From: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
Newsgroups: net.singles
Title: Looking for love; Dependency
Article-I.D.: watcgl.87
Posted: Sat Jan  1 04:37:09 1983
Received: Sat Jan  1 05:22:58 1983

Some clarifications:
To Larry Kaufman:  The point of my examples was to try to show that simply
showing your feelings to someone else is not what will cause them to withdraw,
but that what those feelings ARE may do so.  In other words, the simple act
of admitting loneliness isn't in itself likely to cause serious problems,
and so there is no direct contradiction.  If the other person pulls away,
it's probably more related to the KIND of loneliness you feel and how you
expect them to alleviate it.  I see that you would try to help a desperately
lonely person, but would attempt to maintain some distance from them.  Does
this mean that it's not a good idea for a woman to admit that she's lonely
to you if she's interested in you?

To Calvin Ostrum:  The sort of dependence I was talking about in my second
example was an extreme case where one person would depend on the other
person's affection and accomplishments to provide a source of meaning for
their life, where they would be heavily dependent on that one person alone.
You seem to agree that this is not good.  You say that there will be quite
a bit of dependence of each person on the other in a typical relationship.
Agreed, and I think this mutual dependence is usually good, and certainly
not limited to "relationships" - this is a part of friendship too.  When
I was talking about dependence being a negative thing, I was referring to
the sort of one-person-centred one-sided dependence I mentioned in the
example, not dependence in general.
More interestingly, you seem to be saying that it's quite OK for one
person in a relationship to be much more dependent on the second person
than the second is on the first, so long as the first person isn't solely
dependent on the second.  I don't know about that. I think I'd feel a bit
uncomfortable if the dependencies were too unbalanced.

As to what to do about consumingly lonely people:  I'd LIKE to think that
I'd offer them help and advice to get out of their situation.  However,
my example of this was based on a real person who I met several years
ago, and I'm afraid I wasn't much help to her.  Whenever I was around
her I was very aware that she wanted me to get involved with her and
"make her life worthwhile", and I knew that this just wasn't going to happen.
So I felt somehow guilty that I couldn't be what she wanted me to be, and
thus I was upset anytime I was around her.  I tried to talk to her about
the situation, but she just didn't want to hear about it - she kept changing
the subject whenever I got near to saying something.  So I eventually
gave up, and started avoiding her (not difficult - she lived in a different
city).  Maybe it would have been different if we could have talked about it.

Also, it's very helpful if you can tell right from the beginning that the
person is desperately lonely so you can decide to be careful about what
you say and do to avoid encouraging false hopes.  However, it sometimes
takes a while to see this.

	Dave Martindale