On Being Too Amazing
I realized again yesterday that my life is a hilarious paradox. This set of ideas was weighing on my mind, so I came to write this post, only to find I had started writing it two years ago and left it as a draft. It seems that v2019 Jane left this hanging and unfinished for completion today, when I would finally be able to see and describe the full scope of this concept.
So, about realizing my life is a hilarious paradox – there’s no reason I should feel surprised by this, based on the number of bizarre events I experience on any given day, but it is jarring to realize it with such clarity. I see now that the reason I expect never to feel loved for who I am is that I am “too amazing” to be loved for who I am. While this idea makes absolutely no logical sense, it bothers me because I am the only one who gets left out, per usual.
To clarify, I am not saying I believe myself to be “too amazing” or “too” anything. What I do see is that there have been an inordinate number of people who claim to see me as amazing but also cannot see me as someone they could spend their lives with. They have an ideal of what an amazing woman is, but I have *too much* of that quality to be acceptable.
With this latest experience, I gather that I had the supposed qualities, but still wasn’t “the one”. In reality, the guy was operating on an ideal that he should be in some kind of movie-style love stupor where he was supposed to want his future life to revolve around me… after two months of hanging out, not even in a relationship. Newsflash: that doesn’t happen to people in the formation of real life healthy relationships.
I have been in a pensive mood the past few days, working through ideas and sorting out my true thoughts and feelings. It takes me a minute to whittle it down because my thoughts are often clouded and bogged down with other people’s loud-ass opinions of what my thoughts and feelings “should” be. And, that’s the root of being deemed “too” anything – other people’s assumptions about who I actually am.
See, people tend to be mistaken when they assume what I think or feel, to an embarrassing degree. Even so, it still somehow comes as a shock when they try to tell me what I think or feel. I still feel disturbed that their assumptions are often the literal opposite of my true thoughts and feelings, because they are also accusing me of being the origin of their made-up set of “Jane’s feelings”.
This leads me to a series of questions:
- – Why do people believe they know what I think and feel when they have never actually asked me how I think or feel?
- – Why do people think they can dictate my own opinion to me?
- – Why do people get angry at me when I point out that what they’re saying I think or feel is something I have never thought or felt?
- – Why do people refuse to believe me when I tell them how I think or feel, despite the fact that I’ve repeatedly stated my true thoughts and feelings without variation?
Reading through those questions, I see the problem is that I am trying to figure out what the hell these people are thinking and what led them to think those specific things. In reality, none of their anxieties are even related to me as anything other than a placeholder for their true issues. It has also become clear that these people are apparently so self-absorbed that they become incapable of realizing all these pivotal conversations were created and played out in their brains, fueled solely by their anxiety.
Case in point, the evidence for this is also the number of people who have told me I am “amazing” yet also not worth any level of inconvenience or change on their part. This week’s event included the person stating I was worth it, he just wasn’t the person to convince me of this. The 2019 event included the person stating he didn’t know if he was doing the right thing by wanting me in his future because he really just wanted to be selfish.
A guy last year supposedly thought I was “the one” but kept trying to insult me about everything from my intellect to my grasp of Swedish because I didn’t go see him on his preferred schedule. A guy a few years ago told me he could see a future with me, even imagine having kids with me, but not marriage if it came down to it.
There have been so many instances like this that it’s actually funny now; I’m keeping a tally of people who panic and sabotage any potential love when they realize they are seriously trying to imagine me in their future. Radical acceptance, I suppose – it’s just the way it is, so I might as well get some entertainment value from it and make peace with being permanently outside the lines.
What I see today, and what I couldn’t see in 2019, is that these people are imagining their future with me…without my consultation. In fact, none of these people ever made the effort to ask me if I wanted a future with them, they each just assumed that must be where things were headed.
Surprise to anyone who isn’t me – I had neither planned nor expected a future with any of these people, because I don’t plan fake futures anymore. I was going day-to-day, just enjoying the breeze in the moment, and these people were 3 years in the future buying houses and getting joint bank accounts. Go figure.
I mean, I can really see that the issue here is people’s anxiety-riddled brains. I used to be that anxious, too, so I understand how that goes. I think what I don’t quite understand is the part where they’re making decisions about the future based on things that never actually happened. See, when I was anxious and saying weird shit to people, it was all based on how I was thinking and feeling and how I had interpreted things they had said directly to me. These anxious potential mates, instead, based their anxieties on things they assumed about me. None of it was based in reality.
So, on the one hand, I can feel empathy because I know how it feels to imagine there’s an urgent reason to make a decision about an issue. On the other hand, I have very little empathy when I tell them they’re acting out of turn and it’s bullshit they’re blaming all of their anxiety and made up future failures on me.
It’s not me causing their anxiety if I have never hinted, suggested, dreamed, or had any thoughts about the future they’re agonizing about. I don’t even know about these fake futures until these people come at me with rehearsed speeches about what I supposedly want from them and what they have decided as a result. Again, this has happened repeatedly, and the common factor is that these people have no idea what I *actually* want, need, think, or feel.
I will use two people throughout this conversation because they had opposite perspectives of me. I’ll call them M2019 and M2021. To give a little background, I was in a relationship with M2019 for a year and a half, then he lost his mind and began to believe he needed to commit to me.
I hung out with M2021 for a couple of months, just having fun adventures, when he lost his mind and began to believe he needed to decide whether he wanted to commit to me. Again, I had no intention of committing my entire future to either of these men, and I had not mentioned any type of permanent life together to either of these men.
My actual feelings about relationships are outlined in an old post called Risking Romance, wherein I break down how I feel and ultimately come to the conclusion that romance makes a lot of sense and would be wonderful *with the right person*, but also that I am very simple in that I just want my person, and that I have no pre-set conditions to build that imaginary relationship. The post is old, but it’s accurate. I still feel uneasy about being legally bound by marriage, but I would still love to have a sweetheart and that thought feels me with a smiling warmth.
M2019 read that post and took it to mean I would be fine with an open relationship as long as there was enough romance directed toward me. M2021 took it to mean that I would not want a love-filled romantic relationship at all. Same post, two very incorrect interpretations.
M2019 claimed our relationship was perfect *except* for the part where he didn’t get to have sex with other people. He got stuck in his mind six months before I dumped him, fixating on the apparent thousands of women he believed he was missing out on. I found out about this when he casually mentioned he’d been thinking of leaving the relationship for that sole reason. The weird thing is, he was the one who wanted to be in a monogamous relationship. I didn’t even want to date him initially because I did not find him attractive. Suffice it to say, I found him even less attractive as his obsession with our sex life increased.
He made no effort to improve his skillset, no effort to find out that I actually have a higher libido than him but was bored with his once-per-day capabilities, and no effort to talk to me about anything that involved me. And so I continued to lose attraction and love by the day, likely because I hate whining in general. Also because it’s fucking bullshit for a man to believe his partner owes him sex on a specific schedule, which he finally admitted. Eventually, I was just done wasting time on him altogether and cut him out of my life.
M2021 was fixated on the idea that I am rooted in one spot, because he wanted to be rooted in a different spot. These two locations are a only couple of hours apart. Nonetheless, he came at me with the decision that we shouldn’t be in a relationship because he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. Again, we were not even attempting a relationship. Again, we were not in love, there was literally no talk of him moving to my town, and there was literally no talk on my part of me having a future with him.
I stated multiple times that I enjoyed spending time with him and that was all I was doing or feeling. He suddenly became irate, believing he would eventually have to commit to me and then have to move to my location against his will. I pointed out that he’s assuming he will be the same person in the future, and it would be creepy for him to want to move to where I am before we are even in a relationship. I continued countering all of his made up reasons we could never be together in the future and he became increasingly agitated until he blew up at me. Eventually, I was just done wasting my time on him altogether and cut him out of my life.
These two situations were different yet similar. I can say that my initial response to ditching both of these people was, “Well, now I will have a lot of time to garden and work on my projects on the weekends!” It’s true, I do focus on what is currently happening in life. I was not attached to these people in the ways they believed I was. Period. Sure, I felt upset for a day or two with both incidents, due to my brain being the map-making wonder it is, trying to piece together negativity to make me believe I am garbage, but I got out of it.
The thing is, I keep coming back to people who have told me they don’t want to disappoint me. First of all, anybody who actually knows me is aware that I accept everyone as they are. Secondly, where do they get these amazingly high standards I supposedly hold them to that would cause me to feel disappointed when they fail to meet them? If I have never outlined a standard, why is it my duty to be disappointed when they don’t reach it? Why do I apparently have all the time in the world to meticulously follow and then be disappointed by their action or inaction?
I think it has something to do with people saying that I make them want to be better. I’m still quite hazy on how that translates to me being an amazing burden and, in turn, unlovable, but I feel like I am on the cusp of understanding. I am still missing a key piece of the puzzle here, but I think the idea is coming together in the back of my mind.
I think I understand part of it, to a degree. I know that I am a poor sport, specifically where board games are concerned. I always have been, and I can’t actually help it – it feels like some big injustice is happening when I repeatedly lose or when people gang up against me. It doesn’t matter what game it is, those are the emotions that arise. It feels truly upsetting sometimes, to the point where I, as a thirty-something adult, have had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom because I can feel myself beginning to cry.
I feel embarrassed that I literally cry about games because it makes no logical sense. I know that part of it is that I feel left out and disliked and that I am always the preferred target. I’m also aware that it’s not actually about losing. In reality, I feel acutely hurt and believe I am somehow failing; as if I should have been able to anticipate their moves, that I should have seen that trap, or that I should have played poorly to prevent the inevitable teaming up against me.
And, I think, the last part is what I need to work through. I do see how that relates to other people believing I hold them to a high standard – even I hold myself to some arbitrary standard that says I’m supposed to be better than I am at board games and that I should be able to control my emotions when I feel hurt. But, if that standard is an internal standard, why do people believe I hold them to a similar standard, especially when I have never told anybody about these impossible standards I innately have for myself?
This is something I need to figure out. In the meantime, I feel like I am done trying to date. Nobody seems to be authentic, and I only want someone authentic. And so, if nobody is authentic, then I do not need to waste time on these people who genuinely don’t care about me as a person, only an idea. This gives me a whole lot more time in my garden.