understand what she's going through.  This is one of
the problems associated with being an only child (unless there were lots of
other children of about your own age in your neighborhood, with whom you spent
LOTS of time; and somehow it seems that only children tend to end up spending
less time with other kids outside their families than to children with
siblings."

>I think she chould benefit greatly from professional help.  She
>doesn't NEED it because she's able to live the kind of life she wants
>to lead in spite of everything.  It's just a painful life with little
>security.  She can live with that.  The idea of suggesting it to her
>very strongly, as an opportunity for growth rather than for fixing
>what's broken, was the culmination of my thought before talking to
>Matt tonight.  I now distrust the idea very strongly for just that reason. 
>
>Shared pain lessened, shared joy increased...  but I have nothing to
>share but confusion.  Confusion and a calm familiar inner quiet where
>I'd rather be rage and storm.

"Consider the following:  If you used your idea of `shared pain lessened' in the
Place the way you've implied you use it in your relationship with your
girlfriend, you'd end up spending a lot of your time out in the alley with a
lump on your head.  Fast Eddy carries his blackjack for a good reason.  Shared
pain is lessened ONLY IF THE PERSON EXPERIENCING THE PAIN FREELY CHOOSES TO
SHARE IT.  When dealing with a painful subject, it frequently does NOT help to
keep coming back to the subject.  Having discussed it once, it's often
necessary to leave the topic alone, sometimes for quite a long while, before
it's productive to discuss it again.  Bringing it up again prematurely only
aggravates the situation.  Having discussed a problem, if you're forced to
confront it again before you've had time to make any progress in dealing with
it, you've been handed a second problem:  Not only do you still have your first
problem, but your nose is being rubbed in the fact that you're not capable of
dealing with it (or at least it can seem that way, if you don't have a LOT of
self-esteem in the first place).  Not exactly the best technique for building a
person's self-esteem.

"An old saying with a grain of truth in it is `Time
heals all wounds.'  The saying isn't completely true, but is is usually the
case that time is required to heal a wound.  In short:  Don't push."
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