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FWP, despite all the caveats, your response still indicates a desire, to me, to make her into a kind of evil temptress against whom you have no powers of refusal. I accept that we all, men and women alike, may want to absolve ourselves in this way for situations that are causing us pain and where we find ourselves, against our better judgment, doing that which we want not to do. To wit:
I understand that it's not her fault if people keep falling for her but in my case at least she was doing things which encouraged it; my roommates at the time were astonished when I told them she had a boyfriend. I don't think she was cynically manipulating me for attention but unless she is incredibly bad at reading people (she's not, she's actually quite good) then she had at least some idea of how I felt and continued to do things to encourage it.
Your roommates were "astonished" that she had a boyfriend, but you knew, right? And you were apparently bothered by the fact at the time, but said nothing? You did not, say, try to open a conversation about precisely what kind of relationship she has with that other guy, to see if having other 'friendships with benefits' is a norm for her and him? You didn't seem to directly and unambiguously sit her down and let her know where you were, how you were feeling?
She's a "good reader"--"intuitive female"?--and should have just "known"?
I don't think I'm stereotyping with that last- it's just based on observation and conversations I've had with other people who know her. She seems pretty good at sussing out people's motivations, and for my part I felt like I was being pretty damned obvious about it. Of course, it's obvious to me because it's me, which doesn't translate necessarily to obvious to her.
On the other hand, the eXtreme spooning- by the way, it only happened a few times- was in each case followed by a period of awkwardness and talking only in the vaguest terms about what had happened ('last weekend was really weird...' 'yeah...') without actually going into why it happened. A few times I almost brought it up with her, but I was always too afraid of scaring her off. Which, admittedly, doesn't jive with my feeling that she absolutely must have known what was going on- my only explanation is that I'm horribly awkward in these situations (as is she, for that matter- our break-it-off conversation after the first period of togetherness was a truly wondrous mishmash of awkward pauses, 'um'ing and garbled sentences) and that I'm inexperienced, also very paranoid and second-guess myself a lot. By a lot, I mean all the time. I also felt at the time that there was some element of 'don't ask, don't tell' to it all- like, it was okay as long as we didn't mention it, but once we did things would go completely to hell.
Are you sure you're not expecting her, as a 'good' woman to be more attentive to your "needs" than to her own desires and interests?
Well, no, I don't think so. I would expect someone to be attentive to whether their desires and interests are causing emotional distress for someone else, though. Which isn't relevant if she was not, in fact, aware of it, but our behavior in the aftermath of the various eXtreme platonic physicality incidents seemed to imply that she was, and that it was bothering her too. Am I reading your point right?
I realize I'm also assuming you did not feel physically threatened by her, as would be true in a potential rape case--or at least you have not suggested that was true, here. (If you do feel physically threatened by her in some way I can understand that it might be difficult to admit, given gender norms.)
Ha. No. She's half my size. She did try to kick me once but she fell over.
So, with the caveat that of course you may not be giving us the whole picture even of your own actions, from what I am reading here, you apparently continued to deliberately take part in the infamous aggressive spooning and sinister hand holding, and other actions that to you are unambiguously "come hither" signals, because you feel powerless in your attraction to her, not because you are fearful of her ability to physically overwhelm you, to blackmail you, or to directly harm you in some way. Is that fair?
Fair.
I hate to say it, but, despite all your caveats, it sounds like you still want to see her as a "cock tease," so that you don't have to face the fact that you are feeling powerless around her because of the immensity of your physical attraction to her, the immensity of your emotions. That immensity is scary, but it's not the same as being threatened by someone as in rape cases.
Possibly, it scared the shit out of me at the time and I hate not being in control of my mental state. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, though.
I'll have to think about this some more, but I don't have the time to post more at the moment. |
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