From: lindercs@HYDRA.ROSE-HULMAN.EDU (Galadin (Craig Linderoth))
Subject: Re: All mind and no heart?
Reply-To: lindercs@HYDRA.ROSE-HULMAN.EDU
Organization: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 15:22:07 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.113732.15002@midway.uchicago.edu>, mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures) writes:
>Curious Of All Natures, having decided to stay up all night to pursue
>new thoughts, pushes through the door of Callahan's.  COAN's step is
>unhurried, undriven by clear purpose.  He narrowly aviods no mishaps
>as he walks over to the bar; there are no glimpses of his feline
>aspect.  "Just something that will keep me awake, Mike.  Thanks."  A
>dollar is exchanged.
>
>COAN trustingly takes the mug with him to the chalk line.  It's a
>soothing and cosy beverage, whatever it is.  Mike takes care of his
>patrons.  The line is is in heavy use.  He is in no rush.
>
>Eventually there is a pause.  Curious Of All Natures has this to offer:
>
>
>A close friend of mine, also named Matt, has been dating and in fact
>living with his girlfriend Laura for two years- three times as long as
>I've known Judie my own love.  We, our girlfriends, and our
>relationships with them are very much alike.  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.
>Their romance has been the paradigm of stability for Judie and I.
>
>Laura left Matt the other day.  She'd come to the realization that she
>wasn't happy, that living with Matt wasn't helping her grow.  She
>moved out and seems to be enjoying her freedom.  Matt talked recently
>to ANOTHER Matt, also an arch-thinker, but a reformed one who had
>through crisis and pain chosen to leave the road of the lonely mind
>and follow a path more emotionally aware and expressive.  The
>broken-up Matt found a frightening amount in common with the reformed
>Matt, and is now in a state of self-questioning and quest.  He seems
>well on the road of his own reformation now.  He told me tonight that
>his thinking mind loves to throw dirt on emotions so they don't hurt
>or require dealing-with.  When he confronted losing Laura all sorts of
>other long-buried pains came out...
>
>All of the pre-existing similarities make me fear for my own
>relationship with Judie now.  There are warning signs.  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.  Negative feedback despairs her.  I am a pro, in this
>relationship now, at saying all of the specific things I DON'T mean
>whenever I say something important.  Otherwise she always interprets
>things self-deflatingly.  Now I search for the causes of Matt's
>break-up in my own romance and fear I see them.  I try very hard to
>help Judie overcome her fears and depressions, yet I seem to be the
>most well-adjusted and understanding of people.  Unhelpable.  Has she
>asked for help?  No.  Would she ask if she needed it desperately?  No.
>
>All signs tell me that I really need to undergo the emotional
>reformation myself.  And of course Judie is the one to help me through
>it.  I'll bring it up tomorrow.  But I don't have the benefit of
>crisis/pain to bring stuff to the surface.  I'm faced with the
>familiarity of my own mind and the following problem:
>
>Where is my heart?  I'm not an automaton- I feel love, frustration,
>panic, and joy.  But in my adult life I've never experienced anger
>(but once), missing people, impatience, jealousy, hate... the list
>goes on of things I don't know what it's like to feel.  Nothing fazes
>me.  It's not that I proclaim of myself, as a resolution, that I am
>unfazable.  It's that I seem to go on though life without faze.  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?  How
>then am I to get out of the trap of the lonely mind?  How can I think I
>can help other people if I don't understand 90% of their own raw
>experience?
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>
>Curious Of All Natures looks at the bottom of his mug, at the
>undissolved specks of Mike's concoction.  As he steps back from the
>line he decides to hold onto it for awhile.  He has yet, within
>himself, to find a toast.
>
>Please include questions, any variety suggestive or curious, in
>replies.  Questions are my food and drink.  It is in answering
>questions that I get the best inspirations.
>
>Curious Of All Natures               Matt Ryan, mb-ryan@uchicago.edu
>===================================  ====================================
>If I am dreaming, never let me wake. You'll never see the end of the road
>If I'm awake, never let me sleep.    when you're traveling with me.
>                -old Chinese fellow                        -Crowded House
>===================================  ====================================
	Well, this is not a question, just some comments.  First of all, if you
keep worrying about losing your relationship because of your friends
relationship, then stop.  There is no quicker way to end a relationship than to
dote upon its ending.  And remember, Judie(?) and Laura are not the same person
just as you and your friend are not.
	If you feel love, then you can not be emotionless.  I have met many
people who say they are full of emotion and as yet have to feel true love.  AS
for the jealous, it just means that you probably are not worried about Judie
doing something.  The rest of the pain emotions are things that you are not
missing, believe me, I have lived my life with these things (3 divorces, moved
many a time, lost a brother to suicide, etc.).  Your problem, if it is a
problem, may not be in lacking the emotions, but in lacking any empathy with
the people you are trying to talk with who are emotional.
	As for your girlfriends black moods and such, the only advice I can
give is to be there for her during these times and try to understand that this
is not her.  My fiancee' has these swings of depression a lot too.  A couple of
times I forget my own advice and try to get her to talk to me, but it always
backfires and turns into a big argument.  My fiancee' also does not like to
talk too much and any discussions we have seem to be fairly one-sided.  Well, I
decided that if that is how she wants it, then that is the way it will be.  The
thing that I learned is during one of these discussions, when she does say
something it is normally fairly important and so I pay close attention to it.
	I am not really sure if this will help or not, but don't worry so much
about your relationship or your emotions, you have gotten this far haven't you. 
You never can tell when a relationship may fall apart so you have to live with
it as it is.  
	With this, Galadin walks down off of the soapboxes, and waves his wand
to light the boxes.  He then orders a ginger ale, drops the dollar on the bar,
and sits back and enjoys the blaze.


******************************************************************************
*Craig Linderoth                * Reality is for People who Lack Imagination.*
*Lindercs@Rosevc.rose-hulman.edu*   The Callahanian Protector of People from *
*ChemEng, Rose-Hulman           *    Outrageous Pun Throwers    SPLAT :)     *
******************************************************************************