Unable to Fall in Love Disorder

Prior to 1974 Homosexuality was classed as a psychiatric disorder.

Gay people are not mad.

I 'suffer' from a condition about which there is much debate. The debate is whether it should be classified as a personality disorder. The reasons against are firstly that is agreed to be incurable and untreatable. Paradoxically, attempts at 'therapy' only heighten it. Secondly, there is the curious fact that there is nothing about it which is illogical or irrational. By its very nature, it consists of the 'sufferer' behaving in a manner which at some level is deemed commendable.

I have disguised the actual name of the condition to stop you googling it. Because if you do you will come across endless discussion forums where women discuss men they have lived with who have had this condition. And you will not see it described from the point of view of someone who lives with the condition.

There are two key points behind the condition. Firstly, we resent any attempts at control. Secondly, we suppress our emotions continually. We consistently approach the world through a polite but assertive facade. The emotions we display are not neccesarily the emotions we feel. We are so good at suppressing our own feelings that we ourselves often do not know what we feel. Sometimes this leads to us being confused with Sociopaths. The key difference is that we DO have moral compasses. And in given situations we will display our emotions. But we will only allow ourselves to display emotions in situations where we are totally in control. And feel ultimately protected from them.

In other words, the way we genuinely behave in social interactions is- usually better than most other people. In a sense. But the point is we display whatever emotions we think fits the occasion. And this makes us at a social level something a Sociopath is not. Because we can understand YOUR feelings. You tell us how YOU feel and we empathise. we KNOW the feeling. It's just we don't allow OURSELVES to acknowledge that feeling when WE feel it. That's what makes us so good in counselling roles, in sales roles, etc. We understand human emotions very well. It's just we turn ours.

At a deep inner level we resent the fact we have emotions and we wish we didn't. But we also want to release all those pent up emotions. So. Very. Very. Much.

But we can't. We daren't.

If you read some of the forums which discuss this condition, you'll sometimes see it said that people suffering this condition cannot form genuine close emotional bonds.
It's not true.

But I guess the best way I can describe it is this.

New Year's Eve, 2006. Subspace, Manchester. 11.50 PM.

Myself and the Baker sitting by a table.

Suddenly he turns to me and says 'Joe, I just want to say this to you. When I think of the best times in my life, so many of those quality moments have been with you. The most intelligent conversations, the most exciting nights, just- I see the world differently because of you. It upsets me so much sometimes when people don't get you. You can come across as so callous sometimes and I wish, I wish sometimes that- I just want to express to people sometimes the person you really are. I tell you Joe, if anyone ever hurt you, I'd take a pasting for you, I would.'

And I- I looked back at him distantly and said 'I know. We should hit the dancefloor, you know'.

There was so much more there in what he said. And he restrained himself, I know that. He hugs me a lot. I know how he feels and he knows how I feel. I don't say it, but he knows.
I think he knows also that the joy I express every time I see 'Crazy baby' isn't just love of 'Crazy baby', though I do love her as if she was my own child. I feel comfortable playing Hide and Seek with 'Crazy baby', I'm comfortable with her playing with my crucifix, comfortable with her bonding with me. I don't fear the emotion. Part of me transfers the expression of my feelings about her parents to the baby.

It really is such a hard condition for people to come to terms with. It's not like Autism where the sufferer is socially awkward. It's the opposite. The 'sufferer' is socially brilliant. A born performer. They just cannot cope with emotional intimacy.

And this is why I so badly want to shout at the discussion forums on the subject. It's the sort of crap Carly comes out with 'Covert abuse', 'Manipulative', 'Witholds information and sex as a control mechanism'.

But- here's the crunch. We are accused of 'always claiming that THEY are misunderstood and always playing the victim.

All of which goes to prove the point. No, you don't understand. And you don't understand WHY we feel like victims. We aren't playing the victim.

The key point is that TO US an attempt to form an emotional bond with us is a hostile act. And if you persist in trying to do so in a manner that we ourselves do not feel one hundred percent in control of, it will severely distress us.

It will feel like being raped.

So yes, it's a problem. The chances are that anyone who really does try to get close to you WILL get hurt.

It's pointless trying to ask us what our feelings are. We never know what they are, only retrospectively. We don't know how we feel about anything, ever. We only understand things in terms of logic. To quote my former boss 'You have an opinion on everything and a belief in nothing'. It's true. I don't believe anything at all. I only have opinions based on empirical data and logical analysis.

By the same token, one forms emotional attachments to things most people wouldn't, as a kind of substitute. I still sleep with a soft toy, for example.

A key problem for us is this. We want to be loved. And we badly want to love. But the concept of the emotional bond formed as a result is something we can't deal with. And probably never could. I've come to terms with that fact personally, though I still had a residual resistance to that fact until recently. Two things helped me come to terms with it. One was the whole horror of the Carly incident, the other was- something else. Which I will come to.

The thing is, we keep going out and we find it so, so, easy to attract people. And over and over again, we keep clutching at straw after straw after straw. Maybe you could love this person. And you let out all that pent up love that you feel inside, you let it out on any target, any target that looks lovingly at you. And when they try to love you back, you strike out at them. Because they tried to get close to you. And you can't make them see, can't make them see the paradox. You want to love, you want to be loved, but you can't deal with an emotional bond.

What really finally helped me come to terms with reality- to stop looking, to accept that its incurable, that I really never will overcome it, was- Bunny.

Maybe I shouldn't say this. But it doesn't matter now. I think, being honest, she is the only person I ever loved properly. I used to think I loved Joanna, but I didn't. Not compared to the way I felt- feel- about Bunny.
Why Bunny?

I don't know. It's not explicable to you, the readers out there. All I can say is that there was a period in my life when I spent the entirity of my day looking forward to getting home from work. Just so I could chat in IM to Bunny.

Don't get me wrong. Bunny had no feelings for me whatsoever. Or not like that, anyway. To be honest, I don't know what she thought. I'm not sure in reality I was ever concerned. I used to kid myself I wanted her to love me back, but I think really I was so glad she didn't. I liked telling her I loved her. I used to go to bed every night and hold one of the pillows, pretending it was her.

And I actually used to feel guilty every time I ACTUALLY got laid. I'd hide it from her.

I really have no idea what Bunny thinks of me. What I do know, is she gave me something no one else has ever given me and no one else ever will. She was there, night in, night out. There for me. And she put up with me, as I am on a close interpersonal level, albeit via IM. She got to see me at close range, one minute full of flowery statements of love, next minute having a sulk and saying 'I'm off to the pub. I might see you when I get back. If I get back'. She put up with my angst, my hypersensitivity, my continual diversion of the conversation, she just- handled it. Implacably.

So much so that there were times when I used to try kid myself that maybe IF she were to love me, maybe it would work.

But it's a good job she didn't- because it wouldn't.

It wouldn't work. It just wouldn't. It's just one of those things, like perpetual motion machines or time travel. The laws of the Universe don't allow it. I'm not capable of forming that bond refered to as a pair bond. Even if I love someone. And they love me.

I met Bunny- just the once. And I guess for me, the crucial thing would be how I felt on meeting her. Would I- feel the love that I felt when I talked to her in IM.

And this is what you need to know. Because it's absolutely crazy.

I can remember sitting in the pub with her opposite Victoria Coach Station. And I couldn't feel it. Anything. There she was in the flesh and I felt- nothing. That's it, you see. It wasn't that I was disappointed in her, I wasn't. She was everything I imagined, she was. It was just there in the flesh, the feelings were- gone. Somewhere else. Inaccessible.

I can actually remember looking at the barmaid (black, athletic looking) and pondering what she;d be like in bed. In retrospect I know why I was doing this. To keep whatever feelings hidden wherever I had hidden them.
I actually felt totally calm all afternoon. Chatting about the paintings. I think at times I shut off from the fact that she actually WAS Bunny. I just went into discussing art mode. I can't remember what we talked about over dinner.

Do you know, I actually said to Bunny (twice, I think) that I loved her. Just to see how it felt saying it in the flesh. And to my horror, I did not feel it. Worse. I was saying it in exactly the same way I'd say any random stuff to any random woman.

But yet-

As soon as I got home, I loved her again. More deeply then before.

So there you are. The only time I have ever really allowed myself to fall in love was in a situation where I only conversed in IM with a woman who did not return my feelings.

I don't think Bunny quite understands why she is so special to me, what it is she has given me and why I am so glad I had her in my life.

Because in a sense, she'll always protect me. I'm protected by remembering, remembering how I felt about her every night. And I will never feel that way again, I don't think.
But I got to feel it once. And that's enough. And it will keep me going now for life.

She is the only woman I have ever REALLY loved and perhaps the only woman I ever REALLY will love, screwed up as that might seem to so many of you. And I can't explain it, not really, can't explain why. But I'm grateful, grateful beyond expression.

Anyway.

I think that explains pretty much everything.

Except one last thing...

Carly only began her stalking campaign after she got it into her nutty head that I was 'involved' with Bunny.

Irony. I had never even mailed Bunny UNTIL Carly started posting personal comments about me on Bunny's blog. It's quite ironic, isn't it. Carly got upset because- in her obsessive, stalkery way, she was reading the sitemeters of every female blogger on my blogroll and decided I visited Bunny's blog too much.

You see, Carly is right to say that any women who ever tried to love me would get hurt. True. They would. Most likely. As I say, try as hard as I like, at a deep level I feel any serious attempt to get emotionally close to me in a manner I don't totally control, is a hostile act, and if pushed the way Carly used to try to do, it does indeed feel like being raped.

Yes, Carly got hurt.

But that doesn't justify Carly's stalking, trolling, e-mail harassment, online libel, spreading of malicious lies involving me founding a cult, harassment of family members, threatening of my flatmate and best mate, deliberately attempting to damage my blog and- Jesus, the list is endless.

And that, I think, just about wraps everything up.

I hope that explains everything now.