While I was previewing this, Sissy wandered by and asked me if I'd mind if she read it and gave me some feedback. I've included her responses where relevant.
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Originally Posted by Martian
Sissy and Grace could have an ulterior motive. What do I have to gain? Or any of the people here who've told you the same?
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I accept the compliments from the people here, I just happen to disagree with them. Other than being unusually thin, I'm fairly ordinary looking.
[Sissy: I don't have any ulterior motive. You're an absolute babe. I say that because it's true, not because I love you.]
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How many girls do you think there are who'd call you crazy for thinking you're too skinny? How many girls do you think there are out there who have back problems and wish they had a smaller chest? These things are big flaws to you, but there are others who not only don't see them as flaws, but see them as desirable.
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I don't know of any woman who wants small breasts. I'd kill for b-cups, nothing gigantic, but at least enough that I needed a bra for more than just jogging.
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If you take a quick peek in Sexuality (or even the Titty Board, for that matter) you may notice that everyone seems to have a different ideal. Nobody is going to be universally attractive to everybody, but there are some people who would cause even those who aren't interested in them to say 'she's attractive, but not my type.' As you're not my type, I feel fully comfortable in telling you that you are one of those people.
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Thank you.
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There is a reason I'm stressing this. Your self-image has a huge effect on your self-confidence. If you can see yourself as beautiful, you'll be able to use that to give yourself a boost in social situations. You'll see why guys want to flirt with you even when they know they don't have a chance, or why a random stranger would show concern over injuries you've sustained (I know the ethics of being more concerned over an attractive person than an unattractive person are a bit distasteful, but that's a can of worms for another discussion). It will make you feel better about yourself. Turning it around, it seems like a big part of why you were as comfortable with Dr. KGB as you were is because you think she's good looking. It goes both ways.
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I went back and forth on this with someone in Coming Together a couple of months ago. I really don't believe that physical attractiveness has much to do with social interaction except when there's some sort of sexual thing going on.
[Sissy: You're wrong. There's research that proves that people do tend to sympathize more with attractive people than with unattractive people. You don't, I get that, you tend to look for misfits because that's how you see yourself, but most people aren't like that. Also, you're doing the same thing, but in reverse. You're assuming the better looking, more accomplished people are less in need of your sympathy and understanding. You need to realize that most people look at you and think the same thing.]
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There is being realistic, but pessimism does not equate to realism. It's hard to see that, I know it, but it's true. Accept that you'd like to be a little curvier and accept that you're attractive as you are.
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I do. I really don't have a problem with my body image. I'd like to be more attractive, who wouldn't, but it doesn't bother me to be ordinary looking. I don't need to be attractive because it's pretty much irrelevant to my life now that I already have a mate.
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After all, a bombshell like Grace could have just about anyone from the sounds of it. What made her choose you, initially? There must be something there, right?
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Personality, intelligence, work ethics, and shared values. And I am a world class, strike that, Olympic class practitioner in the art of pleasing a woman sexually. That's not bragging, just an accurate observation
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She was initially attracted to me when she was a student nurse at the school where I taught and she observed some of the family planning classes I helped teach.
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The missing link here is taking stock. We'll use the man you asked for directions from as an example. You didn't describe your surroundings, but that's not really important for me. What I'd like you to do is go back to that situation now and we'll deconstruct it a bit. Think about what was around you and how it might've worked to your advantage. Was there anybody in earshot?
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Probably, but I don't remember anyone.
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Any busy intersections nearby? How about traffic? Any businesses or homes that were occupied, that you could've taken shelter in if necessary?
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We were in the corridor of school building. Nothing of that sort available.
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Was it daylight out? Was the area you were in brightly lit?
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Yes to both.
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Was there anything like a wooded area or park nearby where you might've been able to escape and cause him to lose sight of you?
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Nope.
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Was your cell phone readily available (ie, in a pocket where you could grab it quickly instead of in a purse where you might've had to dig for it)?
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It was in a cell pocket on the outside my purse. I don't carry it on my belt or in my pocket because I don't like how it ruins the line of my outfit. What does this have to do with safety? I mean, I know it's important to have to be able to call the police in an emergency, but it's pretty useless as a tool for one's immediate defense.
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Once you start looking at the options you had available to you, you'll realize that he wasn't much of a threat after all. Although physically stronger than you, as the aggressor (especially against a woman) he would've had anyone in the area to contend with in addition to yourself and that tilts the odds strongly in your favour.
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I understand that intellectually, but I still feel a bit . . . uneasy when talking to a strange man in a strange place.
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She said it's automatic; to me that says that she does think this way, but that it's so ingrained for her that she doesn't even realize it. Her 'danger radar' is a sign of exactly this sort of thinking. She assesses an individual as a potential risk based on who he is and where they are and if the risk from him is negligible she doesn't give it a second thought. Hell, she doesn't give it a first thought, even. It happens in the background. It's only when the assessment comes out as a potential risk that the flag is raised and she starts taking a more careful look at her surroundings. Over time, you will develop that as well, but it's not something that comes naturally to you. So you'll just have to exert that extra bit of effort to get a handle on it, is all.
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Ok. I'll keep that in mind.
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Let's give it context. I'm something of a DIY mechanic and my sister recently called me because her car was running rough. She said she'd talked to another fellow about it who'd told her that he thought it may be an idle speed issue, a common problem with her type of car. But when I asked her what her car was idling at, she couldn't tell me. To me, it seems unnatural not to know, as idle speed is an indicator of a lot of problems with the engine. I could tell you in my sleep that my engine idles at approximatley 950 rpm cold and closer to 750 rpm hot. She has no clue. It's not intuitive for her to monitor that. What's intuitive for her is to call me.
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That's how adults routinely handle problems they can't solve themselves. Have an aquaintance help them or hire someone. If my computer isn't working right, I can ask Sissy or Grace to fix it for me. If my car isn't doing something it's supposed to, I can ask Grace or take it in to the dealership for service.
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Or put another way; I ride motorcycles and the control scheme on them is completely different from that in a car. But when I'm on a bike, I don't have to think about how to ride it any more than you have to think about how to drive your car; it's intuitive to me, but it would very probably be counter-intuitive to you. Were you to take a course, get your motorcycle license and start riding, it would in all likelihood become intuitive.
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Heh. Despite many attempts to teach me, I still can't drive a stick shift. I still have a problem with making left turns across traffic because I've never gotten to the point where timing the turn feels natural, so I tend to leave huge gaps. Harmless, but annoying to passengers and the people behind me. Likewise, I can' parallel park. Grace and Sissy tell me just to practice and I'll get the feel for it eventually, but it never happened. I think I just lack the physical coordination.
[Sissy: You can dance in four-inch heels. That's physical coordination. You've got that part of it already. You just lack confidence.]
Sorry, got way off track there.
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She said she enjoyed that bit of embarrassment it caused them and she liked being able to brag about you. I know it seems outlandish now, but as you begin to build up your own sense of self-worth, you'll enjoy bragging too. You'll want to share your accomplishments and take pride in what you've done and who you are. That's perfectly acceptable. You have accomplished a lot and you have every right to be proud of it.
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I get that, but this wasn't the situation to do that. I went to USC, a very good school. Most of the faculty here went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, etc., better schools than mine. I have a PhD. They mostly have PhD.'s from better schools, some of them two. And so on. In this room, in this setting, I'm pretty much the least accomplished faculty member. Bragging would be disingenuous.
[Sissy: So what? Their having accomplished more, and I doubt all of them have, doesn't diminish what you've accomplished. Compare yourself to you, not to them.]
Well, except for the part where I got to say, "I'm married to
her." That was fun.
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What she said about making errors is absolutely key and it ties in nicely with everything else. Accepting that you will make errors, that they're not a big deal and moving past them will allow you to relax, which will decrease your anxiety a hundredfold.
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This is another one of those things that I accept intellectually when detached from the situation, but in the moment it feels so much different, it just feels so much safer to not take the risk in the first place. I understand that doing difficult things makes you better at them, but at the same time, in individual instances, it usually seems prudent not to.
[Sissy: This one ties into the previous discussion of accepting that you're attractive. The research shows that if a person is seen as attractive, minor flaws or eccentricities make them more attractive to others. The people who were making fun of your drinking a Coke or collecting comic books were probably thinking that those things made you an interesting character. Trust me, they didn't think you'd be embarrassed, they were just enjoying you for bringing something interesting into what seemed a very dull event.
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Dr. KGB has informed you that you were a big hit at the party; given that, is it that big a deal in retrospect that you ate your cucumbers or asked for soda? In fact, the soda wasn't even your gaffe; I'm very surprised that a party such as this wouldn't have non-alcoholic drinks on hand. It seems not only to be a social flub to me, it seems irresponsible. But again, that's a discussion for another day.
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No, none of those things were a big deal. I wanted to make the party a learning experience so I could apply that knowledge to the next one. If we're not careful to notice our mistakes and correct them, we keep making the same ones over and over again, and that's unhealthy. As Supple Cow said, "It's ok to make mistakes", but I'd add that it's foolish not to learn from those mistakes, and you can't learn from them if you don't notice them.
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I'm guessing the next paragraph comes from her. If I'm wrong I applaud you, as that's exactly the type of thinking you want.
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That was her. I should have been more clear about that by using a different font. In my defense, I'm an expert in children's literature and reading, not composition.
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I'll share with you how I deal with those sorts of errors on my part. I start by allowing myself a moment of self-doubt and panic. I give myself the liberty to have that internal 'oh shit' moment while keeping a calm exterior. Then I take stock of my situation; is anyone paying attention to me and what I just did? Does anyone seem perturbed about it? If nobody does then I can continue on my way. After all, even if it would've been a big deal had somebody noticed, a gaffe unnoticed is a gaffe unmade. If, on the other hand, somebody does seem bothered by my error, then I now know and can take steps to recover. I can offer apologies and amends and therefore correct the error. Either way, I have a system in place to deal with the issue if it arises and therefore I don't need to cause myself continual stress.
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That makes sense. However, how do you know whether someone saw the mistake? I don't point and laugh or even stare every time I see someone do something foolish, but that doesn't mean I didn't notice it.
And I know that the mistakes I made at the party were noticed, because people commented on them.
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Be careful with the flirting thing; that Grace and Sissy enjoy it doesn't mean that you have to. If it doesn't interest you or sets off your conscience, then don't feel like you have to do it. However, what they said is a perfect example of how you can approach a social interaction. You know you have some interesting subjects, so you know that you have something to offer in a conversation.
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Well, if comic books, kung fu movies, performing oral sex on a woman, children's books, Scrabble, gender theory, gay rights, or women's fashion come up in conversation, I'm on good ground. Unfortunately those subjects aren't really things likely to come up in casual conversation, so I'm usually not on firm ground.
[Sissy: Nah. I'm the one who has to be careful about flirting. Once the guys know you're gay, you're home free to do all the cock teasing you like, especially if you keep making sidewise references to being gay. You talk easily about a hell of a lot more than those subjects at home. You should have brought up your gay interpretation of Rudolph at the Christmas party. They'd have loved that.]
Side note: I've developed a gay interpretation of the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It makes it a ton more fun to watch and see the gay subtext running through all of the misfits in the show, intended or not.
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Note that the word 'interesting' is subjective; you can't know for sure if something is going to be interesting to an individual or not. Comics are a good example; you can go to wherever you buy from and talk comics with the guys there all day long, because you know it's a shared interest. With the rest of the world, it's a bit less certain. There are people such as myself who may take a passing interest in the subject but don't collect or follow storylines very closely and there are others who have no interest in the subject at all. You don't really know how someone will react until you bring it up. If you begin to see that the individual you're discussing the topic with isn't interested, then you can know that that's not something for them and allow them to redirect the conversation.
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Sounds reasonable.
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For the time being, I'd suggest allowing the other individual steer the conversation for the most part. I read about your interaction with the young girl at the place you volunteer for and you showed an amazing skill there; without thinking about it or wondering what the proper thing to say was, you mirrored her. She mentioned an injury, you mentioned an injury. She mentioned her hair, you mentioned your hair. It was done in jest, but that skill can be applied to nearly every conversation you have. Take what the other person says to you, look at how you can relate to it and share that. It will allow you to connect.
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I couldn't do that with an adult unless I knew them very, very well, and there are only two people who qualify in that regard.
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You're an educator, which means that you probably have the skills necessary already. It's not even a question of developing them, because the things you're trying to do in your day-to-day life are almost cerainly things that you do in the classroom without even thinking about it.
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The differenc is that in the classroom, I'm the authority figure. I'm granted an automatic measure of respect because I'm the teacher, and I have real authority granted to me as a result of occupying that position. I just have to build on that foundation that already exists.
In a social interaction, such as in the restaurant, in a store, or at a party, that doesn't apply. I'm not the one in charge, the one with the most knowledge, I have little to no authority granted me. I'm just a person.
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A big part of teaching is knowing how to make a subject interesting and most of that is knowing how to read the interest level within the class and change tactics accordingly.
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It may depend on the subject. I've taught literature and social studies, which are inherently interesting subjects, so I don't have to make them interesting; they already are. It's more a case of not making them boring. It's not like it's, say, music class which does take an entertaining teacher to keep it from being dull, dull, dull, or PE which must be the most difficult subject to teach well.
[Sissy: I've never seen you teach, but if your history and literature classes were interesting, you were the reason.]
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You may not agree with me, but I suspect that when you're teaching you find that no two sessions are exactly alike, even if they cover exactly the same subject matter. You interact with the class, gauge their reaction and compensate for it.That's exactly what you're trying to develop outside the classroom, although you may not realize it because in class it's so natural to you that you don't even notice you're doing it.
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Maybe, but it still comes back to the authority thing I mentioned earlier. Even if things aren't going well, I still have the authority to steer the topic where I want it to go, and they have to follow.
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Don't for one second think that you have to be a social butterfly. I suspect that one thing we have in common is that we'd both prefer to curl up with a good book rather than go out to a big party.
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Boy howdy do you have that one right. Actually, getting dressed up and going to a party would be nice if I didn't have to talk to anyone but Grace while I was there. That's how it usually operates when we go to a club, and I love that.
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It's okay to be a quiet person who doesn't want or need that. The part that you're getting into trouble with is that your aversion to social situations is currently so strong that you end up with a lot of stress and anxiety over these things. That, needless to say, is less than desirable.
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You got that right.
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Be careful not to overdo it, either. You have to give yourself the time to relax and not worry about it too much. Burning out on this is not going to help. You've done a lot of good so far and you've put a lot of hard work into it; don't be afraid to give yourself a weekend to stay in and not think about all of this.
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Or sneak off to my office for 20 minutes in the middle of the Christmas party to decompress because I was getting antsy. After discussing this with Grace and Sissy, I discovered another way I'm processing this differently from them. There's a tiny bit of stress to any social interaction, but with each new interaction, they're resetting their stress meters to zero. New person, new interaction, no or little carryover from the last one. The stress accumulates with me, each new interaction adding to the last.
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In any case, you're very welcome to the feedback and help I'm providing. It really is it's own reward.
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Thank you. This really is helping, if not to improve my behavior itself, to understand a bit of it better. I hope I'm not arguing and defending too much. I'm really trying to just explain my thought processes here, not defend the status quo.
Gilda