I was reflecting today, rather quietly, about how things went with Entropy.
I’ve wondered for quite a while how he managed to do what he did and still be able to look himself in the mirror. Cultivate a woman’s trust for months. Become one of her best friends. Give her emotional support when she needs it, so she comes to count on you. Know that she has been celibate for a long time and doesn’t want to have casual sex. Know that she’s looking for something meaningful.
So you pour it on thick. You talk about marriage and living together and creating a life together. You tell her how it’s safe to be vulnerable with you, safe to trust, safe to have sex. You do and say everything you know will get her to have sex with you, and you know full well she’ll fully be expecting a long-term relationship.
You get her to trust you completely.
And then you get what you want. She has sex with you.
Suddenly, you get scared. Suddenly, you “need to be present” with your girlfriend, when previously you and your girlfriend were basically “over,” she was moving to another continent, and you had no need to “be present” with her for five months before that.
Suddenly, you have issues with “long distance relationships,” when previously you’d said “it’s a small world” and talked about moving to be with her. Suddenly things are “complicated” when they never were before.
Suddenly, you have all kinds of issues that never once came up during the months when it was sooooo important that you have sex with this woman. Suddenly you think you can turn a woman who told you she has no interest in casual sex into a “friend with benefits.”
Suddenly, you find yourself saying the coldest, cruelest, most judgmental things that any human being has ever said to another. Ala John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons.
Wow. Pretty gut wrenching, no?
It reminds me of when I was in college in my “player” phase. How I got a really amazing guy to fall in love with me, and as soon as he got too close, I got scared and bailed. I didn’t even have a good reason. There weren’t any “problems.” I was just scared.
Three years later, I ran into him at the student union. This was a really hot, super successful fraternity guy. He sat there and cried for what I had done to him and his sense of trust in women.
I felt floored. I had no idea what impact I’d had on his life. I felt paralyzed. I felt ashamed.
But mostly I felt regret. The three intervening years would have been far more amazing if I had stayed with him instead of chickening out. He was an amazing, wonderful, very sexy guy. That’s an opportunity I never got back. My life is less for it.
It’s not my loss or his loss. It’s our loss.
Karma is a bitch.
Sunil,
If I may suggest a question to ask yourself …
Rather than succumbing to the knee-jerk reaction to judge what I am doing, you could ask yourself …
huh, I wonder why a highly conscious dating coach is doing what she is doing in these posts.
I'm revealing to you a very very powerful process for transforming your life.
I am leading
Sunil,
What I'm hearing in your comments (some of which I'm not publishing because they don't meet my need for respect is two main things:
(a) You put dating coaches and other spiritual "gurus" in a category "above" other people and expect them to not have intense feelings or any problems, and
(b) You find it very challenging to be
Thank you for noting the really important things… Renegotiate your agreements before you break them so that BOTH people have made a choice… have had time to work through any fears or blocks and are able to go in the next direction free of hurt, empowered by the conversation and process, even if the direction the two of you choose is not to go forward together.
A friend of mine said
Thank you very much Erika. That does help.
I'm not perfect, but I've tried to be honest. We both had recently LTRs. Upfront she asked what I wanted, and I said I don't know. I really didn't. I told her I do like her and time with her (not just sex, but other things like talking, joking, and watching nature).
I asked her, and she said she didn't
Oh also, take responsibility. If you made mistakes, admit them.
Don't act as if it's "no big deal" if you spent months creating expectations that you're now going to bail on. It IS a big deal, and it's not going to create harmony to pretend that it's not.
Don't try to convert an-otherwise celibate girl who made clear to you that she's
Hi A,
I'm more focused on now than I am on back then, except to explain why I have been so pissed off.
Yeah, I can give a few suggestions.
1. Radical honesty – learn how to communicate non-violently, if you don't already, so that you can express your truth on a continuing, moment to moment basis without reverting to judgments of the other person.
Hi Erika,
Thanks for your open expression. It takes some guts to run through your experience like that.
To reveal your experience with the great fraternity guy, and to further reveal your experience with E.
I'm not exactly like E, but I started something casual with a girl, then we both got more involved, but for whatever reason I'm coming to a point
Karma is not a bitch. A bitch is a bitch.
Gayla,
Thanks for the comment and for seeing the intention here, which is healing of that which will never be healed if we simply "move on."
The first step to transmuting karma is awareness. In an interpersonal situation like this one, both people need to see the dynamic clearly so that something new and much more life-affirming can be co-created.
This
I wanted to thank you for writing this post.
I've sat with this one for a few days… I don't think that unless it was for your writing these posts that I would ever be able to see what I've been caught in clearly enough to be able to face what's really happened.
I think I would believe all the garbage a con man has to say because, unless you stuck it out
hi erika –
something like this happened to me. a guy i thought was in love with me who knew i didnt want to have casual sex
im still in love with him
ie get triggered hehe
in my case i "blame myself" for not taking better care of myself from the beginning of our "relationship" and making sure there were actual stuff getting set up
Smoke,
Entropy = Mark
Sunil,
oh you mean similar to the way that he took away my choice not to have casual sex?
Wait, who is Mark? The college guy or Entropy?
Everything you've written with your standards about Entropy makes sense.
Im confused about the college guy though, which is what I was trying to talk about – not entropy.
I agree that you, as a private individual may well have been better off if you had sat in intimacy with that guy from college.
But that's different from you now, as a therapeutic professional discussing a third party's behaviour on the internet.
I see no evidence that Entropy is volunteering his own accountability and transparency. You have taken the decision from
Sunil,
You're missing my intention here entirely. I'm going to ask you to trust the process.
This is not about blaming anyone.
Do you have any idea how much better off I would have been if I'd sat in a mediation with that guy from college and been required to hear what the experience was like for him, at a time when I still could have done something
Erika, I love you
-Mark
Anonymous,
(The one whose comment is not being published here)
There is no "hating" going on here.
And yes, I do know often what would be helpful to other coaches, just as some of them know what I need and help me. It is a skill that I have developed with a lot of practice.
When I say someone needs to face something, it comes from a lot
And SMoKeLioN,
No, I would not have had sex with him. I've had dozens if not hundreds of very sexy men pursuing me. What distinguished Mark from the others — and the only reason I had sex with him — was the depth of our connection and his long-term interest in me. There is exactly zero chance I would have had sex with him if he had not represented it as a long-term thing.
McSmokey and Sunil,
I hear in both of your comments a discomfort with my expression of pain, a wanting to "move on."
It's exactly that discomfort that is part of the problem here. It's exactly THAT discomfort that makes it so difficult for many people — Entropy included — to stay connected in intimacy.
I have learned through hard experience
Erika, I'm really surprised by this entry.
I can't help but get the impression that this is an angry outpouring expression of dissapointment, disguised as an act of taking responsibility.
I've followed your blog because of your honesty and openness about your own emotions and your journey. But how can you justify talking about a boyfriends alleged bad behaviour
Shit happens dudess..
But we need to put ourselves together and move on.
Im sorry for your breakup with the frat guy, and that Entropy acted like a biatch..
I just get the sense that something is fucked up with most of this so called "community" or atleast with the head figures of it.
people forget they deal with feelings, emotions of other human
"If you seek to take a thing from someone else, you will have nothing left."
Erika, I love how deep you have gotten with your perspective on love… and with the awareness of the human spirit… the early days of playing with other people's hearts really did not serve me well either, on either side of the coin… dating expertise for young men and women… now that
"Knowing that, why would we do it? "
I would guess out of weakness. This reminds me of how the most unconscious people are often those who are the weakest willed and the most manipulated by others.
"I would never have had sex with him if he had been honest. "
I thought you were the one who bailed? Or do you mean with the player-ness. Its
I've revised my view on that.
Once we know the human spirit, we pretty much know what is going to trigger a lot of pain in someone else.
Knowing that, why would we do it? When we can act with compassion instead and make sure that even when we are challenging other people to grow, they understand that we value our connection with them above all else.
"Be
"That's an opportunity I never got back. My life is less for it."
Often times a door closes only to open up two in its wake.
You can't pretend to know that things would have been "just right", can you?
Besides that, putting it all on yourself doesnt seem a healthy thing to do. Wasn't it you that always said that its not the first