Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!sue
From: sue@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Susan Haseltine)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: A love and war story (long)
Message-ID: <1372@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Oct-84 14:19:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1372
Posted: Tue Oct  9 14:19:26 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Oct-84 07:09:26 EDT
References: <16@politik.UUCP>
Reply-To: sue@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Susan Haseltine)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 64
Summary: 

Paul -

Please accept my condolences.  It is extremely hard to face a need
for someone which has been repressed by a need for autonomy and
very sad to realize the full extent of this attachment only after
the one to whom you are attached is no longer willing to continue
a relationship with you.  You have become aware that you also
required emotional commitment both from yourself and your lover,
and that in answering her needs you would really have been
answering your own.  How unfortunate that such realizations must
come too late.

And they always do come "too late".  I will explain that, but
first I would like you and others to understand that what I say
comes from my own experiences and that I do not pretend to
understand your heart or that of your lover, only that I have
felt as you describe her as feeling and as you have described
yourself as feeling, and that I am trying to express some of my
understanding about the emotional gap you have described.  Your
letter caused me to consider some things in a slightly different
light, and I would like to share some of these thoughts.

So, why do such realizations always come too late?  Of course, if
you were already aware and accepting of your emotional needs you
would not need the revelation.  Beyond that, there is the
conflict, why you have suppressed these needs for other needs.
When you have been in a relationship for a long time without
admitting how attached you are to the other person, it is because
there is a stronger, conflicting, need and it too frequently
happens that only when the other person has terminated the
relationship can these other needs be satisfied that it is safe
for you to face your attachment.

But there is another side to the coin.  Just as you realized your
emotional needs after the relationship had been broken, your
lover seems to have become able to deal with you autonomously
only after she had found another possible outlet for her
emotions.  How she feels or thinks I don't know really, but what
I have experienced is this.  That the need for emotional support
and approval can just as easily suppress a need for independence,
a need which is then satisfied by having emotional relationships
with those who do not respond fully on an emotional level.  And
it is possible that should the SO begin to respond on the
emotional level that the need for independence would work to
destroy the relationship.

There is so often a symmetry in relationships, such that whatever
happens in your heart or head is reflected through a strange, and
sadly frequently distorted, mirror into the heart and head of
your lover.  It is too possible that your moving toward
commitment while she was moving away from it was not a tragic
accident, but a conservation of momentum.

It is important to know that just as you cannot suppress your
emotional needs for total control of your own life, you cannot
give up the need for control just for emotional fulfillment.
Both needs, and many others must be balanced according to an
algorithm which must be entirely your own.

Thank you for sharing your story, 

Susan Haseltine

...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix,ucla-cs}!sdcrdcf!sue