I like to wax philosophical with enormous frequency. Part of this is due to pure interest in the big questions and subjects, and part of it is due to fear of getting real.
Today I wanted to discuss a few practical things I've been thinking about/ starting to try and do to live more spiritually. These are not prescriptives, just some things that one person has found to be helpful in his own journey. Take what you will, leave what you find useless.
1) Sharing meals with people is a great way to feel connected to community. I've had a few potluck dinners with some other young people from my school community (and beyond) and it is seriously a highlight during my week. I love cooking for others and accepting the gift of food from others, and there is something intensely spiritual about such actions. It gives new meaning to the word "communion." I wonder sometimes if Jesus was keenly aware of the community building nature of mealtime when he began speaking at the last supper, and indeed imbued the food and drink with the quality of holiness, such that every time we eat together, we are sharing in something greater than us. The word solidarity comes to mind.
2) Writing letters admitting your mistakes and affirming love for others can relieve enormous burdens. I have been repenting for mistakes I made with my relationships with many people for a long time, and while I have begun learning the hard lessons I needed to and turning down a different road, I still felt a weight inside. The act of repenting to God is great, but there is something humbling about honestly and actively taking responsibility for the things you've done and said that helps make it real to me. The response of the other may be positive, negative, or non-existent, but the act of laying down my pride has been changing my mindset towards others, and it's provided a strange kind of release to be a truly different person that wasn't there before.
Those are what I've got so far. This week I watched something that was really helpful in moving me away from the self-hating guilty thoughts and actions I used to revel in, so I wanted to share that to. Here's Rob Bell. If I ever meet him, I'll thank him for sharing such profound encouragement in such a simple way.
You don't have to live this way....
Or in the words of the late John Lennon
"War is over, if you want it"
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning?
The subject of my prior post has been on my mind a lot over the last few weeks, and as the title implies, I have been wrestling with the question of where to go from here.
Then I watched a very interesting short video, which I think I might be smart enough to embed here...
What I want to focus on is the part where Brian gets down and start drawing in the dirt. Regardless of your opinion of the kind of theology a person subscribes to (lots of folks are freaked out by Brian McLaren) he does point out something we have been prone to do. We tend to look backwards through the lenses of our experience with certain types of theology and interpretations of the biblical Jesus, which can have the effect of turning him into a figure we try to plug into whatever structure we happen to find ourselves attached to. The problem is that this can end up making Jesus an object that we project our own ideologies, agendas, and politics (both the nationalistic and church varieties) upon.
We do need to look at how Jesus came about. We spend about eight months of the year in church discussing stuff that happened after the resurrection, and really only look at the story of why Jesus came on the scene during advent. I believe that if we look deeper into the why of Jesus, and less on the "how to do [your denomination] successfully, we'll find some interesting things.
So why Jesus? What made him so necessary and important? The most common answer might be that we are depraved and Jesus was the sacrifice necessary, but I think this sells Jesus/God short. If Jesus was just the ultimate sacrificial lamb, why bother with all the preaching, teaching, and showing of new weird and wacky ways? So why all that?
When I look at the story of the Old Testament, a few things stand out. First, their view of God was pretty inconsistent. If you look at all the different acccounts of God and man before Christ, there are times when God is looked upon as a genie, when God is a bringer of wrath, and when God is just someone we aren't talking to because he doesn't make our crops grow like the Baal worshippers crops grow. With a few exceptions, the people of the old testament had little or no clue who God was as a personality. I think Jesus is a vital character for showing the truest nature of God. As John puts it, he is the "word" of God (word being translated from logos, which not only means word but knowledge, reason, and account). So in Jesus, perhaps we are presented with some knowledge of God.
The other thing I see when I look at the old testament is the failure of systems to help people get better at dealing with God and one another. Sure, there are some bright spots, but all in all, what ends up happening in the old testament is that people get more attached to the system (a temple, rulebook, a country) than they are to one another and God. It's not that the nation of Israel were a bad people, they just did what come naturally when presented with uncertainty. They clung to whatever structure they had. You see the golden calf in the wilderness. You see the outcry for a king just like everyone else. I think you get the point. Jesus changes that substantially. His mindset and attitudes guide everything he does, and as pointed out in the text itself (I'll try to find the exact passage later), the law is fulfilled when we act from that mindset. Not because we know our doctrine backwards and forwards, but because we adopt a different mindset. This is incredible to me. People think that by claiming Christ, I'm looking for some hocus pocus to stave off a fear of mortality, and that's probably somewhere in the back of my head. But what is most appealing about Christ to me is that his life offers hope we can be different. We can live without a concrete rulebook that tells us all the answers (which doesn't exist, because the world is evershifting) because we can claim Christ and by doing so, exchange an attitude of competition, exploitation, and power pursuit for one that actually helps us live better lives with one another.
Now where do we go from here? I'm not really sure, but I think moving from contemplation to action sounds like it has to be involved. If we're really interested in becoming Christlike as people, then to the best of my understanding, we have to move from a hypothetical understanding of God, love, and all that to a manifestation through action. We need to actively cultivate community, live towards justice, and become practitioners of grace.
To my colleagues in Limbo, it's time. Dual meaning intended.
Peace
Then I watched a very interesting short video, which I think I might be smart enough to embed here...
What I want to focus on is the part where Brian gets down and start drawing in the dirt. Regardless of your opinion of the kind of theology a person subscribes to (lots of folks are freaked out by Brian McLaren) he does point out something we have been prone to do. We tend to look backwards through the lenses of our experience with certain types of theology and interpretations of the biblical Jesus, which can have the effect of turning him into a figure we try to plug into whatever structure we happen to find ourselves attached to. The problem is that this can end up making Jesus an object that we project our own ideologies, agendas, and politics (both the nationalistic and church varieties) upon.
We do need to look at how Jesus came about. We spend about eight months of the year in church discussing stuff that happened after the resurrection, and really only look at the story of why Jesus came on the scene during advent. I believe that if we look deeper into the why of Jesus, and less on the "how to do [your denomination] successfully, we'll find some interesting things.
So why Jesus? What made him so necessary and important? The most common answer might be that we are depraved and Jesus was the sacrifice necessary, but I think this sells Jesus/God short. If Jesus was just the ultimate sacrificial lamb, why bother with all the preaching, teaching, and showing of new weird and wacky ways? So why all that?
When I look at the story of the Old Testament, a few things stand out. First, their view of God was pretty inconsistent. If you look at all the different acccounts of God and man before Christ, there are times when God is looked upon as a genie, when God is a bringer of wrath, and when God is just someone we aren't talking to because he doesn't make our crops grow like the Baal worshippers crops grow. With a few exceptions, the people of the old testament had little or no clue who God was as a personality. I think Jesus is a vital character for showing the truest nature of God. As John puts it, he is the "word" of God (word being translated from logos, which not only means word but knowledge, reason, and account). So in Jesus, perhaps we are presented with some knowledge of God.
The other thing I see when I look at the old testament is the failure of systems to help people get better at dealing with God and one another. Sure, there are some bright spots, but all in all, what ends up happening in the old testament is that people get more attached to the system (a temple, rulebook, a country) than they are to one another and God. It's not that the nation of Israel were a bad people, they just did what come naturally when presented with uncertainty. They clung to whatever structure they had. You see the golden calf in the wilderness. You see the outcry for a king just like everyone else. I think you get the point. Jesus changes that substantially. His mindset and attitudes guide everything he does, and as pointed out in the text itself (I'll try to find the exact passage later), the law is fulfilled when we act from that mindset. Not because we know our doctrine backwards and forwards, but because we adopt a different mindset. This is incredible to me. People think that by claiming Christ, I'm looking for some hocus pocus to stave off a fear of mortality, and that's probably somewhere in the back of my head. But what is most appealing about Christ to me is that his life offers hope we can be different. We can live without a concrete rulebook that tells us all the answers (which doesn't exist, because the world is evershifting) because we can claim Christ and by doing so, exchange an attitude of competition, exploitation, and power pursuit for one that actually helps us live better lives with one another.
Now where do we go from here? I'm not really sure, but I think moving from contemplation to action sounds like it has to be involved. If we're really interested in becoming Christlike as people, then to the best of my understanding, we have to move from a hypothetical understanding of God, love, and all that to a manifestation through action. We need to actively cultivate community, live towards justice, and become practitioners of grace.
To my colleagues in Limbo, it's time. Dual meaning intended.
Peace
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Here Lies the Church
So the theme in our Sunday School/Discussion Group/Still figuring it out the last few weeks has revolved around the idea that Christianity has been losing relevancy in the last few decades. The thing is, I think that the "mainstream church" has been losing relevancy for much longer. In fact, like many others, I would say that the church has been losing relevancy since Constantine made it a state religion. What followed, I would argue, has been for the most part a series of church manifestations which have served more to maintain power in the hands of some and to keep others oppressed.
The thing about Christianity is that it has been fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of power since its foundations. To make it work as a tool for personal or social gain, it has to be subverted to the point of unrecognizability. For almost 2000 years, the populace at large was unaware of this, as most were too illiterate to read scripture for themselves, and those who did question what the state/church was telling them were persecuted by an institution whose founders were themselves the victims of persecution.
During the 20th century, a lot of things happened. A lot of thinking type fellows describe what happened during the past hundred years as a movement from the modern world to the postmodern world. Describing postmodernism would take forever, since it is not fully defined itself, but there are a lot of ideas that have come out of postmodern thinkers and writers that presented a deep threat to church elites. The main threat was the idea that absolute truth was in the eye of the beholder. In otherwords, what is actually the real truth about anything cannot be known with 100 percent certainty. Fundamentalists have been dismissing this idea as immoral for the better part of fifty years. What hasn't been done as much is to ask why such an idea would threaten the church. I think the biggest problem for many within the church is that they are in danger of losing the power to tell others what is right and wrong, true and untrue, without some kind of perspective or reason. When people question you, it is hard to control them. You have to engage with them on equal ground.
So we updated our rituals and made things look like the culture at large, but continued to tell people the same thing once they got in the doors. Obviously it hasn't worked. The answers the church is used to giving people do not answer the life questions they are asking. People want meaning in there lives, to know how they can love and be loved, and we tell them to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
Things are changing, however. There are a lot of thinking and feeling Christians out there engaging in ancient ways. By ancient ways what I mean is that there were certain ideals and ways of engaging with people the Jesus discussed in the Bible exemplified that, on their own merit, drew people to him to the point of accepting persecution. Heaven wasn't a goal, it was a state of mind for these people. They adopted the attitude of Christ, as much as they could, and it became their way. Before there was a Bible, or church doctrine, or 5 steps to being a Christian.
My friend Kevin asked us if we (the church) were hibernating or awakening, and I think the question is complex. The church as it had been is dying. It just is, and it's time to accept that. I don't think the church will always be a dominant religious or political force forever. But I do think people will start to re-engage with the character of Christ. There are a lot of people struggling through the questions of faith, but with a desire to have the kind of love in action that they see in Christ, and it is beautiful. Christianity has always done best as a voice in the wilderness, offering an alternative to a system of dominance and subserviance in the form of mutual servanthood in love.
I have been in hibernation long enough. I've put my spirituality aside to get myself back together, but I'm waking up now. The Church proper may be increasingly irrelevant, but I think the spirit and character of Christ is as relevant as ever. It is a difficult way, with little in the way of obvious rewards, but it should be obvious that the way of success by any means is killing us as a society. We need different ways, and there is something in what was once called "The Way" that seems to present an awful lot of good ideas.
I will point out that I've breezed through an awful lot of material here, so this discussion is far from being properly contextualized. Hopefully I'll be discussing these things more in depth over time, but for now I just hope you'll join the conversation, regardless of your own viewpoint.
~Phil
The thing about Christianity is that it has been fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of power since its foundations. To make it work as a tool for personal or social gain, it has to be subverted to the point of unrecognizability. For almost 2000 years, the populace at large was unaware of this, as most were too illiterate to read scripture for themselves, and those who did question what the state/church was telling them were persecuted by an institution whose founders were themselves the victims of persecution.
During the 20th century, a lot of things happened. A lot of thinking type fellows describe what happened during the past hundred years as a movement from the modern world to the postmodern world. Describing postmodernism would take forever, since it is not fully defined itself, but there are a lot of ideas that have come out of postmodern thinkers and writers that presented a deep threat to church elites. The main threat was the idea that absolute truth was in the eye of the beholder. In otherwords, what is actually the real truth about anything cannot be known with 100 percent certainty. Fundamentalists have been dismissing this idea as immoral for the better part of fifty years. What hasn't been done as much is to ask why such an idea would threaten the church. I think the biggest problem for many within the church is that they are in danger of losing the power to tell others what is right and wrong, true and untrue, without some kind of perspective or reason. When people question you, it is hard to control them. You have to engage with them on equal ground.
So we updated our rituals and made things look like the culture at large, but continued to tell people the same thing once they got in the doors. Obviously it hasn't worked. The answers the church is used to giving people do not answer the life questions they are asking. People want meaning in there lives, to know how they can love and be loved, and we tell them to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
Things are changing, however. There are a lot of thinking and feeling Christians out there engaging in ancient ways. By ancient ways what I mean is that there were certain ideals and ways of engaging with people the Jesus discussed in the Bible exemplified that, on their own merit, drew people to him to the point of accepting persecution. Heaven wasn't a goal, it was a state of mind for these people. They adopted the attitude of Christ, as much as they could, and it became their way. Before there was a Bible, or church doctrine, or 5 steps to being a Christian.
My friend Kevin asked us if we (the church) were hibernating or awakening, and I think the question is complex. The church as it had been is dying. It just is, and it's time to accept that. I don't think the church will always be a dominant religious or political force forever. But I do think people will start to re-engage with the character of Christ. There are a lot of people struggling through the questions of faith, but with a desire to have the kind of love in action that they see in Christ, and it is beautiful. Christianity has always done best as a voice in the wilderness, offering an alternative to a system of dominance and subserviance in the form of mutual servanthood in love.
I have been in hibernation long enough. I've put my spirituality aside to get myself back together, but I'm waking up now. The Church proper may be increasingly irrelevant, but I think the spirit and character of Christ is as relevant as ever. It is a difficult way, with little in the way of obvious rewards, but it should be obvious that the way of success by any means is killing us as a society. We need different ways, and there is something in what was once called "The Way" that seems to present an awful lot of good ideas.
I will point out that I've breezed through an awful lot of material here, so this discussion is far from being properly contextualized. Hopefully I'll be discussing these things more in depth over time, but for now I just hope you'll join the conversation, regardless of your own viewpoint.
~Phil
Monday, August 23, 2010
To Judge is to Lose
So yesterday we had an interesting conversation in Sunday School about judgment. While we ended up talking about whether or not it is "okay" to judge others, this was not the topic I found myself drawn towards. Instead, I was thinking about an earlier inquiry we as a class were making into why people do not pursue some of the more creative and bold ideas they have in their lives. My suggestion was that it was because other people, and especially those we are close to, provide a prohibitive function towards truly creative living through the judgments they make. It's just too mentally taxing for a person to try and live creatively without the knowledge that the people in their life are going to be providing unfaltering encouragement.
Perhaps the reason we are so amazed as a culture when someone does something unique is that it seems like they had to do it on their own. When someone lives in intentional poverty their entire life to demonstrate solidarity with the poor, we can't believe it and think they must be special, but the truth is it takes community, which is the antithesis of judgment.
I have never known anyone who has improved their lives, accomplished a goal, or really done anything that was the direct result of having judgment in their lives. Constructive criticism? Yes, but that is different. Having people who are not afraid to talk to you and let you know that what you are doing is not getting you where you want to go is different than judgment. We all lose when we judge, because we inevitably think of others as lesser than rather than seeing them as people of value just like ourselves.
We say that judgment is unavoidable. It's not entirely true. The feeling of disapproval is unavoidable, but there is a difference between thought and action. One of the great things about being human is that we have been gifted with he incredible tool of reason, and should be expected to use it less to prove how right we are and more as a partner to our own hearts. When we allow a feeling to control us without our brain checking in to tell us "is this necessary, is this loving, is this who I want to be" we usually lose out. We lose out because we don't take the time to step back and be intentional about our lives. I love the word intention, because it suggests I am not a slave to whims and whimsies, but can elect to take actions that will move me towards maturity and grace or not.
The problem is that this takes practice. It takes a lot of practice, and I am learning everyday. The last year has been the best teacher I've ever had in terms of showing just what I'm capable of for both good or ill, but I'm learning, and it is a source of comfort.
Here's the thing about judgment. It doesn't just hurt the person we judge, but it shuts us off and in turn hurts us too. To judge is to be certain, and that is something we can never be as humans. We like to be certain about everything. Money, jobs, relationships, our fantasy baseball team, anything. This however, is a fallacy. Just because we label something with a term of certainty doesn't mean it is set in stone, and we have to learn to live in that tension. We have to accept that that money, that dream job, that person, that bacon cheeseburger might not be there like we think it will. In the end, you control nothing outside yourself, and even that is a chore. Its tough to accept, but it is freeing. Knowing you can care about people without believing they should respond this way or that takes the pressure off. Knowing you can only do what you can do in one day makes a job ten times less stressful. Knowing you don't control the outcome of every college football game means you can be a fan without becoming a nut job.
Knowing that your judgment will not change the course of some one's life means you can become a friend instead of turner-away. Now, the hard part is actually doing it, and I'm a hypocrite just like everyone else here, but I'm trying my best.
"Put others' rights before your own feelings, and others' feelings before your own rights" - Coach John Robert Wooden.
Perhaps the reason we are so amazed as a culture when someone does something unique is that it seems like they had to do it on their own. When someone lives in intentional poverty their entire life to demonstrate solidarity with the poor, we can't believe it and think they must be special, but the truth is it takes community, which is the antithesis of judgment.
I have never known anyone who has improved their lives, accomplished a goal, or really done anything that was the direct result of having judgment in their lives. Constructive criticism? Yes, but that is different. Having people who are not afraid to talk to you and let you know that what you are doing is not getting you where you want to go is different than judgment. We all lose when we judge, because we inevitably think of others as lesser than rather than seeing them as people of value just like ourselves.
We say that judgment is unavoidable. It's not entirely true. The feeling of disapproval is unavoidable, but there is a difference between thought and action. One of the great things about being human is that we have been gifted with he incredible tool of reason, and should be expected to use it less to prove how right we are and more as a partner to our own hearts. When we allow a feeling to control us without our brain checking in to tell us "is this necessary, is this loving, is this who I want to be" we usually lose out. We lose out because we don't take the time to step back and be intentional about our lives. I love the word intention, because it suggests I am not a slave to whims and whimsies, but can elect to take actions that will move me towards maturity and grace or not.
The problem is that this takes practice. It takes a lot of practice, and I am learning everyday. The last year has been the best teacher I've ever had in terms of showing just what I'm capable of for both good or ill, but I'm learning, and it is a source of comfort.
Here's the thing about judgment. It doesn't just hurt the person we judge, but it shuts us off and in turn hurts us too. To judge is to be certain, and that is something we can never be as humans. We like to be certain about everything. Money, jobs, relationships, our fantasy baseball team, anything. This however, is a fallacy. Just because we label something with a term of certainty doesn't mean it is set in stone, and we have to learn to live in that tension. We have to accept that that money, that dream job, that person, that bacon cheeseburger might not be there like we think it will. In the end, you control nothing outside yourself, and even that is a chore. Its tough to accept, but it is freeing. Knowing you can care about people without believing they should respond this way or that takes the pressure off. Knowing you can only do what you can do in one day makes a job ten times less stressful. Knowing you don't control the outcome of every college football game means you can be a fan without becoming a nut job.
Knowing that your judgment will not change the course of some one's life means you can become a friend instead of turner-away. Now, the hard part is actually doing it, and I'm a hypocrite just like everyone else here, but I'm trying my best.
"Put others' rights before your own feelings, and others' feelings before your own rights" - Coach John Robert Wooden.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Depression and the Art of Relationship Semi-Maintenance
This is the hard topic. The one I think about writing about all the time, but always have trouble with. Even for someone with a history of opening wide with my emotions, talking about love not easy. I'm a guy, for crying out loud. We want to screw and screw again. Women are something to be conquered, right? It's a game to be played, and if you do it just right, you'll get what you want. uhmm, no.
The other thing that's hard about talking about relationships is that you don't want to give away the dirty laundry of past loves'. So I'll try to talk sbout my relationship style, that of a guy who has struggled with depression, without actually talking about my relationships.
One of the longest running rivers along the landscape of my own experience with depression has been my history with the opposite sex. The hardest thing for me is feeling like I'm going never going to be a stereotypical guy. I'll never be an emotional island, quite the opposite in fact. I can be quite the girl in relationships, as I'm told, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing except it usually leaves the part of the masculine partner unfilled in the "ideal relationship," which of course does not exist.
Here's the problem kids. My greatest strength in relationship is directly tied to my absolute worst weakness. I don't feel things without feeling deeply, which can be really awesome for connecting on a powerful emotional level. I've had girls wanting to spend their whole lives with me after a couple of months, an admission usually followed up by "I'm so glad you're not like other guys." Unfortunately, we can fastforward to a place where that same statement changes to "Why can't you just be like other guys." You see, what the wonderful women I've been involved with fail to plan for is that for every way a person is not typical in a good way, there is usually an accompanying downside. The biggest problem in my relationships with women has always seemed to be this. Early on in a relationship, many of my partners have fallen rather hard for me at some point, which of course signals to me that it is safe to get attached now. At this juncture in a relationship I've probably abandoned logic to take one more shot at something crazy special, and it is amazing for a while. I've been that couple that made other people sick at the level of lovey-doveyness involved.
But here's where depression will get you. The first time you hit any rough patch, that old monster comes a calling to remind you that you probably don't deserve the person you're with, at which point you (I.E."I") start to panic. What if they figure out they're dating a guy with serious issues. Self-sabotage time. My weapon of choice in a relationship is jealousy. See, when you have esteem issues, you're always afraid your partner is going to trade up on you for a better model. The irony here is (and guys, you should take notes, because this is a sure fire technique for screwing up a relationship) that by being jealous of every guy/friend your lady friend spends time with or gives attention to, you can eventually ensure that they will in fact, start thinking about finding someone else.
Now this isn't to say I'm totally to blame for every relationship I've had that ended badly. After all, that would fall into the category of faulty depression logic (i.e. I am the cause of everything in my world, therefore I am both totally egocentric and awful at everything) To be sure, I've had plenty of help in blowing up what looked like a promising relationship.
But the very nature of this disease, and definitely in my case, is that you have a really hard time trusting yourself to be successful with people, and when you are, you tend to think it has nothing to do with you. On the flip side, when things go badly with other people, you tend to think it has everything to do with you. So you're left not trusting yourself with other people, and especially not in intimate relationships. You're sure you will find a way to mess things up, and it infects everything, including your trust for the other person.
Now all that said, I've made a lot of progress in this area, or at least I think I have. I guess I won't know until I'm in another relationship. But the point is that there is hope for the North American Depressive Male on the prowl. Just like in anything, you should play to your strengths, which center around your ability to connect deeply on an emotional level.
The thing I want to keep pointing out about depression is that, while it can be a difficult disease, it tends to come with a array of gifts. For everything thing depression has taken away, it's given something back. Do I have times when I lack any self esteem. Sure. But I get back an uncanny knack for empathizing with other people when they're hurting. Have I ever been that guy who thought he was the biggest loser in the world. Absolutely. But I've also never been the guy who thinks he's better than everyone else and treats everyone like shit.
Anyway, long post, but I keep getting subtle encouragement to keep sharing. The main point here is that relationships are weird critters to begin with, and depression brings a whole 'nother ball of wax into the mix. It's not a death sentence, but it is something that both partners have to be aware of, and as the depressed party, you owe it to yourself and your special someone to tell them what they're getting into whenever things get serious. The truth is that if it's right, you'll both be mature enough to work together through it, and if you're not, it ain't meant to be. Now if I can only remember that all the time....
Later Gators.
The other thing that's hard about talking about relationships is that you don't want to give away the dirty laundry of past loves'. So I'll try to talk sbout my relationship style, that of a guy who has struggled with depression, without actually talking about my relationships.
One of the longest running rivers along the landscape of my own experience with depression has been my history with the opposite sex. The hardest thing for me is feeling like I'm going never going to be a stereotypical guy. I'll never be an emotional island, quite the opposite in fact. I can be quite the girl in relationships, as I'm told, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing except it usually leaves the part of the masculine partner unfilled in the "ideal relationship," which of course does not exist.
Here's the problem kids. My greatest strength in relationship is directly tied to my absolute worst weakness. I don't feel things without feeling deeply, which can be really awesome for connecting on a powerful emotional level. I've had girls wanting to spend their whole lives with me after a couple of months, an admission usually followed up by "I'm so glad you're not like other guys." Unfortunately, we can fastforward to a place where that same statement changes to "Why can't you just be like other guys." You see, what the wonderful women I've been involved with fail to plan for is that for every way a person is not typical in a good way, there is usually an accompanying downside. The biggest problem in my relationships with women has always seemed to be this. Early on in a relationship, many of my partners have fallen rather hard for me at some point, which of course signals to me that it is safe to get attached now. At this juncture in a relationship I've probably abandoned logic to take one more shot at something crazy special, and it is amazing for a while. I've been that couple that made other people sick at the level of lovey-doveyness involved.
But here's where depression will get you. The first time you hit any rough patch, that old monster comes a calling to remind you that you probably don't deserve the person you're with, at which point you (I.E."I") start to panic. What if they figure out they're dating a guy with serious issues. Self-sabotage time. My weapon of choice in a relationship is jealousy. See, when you have esteem issues, you're always afraid your partner is going to trade up on you for a better model. The irony here is (and guys, you should take notes, because this is a sure fire technique for screwing up a relationship) that by being jealous of every guy/friend your lady friend spends time with or gives attention to, you can eventually ensure that they will in fact, start thinking about finding someone else.
Now this isn't to say I'm totally to blame for every relationship I've had that ended badly. After all, that would fall into the category of faulty depression logic (i.e. I am the cause of everything in my world, therefore I am both totally egocentric and awful at everything) To be sure, I've had plenty of help in blowing up what looked like a promising relationship.
But the very nature of this disease, and definitely in my case, is that you have a really hard time trusting yourself to be successful with people, and when you are, you tend to think it has nothing to do with you. On the flip side, when things go badly with other people, you tend to think it has everything to do with you. So you're left not trusting yourself with other people, and especially not in intimate relationships. You're sure you will find a way to mess things up, and it infects everything, including your trust for the other person.
Now all that said, I've made a lot of progress in this area, or at least I think I have. I guess I won't know until I'm in another relationship. But the point is that there is hope for the North American Depressive Male on the prowl. Just like in anything, you should play to your strengths, which center around your ability to connect deeply on an emotional level.
The thing I want to keep pointing out about depression is that, while it can be a difficult disease, it tends to come with a array of gifts. For everything thing depression has taken away, it's given something back. Do I have times when I lack any self esteem. Sure. But I get back an uncanny knack for empathizing with other people when they're hurting. Have I ever been that guy who thought he was the biggest loser in the world. Absolutely. But I've also never been the guy who thinks he's better than everyone else and treats everyone like shit.
Anyway, long post, but I keep getting subtle encouragement to keep sharing. The main point here is that relationships are weird critters to begin with, and depression brings a whole 'nother ball of wax into the mix. It's not a death sentence, but it is something that both partners have to be aware of, and as the depressed party, you owe it to yourself and your special someone to tell them what they're getting into whenever things get serious. The truth is that if it's right, you'll both be mature enough to work together through it, and if you're not, it ain't meant to be. Now if I can only remember that all the time....
Later Gators.
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