A few months back I realized that I am missing something in my life. That something is true, lasting friendships with people that aren't vanilla, anal retentive boors.
For years I've made friends with people using an old model of who I used to be. I would befriend neighbors or the parents of my kids friends, or friends of friends. Over the course of time I would get to know them a bit and maybe even share some level of personal information.
Through the 'getting to know you' phase it would become clear what type of person they were from their actions or words. For example I had a neighbor for three years who was a mountain of a man. He was very outgoing and gregarious and would give you the shirt off of his back. He seemed to love life in a lot of ways and did what he could to be happy as much as possible.
Despite all that he was extremely shallow. It took all of 10 minutes to know everything that there was to know about him and he was the first one to admit that he didn't like to think deep thoughts. Whenever the conversation turned to a subject of some substance he would either leave or try to turn the conversation back to things like the weather or cutting grass or 'Drink More Beer".
Granted, some people are simply private and won't discuss ANY information. But this individual said on many occasions that he thought talking about philosophical shit, or emotional shit, or relationship shit, was just that - shit. The result, at least where I was concerned, was that I got bored with him. Sitting and talking for hours without actually saying anything got old pretty damned fast.
However, he wasn't the exception. I moved to Georgia 10 years ago and I've met an awful lot of people in that time. I can honestly say that in that time I've only met two men who like to talk about subjects other than the weather and sports. The women I've met talk about less than that.
So what kind of freak would I look like if I was my honest self around them? If I mentioned my interest in Poly, or watching my wife get it on with another woman, the concept would turn them all the way off. I'm not guessing about this. I spoke to one wife that I know had had a pretty rough time of it before she met her husband and her response to end the conversation that she essentially started was 'I don't think about that anymore so it doesn't matter'.
Okay, whatever you say.
So those types of vanilla homebodies aren't the friends that I've been pining away for all these years. I would like to meet some people that I could open up to without fear of being judged.
The trick is to discover if I can do this within the boundaries of my marriage. I am only theorizing when I say this, but its based on 20 years of personal observation, my wifes whole identity is tied up in the vanilla concept of the 'perfect' life - kids, house, one husband till death do us part, sex once in a while (with only said husband), and a few (if any) friends that she feels comfortable hanging out with. Her box is pretty small and she's cool with that.
Being capable of change isn't the same as being willing to change. It's like anything else, a commitment to growth requires actual effort and not everyone is wired that way.
Gonna have to be more clever I guess...
No comments:
Post a Comment