Dear Blog Readers:
This won’t be poetic, nor should it be.
It has come to my attention recently that I’m a lousy debater, that I have a tremendous need to be liked and accepted, that I don’t like myself, and that I’m a bottomless pit of need, thus pushing people away.
One of the people who have been critical doesn’t know me at all, couldn’t remember me from 40 years ago, and barely remembers my older sister who she was contemporaries with.
The other person is unidentifiable except by her gmail address — but I have no idea who she is at all… yet she choses a public forum — MY public forum — to tell me how wrong I am to feel the way I do.
Somehow, these people — and a couple of others who I don’t know — understand everything about my youth, the trauma I went through having my parents fight and finally get a divorce, having to pick which parent to live with, moving from small western towns where I was the brightest kid in school to a Midwest brain factory where I didn’t even graduate in the upper half of my class, being told “I love you as a my son, but don’t like you as a person”, being on the wrong side of the tracks, never thinking I was good enough, being dumped by a woman after a 2-year long distance relationship just as I was about to see her again, finally getting married only to discover years later that my wife’s family asked her “what rock did you find this guy under?”, being in a marriage where I was never quite certain I WAS in a relationship, where I never was quite certain I was loved, disapointing time and time again my parents, my wife, my children, now having children who say “I hate you as a dad and a person” even though I gave up a lot to take care of them and their mother as they were growing up …
and on and on it goes.
And although I’ve taken classes and workshops on improving myself, and my self image, I’m still working on it, on me.
And these persons now have the audacity to say that they know me, they understand me, and when I’m trying hard to be liked, that I’m trying too hard, because I should be likeable just because I am?
To these persons who know me so well, I say REALLY?
Who, besides God and His Son, has EVER proven to me that I’m likeable … and stuck with it?
Show me, please, which of the dozens — or even hundreds — of families of kids I coached, Scouted with, went to church with, served with, or did other charity work with, which of those parents has even spoken to me after my marriage fell apart?
Where are they?

Is it any wonder that I try hard to be liked?

Is it any wonder that this blog IS a lot of “wah wah wah”, not only about women, but about relationships in general?
Yes, I have a lot of stories I’m telling myself. And some of the workshops I’ve done recently have really changed my attitude about myself, and about how much I love myself. I’m a lot different person now than I was a year ago …

The sad thing is, JUST when I have gotten to the point of feeling good about myself, loving myself, feeling comfortable in my own skin, these all-knowing people come along and blow me away with their glib assessments of what a self-defeating loser I am.
Thanks. Really.