My own psychology being a questionable experiment in central planning, I can only talk fables of the reconstruction, I suppose.
I take it as a good sign that you’re identifying, exploring, and analyzing your own feelings. And while you may be considering an attempt to change, to grow emotionally to the point where additional capabilities become available, I would recommend against the arbitrary imposition or order on your emotions. That approach seems to ultimately isolate an individual and render him socially … sort of unviable. Or at least unskilled.
If you want to incoporate sexuality, and intimacy into your life, and your interactions with others, then I second the Zenham’s suggestion to begin with a close friendship first. After all, I recognize your quandary:
- A person that you love is important, and you would never want to hurt them.
- If you enter a relationship, and are inexperienced, or are imperfect in your actions, you may hurt them, either unitentionally or by doing something intentional which had consequences that you did not know would be hurtful.
- By entering into a loving relationship, you create a situation in which hurting a certain person is entirely unacceptable, but at the same time, possibly likley.
- So, a loving relationship is a bad idea.
Logical simplicity. I’ve used that excuse before- and also the similar “My current commitments would preclude spending a lot of time with the one I’d love and thus wouldn’t be treating the loved one right but a loved one is by definition one to be treated right” Neihter argument really got me anywhere but lonesome.
The sad fact: Our psychology is not only queerer than we suppose, it’s queerer than we can suppose. We have emotions, and we are capable of hurting people, even by accident. Real people, like you and me, can’t be pinned down and defined any more than real particles can. In the end, you have to work with uncertainty and with probability. You have to say:
“I can’t guarantee that I will know what I’m doing, nor can I guarantee that I won’t hurt people, even people that I don’t want to hurt, by just being imperfect, inexperienced, and clumsy old me.”
You can try to plan out ahead how to be the perfect relationship member, but your necessarily incomplete knowledge of yourself, your partner, and coming events will make it an inadequate plan. And you won’t be able to just be you, because you’ll be trying so hard to be He Who Does No Harm.
Ever notice how everybody starts off with a string of failed relationships before they find someone to settle down with? I used to think I could get around that by just avoiding romance and intimacy until I had matured beyond that point, and until I had learned to be the perfect companion. But the school of human interaction works almost exlusively by the learn-by-doing method. Theories and self-imposed behaviour always fall short of their goal of accurately guiding you in all situations.
So, accept how you feel, even if internal contradictions are part of it. Then, begin building a close friendship with someone who you think is worth being close to. It may take time, and it may not turn out great for the first while. But it will provide experience and build confidence for later, more ambitious endeavours, like a romance. Plus, you may end up with a good friend, who can be both pleasant company, and an aid when you have problems like this in the future. You don’t have to leap in quickly; you can take it slow, going as you feel comfortable.
Someday, when you’ve been able to get closer to someone, or perhaps more than one person, you can go a little further, and act on a feeling of romantic nature. Having the confidence and experience built by a successful friendship, you’ll know, a little better than now, how to ease into and work within a relationship.
Now, I shouldn’t really advise you any further. I’m still stuck at the stage of building a friendship, and of wondering what to make of little hints of sexual feelings that come around every now and then. I can’t tell you if this strategy will work, I can’t tell you if love will actually come in a recognizable form, but I do feel less lonely now having made a friend, and with that relationship continuting to evolve and expand in its closeness and honesty.
Romance may come. But it’ll never get its hands on you if you logic your way out of it. You are NASA. You can’t get to the moon in one shot; you have to toy around with LEO capsules first, learning the mechanics and the human factors of the endeavour. You have to try a suborbital shot first, then try a mission where you orbit a few times. Eventually, you’ll be able to dock two spacecraft in orbit, and to sustain them like that. Someday, a moon shot. Someday, Mars. Test pilots will be injured. Astronauts may die. But is it worth it to you to try? The earth, and your own mind, are comfortable homes to hide in. But the rewards of exploring other places and of touching other hearts and minds are worth the trouble, the risk, and the assured occasional failure along the way. Or so I’m told. I haven’t worked up the courage, the experience, or the technology (ie: I haven’t fallen in love, that I can tell) to try it yet.
Sadly, you can’t build a tower to the moon. You have to ride a flaming rocketship through risky, threatening environments to get there. Apollo One may come, but so may Apollo Eleven. (Heck, you may even settle down and build a nice shuttle program some day. And maybe have a space station or two running around.) You don’t know what you’re doing, but you won’t until you do. So do. But caustiously, using all your knowledge and your best guesses to minimize the risks you know about.
That’s my take on risking relationships when you have little experience and only poorly-understood and conflicting feelings.
As for how you feel about women and men: I can’t say for sure. It sounds like some nervousness at women, and if I knew you better (well, at all, I suppose) I might have a better guess at why. If it were me, it might be perceived pressure, and fear of feeling, or of having my feelings perceived by others. (Don’t look interested in case she’s offended, or worse, in case something starts that could snowball into a relationship) But that’s me. And for the men: maybe you’re more comfortable with men because they’re less different (you beng a man and all). Perhaps women have always had an aura of separateness, and so it’s just easier to be comforetable with men. Maybe, when you were a child, the girls played away from the boys, the girls acted differently from the boys, and there was always a big deal made about getting close to girls because, of course, being friendly with a girl meant you must be in love with her. (wolfstu loves Jennifer! wolfstu loves Jennifer!) But boys never love boys, after all (even if you learned to the contrary after those early imprints were made). But again, that might be why I would feel things like that. I don’t know for sure why you do… but with some investigation, you might be able to figure it out. I guess the best thing you can do is some thinking, some social interaction, and some tyring to let yourself just feel those feelings, and act on them, if you figure out how you want to.
Good luck working all of this out. I hope this helped. Or at least, wasn’t hurtful. Opening up always carries that risk, after all.
[sub](Well, if that wasn’t the pot trying to tell the kettle how to get less black. I’m surprised I could type that, or even deign to attempt an explanation of what I haven’t worked up the courage or the wisdom to do.)[/sub]
(OK, yeah, it was probably the motorcycle…)