More personal outpouring

I used to think that I was a very honest and direct person especially when it comes to the maneuvering of relationships, but now I realize that is not true at all. The other day I was talking to a friend about how one of my biggest frustrations is that I never got to tell my then-boyfriend all the issues I was pissed about with him when we broke up...because I didn't want to. He said that if he was in then-boyfriend's place, he would have wanted to know. Which is true, so would I. But how can you say such things to a person you love/d knowing very well that it would hurt them? In addition to that, it seems very unnecessary because it's not like much good would come of it at the stage.

Which applies to all my relationships with people now. I can barely tell my friends when I need them, or when I feel like utter crap (until days later), or that I disagree with them, or that I think they are being a jerk. I am so non-confrontational now that its ridiculous. It's just that with my time stretched so thin as it is, it seems so almost wasteful to bring in potential-conflict with friends. I would rather just keep it affable and bury issues. But seriously, this cannot be a long-term solution because I am all about suppressed frustration right now.

..as recent posts have proven.

Which is also why my ADM friends know nothing about this blog, I hope. All this anxious introspection would be alien to their impression of me and yeah honestly, I think it would make them uncomfortable. They are so convinced that I have it all figured out that they would find this ridiculous, which is ridiculous in itself. Not that I haven't tried opening up this side of me to them, but I just got strange looks from them so yeah let's just leave it at that.

Weird isn't it, the schism between who you (think you) are and other people's perception of you. To the most trivial thing, like wondering whether people think I'm pretty*. I personally like the way I look, but that is really not based on uh, standards of attractiveness. And you don't need to give me the bullcrap about how the most important thing is I like myself because excuse me, re-read the first sentence of this paragraph okay: not the point! With then-boyfriend, I never gave a flying hoot about this because I knew he thought so (belated thanks, btw). So it seems! That this really boils down to an inherent need for external validation. Which sounds a bit pathetic at first, but really people do this all the time for all causes no? I have an idea of who I am, but need external validation, the need for the Other to anchor what would otherwise be a floating and free-forming set of ideas of who you are. In this case, to think therefore you are, doesn't quite resolve the crisis.

*What, it's true! I think its a fair reaction towards having gone through consecutive half-baked romantic encounters. Its just a whole lot simpler to rationalize the outcome to thoughts of yeah probably just not pretty enough. Simplistic, but it also allows me NOT to go through even more problematic analysis of Why Things Didn't Work Out which is a complete waste of time anyway, cos heck knows what was going on on the other side right.