Dis-Engage

I had a great chat with my good friend Graham. Graham and I were talking about my ex, his recent stunts, and my reaction to all of them. His basic answer- I need to learn to dis-engage.

My ex manages to loop me into these weird issues. My ex manages to get me all worked up and I end up wasting too much mental energy. Graham says that I need to think of it as a lab experiment. My ex just wants attention. If he gets attention, it will reinforce his behavior. If I ignore all his attempts for attention, it will stop his behavior. What I've been doing is intermittently giving in. Graham says this is the worst, because it not only reinforces the behavior but makes it happen more often as well. Graham believes that if I ignore my ex, he will find someone else to bother. Interesting theory. So, for the next few weeks, no matter how difficult he gets, I'm going to ignore it. Hopefully he will go away. So that means no replies to emails, phone calls, or conversations. Let's see how this goes. I suck at this game. I'm not a game player. I am always honest and straight with people. This just feels wrong.

Anyhow, enough about him. The world is a puzzling place sometimes. Just when I think that my ex was the only puzzling guy on the planet, I realize, they're all a bit puzzling in their own way. I have some friends etc that have taught me that. I guess the joke is on me. I always thought life would be easier once I left my ex. I thought the world would be easy to understand. I thought wrong. I just realized...I guess all humans are puzzling in different ways. There are very few people left that can be read like an open book. Well, except for me, that is. And now I'm starting to realize that it's not necessarily a good thing. There are some serious benefits in having a poker face. Being naive like myself is the same as being stupid, and being an open book makes me naive as well as vulnerable. What a bad combination.

So, here is my new goal- I'm going to try to be a little less open, honest, and trusting. I think I am setting myself up to be hurt way too often in life. I think I need to learn to be just a little bit more private about things (well, except maybe in this blog, this is my venting space)...

Let's see how long this will last. My guess is that I'll get tired and drained from acting all private, but either way, let's see. Maybe, if nothing else, it will protect me in the future. I did like the person that I am, but I'm also realizing that who I am is a good part of the reason why I get hurt so often in life. Dis-engaging from the world is not necessarily a bad idea. Thanks Graham.