I tell @Baden I accidently had sex with his stupid fucking dog last night thinking it was his mom — Hanover

Hang on, if you were banging my dog, who—or what—was I banging? :grimace:

So wrong, and yet I can't look away.

I tell Baden I accidently had sex with his stupid fucking dog last night thinking it was his mom
— Hanover

Hang on, if you were banging my dog, who—or what—was I banging? :grimace: — Baden

The Aristocrats.

Your problem person sounds like a particularly nasty mix of (1) and (3), and that's a lost cause. Someone who's right no matter what they do and an asshole at the same time. Their actions are in a continued state of exception and never aggregated into their persistent sense of identity. You are a thorn, they are pulling it out. You are a crawling ant, they will destroy you without a thought. — fdrake

What I can tell you is that he is miserable and my unhappiness gave him pleasure even to a point of giving him meaning as he compared my weakened state as evidence that his life is so much more better. There was no honest pursuit or attempt to form a bond with me and he made sure that his decision to do this was the right one by making me appear crazy and worthless. I was just an object he wanted for a few weeks to then discard and go back to his actual life (he cared nothing about me as a human being, my identity, my values) and since that did not manifest, like an angry child who did not get the toy he wanted in the store, he lashed out.

His aggression helped relieve his misery and strengthened his relations with his girlfriend who joined in following his slanders; he made it out like I was chasing him, and he would ask me to come into work early or lure me in other ways so that he can pretend to others that we had some secret thing going on while protecting himself by constantly talking about his girlfriend. He had a secret. He really wanted me despite having a partner and so he was at risk of being caught; he used it to his advantage and got her involved instead.

He created the whole thing all by himself, influencing others, indirectly threatening me, everything was created in his own mind and such was his persistence. I just could not get him to stop. I did not want to believe that he was a lost cause, but again and again and again until I gave up. I still wish you are wrong, my loving nature really wants to believe that he could feel remorse or something, to try and be a friend. It is almost like his ability to achieve this would make me believe in humanity.

That is not the kind of person to martyr yourself to for any apparently philosophical ideal — fdrake

:yikes: If I don't need to help good people, then isn't he the kind of person you try to help? In the bookThe English Patient, it said: “If you take in someone else’s poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you.” That is what happened. I am no martyr, though, I am lot smarter and well equipped than most think. Hence why accessing your vulnerabilities and articulating your emotions is actually empowering.

Hm. I suppose this is part of blaming the victim for how they're treated. Responsibility's absolved from me because they deserve it, or are somehow asking for it. I don't actually think there's much reason for it, at least when I've done it. It's like identifying as a cat playing with the baby bird, pushing it around on the ground until its legs buckle, wings snap and it eventually bleeds out. That I could catch someone in a moment of weakness that I created legitimated feasting on the all the horror and inner torment I caused. It was certainly fun. — fdrake

This is about you not about them because your actions is a type of relief for you. People who self-harm find relief in such behaviour as a coping mechanism for the emotional pressure that they feel, only in your case it is projected outwardly as though the animal that you torture is an inanimate object inasmuch as the person that you bully has been dehumanised. Just like when one clenches their teeth and becomes physically tense that aggression and violence helps relieve that tension, words can be just as violent as it damages a person psychologically. Violence does not need to be physical; ostracising, slandering, threatening (particularly indirectly) are all forms of violence, as well as the whole bystander/gang behaviour where the more people you have your side, the more justified your actions become is a form of aggression. What better way to get people to side with you when you make a joke of the person.

You would not act if you felt nothing and so you are imagining weakness as a tool in as much as thinking there are threats and insults that are prompting the necessity to retaliate. You would believe anything that would enable you to act and all this is caused by your own emotional volatility. You intentionally seek the vulnerable because you are assured control over the situation, because being vulnerable implies a lack of control, and aggression is a way of rehabilitating those vulnerable sensations within.

Those who have Borderline Personality Disorder - whilst lacking in empathy - have embedded deep feelings of insecurity and the ego responds against these intense feelings through impulsive and aggressive behaviour. There is no switch in the brain to feel empathy and it likely has developmental beginnings where there is an absence of any conditioning to recognise the responsibility of their own behaviour. That is, they are completely oblivious of how others perceive them and cannot relate because there has not never been any communication fostered or interpersonal relationships as a mechanism to develop healthy patterns of social behaviour.

All three have the capacity to be rooted in something deeply psychological or traumatic. Or perhaps they aren't. — fdrake

It does not need to be rooted in something deeply traumatic, but that most of our behaviours and responses are conditioned and thus bullying behaviour is fostered and formed from a very young age. Romanian orphans that were left in the same place and never felt the warmth of affection neither had any adequate sustenance and play actually had profound physical and cognitive effects. Parental styles such as using threats, ignoring behaviour that often goes unchecked and a lack of interpersonal interactions such as having friends can have a negative impact on a person' behaviour.

These are attractive men, they have muscles in places I never knew existed, popping out everywhere like a balloon full of walnuts, the type of guys who iron their shirts while they are wearing it. — TimeLine

Look at you checking out the scenery. Sounds like you were getting busy at the gym. And by "busy," I mean preggers.

In our culture here in Australia, these 'jocks' are not visibly nasty because society contains and controls their behaviour; they get tattoos, pretend to care about some charity to make themselves appear moral, paste "the thinker" type photos all over Instagram with some ridiculous quote (some women do this face where one of their drawn-on eyebrows are raised and puff up their lips with a slight nose flare and write some feigned story about self-love), and yet underlying all that remains this hostility, this sense of entitlement and superiority — TimeLine

H8r.

There is no substance, they offer nothing that is real. I did not anticipate their reaction and was genuinely surprised because my joke quoting Dracula was hilarious, but in doing so kind of revealed who they were that has thus enabled me to write this. So, no, I did not feel bad at all and they are only really nice to me because I knew more people than they thought I did and that made them look bad (society contains and controls their behaviour). — TimeLine

Either they changed their behavior towards you because they realized they had insulted Miss Australia or they simply felt bad for having made fun of the apparent teenage transsexual rocking in the corner laughing to hirmself while quoting obscure passages from 19th century literature onto an even more obscure philosophy forum.

Oh yeah, I done brung it.

Bet you got your kicks into provoking her, the type of guy who tries to make his girlfriend jelly by flirting with other women. — TimeLine

You're sounding a bit jelly yourself. I didn't know that jelly came in so many flavors.

*Files nails. — TimeLine

Look at me damn it. I'm doing funny things. Look at me!

You would not act if you felt nothing and so you are imagining weakness as a tool to act in as much as thinking there are threats and insults that are prompting the necessity to retaliate and thus an apriori right as you say; you would believe anything that would enable you to act and all this is prompted by your own emotional volatility. You intentionally seek the vulnerable because - as cowards do - you are assured control over the situation, because being vulnerable implies a lack of control and aggression is a way of rehabilitating those vulnerable sensations within.

Yeah, the way I used weakness in the previous posts is probably a retrojection. A better summary might be that targets are contemptible. Or perhaps they become contemptible because of the series of decisions to victimise them. At that point it makes sense to brand them with weakness, since they're victimised. That will get fed back into the bullying feedback loop, something like 'your responses are over-reactions and will be met with understandable scorn', to reference a previous comment to @Hanover. I'm pretty sure that the target has to respond in a certain way to make themselves a tempting victim for continued psychological assault. This isn't to blame them, it's to say that only certain responses would be a turn on.

you would believe anything that would enable you to act and all this is prompted by your own emotional volatility. You intentionally seek the vulnerable because - as cowards do - you are assured control over the situation, because being vulnerable implies a lack of control and aggression is a way of rehabilitating those vulnerable sensations within.

Certainly sometimes I've profited from others' vulnerabilities. I used to do palmistry (cold reading) as a hobby, one of the things I noticed was that the more traumatic the details exposed during the reading, the more accurate the reading would be remembered. Further, the less I said new things and the more I rephrased what they said provocatively, the more accurate a reading it was remembered as. Put these two together, and there was a big satisfying payoff whenever I was able to get a punter to relive something horrible; then they'd remember it like I'd seen into their soul.

I'm actually very emotionally stable. Most of my friends think of me as a rock. Furthermore, even if they're very mentally resilient they usually want to talk to me about their problems. Hell, they even find it helpful, and I get a lot of satisfaction from it. Generally, what I do if I sense that someone's currently suffering from some vulnerability or insecurity is ask them if they're suffering from it in a low-key way, then try to help them with it if I can. People trust me and I've very rarely abused that trust.

As much as it's tempting to paint me black all over, a person who is constantly predatory and looking to be cruel, I'm a lot more compartmentalised than that. I imagine most people who have been bullies are compartmentalised in this way. It'd be difficult to maintain a positive self image if there weren't some extenuating circumstances or means of forgetting. Most people have done (or neglected) things that are difficult to square with their sense of identity. And, pace @unenlightened, you have to find a convenient fault-line to elide (both senses simultaneously) to have an identity to begin with. Example, you can be a workplace bully and a great partner at the same time; and not in the Screwtape sense of praying for your partner's soul every evening after you've assaulted them.

@TimeLine

His aggression helped relieve his misery and strengthened his relations with his girlfriend who joined in following his slanders; he made it out like I was chasing him, and he would ask me to come into work early or lure me in other ways so that he can pretend to others that we had some secret thing going on while protecting himself by constantly talking about his girlfriend. He had a secret. He really wanted me despite having a partner and so he was at risk of being caught; he used it to his advantage and got her involved instead.

This sounds pretty familiar. I had a friend (guy) who sexually assaulted another friend (girl), there were a lot of witnesses, but the guy denied doing it repeatedly, he couldn't handle that he'd done it because it just doesn't square with his identity. So he made an elaborate story up and got his friends involved over it. Ironically, because of the way our social group was composed, the people who asserted that the guy had sexually assaulted the girl were stigmatised.

Sounds pretty similar, in terms of the mental states of the aggressor. Girl's life was a lot better when she never had to see the guy again, stopped feeling like she needed to apologise or redeem him, and stopped feeling sullied; and equating the thing which removes the sullying with the redemption of the guy. I'm imagining that you're in a similar situation to the girl. I don't have a freakin' clue why you feel like you need to redeem him, and I imagine it would help a lot if you stopped.

You know, I think you're basically right about humor, its uses and abuses. I didn't intend to paint too thoroughly damning a portrait. I think what happened was something like: I was trying to validate Tclark's complaint by focusing on one potentially negative use of humor and that laid in place some conversational rails which made it easier for me to then continue on that theme.

Essentially, it is all about intent and our individual motives and the culture or social conditions must provide the platform that is conducive to good behaviour as much as it is responsible for the bad. There are bad people making bad jokes, but we do not eliminate jokes to eliminate the bad. We challenge the motives. — TimeLine

I agree with the point about motives. I hesitate to talk in terms of bad and good people. I don't mean this as an ivory forum thing where I get to pretend I'm above all condemnation and take in all the world in an understanding embrace. In real life I get caught up in this stuff all the time, and online sometimes too. It's just that I've learned, through bitter experience, that if I get too used to characterizing stuff in absolute moral terms, and sort of look out and see people through that lens, then I'm strengthening a sort of moral/emotional muscle, Condemnation+Shame, which works fine until I find that I've slipped up, again. Then - bam - that same muscle I've built up is now turned against me.

My posts certainly had some good/bad connotations, which I wish I had softened a bit. I may have contributed to introducing that good/bad chill into the thread. I think fdrake's posts about bullying exemplify the approach I would like to take: a kind of objective, nonjudgmental look at how this stuff functions. With the intent to stop engaging in it as much, of course, but without making its uses symptoms of an inherent badness. More like unfortunate patterns that we all get caught up in from time to time.

I like distance. I need to observe. It takes time with me, which is why friendship is paramount. We build walls to protect ourselves and we protect ourselves because we know how terrible it can feel when our trust has been betrayed. I give hints here and there, but the question is what exactly do you want? And why from me? Do you say the same to your male counterparts or are you suggesting that I need to give you more than just the words that I write? .

Yeah, I like distance too. Or, I don't know if I like it, but I certainly have trouble functioning without it. I'm not sure what I want. I've been on a kind of boundary-shaking tear these past few months, at least on here. Not just you, by any means: I've been doing the same kind of thing, in different ways, on quite a few threads, with quite a few different posters (male posters, I'll add!). It doesn't feel all that good and it all really caught up to me the past two days and I've just felt gross about it. I have lot of recent discussions here, about people not confronting stuff, about presenting their selves falsely, about approaches that try to neatly organize the world at the expense of real life - certainly all seems to point to something I need to address, I just can't quite figure out exactly how to. I stand by most of what I've said in this thread, but I don't think my last post was really necessary.

Since there's so much talk about games people play, how does game theory factor into this discussion if at all?

I think this is a function of your stance towards the thread more than anything. It is a very unusual thread, a nauseating psychological hall of mirrors. Is it possible for you to see yourself as one of the reflections? In it rather than beyond it.

I wonder what came to be to make this thread how it is. Very strange.

its been dizzying to me. It feels kind of like what I felt the first time I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though I couldn't quite say why. It's hard for me see reflections in general - I'm trying, but it keeps sort of slipping away

Since there's so much talk about games people play, how does game theory factor into this discussion if at all? — Posty McPostface

Call the game 'analysis', or 'theorising', or 'psychology'. It's a game people play of theorising the games people play, that involves the analysis of what is a person. It requires that we can distinguish a person from a player. Sometimes I play this game, and sometimes I play another game, and the sense of being a person is that the same something plays this game and that game.

I am seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of ...

I'm trying, but it keeps sort of slipping away — csalisbury

Unsurprisingly, I end up lost in the game, and perhaps it is tempting to conclude that the person is the persona, and there is nothing behind the mask, nothing playing the game but the game characters.

Because even if I play the game of not playing the game, I am still playing the game; it is just another persona. And yet the sense that I am not the mask I wear, the game I play, persists - it is an experience, but it is unanalysable.

Let's make a rule - one that is unbreakable: whereof one cannot analyse, thereof one must not analyse.
Call it 'the mystical', and allow that though it cannot be defined it can be manifested, (manifested through the relations of masks in the game, as the unsaid indications 'between the lines').

its been dizzying to me. It feels kind of like what I felt the first time I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though I couldn't quite say why. It's hard for me see reflections in general - I'm trying, but it keeps sort of slipping away — csalisbury

I bailed out of this discussion a couple of days ago, although I've been reading the posts. There's a darkness here that resonates with a darkness and dread inside me, although I haven't articulated it the way you and the others have. It's not hidden. It's always there, but I don't bring it out, dust it off, and look it over very often. The way I think about it doesn't really fit in with the theme of this thread, at least not the nominal theme, but I'm wondering if there isn't something deeply male about it. It's not part of the games we're discussing. It's under the games. Behind them.

I was sort of hoping to nip self-recursive meta-scaffolding in the bud by highlighting that these are scripts. A script can be analysed, re-interpreted, and played -- and it can also be put on a shelf. It can be owned as a prized script, beloved as a favorite script, and forgotten about after putting it on a shelf but habitually re-emerging as we pick up another script to play out.

Since the scripts aren't written with our well-being in mind the shelf is usually the best place to put them -- to be read and discussed, but only played out for the fun of it and with a full understanding that this is just a play, and not who I am really.

But who am I really? Well, you'll find out in time, the more time we spend together. The script helps in looking for analogies, but they aren't anything other than fictions, with the possibility of some truth. And the answer to the question doesn't have some kind of final answer, or even a right one. There's no meta-analysis which will resolve the question of who we are. We are what we are: a multiplicity, a depth, an answer, a being. We are everyone's Other, and everyone is Other to us. And isn't the Other actually a mystery, anyways? Wouldn't they know better than the script?

You may be a hopeless romantic falling in love with the daughter of an enemy, and I'd point out that you're playing the part of Romeo. But, all the same, you'd still be csalisbury, and it would only help in orienting you to point out said analogy -- you wouldn't be Romeo, just as you wouldn't be any character trope (Male, Father, Analyst, Priest, Teacher, Female, Mother, Child, Patient, Sinner, Student).

I was of the impression that the priming of interpreting responses as scripts was the thing which set the self recursive meta-scaffolding off to begin with. I'm not sure what created the priming in the thread though.

Wouldn't they know better than the script?

The analyst is also such a script. Including it as a script among many is what sets off the vertigo. Everything said is starved of expression but simultaneously too much. The role of the analyst is the usual affective standpoint posts here come from; creating a schism between what's read then reacted to and what's identified with. To play the game of the analyst here is, partly, to see yourself amongst the impersonal ideas the analyst judges from a distance; and so people playing the game find their voice stolen from them by identifying with themselves as another impersonal idea; as one among many.

Encountering yourself within the play of signs in the thread is to hold yourself in suspension; as public property; which destroys the impersonality we usually afford to the role by affirming it as a property of ourselves.

It's like coming home and finding your doppleganger in the bathroom.

It's like coming home and finding your doppleganger in the bathroom. — fdrake

Great image! But also using your towel, and demanding to know what the fuck you are doing barging into his bathroom.

And then...

Poor as the birds but to give their songs away
Gathering possessions 'round to make a bright array
Dark was the night, praise God the open door
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
Farewell sorrow, praise God the open door
I ain't got no home in this world any more. — Robin Williamson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVNcttXoX8

Then it had the opposite effect to the intent. :D

Though I didn't mean to say that every response is a script, too. I just meant these sorts of cliche's -- the analyst, for instance.

A response, though, is just a response from you to me. It's something I listen to, rather than analyse. It is not a script, but what you are saying to me -- to interpret it in the frame of the script is to forget that the script lies on the shelf, rather than who you are.

That's kind of what I was trying for at least. Does that make sense?

A response, though, is just a response from you to me. It's something I listen to, rather than analyse. It is not a script, but what you are saying to me -- to interpret it in the frame of the script is to forget that the script lies on the shelf, rather than who you are.

I think this makes some sense. At least, the sense I made of it was trying to play about with the analogy of shelf and script to see if it compares well to the sense you made of it. Then I decided to expand on the analogy because it was inspiring, difficult to look away from like my doppleganger.

I think you see it something like, there's a vast library of scripts available for each person, people can play about with the scripts and commensurate themselves with them by playing along with a selection; always their selection in regardless of how agency is attributed according to a script. These two things; commensuration with scripts and selection of operative scripts; are rendered equivalent through actions. In this respect, people are the librarians of this vast library, a personality is simultaneously a pagination of each book and a library classification system (like Dewey Decimal) of the scripts.

Generalising:

In this library, somewhere near the back, there are scripts for 'commensuration with scripts'. The Analyst lives somewhere in there, so does The Histrionic. Both of these are genre demarcated like the selection in a book shop, little tags above the scripts given by the general pagination/classification system which keeps the library in order. However, some of the subsections when selected have their own way of paginating and classifying the whole library. The Analyst has to do this, exploring the terrain again before deciding what kind of map to draw; which scripts are chosen (again, indifferent to agency) to navigate the terrain.

Perhaps, when the librarians have sufficiently similar scripts and the Analyst would tell them the terrain has the same landmarks, this is what is meant by following a rule and what gives such an amorphous denotation retrospective definiteness. The Analyst would also tell them that there's nothing of which they couldn't, in principle, speak because making way for the sense of things is always-already a pagination and classification system for the Analyst. The Analyst doesn't notice he does this while finding the scripts which have already made sense of things. One of the Analyst's principle tricks is forgetting that he's commensurated with the librarian itself, which is how he appears to edit the other scripts. Another way of saying it, nonsense is anathema to the Analyst, which is funny, as it's how he makes sense of things. He reaches underneath the shelves, finding fragments of scripts in the direction of the unwritten. Forgetting, as a matter of necessity, that it is the librarian who lends his body for such navigation.

His is only an intellectual joy, a reappropriated ecstasy, felt only in the hole behind the librarian's eyes. Feeling so strongly is quite remarkable for something which never quite exists.

Admittedly yours wasn't the direction my mind was going in, but I think we're on the same track with the metaphor/analogy. So, yes, I would agree that you read me right. People can play with scripts to see what commensurates with themselves, if they do in fact, and agency isn't the interesting thing here either. There is a vast library, both within ourselves but also -- so I would say -- that we collectively have access to. We are all librarians.

Then there is The Analyst, a character in a script but also there are analysts who commensurate with said script and select it as an operative script, thereby acting the part of analyst -- creating and analyzing a dewey decimal system of the library. The Analyst can see all, for The Analyst has perused the library and knows where to look. But, as you say, this borrows from the body of all of us librarians - which the person who plays the analyst is also one such body, but in the playing of the role can forget that there is a body in a library reading scripts and playing.

In highlighting the (per?)scriptive nature of our roles I'm trying to draw attention to this body in the library, and the doors the library has which we can step out of. We have books, but we are also something other than the books -- that which the books are about.

So I guess in a sense these scripts would be different from games, after all -- at least in our formulation here -- since rules of a game are more of a similarity between scripts which turn into roles to play out.

Then there is The Analyst, a character in a script but also there are analysts who commensurate with said script and select it as an operative script, thereby acting the part of analyst -- creating and analyzing a dewey decimal system of the library. The Analyst can see all, for The Analyst has perused the library and knows where to look. But, as you say, this borrows from the body of all of us librarians - which the person who plays the analyst is also one such body, but in the playing of the role can forget that there is a body in a library reading scripts and playing. — Moliere

I think the fungibility of being a character in a script, commensuration with scripts, and being a script in its own right is something pretty unique to the Analyst script. (Almost) All the scripts have to be put on a level playing field in order for the Analyst to work as it does. Since It clusters them into meaningful islands of relevance (commensuration over scripts) borrowing operations from them (commensuration to a script) to push on the boundaries of those isles and shape them for the terrain (as provided by the librarian's adoption of the role, proclivities from histories). It meets the librarian in their shared activity of fumbling towards the next unwritten. The embedded interplay of
[ (script<->librarian)<-world] terminates and orients us to that world, adding a librarian->world relationship to that composite through enacting the role. The interplay of all these things is being the Analyst, including (librarian<-world) as the present unwritten/unexpressed and (librarian->world) as accommodating to what was not already determined (scripted).

Contrast this to the similar role of the Agony Aunt, which requires [(script<->librarian)<-external agent] to advise. Or the Flirt, which is [(script<->librarian)<-external agent] to seduce. Only the Analyst problematises itself, in some senses it is the discourse of problematisation, which is spoken mostly in other voices merged with the silence beneath them. Which is to say

[(script<->librarian)<-analyst]->analyst

is within its scope, a picture of the hall of mirrors generated in the thread.

The arrows are supposed to convey the direction of the relationships without specifying their nature. The brackets are supposed to convey a unity of the contained terms.

Echoing your concerns, I hope this makes some kind of sense. It's difficult to find words this far back in the library.

Call the game 'analysis', or 'theorising', or 'psychology'. It's a game people play of theorising the games people play, that involves the analysis of what is a person. It requires that we can distinguish a person from a player. Sometimes I play this game, and sometimes I play another game, and the sense of being a person is that the same something plays this game and that game.

I am seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of ... — unenlightened

Yes, but the subjectivity of playing the game of what call you not, is removed from the analysis in game theory. The mounting ethos/sentiment of this thread, as unfortunate as this may sound, is that people are egotistical swines. Is that too much to handle?

Yes, but the subjectivity of playing the game of what call you not, is removed from the analysis in game theory. — Posty McPostface

I don't think it is at all, it is assumed from the beginning without question.

Yeah, the way I used weakness in the previous posts is probably a retrojection. A better summary might be that targets are contemptible. Or perhaps they become contemptible because of the series of decisions to victimise them. At that point it makes sense to brand them with weakness, since they're victimised. That will get fed back into the bullying feedback loop, something like 'your responses are over-reactions and will be met with understandable scorn', to reference a previous comment to Hanover. I'm pretty sure that the target has to respond in a certain way to make themselves a tempting victim for continued psychological assault. This isn't to blame them, it's to say that only certain responses would be a turn on. — fdrake

That guy I mentioned had some deep resentment to his mother, but he could never admit that. How can anyone, you are not allowed to have those feelings. She left his father and his father eventually passed away and I remember him telling me how he would go off into a shed and beat a boxing bag until it ripped apart. She still seems to control his behaviour and decisions and he does what he is told and adheres to them, including the people he should associate with and so he has never learnt to think for himself, to take responsibility for his own behaviour. It is like he is safe from that responsibility as long as he does what he is told, resorting to aggression for this deep and unknown resentment because of his impaired understanding of his own emotions. He was angry with me because I was his mother, an anger he could not give to her.

In his heart, he probably wanted to get close to me but did not understand the emotion, the affection that he probably felt. It was his and he has no clue of who he is. He felt like he wanted something, but in his mind - being impaired - he could not separate the him with what he is told to do and so could not understand how to change his life based on what he wanted. His partner has the approval of his mother and I have seen her feed him this strange emotional control by telling him that he is happy with her, that he thinks this and thinks that as though she is telling him what to think but in a manipulative way. He doesn't want to make her unhappy or garner her disapproval, so it meant that he could only be himself without their knowledge as though I was a part of his secret world, a world that shouldn't actually be a secret because it is real, him, the person he was not allowed to be. And, obviously, because I am a human being with thoughts and experiences, as part of healthy interpersonal relationships, it was something I don't want; I don't want to be a mistress, I don't want to be hidden and seen as a temporary object, but he took that as rejection considering his inability to understand his own responsiveness to his emotions. He doesn't understand me.

This falls back onto the fact that while he may not feel empathy and it is parallel to extreme narcissism, his pathological inability to connect with others vis-a-vis atypical reactions and responsiveness to his own feelings of distress is mostly because of some deficit in understanding his own emotions characterised by some dysfunction in interpersonal relations stemming from childhood. He was told what to think that he does not know how to do it on his own, and in that forms a kind of 'numbness' that as he gets older and his cognitive capacity gets more mature, a conflict arises that he just simply cannot understand.

So, because I understood him and what he was going through, I forgive him. I just could not tell him and guide him to this understanding because he was too aggressive and frightened me that I was left trying to protect myself rather than trying to help him.

As much as it's tempting to paint me black all over, a person who is constantly predatory and looking to be cruel, I'm a lot more compartmentalised than that. I imagine most people who have been bullies are compartmentalised in this way. It'd be difficult to maintain a positive self image if there weren't some extenuating circumstances or means of forgetting. Most people have done (or neglected) things that are difficult to square with their sense of identity. — fdrake

I am thoroughly surprised that so many people find this thread to be distasteful because, like your friend who could not accept - despite the clarity - that he committed a serious wrong, it is as though our self-defensive mechanisms initiate a subjective fear that forces us to turn away from our vulnerabilities.

As children we are taught that if we are honest after we have done a wrong, we will be punished, some consequence will occur and so we need to protect ourselves from this consequence. I find that to be immature and lacks reflective practice that stems perhaps even from a type of cowardice. The worst kind of person is one who openly accepts he is a coward to ensure continuity in his self-deceit rather than honourably face the punishment. That is why one of my favourite movies is Dead Man Walking.

Despite the fact that much of what you say has disturbed me, your ability to articulate your past as a bully has given me insight into my experiences with one and that is how change or improvement can be made, as well as forgiveness. You could have bullshitted your way through this by portraying yourself in a more morally acceptable light as is often the case socially, but you didn't and while it is brutal in its honesty, I am one of the very people out there that wants that and not the whole 'people play games'.

Well I'm glad going into the role of the bully was helpful. The brutality of my delivery was probably game like, a facsimile of approaching such things with integrity (both senses). I'm interested though, and want to admire my hair in the mirror, what did you find disturbing about it?

Well I'm glad going into the role of the bully was helpful. The brutality of my delivery was probably game like, a facsimile of approaching such things with integrity (both senses). I'm interested though, and want to admire my hair in the mirror, what did you find disturbing about it? — fdrake

I think most of all I was sad because I have - and still do - hold onto the hope that he would feel remorse and find the courage to be honest, which I think you showed to be impossible. It breaks my heart that he and I will never be friends.

I saw him through you, a glimpse into what he was thinking and feeling (or the lack thereof) and that made me uncomfortable as it made sense of why I thought he was dangerous. You were very cold and calculated. Your descriptions of killing a bird, perceptions against weakness, and your friendships with the wrong kind of people brought to mind a book I read on the nature of violence where young men with high testosterone levels associating with deviant peers themselves become conduct disordered. It made me feel hopeless as though nothing was going to get through to you because of the solidity of your perceptions and your almost robotic identification with the external world that lacks any responsiveness to the cultural and creative, that you have no joy enough to see humour as pointless save for it being a tool to hurt others, that I would need to watch what I say so that you don't get offended or retaliate with aggression, everything that I was feeling with him several years ago, but that I never really understood.

Our understanding and cognition is evolutionary and thus our interpretations of our past and memories are continuously changing as we are. A person who loves - as I do - attends to her past by accessing and attempting to analyse the emotional responses that I have and why I am having them, which then leads me to a network of possible past experiences and physical causes that could have propelled this reaction and piece together a number of possible factors that leads to that aha! moment. I am being brutally honest too but my disposition is highly empathetic and loving. I see virtues of loving-kindness and respect to be paramount to the human condition. Someone like you is calculated and logical, seeing emotional responses as devoid of any rational substance and so analyses the past as though it were an irrelevant document to be filed away.

Thank fuck you are approaching this with a game-like stratagem :lol:

Thanks! You never actually offended me by the way. Not that it felt particularly safe to engage with you in that way, but I didn't feel particularly at risk either since I've had similar conversations before. I felt a little bit like a tour guide. But also like a mirror, I never felt like you were actually talking to me, only me in the abstract or a projection.

I think most of all I was sad because I have - and still do - hold onto the hope that he would feel remorse and find the courage to be honest, which I think you showed to be impossible. It breaks my heart that he and I will never be friends. — TimeLine

You still love him. Notice the period at the end of the sentence. He occupies your thoughts. Get him out of there. He doesn't love you. Commit to dedicating as much of your day thinking about and ruminating about and writing about him as he does you. Zero.

Commit to dedicating as much of your day thinking about and ruminating about and writing about him as he does you. Zero. — Hanover

Dare I say that sometimes reviewing our past relationships and figuring out the reason they failed (which always takes two as the relationship starts with two and ends with two) educates and highlights the reasons why for us, so we are not doomed to repeat them.

I have witnessed one woman, marrying three men, all of which if you set up a profile on are all the same. The only difference is their names and faces.

I suppose we could be witnessing an attempt to obtain therapy to eliminate prior negative patterns, but it looks like heartache and pining to me, not resolved by analysis and obsessing, but by finding someone new.

The reality is that the antagonist in our story is better positioned for future happiness because he lacks the emotional baggage. Likely he has moved on and is well on his way to the 2 kids, picket fence, and happily ever after than what we have here.

You still love him. Notice the period at the end of the sentence. He occupies your thoughts. Get him out of there. He doesn't love you. Commit to dedicating as much of your day thinking about and ruminating about and writing about him as he does you. Zero. — Hanover

I don't love him like that (that would be fucking weird) but that I am a loving person. When I say that I still have hope or wish we could be friends, it is because friendship is the enabler of empathy, it draws one away from narcissism and teaches self-reflective practice through our interactions. I believe in higher virtues, in humanity and I see in him that brutality and coldness you see in war. I want to believe in peace, that people can change and improve and so I am sad because I know now that "zero" thoughts about me exist on his part, that he likely does not feel remorse. Also, when one is repeatedly threatened - even if they are empty threats - it can have some pretty profound psychological aftermaths and I was very much confused for a long while that articulating it and making sense of it was necessary for me.