Friendship | The Habitation of Justice

When does yearning turn into dweebish neediness?

Lincoln Adams | June 3, 2009 @ 8:30 am

As I chat and connect with more and more people online (read: hot babes), there are times when I sorely miss talking to someone and I have to consciously make an effort not to barrage them with IMs, emails, texts, phone calls and whatnot just to get some attention.

I guess it’s normal for me to yearn for female companionship and friendship, but I wonder at what point it gets to be too much. I’m always groping in the dark trying to gauge whether it’s ok to reach out to someone, or whether I’m just being a pest. Women though (at least from what I’ve seen so far) seem to be like total camels here. I mean sheesh, if I didn’t reach out to them every now just to remind them that I’m still alive I’d be lucky if I ever heard from them again. I know a lot of people lead very busy lives, so I do take that into consideration, but it sucks the sucky suck when I’m left to sit here by myself twiddling my thumbs because there’s no one sane enough to talk to. Why am I always the yearner but never the yearnee? Or is it simply because I am a weenie-ish little poopiehead who is just not yearn-worthy enough for the wimmins? :tongue:

Women have created some very strange criteria in this regard too. On one hand they want a guy who’s independent and doesn’t need a woman to be happy, but then they get upset when said guy never calls them precisely BECAUSE he is in fact an independent brutha who doesn’t need a woman to be happy. If he doesn’t need a girl’s company, then chances are he’s not going to yearn for her either.

But then there’s the other extreme. I have a dear lady friend who seems to be surrounded by guys that bring neediness to levels I didn’t think were even possible. I thought I was bad? Holy crap. There’s one guy that texts, IMs, tweets and calls this poor woman every fricking minute of every fricking day, all day long, nonstop. And then another that does the same, only when he doesn’t get a response within 5 minutes he completely FLIPS THE %$^ OUT, getting all huffy and mad and bent out of shape because she didn’t INSTANTLY return his messages.

Seeing that crap does help me understand why women want a guy to be a bit more… free spirited, but that can be just as bad too. Do you really want to be with someone who doesn’t give you a second thought for weeks at a time? I sure don’t. There has to be a balance somewhere, and it makes me wonder what exactly started this mess. Have men always been clingy balls of mush, or did we start getting this way because our women have gotten more and more aloof and cold-hearted with each passing generation? Or have women become more aloof because they can’t deal with men’s growing insecurity?

Really, why can’t people yearn for each other in a normal way without overdoing it? Is that even possible anymore? All I ever see is this unequal balance where people are either too clingy or too aloof with each other, and I see the destructive impact it has on relationships too. One guy needs the girl more than the girl needs the guy (or vice versa), creating an inequitable bond that can only lead to ruin.

As for me, maybe I simply got old, but I’m starting to see a change in myself where I just don’t give a flying leap anymore. I think this is the product of years of unrequited love and the need for survival, reaching the tipping point where I finally end up as one of those free-spirited guys who have embraced and married the single life, though at the cost of losing all natural affection for the opposite sex. And while “physical needs” may still die hard, that can easily be satisfied by perusing the services of the world’s oldest profession. :whistle:

I have to admit, it sounds like a GREAT life. :angelgrin:

Tags: affection, companion, companionship, female companionship, free spirit, friendship, independent, relationship, single, unrequited, unrequited love, women, yearning
Categories: Romance and Relationships

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Whether in the clouds, or down in the dumps, I gotta be me

Lincoln Adams | May 18, 2009 @ 2:18 pm

Yesterday I got a snarky email from a reader over my last post, where she said merely what an “uplifting” read my post was. I asked her if she was being sarcastic and got this response:

Absolutely. I think I was wrong about you. I was under the impression that you were the type of person who turns lemons into lemonade. But this last post makes me wonder if you have a bad case of sour grapes … Nobody wants to hang out with a whiner.

So I wrote back and told her nobody likes to hang out with a judgmental haggish little prude either, and man she just gets bent all out of shape, demands that I unsubscribe her from my “depressive” blog and announces that she will also be blocking me from Twitter.

You know, I really dislike it when people don’t allow you to be yourselves. It’s like you’re not allowed to express any kind of negative emotion or feeling because that might somehow disrupt their Oprah run universe where the law of attraction applies and little pink bunnies prance through lush, dewy meadows.

So I whine. It’s what I do. I can’t always turn lemon into lemonades. I can’t always be happy 24 hours a day. And yes I know no matter how bad I have it sometimes, there are always people in far worse predicaments than me. But that knowledge doesn’t automatically take the pain away.

And like I told Miss Stupid Haggish Ho Bag Prude, my blog is an outlet of how I feel at that moment when I write, whether good or bad. It’s not meant to be a perpetually uplifting read (although it can be for the right people.) But this thing where people try to keep you locked in a box and dictate how you must feel or act gets old real fast. As a popular saying goes: if you can’t accept me at my worst, then you certainly don’t deserve me at my best either.

Besides, people are always in a constant state of transition. Just because they haven’t learned an important truth now doesn’t mean it won’t finally sink in later. We live, we make mistakes, and the wiser among us will learn from the experience. But people who judge you without taking the time to get to know you and who jump at the first HINT of a different opinion should really just get bent. I understand now why so many people put on a front because the fear of being rejected and left alone is so palpable and real. It doesn’t bother me as much because I’m used to being alone, and most times I even prefer it.

What DOES bother me though is watching how people take an immediate liking to me, thinking I am just about the greatest guy on earth, and meanwhile they don’t have a CLUE about who I really am. They just like some preconceived notion of me, which depresses me to no end because I know the minute they see something they don’t like, they will cut and run. We can’t talk about it like adults or just accept that there will be differences between us. No, I absolutely HAVE to conform to their criteria and expectations or otherwise I am just not worth the doo doo of their shoes. Nice.

Not everyone is like that, thankfully. People who don’t initially know me well end up still liking me even when I show my dark side, and for that I’m grateful (if still somewhat surprised by it.)

Or maybe they are just drawn to the power of the dark side. :naughty: