So Amanda Marcotte has a nice piece in Salon today on the adoration the world’s most repellant pickup artists feel towards Donald Trump:
Pickup artists like Daryush Valizadeh, who goes by the name “Roosh” … and James C. Weidmann, who goes by the ridiculous name Heartiste, absolutely adore Trump. In him, they see a kindred spirit, a man who believes women exist to be submissive and flattering and provide sex and have no value outside of that.
I shared some thoughts on the subject with her via email:
“Trump is, in many ways, their ideal alpha male, an arrogant, deliberately obnoxious asshole who treats women like shit but has a former model more than twenty years his junior as a wife,” Futrelle told me over email. “It doesn’t hurt that she’s Eastern European; PUAs like Roosh Valizadeh contend that American women are basically spoiled by too much feminism, and see Eastern European women, by contrast, as relatively unspoiled.”
Marcotte takes a look at some of the gushing tributes to Trump that Heartiste and Matt Forney have spilled on the internet, then peeks into the Red Pull subreddit, which, she writes,
is teeming with discussion threads positing that Trump is a role model and that the disrespect and abuse he dishes out to women is behavior to imitate.
“Donald Trump teaches us something very important. Never bow down when put on the spot in front of a women,” one poster’s headline declares. In it, the poster explains that the way Trump treated Megyn Kelly, i.e., being a dick to her, was how men generally should, uh, handle women.
“This is a vital lesson to all men. Never ever let the hottest girl in the room manipulate you and break your frame. Never give in,” the poster writes. (“Your frame” is pickup artist lingo for trying to project an aura of overconfidence and stubbornness, or mostly just about being a bully.) “Even if you make a mistake, NEVER apologize to a girl.”
Kelly is 45, a bit old to be “a girl.” Come to think of it, isn’t she way too old to be the “hottest girl in the room,” at least according to Red Pill dogma, which posits that women all “hit the wall” by age 30, if not earlier, and are shortly afterwards transformed into ancient crones fit only for cohabiting with cats?
And, wait a minute, isn’t Melania Trump 46? Why hasn’t alpha dog Trump traded her in for some 19-year-old Ukrainian hottie?
Could it be that the “the wall” isn’t really a thing. not even to the Red Pillers who talk about it all the time? Could “the wall” be little more than a revenge fantasy of Red Pillers who desperately want to believe that the young women who turn them down will someday face their comeuppance by suddenly contracting a case of the uglies?
Marcotte finds herself wondering something rather similar, suggesting at the end of her piece that perhaps
“pickup artistry” is not really about improving your game with the ladies, so much as it’s about giving men permission to belittle and bully women under the guise of becoming “alpha.”
That such men would love Trump, then, is no surprise. Trump is loud, orange, stupid, and ridiculous, but he is a bully, and to the pickup artist community, that’s what it takes to be a man.
Yep.
From Adams:
Little-known fact: “Patriotic American” is the long-form spelling of WASP.
@Chiomara and Kylo Ronin (great name): I haven’t the time to say all I want to but you both deserve better people in your lives and I’m sorry.
@Chio,
(Sorry that this got as long as it did!)
I like to sometimes think of self-esteem as a thing – as a fluid, as stuff that can be traded, taken, created, etc. Not to do an Economics of Feelings, but to look at the way it moves around between people. Perhaps this idea can help you examine your relationship from a new perspective. I’ll try to look at it on my own as an example, but don’t take my word for it – your perspective is better, even with emotions clouding you.
Self-worth can be created internally – confidence. It’s hard, and it takes a mind-set that you don’t have right now, because of the depression. That internal source is what I try to nurture in myself. Tough but worth it. But you can’t, and in fact I think that most people can’t, to a large degree.
Self-worth can be taken through a number of means. Bullying, insults, belittling – these are all ways someone takes bits of the self-esteem you have built up. That’s what him calling you “princess” is about. Perhaps it’s as “punishment” for holding a feminist viewpoint or just for disagreeing with him, but the result is the same. He wants some of your self-worth for himself.
Self-worth can be begged for. Sympathy plays and guilt trips are all social pressure to force someone to give self-worth. That’s what he’s doing when he points out that you saved him from suicide. “You’re a bad person if you don’t make some of your self-worth about me”. This is something that I managed to escape two years ago – it’s really hard. Also very common.
Self-worth can be given. That’s what you’re doing right now with a number of people around you. For various reasons you’re giving them little bits of your self-worth, your self-identity. You are defining parts of yourself in terms of their needs and their values, so much so that you’re struggling to find any self-worth left that you can use for your own definition.
Now, in any relationship, all of these things happen. Long-term friends might spend most of their interactions sniping at one another, taking bits and pieces of self-worth from one another through barbed jokes; couples might spend a lot of their time complaining about their jobs and efforts, sympathizing with one another. Problems arise when there is an imbalance that is not addressed, when one side starts losing esteem (maybe to the other, maybe to an outside source) and the other side starts having to support the other. Over the short term this is fine, and part of what’s good in a relationship – you have someone to lean on for help when you need it. Over the long term, it isn’t sustainable.
You say that you used to be happy and optimistic and cheerful – you could make your own self-worth within you, and shared it out into the world. You can’t anymore. When you needed someone to help fill that gap, he arrived and did just that – he gave it to you (perhaps you begged for it, perhaps he just gave it, I don’t know). I imagine you started sharing it back with him, sympathizing with him when he needed it, caring for him, defining yourself according to his needs to some extent. That’s how many relationships bloom.
But it’s not what’s happening now. It sounds like he has started taking from you, to the extent that you don’t have much left anymore. He gives you some, like he used to – and then he takes it right back again. You’re back to where you were before he was caring for you, only now you’re tied into a situation where you can’t just walk away without feeling loss.
Examine this for yourself. Don’t take my word for it – I’m almost certainly wrong about the assessment. But the important thing is whether the exchange of self-worth between you and him is healthy and balanced. It doesn’t sound like it is, and if it isn’t, just giving him more isn’t really an option – you don’t have a lot to share around right now, and can’t give him more without taking or begging it from somewhere else.
Sorry I wrote so much about this – it’s a neat way of looking at relationships, even if it is such a narrowly-focused perspective.
@Kylo Renin,
<3 that sucks so much. Hopefully the perspective of my post to Chio can help you too, but when it's an internet relationship it can be really hard to stay away from the polarizing topics. Face-to-face friends can usually just agree to not talk about it; when it's the internet you sort of get an unfiltered stream and it can be hard to ignore. No advice here, only support. <3
@Chio,
Just wanted to add something to the splurge from my last post, since apparently I can't stop talking. Not about the boyfriend, about the distancing you've gotten from those around you. I thought I would use the self-worth-as-a-fluid metaphor on that too, since that distancing is so common and so hard to beat.
(I'll note that I'm really hesitant to write this, as it comes across as very negative on your friends. Please – don’t take my word for any of this. Each relationship is complicated and in no way do I want to suggest that the stuff below reflects what’s actually happening. I just wanted to provide the perspective)
It happens to most people with severe depression – friends stop making time for you, all of a sudden people have other places to be, etc. Just like you said.
There are two things that might be happening here that I can think of (within the lens of the metaphor at least). Your behaviour may come across as “begging” for self-worth, which they’re recoiling from – they’re protecting their own. That’s not a very friendly thing to do.
Maybe more likely, they’re used to the cheerful, happy, generous you that would give self-worth freely to them. That isn’t happening anymore. You were a source, now you’re a sink. They aren’t getting their ‘fix’ of self-esteem from you anymore, so they don’t have as much reason to make time. Also not a friendly thing to do.
Now, they all have their own situations to worry about too. I bet that many of them aren’t able to make their own self-worth easily, either, so they don’t have a lot to give. That doesn’t make them bad, or bad friends – it makes them vulnerable.
Nor does it make you bad, for no longer giving them the gifts of self-worth that you once did. Those were gifts between friends. Neither you, nor they, should be tallying them. I bet that, once you can build up that internal store of self-esteem again to the point where your hurt isn’t such a threat to their own self-worth, you’ll be seeing them again.
It sucks that you have to make up the difference yourself, but it’s a worthwhile effort. The fire inside is the hottest and most resistant to going out. Just by how you write, I can tell that you haven’t given up yet. The fire’s still burning, it’s just lower than it should be.
You’re gonna be fine, Chio. Keep trying <3
@weirwood: Unwarranted Self-Importance in action.
Troll Says Outrageously Stupid “Opposite Day” Thing For Attention, Momentarily Arrests Slide Into Irrelevance
For someone with a supposedly high IQ, Scott Adams seems willfully dense about which candidate has actively called on supporters to engage in violence. Who was it who promised to pay his supporters’ legal bills if they roughed up opponents? Oh, that’s right: Trump.
Chio, another question for you…what about the impact of your relationship on other people? For example, I don’t know how you feel about kids, or if you’ve even thought that far ahead (and feel free to say none of your beeswax) but hypothetically, if you were to stay with this guy long term and one day find yourself raising kids together, would you feel like you were on the same page as far as parenting values? Would you want him imparting his MRA “wordly wisdom” to your kids behind your back? Would it frustrate you to have to constantly counter his poisonous attitudes? Would you want your daughters being taught that their only value is in their looks, and your sons being taught to treat women like things? Same with your friends and family – is he open about his beliefs around them? Do you find yourself having to explain, justify, and defend him?
I get that he’s been your rock and support on a personal level, but I’m not sure that’s enough. Yes, he cares about you, but apparently not enough to see how it hurts you when he makes generalizations about women. Even if he makes an exception for you, because you’re “one of the good ones”, it’s not worth nodding along and throwing the rest of your sisters under the bus. Relationships have to face outward as well as inward, if you know what I mean. Even horrible dictators who are a stain on humanity can be sweet and loving towards their own families. That’s what complicates decisions like this. It’s a lot harder to kick someone who’s almost ideal to the curb than an out-and-out monster. All I can say is, pay attention to your gut warnings. Those little red flags are trying to tell you something.
@Chiomara
As someone suffering from crippling depression and loneliness, I am so sorry to hear about what you are going through. I’m not in a position to give any relationship advice, but I can say that as awful as being alone is, it is something that you can survive.
I sent an IM to the Majority Report’s Michael Brooks today, calling them out for labelling Trump as mentally ill. I don’t think he really understood the problem, but at least it got read on air.
@Chiomara
nthing what others have said, especially Jarnsaxa and Scildfreja.trying to phrase a better response myself through a fog of exhaustion and poor sleep, but the short if it is as follows: I’ve seen this guy before. Last time I saw him my sister in law wound up crashing on my floor for a couple weeks until we could get a restraining order to get him out of her apartment. In short, the best part of this relationship is over and gone, and it’s only going downhill from here. To be honest, I’ve pretty much been thinking this since you started talking about him, but I don’t generally consider it my place to tell people how to run their lives, and I could have been wrong, especially over long distance. So, fwiw, my advice is to dump him now.
Also, while I’m not always great at being one, I’d consider myself your friend.
@Dalillama, sleep deficiency! It takes such a toll! I got to the point where I could barely recognize how tired I was – still am that way, to be honest. Forgot what being well-rested was even like!
I bought a Fitbit recently, which had a nice little surprise. Because it can track your pulse and blood oxygen level, it has a function for tracking how well you’re sleeping, and whether you’re awake or asleep. You get a nice nightly chart for how many hours of deep and light sleep you had. Turns out that I get under four hours of good deep sleep, and rarely more than six hours of sleep total! No wonder I feel so fuzzy in the head. Just knowing how I’m sleeping has been a huge help. Now I regulate my sleep better, get to bed earlier, and excuse myself more when I’m not well rested. It’s helpful!
@Imaginary Petal
If you have the time and inclination, would you mind giving the gist of his response? I love the Majority Report but I sometimes feel Seder and Brooks don’t have as sophisticated a grasp as they think they do on certain issues.
@everyone else
I’ve been a lurker here for about two years and decided to come out of the woodwork. All your comments and discussions brighten my day — this really is one of the coolest communities on the Internet. So, hellooooooooo!
@Peep
He basically said he understands the concern and “I have friends with mental illness”, but it’s impossible to look at Donald Trump and not see untreated NPD, which is a mental illness, i.e. he’s mentally ill. Then it got quickly derailed and they started talking about trustfunds instead, and they never got back to the original topic. Are you an MR member/have access to the fun half?
Also, welcome out of lurkdom. 🙂
Hi peep! Help yourself to a welcome package 🙂
Thank you. Sorry, but I disagree. I understand what you mean, but he never held me responsible for his well being. I did that to him many times, though. Emotional blackmail is my first panic tactic, unfortunately.
@Scildfreja
Thank you very much. This is a very interesting “theory”, and it does make sense.
Kids are very important for me, and yes, I do keep wondering about that.
Nooooooo, guys, no, please, this is definitely NOT a problem and NOT convictions he holds! He is anti feminist but not a misogynist in ANY possible interpretation of the word. He is not Roosh V. He is not even Sargon, he is more like your garden variety “I am an egalitaaarian because since I am white and male I can’t see the way the world is Wired in my favor. I in fact mostly act the exact way feminism say men should act and believe in many of feminist point, but I have a serious problem with accepting collective views”.
No, all I fear about children is that he may not prepare and inform them well enough to face the opression they and others suffer, by thinking equality is much closer than it actually is.
Most people dislike him at first sight, but that’s because he puts on a “douche” mask until he is comfy enough to be himself. He just put on his best impression of the “smug yet charismatic” cinema trope, without understanding he is not RDJ not Sherlock and this is not a movie, so no one other than 14 yo boys find this admirable or fun. Once you mention feminism, Mr Sherlock, performing to an invisible audience, comes back. He has lost many friends because of that, and it makes his family be very rude to him. It just so happens that the most people confront him about this attitude, the thicker the mask gets. He just doesnt want to admit he is acting unnecessarily stupid and that he is feeling uncomfy an insecure. He is only himself around very few people, and once he is, people like him much, much, much more, and understand him much better. But he doesn’t understand that he is wearing a mask and this is not the “him” people know and love. It may please certain women for a night or so, or seduce this or that man that he needs to seduce to get a raise, it may be entertaining to watch in a video, but this is not the persona your loved ones want to see, we didnt hire a escort who makes a good James Bond impression.
Once the mask cracks and he allows himself to just be who he is, everyone loves him. But if he doesn’t, my, me and his friends have a really rough time explaining why do we like and speak well of such a douche. It really one headache.
I don’t know what to make out of this aspecto of him, either.
@Chio, I have a friend who is exactly like you describe. Fun, cheerful, not at all a misogynist, but completely unable to accept the fundamentals of feminism. Maybe not quite as bad as your guy, actually – he can accept that he has privilege, but see, since he knows about it it doesn’t affect him, because rationality. He’s put off a lot of friends because of his need to be right. He’s gotten a lot better, though, and I’m happy to count him as a good friend. We all have our challenges in life.
You have yourself quite a tricky pickle of a problem! Perhaps you should focus less on him and how he interacts with you, and more on rebuilding the wellspring of self-worth you once had? I think that you will find your challenges much lighter then.
I’m not suggesting leaving him, or ignoring him – just disengage when the conversation moves in that direction. You could even tell him directly – that it hurts to talk about those sorts of things with him, and you don’t want to for a few months. He cares about you, so he shouldn’t mind, nor should he be snarky about it. If he does start pushing those borders when you’ve explicitly asked him not to and he knows it hurts you, then you have a problem. Disengaging from those topics will let you avoid the hurt, and then give you some space and a better environment to rebuild your sense of who you are.
Seconding @Scildfreja on disengaging from those topics.
Chiomara,
I’m sort of hesitant to even see this because I don’t know if it’s my place and I don’t want to add to your stress or come off ‘splainy. But you do seem to be seeking advice or you wouldn’t have posted. So I’ll say my piece once and then back off and support whatever choice you make.
I guess I’m just not sure this can be the case. Men can certainly be non-feminist or not fully grasp the concepts of patriarchy, male privilege or rape culture and still be well meaning and not misogynistic. Like the guy I used to date who didn’t understand why street harassment is a big deal. Or my dad getting defensive when his white or male privilege is brought up because he’s working class and doesn’t have a perfect always life. Those types of things we deal with when it comes to the sometimes clueless men in our lives can be frustrating but they can also be dealt with our overlooked.
But from you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like ignorance. It sounds like malice. There’s a world of difference between not quite getting feminism and belittling feminism while dismissing misogyny entirely.
You were saying he went on a full blown MRA rant and said this
That he called you names and accused your problems of being made up while he knew you were in particularly vulnerable place in your life is just such a huge red flag. It really and truly sounds to me like he’s successfully gaslighting you and it’s concerning to me.
Another big red flag for me is that you’ve said more than once in this thread that he puts people off, acts like a douche, and drives people away. I don’t think this can be explained away by social awkwardness or putting up walls. I say this as someone who is socially awkward and puts up walls. It’s fairly common for people who meet me to interpret my being a bit shy and my lack of emotiveness as coldness or as my disliking them. But as far as I can tell people don’t actively dislike and once people get to know me, they find out I’m not really cold, mean, or lacking of feelings and while I drift apart from people, I’m not driving them away either. Not to make this all about me or anything! I’m just explaining why I’m someone who would know the difference between hard to get to know and an asshole. If you’re the only one who can see his good side, is it possible that either the good side is a front used to draw you in? Or the bad far outweighs what good there is?
I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds too much here, but like Dallilama, I was a bit skeptical that your BF was going to be able and willing to change for you. Obviously, I could be wrong as I don’t know him and you do. But my gut feeling is that this guy is harboring some serious misogyny and anger and is taking advantage of your vulnerability and kind nature. I think you maybe know it too and that’s why you’ve chosen to discuss it here with a feminist/ally community.
But I don’t want you to feel judged here, so I won’t keep harping on it. I have your back no matter what you decide to do.
I’m a little late on this, but . . .
Bieber’s no angel and I personally see him as a immature douchebag, thus that’s why I don’t like him. There are plenty of examples of negative, even criminal behavior, from him over the years.
He’s gotten into fights with other celebrities, assaulted someone he got into a ATV/minivan accident with (he caused the accident), put a cigarette out on a friend’s arm, shoved an up and coming rapper who was performing at a nightclub for accidentally stepping on his shoe, egged his neighbor’s house, inappropriately touched fans, put an arm around Ariana Grande without her consent, commented at the Anne Frank House that Anne Frank herself would have been a Belieber, made Prince’s death about himself in a Tweet that said not all of the musical legends have passed on, made a “joke” video of his song “One Less Lonely Girl” that replaced “girl” with the n-word, harassed a flight attendant on a private flight so badly that she decided to hide in the cockpit for the duration of the flight, dragged raced his Lamborghini under the influence of pot, alcohol and prescription drugs, drunk-peed in a restaurant’s mop bucket, drove his new sports car around his gated community at speeds of up to 100MPH then spit in the face of a father who complained and said he’d “f*cking kill” him, walked out of an indoor skydiving facility in Las Vegas without paying, spit off his hotel balcony onto the heads of his adoring fans and abandoned his pet monkey in Germany after forgetting the documents that would have gotten the monkey through quarantine.
I guess we can hope that he’ll grow up one of these days, but I’m not holding my breath. He lives in a world of privilege and believes he’s entitled to do whatever he pleases. That’s not going to make the transition to a responsible, mature person very easy.
@Chiomara
I hope that I’m not piling on too hard here, but think carefully about which face is the mask, and which is real.
@Chiomara
I don’t have anything to add beyond what everyone else has already said, but I wish you well, and hope that both you and he are able to find the happiness you deserve, however it may come.
@Chiomara
You’re a fantastic person, and you deserve to be treated better.
For me, personally, calling me names is an absolute dealbreaker. Not because I can’t handle being called names, but because calling me names demonstrates absolute contempt for me as a person. Nobody who has contempt for me is going to be in a relationship with me. No relationship can go anywhere good when one person has contempt for the other.
You keep asking if you’re being selfish, or implying that you might be acting selfishly. Erase that entire question from your mind. “Selfish” is a term applied to women who want their needs met. Women are expected to put their needs aside, to make themselves small and pretend they need nothing, because our world treats only men as fully human. “Selfish” is a silencing word. You’ve been told over and over that being selfish is bad, and I’m here to tell you that it is not. You can be selfish. You deserve to have your needs met. You aren’t a bad person if you don’t want to minimize yourself anymore. The people who benefit from your minimizing yourself will certainly try to tell you otherwise, but they are acting in self-interest and not in your interest at all. Dare I say … they are being selfish by insisting that you are the selfish one if you don’t sacrifice yourself for them.
re: friends
If your boyfriend acts like a douche … maybe you friends have distanced themselves from you because you bring him along sometimes and they don’t want to be in the same room with him? Or you talk about him, and they don’t like him and don’t want to hear about him? Maybe they’ll re-open themselves to you if you are no longer with him, is what I’m suggesting. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s kind of jerk behavior to ignore you on the basis of your unbearable significant other, but a lot of people do it and it’s understandable and common. You may not actually have to make the trade-off between this dude and total aloneness. The trade-off might be between this dude and all your old friends. I’m not saying this is absolutely the case, but if you are reaching out hard to your friends and they are flaking on you constantly without actually ending your friendship, there is a reason for that. There is something about you that they like in the abstract, but also something about you that they don’t want to be around in the concrete. That concrete thing could be your boyfriend acting like an asshole to them.
Take away this: You are a fantastic person and you deserve to be treated well. NOT with contempt. The support your boyfriend provided to you in the past was not a down-payment on treating you with contempt going forward. No matter what he did for you previously, or how he treats you when his contempt for you isn’t bubbling over, he does have contempt for you and when he’s upset you can see it clearly. You know it for what it is, so don’t gaslight yourself.
@Chiomara – First of all, I’m sorry you’re going through a hard time. You have my (long-distance) support.
About the boyfriend, I’d take a careful look at his patterns of behaviour. Those incidents of him insulting and belittling you – how often have they happened lately? If this is a habit, I don’t think he’s going to give it up anytime soon, even if he’s supportive in other ways.
He doesn’t have to be an awful monster in order for him to be wrong for you. If someone is insulting and belittling to you, you shouldn’t have to put up with that.
Anyway, I hope that – whatever happens with this relationship – you can be happy and not have to put up with things like this.
Tried that just now. 4 months avoiding the subject. As you can see, I am still just as mad 🙁
Yes, I agree he belittles it, but I don’t agree that he entirely dismisses misogyny, sorry. He just thinks misogyny happens way less than I think it does.
Yes. I agree with this.
Yes, I agree. I am really awkward too, but I don’t MEAN to act the way I do, it’s completely out of my control and I regret it, but he seems to ACTIVELLY build a persona, like he learned somehow this persona was preferrable to his actual self for whatever reason. Narcisism? Protection? Watching too many movies? Everyone finds it weird, rude and frustrating, including the therapist. And he claims not to notice he acts different.
I am not the only person who likes him. He has two other long term friends, plus the therapist. You see the therapist, for example. She hated him at first, she even considered refusing to treat him because he kept stealing her pens for no reason at all, and when she confronted him he said “I was just wondering how long it would take for you to say something, haha”. He later told her he was attempting to tease her because he really liked. It’s like he thought stealing pens was a delightful behavior or something. But after two years of therapy she liked him as a friend so much that she broke her own professional code for the first time to be friends with a previous patient. They meet almost weekly, it’s lovely.
But just yesterday her friend was curious to meet the wonderful person who made her break her strong professional ethics for the first time in twenty years. But guess what, he acted like a douche again and now she is really angry at him, rightfully so. And no one understands why he does this. He is just a really weird person.
Yes, exactly. It’s my biggest fear, that for some reason he has been tricking me into thinking his nice face is real for almost 4 years. Who knows why he’d get the trouble.
It’s a long distance relationship, by friends barely see him. But he was surprisingly nice with them. Of course, the fact my friends barely speak english and I translated most of the conversation helped plenty.
Yes, I agree. There’s some contempt. I strongly feel that too.
THANK YOU ALL on the advice. Even if I often sound stubborn and disagree with certain points, be sure I value those insights VERY highly and you made my head much clearer, not to mention making me feel better. A a hug to you all.
@Chiomara
I think Scildfreja’s advice is really good. Before trying to discuss things with him, you need to know if he’s receptive to having his opinions challenged, and, more importantly, you need to know if he is willing to hurt you to defend them.
It would be ok if he didn’t understand feminism because he simply couldn’t grasp it, but if he acts in a way that he knows can hurt you just to “win” an argument, this is not a good sign. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you, but it can mean he’s not mature enough for a relationship, and I ask you to never think that you can or should try to change him.
I won’t go on about what I think you should do because I don’t want to intrude in your life or confuse you, but I have one advice: If you are afraid of being alone or not being loved, also DON’T. You ARE lovable, and you will find people who will make you wonder why they love you so much and care about you so much even when you can’t think of anything about you that would be worth loving. And this is not lip-service – I’ve been in this situation many times and it never ceases to amaze me how I could always find people (even people I didn’t even know) who showed me love when I wouldn’t love myself.
I apologize if I’m not making a lot of sense, or if you have heard all this before. I just thought I should say something.
Also, I know I don’t usually comment about the things that you post here (Both because I’ve not been checking this site for a while, and because I am afraid I’ll say something dumb or even mean while trying to help), but if you don’t have anyone to talk about this sort of thing here in Brazil and you ever want to discuss stuff or just vent in Portuguese, you can hit me up. I’m not sure if I’m any good at cheering people up, but I am always happy to do it.
That explanation troubles me deeply. It raises more questions than it answers, to be honest. Let’s grant for a moment that “teasing someone because you like them” is a good idea, and that petty theft is an acceptable way to do it. I still want to ask. . . why his therapist? What gave him the idea that he could or should “like” his therapist? What makes him think he’ll learn anything or grow at all by stealing a woman’s pens and then charming her into an inappropriate relationship?
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound lovely to me. It sounds troubling, inappropriate, and just plain weird.
Personally, I’m not sure it”s helpful to assume that either face is the “real” face. Maybe both are acts he puts on consciously; maybe both are acts he puts on unconsciously. Maybe both are real, in their own way. Regardless, you’ve observed the way people react to his outer douche-persona, and doubted / questioned those reactions. I think you should also question the way people (including you) react to his more private persona before you accept those reactions as more valid.
Some people have a kind of laser-focused charisma. They don’t have the skills and graces used to charm a whole room, or to quickly make strangers think well of them, but if they get you alone they can catch your eyes and blind you with a searing beam of white-hot personality that melts your brain with its brilliance.
Some of these people are calculating manipulators who identify targets they need something from and turn up the charm by showing them what they want to see. Others are just people so talented and needy and generous and raw and incomplete that some people can’t stand to look at them and others can’t stand to look away.
It sounds like only a few people like him, but those people really like him. They like him so much that they suppress their values to stay near him (therapist’s professional code, your political values) and willingly take risks for him. This suggests to me that the people who recoil from him aren’t wrong. The vices, or flaws, or threats they see in him are real, and most people who see the flaws don’t see anything they like enough to redeem him. The only people who overlook those flaws are people who are so captivated by his virtues or apparent virtues as to overlook them.
EDIT: Curious what you think of this: http://kitwhitfield.blogspot.com/2009/10/real-life-mary-sues.html
@Imaginary Petal
Naw, but I intend to be! Just keep putting it off. And yeah, I don’t think he quite understood the nuance of your concern.
@Scildfreja
Thanks for the welcome package! 😀
@Chiomara
There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said by our fellow Mammotheers — and I’m too new and don’t feel it’s my place to offer advice anyway — but I can offer a few good songs that have always helped me when I’ve needed confidence and clarity:
Esperanza Spalding, “Precious”
India Arie, “Strength, Courage & Wisdom”
Wishing you peace and courage. 🙂