The Curse: A Treatise on Myself
Curse is the act of someone hoping for something bad happen to you. It may be due to misbehavior, it may be due to heartbreak, or what ever, but one thing for sure is it sure is a bold dan incriminating word to say, reflecting the subject’s insistence of an idea that someone somewhere out there expects the worst for him. Well this might or might not be true. For one thing, I felt that I had a curse upon myself. But the funny thing is it is not particularly expected by anyone. But myself.
I feel that I’ve been cursed because of something I do myself. It happened to me everytime a certain event occurred. It most probably occurred wheneverytime I got involved with the other sex. It recurs when a certain connection has occurred. It persist when a significant attraction exist. It is certainly recurring and by every occurences of it, destructs my very ongoing and eternal aspiration of having a decent and civilized relationship.
It started after I met a girl and as our relationship, at whichever depth or from whatever initial intention that is, begin to crystalize. The fact that keeps occuring over and over again is a definite pleasure will come out of every instance in the history of this relationship. We will have definite fun. We will have found ourselves loving every minute of it and cherishing in remembrance afterwards. Phrases and counter-phrases like “im having so much time with you” and “me too” will be common. It will be so common that it’s really hard to think that these moments would end anytime soon. Unfortunately, just to get the facts straight, it usually will.
Right at when we’re having our most high moments, something is lurking underneath, ready to devour us. Yes, devour, since it’s action will be severely detrimental later on to our relationship. Very devious this assault is to us, I feel likening it to a ruthless sniper who attacks just when the prey felt really safe and got off guard.
At this particular point in the relationship, at which time I myself as the perpetrator of this venture could not exactly pinpoint, there exists an emotional and intentional intersection that we both pass together but come out in different ways. To make things easier to understand, let’s name one way in this intersection as Road A and another Road B. Previous of this intersection, both party in the relationship walks together on Road A. But after this intersection, while one remains firmly on the road A, another has slipped off from the road A into road B – a road which, as we shall see later, not only requires more than road A but also entitles more.
Now, there’s definitely more to say on Road A for sure to make our reader understand. What is Road A? Assume Road A is a path in the relationship in which no additional submission in the man and woman relationship required – and by additional submission I mean no significant increase of requirement for the man to devote more than what he devotes now. Simply, he doesn’t need to add more engagement to this relationship - Road A is the way it was at the start and it is if nothing’s change. Road B is initially only an optional road, a road most oftenly exists only due to one party’s deeper underlying wish – Road B is a path created out of passion, love and those inexpressible expressions of one side and one side only, not in conjunction, nor collaboration with the other side of the relationship. It seeks an extensive and more devoted path of relationship than the other party expect. It’s only problem however, and a major one, is it’s unilateral nature.
When one party, usually the woman, in my case, has, consciously or unconsciously, take side to Road B, while I, as the man, stick in Road A, then our relationship is bound to have problem.
You see, relationship is about going together. Being side by side in the same step, sharing each other’s mind, sharing each other’s perspective and concepts, and most importantly, sharing (and I mean here having the same) projections about the relationship. It is more of a pre-requirements than a view of an ideal relationship. When this pre-requirement fails to complete, the lack of synchronization will produce frictions and incidents whose effect will be to reduce the energy of the relationship, and in long term forced it to stop. That is, unfortunately, what often happened in many, if not most, of my relationships.
When the woman had taken the Road B while I stayed in Road A, gradually de-synchronization within our relationship grows. Road B, which exists only within the woman state of mind, charged with bigger expectations in the relationship for the man. Road B, which was taken by the woman at that certain point in the relationship, instills this bigger expectations simply because the woman had somehow underwent mis-valuation about the relationship itself, which happened right at the point of the intersection that separates into Road A and Road B. The value of the relationship from both parties respective to each other are now no longer even (even like an even scale), but tilted, with the direction more heavily to the woman than to the man. To say it in another way, the value of the relationship is now bigger to the woman than to the man. And from this slide of balance, comes all sorts of following effects.
One effect of this imbalance on the perception of value (much similar in the case of a buyer and a seller having different perception on the price of certain commodity) is the differing size of resouce commitment and emotional commitment asked by the woman to the man compared by the man to the woman. When value of a relationship increases for a woman, a woman tend to expect more from the relationship (or practically, from the man), than the man to the woman. The woman went on to form a special image of a man which unfortunately not of his own. This special image is an image of a man that can fulfill all the resource commitment and emotional commitment askings of the woman – even the amount of these commitments are yet only known by the woman. The woman, in this respect, has acted unilaterally, by single-handedly created an imaginary object of the man and the relationship which are all entirely hers and not shared in anyway with the man (in fact the man will know very little about this ideal image of man the woman had created). The woman ceases to face to the truth of the relationship (by truth I mean is the conventional truth, that is the truth that is derived from the agreement of both parties) and instead, due to factors she “saw” at the moment of the intersection, chooses to make her own truth. This different reciprocality means the man will have fewer resources and emotional capacity than the woman asks for. In the other direction, the man will ask fewer resources and emotional capacity than what the woman expected to give. The woman will then receive significantly little of those resources and emotions and give away significantly little also. In basic men and women relationship mathematics, this means trouble.
The woman who receives little and can only give away little is pregnant with dissatisfaction. Especially when all of this is done by the man that she was seeing as the special man. The man she grew an image in her head about. The man she “thought” would be able to give her all the resources and emotions she needed and the man she “thought” would be the object of her enormous need to discharge her huge allocation of resources and emotions. In both directions, the man has failed to match her. All due to the imbalance of the perception of value of the relationship.
In practice, the woman will feel continually dissatisfied. Shelfish will be a common word mentioned in the numerous quarrels lying ahead, just like I had during these times. The woman will feel badly battered, hurt, and, more often than not, tried to avenge his unfulfilled askings by doing offensive gestures to the man at the intention of hurting him emotionally. The man will feel utter break of self-belief, mostly due to the guilty feeling he produced for himself for hurting the woman without he even wanting and meaning to. Significantly hurt, the woman’s mood and emotion toward the relationship and the man will tend to be unstable – one example would be sometimes she would be joyous but when a slight inconvenience occurred she would be fuming. This marks a major problem which will deter the ongoing of a normal, healthy relationship.
In this broken state, the only way to make the relationship work is for the man to be patient. The option of the man himself turning to Road B – a road which was by definition built upon one’s imagination – would prove dangerous and even could be fatal. Since the Road B that the man created and the Road B that the woman created is not necessarily the same one, since they exists only in the mind realm of each party, both the man and woman may never again found each other again in harmonious and reciprocal relationship. For short, for survival, the only way is for the man to take the woman back to Road A – which is most definitely not as easy as it was explained. Other two options, be patient or quit the relationship, are uneasy options that wins no one.
Now, having learned the poor situation that could occur due to imbalance of value perception, we could wonder what causes it to happen. In a question, what causes the woman to build the un-true image of the man and the relationship into the relationship? Or, in another way to put it, what causes the woman slipped to Road B, instead of staying on Road A together with the man?
The answer to previous question is not an easy one. It could be that the specific (but mysterious) nature of the woman’s mind force her to value a relationship gradually more and more. It could be also that this transition to Road B is what some would understood merely as the impact of love. Or, more graspably, it could be the result of the man’s doing. More often for myself, the latter seems to be the most probable than the other causes.
The reason why I feel that my own doing seed the imbalances of value perception is the frequency of this phenomenon. Many (more than 3) serious relationship I’ve had were marred by this problem. This fact more or less eliminates the variation exists between the different women. The question now is what’s wrong with me? Hence, what is the curse with me?..
The fact is I don’t know what’s wrong with me.. I don’t know why women tend to “regress” to Road B when involved with me. That is, I don’t know why women tend to gradually view the value of our relationship bigger than what it is to me. Why is it that I tend to make women asks more of me, while I am always stable on my askings to them? Am I a complacent man? Am I ungrateful? Am I too cold a person to be swept away by love? Too logical to think the irrational such as love? I could be, but one thing I know is I’ve always been the one who is able to remain coolheaded throughout the relationship, without losing my sight on the “road” which I take, without losing grip of what level of resources and emotional commitment I am able to request to the woman from the start of the relationship to finish. I am in my point of view always remains the same! The fights, the quarells, the bitter silent periods, all the hardships mostly started when the woman I had relationship with started seeing me differently while I don’t grasp the good enough reason why I should become what they wanted to be.
