From: dmm@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (donald)
Subject: attentive dependence Was: Re: Commitment--The C-word?
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 20:52:53 GMT

Marianna Max (drmax@casbah.acns.nwu.edu) wrote:
: In article <1992Aug26.162215.16035@cbnewsd.cb.att.com> nance@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (nancy.l.colucci) writes:
:  How about it
: guys, do your girlfriends ever try to make you feel like you are dependent 
: on them to the extent that it would be difficult to leave them if you
: wanted to? 
: 
My last girlfriend tried -according to several friends- to elicit in
me a feeling of dependence, but due possibly to my social ineptitude
or quixotic independence -imprints from both my maternal grandmother and
my father- after a few years having failed in this regard she broke
our relationship down to a now distant friendship.  I'm sure that this
aspect of our relationship was as frustrating for her as her habit of
pulling our relationship up by the roots to check on how it was
growing was frustrating for me.  From this vantage afforded by
hindsight I'd even venture that our mixed needs for interdependence
were the weed that choked us off from each other.

Before launching into a (hopefully brief) description of what I meant
by that last bit I should admit up front that a great deal of what I refer
to as my social ineptitude derives from an avoidance of petty games in
favor of simple open discussion (not that frivolous flirting isn't
fun, but where does it lead ;-).  So now to heap the blame on my ex-
and further this dependency issue.

First off she seemed to have her rather rigid script for how a
relationship should proceed (Is this a common aspect of females?), and
while I'm rather flexible in most things, I have some rather rigid lumps
in areas and her kneading me in those areas, I'm sure, frustrated her.
Now my biggest lump lies in my sometimes single-minded attention to
what I'm up to at the time.  When that was her all was well, but when
grad-school or friends diverted me for a while (as deadlines and
crises still tend to do) it wouldn't take long for her to uproot
things:
	"...great movie."
	"We should break up."
	"What???"
	"Well, you don't care about me like you did when we started
	 going out." sniff...
The first few times, at this point, I would spend the next hour trying
to get her to tell me what was wrong and then try and work most of it
out.  A lot of it turned out to be that she didn't think I needed her
in an indespensible sort of way.  After a few times through this
emotional ringer I returned from a conference to find an email message
from her much along the same lines as the dialog above and with a few
days to mull over it before seeing her again I agreed that we should
just break it off.  It turned out that that was the furthest thing
from her mind (such a silly and tragic game) and seemed surprised that
I could even have thought of entertaining the idea, but by then I'd formed
another lump that wouldn't let me see her as more than a close friend
(on past the point of her getting married to somebody that she hoped
needed her.)

So why go into this here?  Well, other than group therapeutic gains
from posting this, I'd like to hear how others feel about how the need
for a sense of dependence and the need for attention relate.  You see, I
am a rather attentive person toward others, but I've found that I need
occational breaks from the same person (be it in the form of a project, 
trip, or just closely interacting with others for a while) to allow myself 
room for breathing/growing/grounding myself.  (And I hope this notion
doesn't bring into question my fierce loyalty and faithfulness since
this is a very different kind of flaw.)  So by being rather intensely
attentive to somebody am I building in the other person a sense of my
dependence on the other or possibly creating a dependence on me as a
source of ample (but non-constant) attention?  Is there any hope for me?

I'll stop publicly dribbling before digressing to further incoherence.

take it easy,
donald

{My but how an hour of lurking in an unsubscribed group can get one
sidetracked.  I suppose I should subscribe now.}