The Philosophy of Psychology

One of my biggest stressors is interacting with women.  Typically withdrawal has been my coping mechanism.  Recently, I realized that I can also avoid the stress by finding reasons why it could never work between us.  This is another barrier or defense mechanism.

But it’s really not women I’m afraid of.  They wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for my own emotional neediness.  My internal emptiness.  It’s actually my own needs that I’m afraid of getting sucked into.

Needs or barriers.  There seems to be no middle ground.  Either I’m barriered and inhibited, or getting sucked into emotional neediness and fantasy.

Now, we might imagine guys as being more often the barriered type: stoic, macho, playing it cool, etc.  And perhaps women are more often the needy type: the hopeless romantic, vulnerable, tragic, etc.  But needs and barriers are in every single one of us, and are actually two sides of the exact same coin.

We start with the emotional need for acceptance and fulfillment.  This creates the fear of rejection and denial, causing us to erect barriers to protect ourselves.  But these barriers are negative and self-suppressing, thus leading to even greater emotional neediness, and so on.

Our identity is so wrapped up in the approval of others that we become more comfortable rejecting ourselves than risking the rejection of others.

For some, it becomes quite an elaborate game.  We learn how to behave in order to get the attention we seek.  But, notice the feeling that arises when you don’t get the desired response, and you’ll know the extent of neediness involved.

In fact, this game of performing for approval is itself just a highly refined barrier.  We think we’re blocking ourselves from rejection, but instead we’re blocking ourselves from our real self, while becoming more and more dependent on the emotions of others.

Is there a way out of this unreal game?  Even when one can see it, it’s hard to know what to do.  For example, imagine a situation where you get a brief chance to interact with someone you are very attracted to.

As a person with needs, you can either sit there in your needs feeling pathetic, vulnerable, and needy, or you can hide behind the safety of barriers that ruin the chance for having a genuine and meaningful interaction.

It is very painful and frustrating to be stuck between two unsatisfying responses to a situation with such high emotional stakes.

So what can we do?

If you’re not getting closer to something, you’re procrastinating and getting further away.  Every moment of delay opens the door to more and greater distractions and delays.  Rabbit trails, “way leads on to way.”  You can’t do everything.  So each moment is a conflict of what to do, and what to leave undone.  So that is the question of our lives:  what can we not leave undone?  The rest is meaningless.  And I’m not talking about “bucket list” stuff either.

There is something really wacky about the nature of attraction.  It’s like a big confused muddle between all these different types and reasons for it.  There’s physical attraction (the secondary biological need for sex), loneliness (the psychological need for attention, because we don’t know how to fulfill ourselves), and the occasional attraction to people for who they are as a person.

But attraction based on the quality of character is not sexual attraction.  It can enhance sexual attraction (probably through our need for attention, by the value it creates) but it is essentially non-sexual.  It can occur between any two people (friends, family, strangers) and even between species (like between someone and their dog).

I have a theory that if we fail at fulfilling ourselves, then we will not usually be attracted to, nor be attractive to, someone who is self-fulfilling.  We will be afraid of or emotionally blocked toward self-fulfilled people, because we can sense that they don’t have a need for us.  Thus the fear of being left alone, unfulfilled.  And even if we have the courage to like them, they won’t be attracted to us because they can sense our neediness.

We will be attracted to those with needs more equal to our own, not wanting someone who will always give-in to us, nor someone who could leave at the drop of a hat.  We have this crazy need to get emotional fulfillment not through ourselves, but through someone or something else.  And as long as we look outside ourselves for our fulfillment, we’ll be unsatisfied over and over and over.

As a side note, I think that’s the trick to how Jesus “saves” people (for those that really do grow into better people).  He plays into people’s need for something external, but the further you get into it, the more you find you really have to do things on your own.  He doesn’t show up in person, and lives don’t magically become full and abundant overnight.  It seems like a mysterious supernatural process.  But there’s no mystery to me, because the Christians who do the deepest praying and soul searching are the ones who reap the benefit.  The ones who just go through the motions are interchangeable with everyone else.

So we’ll get involved with all kinds of crap out of our need for attention.  And like I said, the people we admire the most for their character, are the ones who are the most self-fulfilled, therefore don’t have a need for us, and aren’t attracted to us…  Unless we are both relatively self-fulfilled.  Then there can be a genuine appreciation for each other.  Genuine friendship and emotional sharing.  That’s the most important thing.

This just doesn’t seem to happen very often between people that want to have sex with each other.  It doesn’t matter.  Sex is only a secondary biological need.  Emotional sharing is more like a primary spiritual need.

For example, the boost I get from sharing my feelings with a friend who is totally open and real is far better than going out and getting laid.  Not only is there no risk for STD’s  🙂  but it will always remain a positive experience, no matter what happens. It’s like a good emotional scar, always there as positive emotional reinforcement.  Whereas, there’s nothing eternally good or praiseworthy about getting laid, no matter how great it may feel at the time.  Not that getting laid is necessarily a bad thing, it’s just more of a temporary appeasement of emotional and physical needs than it is anything real and genuine and lasting.