Newcomers to this blog are probably wondering which is true (and why they should care).
In recent months, regular reader the Shrink has volunteered much advice about what I should do with my relationship.
Sometimes, I get annoyed and say so. Once or twice, I have even deleted his comments, as I thought they went too far (well, I assume they were his - he posts under the 'anonymous' label after all).
Yet am I justified in complaining?
Someone who writes for an audience should expect that sometimes readers might not agree with him, or offer views on his life which he doesn't want to hear.
I accept that some of what regular reader the Shrink says is hard to take, and that occasionally friends and even members of my family have said much the same thing - boyfriend Maiyuu is a waste of time, manipulative, and so on.
However, I stand by my assertion that no one is in a position to know as much about what is really happening as the actors involved - me, him, and people who know us or who have met us.
I will stay in the relationship for as long as I think it is going somewhere. Should we meet problems, then we will have to sort them out ourselves. Ending the relationship is a drastic solution to something which could still be repaired.
Why we bother trying to fix things if they break? Usually because they still have some value to us. When they cease to have that value, we trade them in or discard them for a new good.
I would like to thank the Shrink for adding colour to this blog. A while ago, I declared that reader responses were the best part about any blog, and for the last few months have encouraged more of them.
Someone left a message yesterday saying he could understand why some readers liked to bitch about Maiyuu and me - because I wrote in such a way that almost demanded a response, or was angling for comments.
True! I want comments, and the more the better. I won't like them all, of course, but I don't care.
When I started writing this blog, readers rarely commented, and nor did I welcome them. I thought I could do it on my own. Blogging was a way to vent, or prove to myself that I could still write. Boring!
Now, I feel differently. A blogger is just one voice. If readers take part as well, then many voices are represented on our little stage.
If readers are interacting with 'content', then that content takes on a new life.
When I realised how much I valued reader comments, I changed the way I write, to draw them out more often.
Yesterday I invited the Shrink to become a regular contributor to this blog. Judging by his latest response, the Shrink doubts my motives.
Actually, I am keen on inviting someone else to write for this blog, and thought the Shrink might make a good choice, as he appears to have a good command of English.
The arch, bitchy, moody queen in him comes across clearly. By which I mean, he has a good writer's voice.
I did not extend the invitation merely to 'marginalise' his opinions, though if he was to write in this space then he should expect readers might well subject his stories to as much scrutiny as they do mine.
We are all interested in each other's lives. The question is, are we willing to 'share', to use the ghastly modern parlance?
Apparently, I made some outrageous 'projections' about Shrink's conduct with boyfriends. Sorry about that.
Now that I have said sorry, I hope we can move on.
Message to the Shrink: If you're worried that I would attempt to undermine stories about your life, by making other 'projections' about what it might all mean, then I think you should rest easy.
If you are even half as good a writer as I hope, then your stories will cry out for reader reaction. Regular visitors to this blog will pile in to leave their views: how they feel about decisions you have made your life, especially where Thais are concerned.
Like me, you might find some of the responses hard to take. But those who dish it out are usually just as good at taking it back in return. Right (cough, cough)?
However, in any event it seems 'personal circumstances' might conspire against you taking part. 'Personal circumstances?' Almost everything about blogging is personal.
If you lack the courage to tell us about your life, then just say so. No need to be a bashful queer!
The last word should go to The Shrink:
'You have characterised me in other critical posts as someone who probably "has a different young English-speaking boy in his bed every night".'
That was intended as a criticism? How remiss of me...I must have succumbed to an envy attack. In most circumstances, my response would be: 'Good luck to you, dear!'
Now, how about telling us those stories!
17 comments:
ReplyDeleteichimaru akira6 April 2009 at 23:21
elo,Ur a true gentleman.its hard to find gays who are gentlemen,mostly would ignore the negative comments or give a bitch slap to the commentators.
Anyway,i agree with u,we shuldn't end a relationship if we can still fix it
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Bkkdreamer7 April 2009 at 03:35
Sometimes all a stale, flagging relationship needs is a change of scene.
Today I took Maiyuu out for lunch. He chose the spot, ordered, and then took me on a long walk home.
After a tense couple of days in which we argued often, we are now best of friends again.
Thank goodness he agreed to go out! I didn't think he would. It's the first time we have been out for a meal together in months.
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Lino7 April 2009 at 08:45
It might be worth considering that a "shrink" is the slang for one who practices the precepts of Sigmund Freud. Freud was a middle-class Viennese Jew, a imperious genius but one whose perspective centered on his limited culture and frankly, his penis.
The days when this man's theories were bedrock of therapy and social science have thankfully passed.
It may be flattering and intriguing to have one spend the bytes analyzing your relationship, but without actually knowing you, its as valid as Dial-a-Shrink.
----------------
One comment you wrote a few days ago has really stuck in my craw:
"If someone were to ask me, 'Would you live with someone like Maiyuu in the West?', I think you can guess my reply."
'I am not a charity case!'
"I tolerate Thai ways because I live in Thaland.."
When you regard your companion as a "charity case".
When you only "tolerate" the ways of your host country...
..It is time to weigh anchor and move-on.
Lino
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ReplyDeleteAnonymous7 April 2009 at 12:17
I think, BKKD, that you would find my life quite boring and drama-free- from my point of view, it is functional and fulfilling.
I work, I go out, I occasionally go on a date- mostly with employed Thai men who are about my age, though I won't throw someone out for being young, unless they behave badly! A few of them have spoken English but most don't. I've had a couple of relationships with Thais that ended amicably when we either found other pursuits or realized things were not going well for both of us.
I'm not really interested in broadcasting details about my life on the web. I'm a private individual, and not interested in discussion of my situation with strangers. I don't need their approval and I'm happy with things as they are. I gave you one example before because you seemed so insistent that there were no alternatives to your perception of how it was to socialize with Thai gay men, and I wanted to provide one. Repeats would hardly be interesting because I don't go out with men who are unemployed or who ask me for money. It's not at all a strange thing, though the entry barriers I discussed in a previous post make it rarer for foreigners to do, I suppose.
I think one of the reasons I have been so hard on you is that I recognize in you personal patterns I struggled with in the past. They seem magnified in you, which warns me that you will find it much more difficult to heal, as you are older than I am and in poorer health.
Simply choosing to do nothing and letting life pass you by is not a way of avoiding responsibility. It will not be Maiyuu's fault (or the fault of any of his potential replacements) that you have never learned to love yourself, to grieve for your losses and forgive yourself for the self-abuse that you have been trained to practice, and to move on to a more fulfilling life- even though you seem to have chosen him to be a dysfunctional figure of responsibility in your home, probably replacing one of your dysfunctional original caretaker figures.
If you never choose to love yourself and take responsibility for your life, it will be your fault, and that will only add to your regrets eventually.
But you are the only one who can decide when you are ready for this kind of process. I feel, though, that many of your posts over the last few years in this blog have represented implicit calls for help- and to that extent, I am trying to provide advice which could lead in a direction which would be useful for you.
There is no fix for the situation you are in- the situation itself is the problem, and it is probably more global than you realise at present, extending into various areas of your life.
Repeating themes in this blog include drug and alcohol dependency, dysfunction with home, family, and work relationships, and a personal acquaintance that is not mostly composed of equitable relationships. The most common factor here is an unwillingness for you to stand up for yourself and love and live for yourself first. It is painful to watch and I am sure it is painful to live through.
That's all I really have time for for the next week or so. I am quite busy now. I hope you will think seriously on what I have said.
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neil7 April 2009 at 12:34
ReplyDeleteI vote (if we are tallying such things) for one voice blog ownership. On other blogs, they have 3,4,7 people writing as mods and demimods*. Different views, even if it is on the same theme, distract from the flow established before the cooperation formed. Personal blogs are written by one person only. Bring in writters, soon the original flavor changes.
Too many chefs spoil the soup.
and... they don't have to speak English in my bedroom.
*new word i invented
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BODYholic7 April 2009 at 14:10
"Actually, I am keen on inviting someone else to write for this blog, and thought the Shrink might make a good choice, as he appears to have a good command of English."
Spare me.
I read your blog because of your content, not your English. Please leave your Mr Shakespeare_wannabe in your comment section.
Thankyu You na. :)
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Bkkdreamer7 April 2009 at 16:10
Lino:
I doubt my relationship with Maiyuu would work in the West, because in the West people live by different rules.
There are so many things about the world which my young man just does not know.
That's not such a big problem, as he could always learn. But for the time being I think he is a better in an environment he knows.
Could he adapt to the ways of the West if he lived there?
He would need several visits, and preferably he would get to meet Thais as well, so he did not feel cut off, or isolated.
One of us, however, would have to carry on working, and that person would be me. Maiyuu could feel like a chain around my neck.
At times, he feels like a chain around my neck even as we share a life together in Thailand. I imagine the burden would only be heavier if, alone, I had to show him the ways of my home country as well.
I doubt my friends in the West would know how to relate to him. I might quickly find myself becoming isolated myself, as friends and family gave up on us as a couple.
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Bkkdreamer7 April 2009 at 16:27
Anon (the Shrink):
Thank you for your generous reply. I understand that not everyone wants to share his life in a public forum. I often have second thoughts about it myself.
My father and I share a common affliction: a desire to keep the peace with people around us.
That does not mean we shrink from confrontation; far from it. Sometimes I go out of my way to encourage it, if I think a good argument will help bring things out into the open.
However, it does often mean that we appease people even when we are sure that we are right. We try to keep them happy, so everyone can go to bed at night feeling happy with each other again.
In some people's eyes that makes me weak.
I know I have tolerated some things in my relationship with Maiyuu which makes my foreigner friends despair.
I console myself with the thought that I am not in a normal relationship. Often I am more like a father to Maiyuu than a boyfriend.
That's not ideal, but has its fun moments.
I enjoy making him happy, just as he enjoys caring for me.
Maiyuu enjoys much more freedom and equality than many Thais would enjoy in relationships with foreigners.
Maybe I give him too much at times, but then I do not believe that ordering people about gets the desired results.
I may not love myself, you are right. But I suspect a bigger problem in our relationship is that we come from such different backgrounds.
That's just one of the things you get when you enter a relationship with Thais; we find ourselves in unusual circumstances, so we try to adapt.
The foreigner makes certain sacrifices - putting up with things he would not have to tolerate in the West - because that is the price you pay for living in a foreign, developing country.
I doubt the relationship would do as well if we transplanted it to the West, because then Maiyuu would have to up his expectations and behaviour dramatically, and I am not sure he has it in him. It would all be too hard.
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Anonymous8 April 2009 at 04:01
ReplyDeleteI continue to maintain that the difference in expectations is not cultural, but your own. I have the feeling that the isolation you mention as a consequence of living in an English-speaking country is already upon you here.
You will notice that it is not me, but you, that continues to draw back the conversation to Maiyuu. He is irrelevant. You want him to be relevant because he is a projection of your defense mechanisms- primarily your defense against your own feelings of worthlessness.
You need to be spending that money on YOU, nurturing YOU, wondering what YOU are going to be doing later on today, tomorrow, next week, thinking about what YOU are doing with YOUR life, taking responsibility for animating YOUR own home, concerned with YOUR health, embracing and giving messages of SELF-love to YOU.
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Was Once8 April 2009 at 08:09
I find these comments by both of you to be interesting, real and poignant to your relationship at this time. I do have to agree that the main reason you flop between an easy time with Maiyuu and not, is how you see the world. If you do not love yourself ...one continually look outside for approval and validation. You posted this post just to show that you are loved, yet we know that beyond this post their will be another where you two just don't communicate and it makes you uneasy. I am not sure if Maiyuu is mature enough inside his heart to have a pure intention in regards to your relationship. He probably also struggles with loving himself stuck in this situation. And because of this you will be left with ongoing question marks. But now you have to set the example as the elder.
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Bkkdreamer8 April 2009 at 09:13
May I urge you not to rush to the conclusion that I am isolated, or lack love for myself.
These are assumptions which the Shrink has made based solely on his reading of this blog. He has never met me, or the boyfriend.
I suspect the Shrink likes to practice his craft on others around him - perhaps his foreigner frends who are in relationships with Thais. Does the Shrink offer them advice as well?
That might be wild speculation on my part, but then so is his analysis of my plight, until he has at least met me.
I could mention my wild, speculative assertion about the Shrink's habit of sticking his nose in his foreigner friends' affairs another three or four times, and over time it might gain credibility as a factoid.
That would be unfair, right?
If this wild speculation of his carries on, then we may reach the point where nothing I say in my defence carries any weight any more.
I become an emotional cripple, because someone who has never met me keeps saying I am, over and over again.
The conversation about what I need to do with my life has almost outlived its usefulness.
No one knows to what extent I look after myself - love myself, if you like - unless I tell you about it on the blog.
Put like that, then this discussion becomes rather absurd.
If I say anything where I attempt to put my own point of view, I am merely being 'defensive', refusing to acknowledge the truth.
I lack love for myself? Maybe I treated myself to a huge chocolate cake yesterday, you never know.
Today, the Shrink says he is younger and in better health. Now my health is under question!
One advantage of being the older one here is that I have been around longer. I don't need to pay too much attention to the ramblings of the young.
The Shrink says he has been on my side all along, and the problem is really about me, not the boyfriend or cultural differences. My, how convenient! I could be living in Latin America, it would make the same difference.
Yet how does the Shrink know? The simple truth is, he doesn't.
I see regular reader Was Once is starting to buy in to the Shrink's arguments. His magic is working.
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Was Once8 April 2009 at 10:04
ReplyDeleteI mostly have had this feeling as I have read your posts, and the shrink did not work did work his magic on me but agree more with what I felt all along. But who I am I to say? I understand that what you say here and how you really live may all be made up, since we have never met. You might create drama to further snag readers, and might just sitting by the pool laughing at others really caring to write a reply to your current dissatisfaction mirage. I engaged with the intent to help or clarify, not to gang up on you.
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Kevo338 April 2009 at 18:00
I agree with Neil and BODYholic: It is your writing that i come to this blog for. Anyone else writing would ruin the originality of this site. I am lately starting to just brows the comments instead of read them all...they're getting annoying :P
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Bkkdreamer8 April 2009 at 18:07
Was Once: All the stories are real. They are a faithful recall of what happens between me and the BF - well, as faithful as you can get with a guy whose short-term memory is as bad as mine.
I didn't think you were ganging up on me, dear, and I do suspect you were thinking along the same lines as he does...as I say, some of my farang friends have raised the same concerns which the Shrink mentions here. I'm weak, and the boyfriend is a user.
Actually, I don't think he's much of a user...he's just a kid, and at present knows little better.
Kevo33: Thank you for the compliment. How about we keep things the way they are.
I will try to keep the writing cheerful and chirpy. Where that fails, I will try to fend off nayasayers such as the Shrink as much as possible. How does that sound?
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Anonymous9 April 2009 at 02:21
Whatever- as I have mentioned, you are too happy to give my comments credence.
I know you are older because you have mentioned things which point to your age. I know you are in ill-health because you have mentioned issues with drug and alcohol dependency, and with your weight (perhaps you have deleted them, so I am not going to try to dredge them up in detail- but I am sure you know what I mean).
Anyway, good luck. You'll need it.
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Anonymous9 April 2009 at 03:29
PS - if you ARE having issues with your weight, treating yourself to chocolate cake is self-abuse, not self-love. Self-love would result in something that helps you and makes you better- and THAT will make you feel better more than any chocolate cake ever good.
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Anonymous9 April 2009 at 03:30
er, could.
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