azurelunatic | (no subject)

Current Mood: crushed

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He's never really yelled at me before. Grouched, yes. Yelled, no. I feel so awful for just continuing to walk all over him... why do I do this to him? Why do I do this to myself? Why don't I see it coming and just give the hell up? This is what he does to a losing battle, continues to gripe about it until he explodes...

It wasn't even a large explosion of anger, in the grand scheme of things. He just doesn't do that. He doesn't yell. He rarely raises his voice. This was a yell.

and it was my fault.

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I think it's always in our nature to try and find our limits - push until you're pushed back. It's not nice, but it's true.

I don't think he knows how hard back he pushed...

I'm not sure why you keep doing it. It's one of my curiousities, because pushing the boundaries is not what I would choose, in a similar position. In fact, people pushing me has been a reason for me to leave relationships, because it feels so disrespectful. I know what I want, and I try to make that clear.

But I'm also not sure why he keeps letting you get away with it. What is his benefit in this situation? He could avoid/break you if he wanted, and he hasn't. So possibly he is too soft-hearted to tell you everything that bothers him, or possibly he derives a benefit that is impenetrable to me.

Empathy is a difficult tool in this situation, since you would like nothing better for him to be cuddly with you, so that won't work well. But it may help to write on the top of your notebook where you will see it every day that you have an agenda for this relationship, and you don't know what his is, except that it's different. You could even ask him his motivation/agenda for continuing to be around you.

Perhaps that's part of it -- that your agenda/goal is a motivation outside either of you, and you need to be sensitive to how it affects your interactions.

It is disrespectful and I know I'm being disrespectful and I don't like it when I'm being disrespectful... and yet I keep with it.

I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, and it confuses and scares me.

Are you familiar with the idea of intermittent reinforcement? It's the best way in the world to do training. Get a critter to do the desired action and then SOME of the time, give them a treat. Not all the time, or they only do it when they want the treat. Not none of the time, because then why would they do it? Some of the time, so they never know when the treat is going to come and are compelled to keep performing the action. Much like slot machines, really.

Your interactions with him end up looking like that sometimes.
touch - rejection
touch - rejection
touch - rejection
ass-grab - REWARD!
touch - rejection

Obviously you are not a lab rat, but we are all animals, and we desire our treats as much as the next mammal.

It's not a full answer, but it's a theory.

Why does so much of your self-image depend on your perception of his perception? This morning I yelled at Silmarian for playing a bit too rough. And he stopped. And it was good. He does not seem crushed, anyway, because he knows that he did not intend ill and I did not read it as malice. Does Darkside know what you intend by your touch? Do you? Does that come across? Should it?

I agree about the intermittent reinforcement--I've thought that before when reading some of your entries. So don't beat yourself up over it.

I think most of the reaction to the yell was that Darkside rarely, if ever, yells. The one other time I recall hearing his voice raised like that was when he and his father were conversing, and his father was pushing him about an internship, and pushing much too far -- and Darkside finally snapped back and yelled at his father. That incident made an impression on me. It's just not part of the Darkside-normal behavior pattern that I'm exposed to. Darkside is and has always been a verbally gentle, soft-spoken man, despite his habit of running off at the mouth with old movie plots and gamerbabble if given the slightest encouragement.

If I heard Darkside yell on a regular basis, his yelling, and specifically at me, would not dent me.

If my roommate-sister Votania were to hit me, I'd be in a state of shock and flee crying to my room, because she doesn't hit, much less me. Darkside, on the other hand, hits me all the time. This morning, in the context of our normal morning interactions, he smacked me across the face. He apologized for connecting harder than he'd intended to, and I giggled. When Darkside hits me, it's never hard enough to sting for more than a moment, and is always in a safe context. I am never fearful for my safety from him physically; it is play, not punishment. His hitting me is unremarkable, especially as I hit back or hit first. Votania and I yell at each other with tones far sharper than what Darkside used on me from day to day, and we know that nothing dangerous is meant by it. It's all in what we're used to.

I don't deal well with new situations.

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Good questions

Re: Good questions

Re: Good questions

Re: Good questions

Yelling