Contents
Discussing feelings is not the strongest side of many men. For various reasons, they avoid talking about the personal, but alone with themselves they inevitably meet with hidden experiences. Our hero Alexander shared his story and admitted that this conversation helped him realize a lot.
“It all started when I didn’t answer her letter”
Alexander, 42 years old
Sometimes when I look back, I feel like I’m walking in the same circle. I always end up with people I don’t want to be with.
Even in my youth, I liked a girl, Alexandra. Even now, almost 20 years later, I remember her. She was not only incredibly beautiful and smart. There was something inexpressible about her that made her stand out from the rest. To myself, I called her a princess. And I felt like I didn’t deserve it…
We often met at parties with mutual friends, went to the movies and discos as a group. Occasionally, when suddenly found himself alone, he was happy to talk to her. The mere fact of her presence made me feel good. I felt that she seemed to use the opportunity to come closer to me.
Why didn’t I ask her out on a date? Yes, I could not even think that Alexandra could consider me as her boyfriend. But I asked a friend who knew her friend well to find out how she felt about me.
This story resonates with what happened to me much later.
At the same time, I suddenly started a relationship with a classmate. Once, when I walked her home, she put her arm around my shoulders. I, quite inexperienced then, was flattered by such attention. I kissed her and from that evening I thought that we became a couple. I liked that I have a girlfriend, that I was dear to her. Alexandra, on the other hand, seemed to be something unrealizable, although she did not get out of her head.
The friend never said anything, and I was absolutely sure that I had nothing to count on. Imagine my amazement when I unexpectedly received a letter from Alexandra. At that time, there were no instant messengers. She wrote it by hand and mailed it. I have kept the letter to this day. It was obvious that she was taking a step forward.
Everything inside me went cold. I realized that … I can not leave the girl with whom I had already started a relationship. I still don’t fully understand what was driving me then — as if I already promised something and I can’t fail. I didn’t answer Alexandra. I stayed with my girlfriend, but our relationship did not work out. And only recently I realized that this story echoes what happened to me much later.
The thought that there might not be a child floated like a shadow of relief.
I met Polina while working as a computer technician. She recommended me to her friends and we started talking. One day, she asked her mother to help her install a television system, and then invited her to her house for dinner. In the car, she put her hand on my knee, and when we arrived at her house … I did not expect that she would rush to me with such passion.
A relationship developed between us. At first I did not take them as seriously as Polina, but two months later she was admitted to the hospital. It turned out that she had no close friends: I went there, talked to the doctors, and when I brought her home after the operation, I realized that I had to stay. She constantly needed my help. And a couple of months later we found out that Polina was pregnant.
I took this news with mixed feelings: there was a desire to feel like a father, but at the same time the thought did not stop sounding in my head that I was not completely voluntarily in this role. “Do I want this woman to be the mother of my child?” I was afraid of this question. For Polina, motherhood was happiness: she bought clothes for her unborn baby, and when the apartment was filled with things and toys so much that it seemed that he had been living here for a long time, she had a miscarriage.
Sitting in the hospital corridor, I again found myself ashamed of my feelings. Of course, I didn’t want my own child to die. And at the same time, the thought that he might not be passed like a shadow of relief. And we lost him.
I realized that I can’t just walk away and be happy
From that moment on, Polina seemed to become my child herself. Almost every conversation ended in tears, and then in her long silence. I was willing to do anything for her to avoid feeling guilty.
Six months later, I met a girl at work, and our relationship became a refuge for me, in which I hid from Polina. With the other, I felt relaxed, as if I found myself free. However, he could not confess to Polina. She herself found the correspondence, we explained. I realized that I couldn’t just walk away and be happy. Her look, reminiscent of that of an abandoned dog curled up in the corner of the sofa, will never allow me to. But I can’t leave this girl either.
Now, even sensing that I am getting a message from her, Polina pretends nothing is happening. And I do not have the courage to tell her that we both have long lived only with the illusion of a relationship. And I myself have been living like this, probably since I didn’t answer Alexandra’s letter in my youth …
“In a relationship, it is important to see the real person, and not your reflection in him”
Julia Kazakevich, Jungian analyst
In his youth, Alexander had a need for a relationship not with a living person, but rather with the image of the Princess — this is how he calls Alexandra to himself.
This image contains features of femininity and softness. They are in the soul of the man himself, but they cannot be realized by him, because society expects a different type of behavior from him: activity, heroic overcoming, striving for achievements. Therefore, the soul, in Latin — anima, hides, and the man begins to unconsciously see it in a woman, as if projecting his own soul onto her.
If this woman suddenly behaves like a living person with her own needs and interests, he experiences anxiety. In order to prevent the loss of the soul, all sorts of rationalizations come to the rescue (in this case, a sense of duty), which exclude the possibility of a real relationship with a woman.
In relations with a classmate, Alexander himself unconsciously behaves like a symbolic “Princess”: he is passive, driven, appreciates admiration, but this behavior is in conflict with ideas about masculinity, so the union does not work out.
Proximity opens the eyes to what is not visible at a distance.
In the story with Polina, we see that the woman again takes an active position — she invited, rushed with passion — and the hero allows himself to be seduced. He has no need to be interested in either the personality of the partner or his own feelings.
And here again the conflict: the illness of a girlfriend is perceived by Alexander with resentment, he cannot remain a follower when a woman constantly needs his help. And the hero immediately finds himself in a new relationship, about which we know nothing, except that they are easy.
Who is this co-worker? A new active woman with whom you can be passive? Or a second Alexandra, a girl from the past, who reflects the projection of his own soul while she is far away and does not demand anything?
The answer to the question of why he cannot be with those with whom he wants is simple: proximity opens the eyes to what is not visible at a distance. He cannot approach without sacrificing the image of the Princess dear to him, therefore the image of the soul, which the woman symbolizes, is stratified into “distant, kindred, light” and “close, demanding, heavy”.
The awareness of these opposites could help Alexander to accept the integrity of the soul and part with the limited image of the Princess. But this is a long process that requires research into the cause of such an internal split.