In touch with your feelings

It sure is fine and dandy to be in touch of your feelings. It is great to express them,not suppress them.

But do you know if they are your true emotions or just a script (reactive behaviour pattern, or demons as they used to call them) sitting in you and jerking you around. You think that you are so in love and can't live without this person, but in fact it is that whimpering little boy or girl in you that your Dad did not hug enough when you were small so now you are looking for just anyone who will satisfy that craving, fill in that void inside you. You pick on on those clues - that you are not even consciously aware of - choose you victim and pounce down on them.

You sure be better off not giving voice to that trapped negative emotion, because it is not you and it won't be you speaking if you let it speak and, in all likelihood, it won't be saying anything nice! So keep a lid on it and work it out on your own. Don't bring this voice to your nice relationship meal!

Games we play in relationships: narcissist and co-dependent

There is a very old Russian joke: What is a perfect couple? - A sadist and a masochist.

How very true: they must be inseparable, both fulfilling each other's needs. On the flipside, it is a very destructive relationship, akin to that of a dealer and a drug addict. They are stuck in pressing each other's pleasure buttons: the need to abuse and the need to be abused (remember that Eurythmics song?), the need for money and the need for drugs.

There are millions of couples around us like that, maybe even us - not as dramatic as the sadomasochist couple but very similar in essence. We all tend to take account only of our actions and emotions without examining the cause of them, be on the effect side, like my favourite coach Phillippa Mole says.

A very common pattern is a relationships where one party is narcissistic and the other is co-dependent. The latter wants to be loved for all wrong reasons: for example because they were emotionally rejected by a parent and now they try to re-create that relationship and make good for what happened in the past but this time around with someone else. There is an element of thriving on rejection in that, because all too often, what the co-dependent is striving to recreate is that very unhealthy relationship with their parent(s). Despite aspiring for love, the codependent subliminally (because all this happens as all parties involved are jerked around like marionettes by their unrealised behaviour patterns and urges) does everything to be rejected once again. In other words,s/he falls into the same script, because it was never brought up to the conscious mind and analysed for what it is.

In terms of transactional analysis, the co-dependent's script is "I'm not okay, you're okay". No surprise then, that the complementary party to this would have the "I'm okay, you're not okay" script, which is that narcissistic person who thrives on rejecting love and emotion. The underlying cause of that can be a previous trauma (emotional rejection) or an inherited pattern from an "I'm okay, you're not okay" parent who was perceived to be in the winner's position.

I have seen people for whom this (the narcissist script) was a self-defence mechanism against low self-esteem - they would project their insecurities on others, thus justifying their self-worth. Although they may appear to be riding the high horse, in fact, they are perpetuating a loser's script.

Deep inside, a narcissist would crave love but on the outside s/he would find pleasure in denying it to the other, just like someone before did it to them. That often leads to a "bad cop/good cop in one ball" script, where the narcissist alternates attracting and rejecting the co-dependent. That, in its turn, attracts the co-dependent because it fulfils their both urges: for love and for rejection. First s/he get a hope of love and then s/he gets the huge emotional kick of rejection. That scenario keeps both parties interminably busy with pressing each other's "pleasure buttons" (and pleasure is not joy!).

It is a very detrimental pattern because the energies here are wasted on re-confirming the neuropaths of deriving pleasure from negative stimuli: neediness, trauma, rejection, and emotional deprivation. Both parties thwart each other's emotional and all other kind of development because essentially they are busy recreating negative scenarios from the past over and over again.

How do you break from that? It is hard to see beyond the surface of what we do and are when we are embroiled in the very midst of a eddy of emotional bonds. Like I said before, we tend to look at the surface of things and events without trying to see what they mean. When you see that something in your relationship does not work, especially if it repeats time after time again, sit down and ask yourself why, or even better have someone else do it for you, a good therapist, for example - so keep asking yourself why until you get to the bottom of things.

Eric Berne's Games People Play can provide a good insight into how it all works. Also have a look at the Obssesive Love Wheel and see how much you can relate to it.

So is there a hope? Sure there is: a healthy relationship is like a good shared meal and is realistically attainable.

Why are egoistic people attractive?

There is some bizarre attraction in egoistic, self-consumed people. We are drawn to them like moths to the light bulb. But how do you deal with them without ending up getting hurt?

I am still on my learning curve but this is what figured out: always keep in mind what you can and what you can't get from them. You can't hope for a true involvement because egoist's main relationship is always with themselves. Enjoy what you can and don't hope for much. They are never relationship material. Once you've sussed out their nature, keep your emotions in check, don't let yourself tumble for the wrong person.

alexander mcqueen suicide bipolar

What I find most shocking Alexander McQueen's suicide one month ago is that out of all the people who flocked around him and claimed to be his friends, no one bothered to be around him when his mother had died. His diagnose as bipolar was even in his Wikipedia article, yet it occurted to none of his alleged friends to be next to him to help him tide over the rough patch. All it would have taken was just a phone call or a visit by someone who was actually concerned with Alexander's well-being.

By some strange twist of fate, his muse and fairy godmother Isabella Blow, who also killed herself a few years earlier, was also bipolar. They were supposed to be bosom friends

Why Gay Men Never Mature

It is women who make men mature. Women become adults through childbirth, or even earlier through the menarche. For them, there is not escaping adulthood. Mother Nature drags them into that by the scruff of the neck, it's a bloody affair.

In the absence of initiation ceremonies in our society, men stay boys until they die. Their toys become bigger and more expensive - car, career, bank account, gadgets - but very few actually mature without the pressure from women. Or to be more correct, the woman, a wife or a girlfriend who would pressurise her beloved sperm donor into the responsibilities of child-rearing and upkeeping a household.

So what about the men who never experience that benign female influence, gay men? They stay true boys for life, stuck for ever in the Peter Pan Land.You see them prancing in skimpy tanktops and partying until grey hair becomes impossible to dye.

Have you ever tried to make an appointment with a gay man? It is one of the most frustrating affairs in the world. Constantly on the lookout for a better dick they are shit-scared of any kind of commitment be it even a casual date. A slightest perspective of getting laid and they ditch you and stand you up without a second thought.

That is why I would think more than twice before letting a gay couple adopting a kid. I'd make them pass a tough exam to weed out those who only care about accesorising. Unlike lesbians, who I think make bets parents in the world, gay guys are just real men after all, biologically programmed to "aim, shoot and run". Women, on the other hand, are biologically programmed to choose the most powerful mate and make sure that their progeny survives. To accomplish the latter they, by hook or by crook, involve the male.

Of course, we've evolved to be highly complex social animals since our ape phase but the core stays true nonetheless.

If your mother and father did not hug you

Interesting how the people who were brought up not knowing love in their non-hugging families, when they grow up, have no idea how to give love and even how to receive it. It scares them because they don't know how to handle it and now amount of love at this stage will change them. Their feelings will always stay shallow and they will seek company of their like.

Voices

Sometimes it seems that all I have left are voices. Voices in my computer. They listen to me, react to what I say, offer their advice. We discuss things, sometimes have arguments. I try make them understand and I guess they think they do but they really don't. I can't help feeling that they have all failed me. VOIP (Internet-based telephony) is great but what's the use of talking now.

It is really my fault they don't have bodies any more. I've kept running from them for years, putting seas and mountains and thousands of miles between us. I was trying to find myself and a perfect place where I would fit but it turns out there is none. All these years I was waiting for the voices to speak to me, speak love I have been looking for but it never came to pass.

But really, the only voice I still have to listen to is hunger. Hunger is my saviour. It's the only force that drives me to get up and do things. Otherwise I would just stay in bed day and night until somebody finds my decomposed corpse. But my hunger takes on very sophisticated forms I have to go through some very convoluted motions to satisfy it. Hunger keeps me alive.

Vasilissa The Wise and Russian Women

It was Russian Silver Age philosopher Berdyaev who said that Russian women love Russian men out of pity. National archetypes are best represented in folklore. The Russian fairy tale Vasilissa the Wise is one where the stereotype of Russian male-female relationship is expressed in an allegorical form.

There Vasilissa is a frog who turns into a beautiful and wise woman at night, unbeknownst to everyone but her husband Ivanushka. Under the frog's skin lives a beautiful princess capable of most amazing wizardry.

Her husband keeps getting various impossible tasks from the Tsar. Every time Ivanushka come back home lost at how to cater to yet another royal whim, his frog-wife reassures him she will take care of it. Whilst he is asleep, she turns into a witch lady and gets down to business of accomplishing all kinds of impossible feats such as baking a pie enough to feed a thousand or weave a silk carpet overnight. In the morning she turns back into a frog and creeps back into the padded box where she is kept while Ivanushka takes off to the court for another string of praise and accolades from the Tsar. When royal favour runs out, Ivanushka gets another task and the circle repeats.

Many Russian women bear their husband like a cross, as if a repentance for the sins of their past lives. Burdened with the double task of earning a living and running a household they are also expected to look sexy and sophisticated at all times.

The situation is not helped by the centuries-old reality of constant warfare and social cataclysms that has resulted in a female-to-male ratio of 13 to 10. With the average lifespan of 54 years for men and 72 years for women, perspectives of a happy family life for Russian women are, mildly put, bleak. Russian men are spoilt for choice and have no incentive to perform. Gender emancipation of the Soviet times also ensured a nearly equal female participation in the work force as well as easier sexual accessibility than in other traditional societies. The perceived social value of women is thus rather low.

Not surprisingly, Russia’s biggest export commodity after oil and arms are women. Educated, good-looking and demure, ready for hard work and sacrifices, modern-time Vasilissas depart in droves in quest for a husband.