pregnant pauses or uncomfortable silences...

i don't care what you call them, but with some people i don't like them...not only do i not like them but they drive me crazy - literally, actually and it's time for me to confront this little demon...

i don't know if i have been able to talk about this on here before, but with my new found voice and the realisation that i really DO need to work through this, now seems as good a time as any...my universe is already in a state of chaos and flux where every day a new realisation seems to arrive, so this one can be thrown into the mix right?

and sure i probably haven't talked about it too much because i am, in fact, embarrassed about it and even ashamed :-(

turns out that one great byproducts of being a therapist is you get to hear other people's stories, none of which will EVER be mentioned here in such a way as to a) be identifying or b) to break confidence but it turns out that whilst this particular aspect of self/behaviour drives me crazy and to lengths i ordinarily wouldn't even consider going to...seems other women (and maybe men) do this too....

big sigh of relief...must mean i am normal :-)

anyway, even if i am 'normal' (whatever that actually means) i would like for this not to be the way of things...

soooo here it is...when i'm in the middle of a 'conversation' with someone and they suddenly disappear it drives me nuts...and not 'oh he must be busy' nuts, but 'what did i do to make them go silent' nuts...seems i take this all very personally and start to wonder what I must have done, when probably it's nothing, but since this is a pattern of mine with men (funny it's only with me...and I don't mean funny ha ha!) i am intrigued

soo it would seem that i take all the responsibility for the silence and once it has become all about me i turn myself inside and out wondering what has made them go silent and reading things over and over again until i feel as though i have found an answer...but invariably all that happens is i find myself exhausted, and a little bit manic and no clearer on what just happened...

seems that when this happens, i feel compelled to either have the last word or have that 'conversation' resume, even if it was a stupid meaningless conversation (as most of them seem to be)....why oh why has this become something i do? i have let whatever belief is sitting underneath all this turn me into a crazed and obsessive woman (and i don't like her, i can tell you that for free)...

and the timing of this post obviously co-incides with 'him' going silent yet again...seems he does this with alarming frequency but this time i'm really angry about it...we were in conversation about him needing to show me a sign i could trust him (in order to share something with him), he goes quiet, texts me at 1am ish and then goes quiet after i respond....yet again, he thinks it's ok to just 'pop' into my life when it suits him and then disappear...well i don't like it! i have NEVER been a fan of the 'drop in' and to me his arrival in my life has just been one unwelcome drop in after another...

so now the big question: why do i continue to allow it to happen, and herein lies one of the great mysteries of my life...

is it this need for the last word? the upper hand? the power?

i don't know, but they all do seem to resonate with me on some level, soooo yet again, his arrival has forced me to look at yet another aspect of myself, and i'm not sure yet whether this has anything to do with what happened between us...maybe it does, maybe it doesn't?

it's getting exhausting i can tell you that!

i think there are probably multiple things at play here - abandonment is one theme, inappropriateness is another, see sometimes i feel as though when people are available and then not, it's because they feel they've gone to far and then withdraw...and sure, i get that....but do they think that maybe they shouldn't get themselves 'too far' in the first place??  what i mean by this is that when it suits him he will text back and forth, and then all of a sudden he retreats....

funny, i often have big insights whilst typing the blog (that's one of the reasons i do it after all)...and this is no different...i think what this sort of a situation leaves me feeling is 'disempowered' and the silence is deafening...seems that having been silent for so long, i don't actually like silence when it's being imposed on me (and here comes another realisation)...

so the question is this: in this particular case, with this particular 'him' who seems to want the power in the texting relationship (and that's about all we can call it really...), where does that leave me? or perhaps more pointedly, where do I allow myself to be left?

the question is this: what do i think it says about me when these pregnant pauses or uncomfortable silences arise?? big question for a saturday morning....