the search for true intimacy.....

9/30/07 – Sunday morning. Nice morning, mostly lightly overcast, cool.

An introspective and thoughtful day for me. Ever have those, where you just wake up, and things seem more clear and lucid than other days? Where thinking thru things just comes so easily?

I’m there. I’m 52 years old, not old, not young, but full of a lot of living yet to come. I can do many things alone and derive some amount of pleasure from them, and that’s ok. But for me, personally, my dream right now, the one thing that would make my life full and satisfying, would be to find a woman who I truly “connect” with. That it feels so natural to wake up next to, to go thru every one of my days with, a woman I’d have no insecurities about, knowing we were together because we chose to be, and knowing we were going to be together all the tomorrows of our lives. No, I don’t expect, or even really want her to be exactly like me. I kinda like a feisty yet fun woman, one who has a mind of her own. One who has definite likes and dislikes, is ok when we’re together or when we do things alone that maybe the other doesn’t enjoy. One who isn’t afraid to voice her wants, her desires, her likes or dislikes, her opinions. One who gives me a different perspective on things than just my own.

In that search these last 7 years of singleness after two failed marriages, if you took the sample of women I’ve gotten to know in many ways, and extrapolated that out as if it was representative of all the available single female population around my age, 99.8% would have been physically, sexually, or emotionally/verbally abused, and 98% would have lost themselves, merging their thoughts, needs, and lives into those of the kids, but more usually their grandkids. Living vicariously thru them? Maybe. Hiding? Very possibly. Avoiding the pain, the deepest emotional pain many have suffered? Yes. In this world of labels and acronyms, could refer to it as the gramma complex, to look at it as if directed "at" the women. or the grandpa complex, to refer to the man's loss of attention from a woman, victim of the abusiveness in the world today.

I’m not one of those abusive men, not one who has ever struck a woman, nor verbally or emotionally battered or harangued God's greatest gift to man. Never have been, and I don’t ever see myself changing in such a sick way. It has been an eye-opening last 7 years, and I’ve had to scramble to read everything I could on abuse – the nature of it, the cycles it goes thru, the escapes, the fallout, the results on people’s lives. I’ve learned more about codependency in the last 2 or 3 years than in the entire previous 50 years. And thru all of this, have uncovered some issues in my own life, and have found a love and appreciation so much deeper for women than ever before. Learning to really let God deal with me, turning my issues over to him, and realizing only he could remove the venom of these things from my life has mellowed me more than anything in my life.

I can’t imagine how so many men could abuse so many women, the women they’re supposed to love and cherish. It escapes me, blows me away, the massive scale this damage has occurred on.

I can understand why so many women, grandmothers now, really do meld their lives into their grandkids'. I hate that that happens, and wish I could find a woman who didn’t feel like that was what they really wanted. I’m guessing its fear that keeps them shielded, hidden.

In the meantime, loneliness has grown to be a daily companion. Hopes of finding a woman to truly share my life with and me hers, they’re still very much there, as is the wondering if that’s even in the realm of reality any more in this screwed up time we live in. I keep going back to the knowledge that thru God, anything is possible.

Today, had a new realization, or question, arise. Where are all the single men in my age range? What do the others do for companionship? What have they found in their search for one to love and share a life with? Is it similar, or totally different, than my experiences? Maybe there should be a support group, for men who find themselves discarded and single after 50, or 40. kinda sad, how men don’t form the kinds of friendships women do, a network that can keep one going when he gets down and discouraged and loses hope. A bunch of guys to go bowling with, golf with, have a beer with, whatever one’s interests are.

Life can be really hard sometimes. Lonely. Distant. I miss the good times, the laughter, the fun times. I'm sad. sad that so many women have suffered as they have, needlessly. sad, that so many men have failed to see what they could have had, but instead destroyed. sad, that because of other's shortsidedness and insensitivity, that I lose.

What's humility?

It's not being one serving sacrificingly to others, a poor beaten down, walked on martyr. Humility is seeing ourselves as God sees us. He created us perfectly. But we get to where we get in life, not on our own, but like the turtle on the fencepost, we got where we are only with help from others.

It's being honest with ourselves, realizing we all have our compensating balances - good points about ourselves, balanced by areas we're not so strong in. yes, we ALL have these balances, none excluded that I've found.

Humility is realizing God gave us the skills we have, and being thankful for them and using them, knowing we did nothing to deserve those skills. And if we seek God's help, we can even build on these strengths and increase them.

Humility is realizing we are no better, no worse, than anyone else.