I want a new toy.....

I get a New Toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expanding (ta).I get a New Toy (oh ay oh), nothing too demanding (ta).Then when everything is in roses you don't get any headroom.Yeh my New Toy (oh ay oh), you'll find us in the bedroom, yeh.New ToyNew toy...
--Lene Lovich

I'd like a partner and a long term relationship and all that but a new toy could be nice too. Narcissists need not apply. The truly lousy in bed need not apply. Maybe it would be shorter to talk about who can apply! The intelligent, fun, caring. You need to be able to play well with me in the bedroom and outside of it. So, fun to play with is the major criteria here.

The Narcissistic Personality

Have you ever dated the narcissistic personality? Has it ever tried to marry you? I just dodged that bullet. I said no. The trick with narcissists is to realize that you have to say no for hours and sometimes days because it takes them a long time to hear the no and actually believe it. First, the narcissist has trouble hearing you over his or her self-absorbed internal dialogue. Second, the narcissist has trouble believing that you don't find the idea of sacrificing yourself at the alter of his or her needs the ultimate in self-fulfillment. They really believe that they are doing YOU a favor by sucking out your ability to experience any happiness whatsoever along with your will to live.

I'm heterosexual so my most recent godawful experience with a narcissist came in the form of a male--I can't say man as he's more like child-man. He really, sincerely believed that I should be thrilled to marry him and take care of his woes. Do I look desparate to you? I'm not.

Don't get me wrong. I would love a partner but the narcissist is incapable of partnership because he or she thinks your ultimate fulfillment should come from taking care of him or her. This guy was just unbelievable to me. He knows me? He never lets me say anything about what I want. It's all about him and what he needs. He loves me? He doesn't know me. I think what really bothered me was that he kept saying that he knew I wasn't like everyone else and wouldn't just be trying to get money or whatever out of him--not that he's got any. So his overall message was that I seemed to be a good person to use. He really believed I should be happy to be used by him. I told him he needed to get away from me. He makes me tense and unhappy because he's constantly trying to manipulate me and coerce me into what he wants. He got so mad he told me that he would not stay in touch with me and you know what I felt about that?

Happy!!

Freedom from Guilt

I've always had an overwhelming sense of guilt about everything and while I usually blame the holy water the Church used to baptize me (Catholics always feel so guilty about everything that I think the Church found a way to liquefy guilt and passes it off as holy water), I know that this is just to try to be funny about my overweening sense of guilt.

Guilt is a perfectly useless emotion. It does no one any good. Consider why someone feels guilt. It's usually because one didn't conform to the expectations of other people, or society, or religion. In other words. we feel guilty for not being perfect in the eyes of external actors and, hence, oneself. That's alot of power to give away to others. Do the truly empowered and self aware feel guilt. Moreover, we tend to love our guilt. We dwell on it and nurture it into a truly raging case of self-loathing. Guilt is useless because it's both self-absorbed and gives us an excuse not to be happy, healthy, and whole. We tell ourselves we don't deserve it. If we deserved happines, we wouldn't feel so guilty. Talk about circular reasoning. Why should anyone feel that they need to sacrifice themselves to be worthy human beings.

I had a small epiphany on guilt this weekend. Someone I briefly dated began calling me rather relentlessly. First it was to get back a bracelet. I don't want the bracelet and managed to drop it off to him. Then it was 'he wanted to see me.' I don't want him at my house. He won't leave and has no problem with using a great deal of coercion to get laid (and he is so bad at this that one would really rather go to the dentist). So I told him he could not come over but if he really needed to see me, I would meet him somewhere like a coffeeshop. The incessant calls stopped. I stopped feeling guilty that I didn't want to make myself miserable so he could use me. Unbelievably, that's what it took for me to really see my problem with guilt clearly. Do I really believe that I should be miserable?

It was a useful lesson though. Today, I'm going for a completely guilt free day. I am doing what I want, when I want--purely to please myself. In other words, I'm going to learn from my cat. Apparently she's smarter than I am.

Islamophobes

Has anyone else noticed the sheer hatred and invecative that Islamophobes will direct at Muslims. Perhaps not. Allow me to enlighten you from the Amazon Islam Forum wherein someone actually says this: "all i have used is truth. why do muslims, communists, pedophiles and homosexuals always portray themselves as poor innocent victims?" This is not a critic of Islam or Muslims. This is someone who has serious pyschological issues. Projection doesn't seem quite right but it's some sort of pathology. The same person tried to say there's no difference between Sunni and Shi'i. I just can't believe that there are people out there who think this passes for any kind of a debate.