Hi Vineeto,
I will reply to your latest post here :
Actually for the first time this is not something that I am finding very attractive anymore. Looking around in this area of being a ‘man’ I cannot seem to find much else. However I do agree with what you wrote here :
Vineeto: Even though one can become actually free without having dismantled the whole of one’s social identity – if aspects of it bother you now then now is the time to examine those and may remove a lot of your present ‘jitters’. It will also remove various obstacles/ concerns which you may come across exploring the full range of naiveté and being as close to innocence as a ‘self’ can be.
Those last 2 points are relevant and related, in that there is clearly something blocking naivete from flourishing fully. And I very much find this prospect attractive, to find a way for naivete to flourish fully - both because of the immediate reward and because it is the best thing ‘I’ can presently do to get closer to reaching ‘my’ destiny.
What I can locate in myself which is possibly blocking naivete from flourishing is this deep feeling that I am disliked by others. This feeling goes against all my day to day experience so clearly there is something there. As an example with my hen party work, I have done at least a thousand of these events now and in 99% of the cases they are all having a great time and clearly they very much enjoy having me there. And yet almost every time as I am on my way to meet a new group there is this deep feeling/expectation/belief that they will dislike me. Now this feeling will usually disappear within a couple of minutes of me meeting the group as I find out yet again that they are enjoying my company. And yet the next time around the expectation is still there, against this overwhelming amount of data pointing in the other direction. So clearly there is this aspect of - fervently wishing something to be true.
It seems this may be related to the fact that I was never able to quite relate like others did. That there were all these rules and double meanings and hidden messages that perhaps I could not pick up and inadvertently I would sooner or latter accidentally transgress some expectation or boundary. I always found people to be very volatile in this manner, that niceness would very quickly turn to malice when I did not “play ball”.
Now again this really seems like a “phantom problem” because I can’t remember the last time someone was less than nice towards me ![]()
But perhaps the belief is that the only reason I am able to maintain niceness with others is because I am “playing ball” with them and so if the controller was to disappear and then ‘I’ was ‘being’ naivete as an ongoing modus operandi then ‘my’ very presence would be an irritant to others.
There was something that was written in one of the links you included : That the society we exist in is a fun and sex depreciating society, it’s a bit like that. It’s not just a case of the fear of being different but I am worried about people attacking me when I no longer give credence to all this seriousness. That by living naively and in gay abandon I will sooner or later accidentally transgress some boundary. Will I laugh when I was supposed to be serious? Will I forget to reciprocate some unspoken rule? Will I not realise that they other expects me to respond in this particular way etc.
And I am scared of this, because I have seen just how quickly the so called goodness flips into malice, that I am a friend as long as I “play ball” and then very quickly I become foe.
Actually the correspondence Richard had on the AFT when he first went public is a perfect demonstration of this, and the same for ‘Peter’ and ‘Vineeto’. What incredible push back against well meaning fellow human beings demonstrating a different way of doing things.
This is certainly what I have enjoyed immensely when talking with you Vineeto, that there is no malice that I could accidentally trigger, it is so safe. And of course at times you will discover something that will trigger ‘me’ but that is ‘my’ business. It is an impression which has burned itself deep into ‘me’, seeing what it is like to interact with somebody that will never ever ‘bite’.