Find Women Where They Are

Amazing realizations about how far I have come have become routine aspect of my life ever since Get Real almost 4 years ago.  And this one is all about acceptance, like really accepting, where women are in their lives.

I began Get Real because I wanted to get a handle on “rejection” by women.  Rejection used to destroy me for weeks, sometimes months.  And the rejection could be something as simple as smiling at a girl and receiving no response to the more intense: “I just don’t like you in that way.”  Before Get Real I was richly dependent in every aspect of my life and that led to such intense feelings of powerlessness and disconnection that I eventually fell into a dark depression and all sorts of suicidal feelings.

I naturally turned to women as a source of filling this empty hole in my life.  And so with so much at stake, so much of my whole sense of psychological health and well being at stake, a rejection of any degree shattered me to pieces.

Today I experience rejections as forms of connection.  I actually feel closer to the woman who expresses they do not like me “in that way.”  I experience them as being free and open with me about how they feel and I can literally feel connected with them in that moment.

In other words, I have the ability to accept where women are, what appeals to them, what they feel they want, and how they are going about giving themselves what they want.  I can simply accept that they are the best judges of what is best for them. And if they do not imagine me as a part of their adventure in life as anything more than a friend, acquaintance, or just a co-worker, I don’t push or pressure because, well, I have no NEED to.  Not like I used to…

Don’t get me wrong.  It still stings when life does not turn out exactly as I would like, but I do not blame women or anything else for those “stings.”  Those stings are not about those women, or the way the world is, there is no “stimulus and response” here.  Those stings are painful, but they no longer cut as deep as they once did.  Instead, those stings have an equally rewarding flipside: they show me what I want and give me direction.

The more I fail, the more clear I get.

What is the feeling of “clarity”? For me, it’s feeling powerful, confident.  It’s feeling connected to my own experience, too. In moments when life and relationships take a turn in a direction I did not want them to go, I don’t resist these changes.  I flow with them, especially when I have no control over where a woman is in her life, how she feels in her life, how she views relationships, how she engages all the choices and decisions that she faces on a daily basis.

“I Just Want To Slap You”

Recently, I was talking with a friend.  She sat down next to me at a bar.  And we struck up a conversation about life, relationships.  She would later tell me that she enjoyed feeling a reconnection between us in that moment as we chatted about ideas in a pleasant manner.  She was trying to understand my perspective on relationships, life.  She told me she enjoyed feeling reconnected to me.

Much later in the evening when, as we continued our conversation, she expressed to me that she could not imagine why anyone would talk to anyone else unless they felt a desire to have their views about life validated and understood.  I pushed back against this saying: “Well, I really do not need your validation for my views.” She immediately felt hurt, annoyed, and told me: “I just want to slap you, wring your neck.”  She meant it, too.  Like she really felt disconnected, hurt.  I could feel it.  So in that moment, that single moment, where she felt the most disconnected from me, I actually felt the MOST connected to her.

Connection occurs when there are as few barriers between two people as possible.

In that moment, maybe even without her knowing it, she leaked out how she really feels about what it means to connect with others: to feel validated. Moreover, she had all this passion behind it.  I could feel her frustration with me and perhaps with what she feels to be a natural part of human interaction: we seek validation from others.

Words can be the source of misunderstanding, barriers that give the impression of connection, of sharing, but what gives any word or communication its meaningfulness is not the words but emotional content: that is, the passion, the intentional force in a statement meant for a particular someone and for a very specific purpose.

It was not her words or ideas that gave me a sense of connection with her, but the strong emotional content that really gave me something to connect with.

It’s hard for many people in our culture to understand that having one’s perspective or thoughts or viewpoints validated from others is not only NOT necessary to feel connected to others but is actually a barrier to deeper more fulfilling experiences of connection with others.  There is so much talk in our culture about differing views but so few are actually able to open to these differences because they desire to be heard (validated) more than desiring to feel how those radically other people feel and experience their life. Society cultivates habits of “tolerance” and not really empathy, or being in feeling with others.

I am now able to accept rejections by women, challenges by women, or unexpected changes in the direction of relationships without falling to pieces because I can feel were they are, where they want to be, and how they are going about giving themselves what they want.

Women are the best judges of what works for them. And sometimes they are courageous enough to let you in on their worlds and when they do, I just accept it, enjoy it, connect with this openness, even if they are challenging or rejecting.  I require nothing more…