Recently, I let unqualified, biased and angry people with self-serving goals get in my head and turn the screws yesterday.
I made a mistake and it bit me in the ass. I allowed myself to be distracted and ended up with other people defining me with more misguided armchair psychology. Clearly, mistakes are for other people.
As such, I spent over five hours of my life yesterday sitting in parking lots across two states typing responses to people more interested in covering me with labels than in an actual adult conversation.
Others may consider me a really horrible boyfriend and menace to society but I don’t run from it or hide. I’m willing to own my behaviors, learn from others and make new mistakes.
I don’t hide…but I do get distracted at times like an absent minded professor.
Around 2:34 am morning I realized I allowed myself to be distracted. I may not be pursuing C but I continue to pursue her forgiveness and understanding. That needs to stop too. It’s never going to happen and her opinion is none of my business.
I still take their unprofessional opinions personally. I’m not a doctor and neither are they. They are no more qualified to make evaluations on my motives and mental health than I am to perform heart surgery. Actually, they aren’t qualified to do heart surgery either…but everyone loves to be a part of the story.
My defensive posturing just feeds raw meat to hyenas preying on the decaying carcass of my relationship with C. That isn’t C’s fault and I’m not holding her responsible for their unsolicited opinions.
Although, I did.
She is no more responsible for their choices than she is for mine.
However, I need to stop being drawn into a debate of definitions related to triangulation, narcissistic tendencies, grooming, and gaslighting with people that treat this as an episode of To Catch a Predator. I figure it will stop when northern Wisconsin warms up and people go outside again. My infidelity has turned into their hobby.
They believe I think this is a game because they read an article entitled 5 Signs You’re Dating a Narcissist. They believe I’m incapable of really understanding what I’ve done, owning it or changing. And if I am a narcissist they may be right but, as my doctor says, “Leave the diagnosis of pathology to the professionals.”
Someone said talking to me “doesn’t matter because I don’t think you want to get better” and “this is just a part of your life pattern.”
Again, the assumption that I need to get “better”. Every word is code revealing their feeling I’m “sick”. More armchair psychology.
My behavior broke five valuable relationships and damaged good people. This isn’t a game. This is life and death.
I’m not an expert. Neither are they.
Toss in the reality none of them have talked with me, my friends, or my doctor since this started. They think reading my writing tells them everything they need to know about what is going on with me.
Using that logic, I assume looking at a painting means I know everything going on internally with the painter.
I have spent the last 72 days trying to be focused inward. Counseling, journaling, reading, talking with nonjudgmental friends, listening to men and women dealing with infidelities, and working to shine the light onto the darkness of my blind spots and apply honesty and openness to these issues.
What have the armchair psychologists done?
They have spent the last 72 days imagining they are shining the light onto the darkness of my blind spots.
What a wonderful world it would be if people spent half as much energy on their own blind spots instead of pretending to be Sherlock Holmes about mine.
I’m working very hard not to be distracted by the Inspector Gadget’s of The Armchair Psychology Squad.
They have no special knowledge, only opinions built around someone else’s ghost stories. Nothing I do or say is going to change the status of my relationship with C and hers is the only opinion that matters. We’re finished (and I’m working on being okay with that).
I’m finished pursuing her forgiveness, acceptance, or opinion. I’m finished pursuing conversations or a relationship with C. I need to also be done pursuing the approval of ghost hunters. I need to be finished being distracted.
I need to spend my energy pursuing my future and be less concerned about others pursuing a mythologized past.