I set a goal of completing ten pages of my latest comic book before the end of January.  However, I feel I've made my point about productivity, and I will settle for less than that.  I hope to have three book completed this year.  I'm on track to have this one finished by the end of March.

I don't want to talk about that former cashier anymore.  In my last post I said I wanted to turn the page on her.  If this loses readers of this blog, so be it.

I joined a support group for my love addiction in early 2022.  In the literature for this group, the author and founder came up with the concept of the seductive withholder.  A seductive withholder is everything the label implies.  In my case, girls and women would represent themselves as more available than they actually were, and they would wind up failing to deliver on the attention and affection they seemed to promise so much of initially.  I had big problems with this type in high school, on into college, and into the year 2022, apparently.

I will talk about someone in this paragraph that perhaps knows the last seductive withholder I had such a big problem with that I joined a support group in January 2022 while in the process of letting go of said seductive withholder.  I will not say this person's name, or give much of any other identifying info on her.  Therefore, any allegation that this post marks an attempt to embarrass this woman-who may or may not know my last seductive withholder-any allegation from ANYONE who tries to say I'm attempting to embarrass this possible friend of said seductive withholder, well, such an allegation is bullshit.

When I mentally test whether or not a post guards a private person's privacy sufficiently, I run my approach through the "cousin test."  For example, If this young woman had a cousin in, say, Amarillo she was kind of close to, but not that close to, would this cousin, just randomly stumbling upon this post while surfing the web, would this cousin recognize who I am talking about just from the contents of this post?  In my opinion, a hypothetical cousin of this young woman could not make such a connection just from reading this post.  So there.

That said, this young woman seems to offer a weird kind of window into the soul of said seductive withholder.  By that, I mean the expressions on this young woman's face and her overall demeanor compels me to think that I can see where I stand with said seductive withholder after one of these posts.  Such an interpretation of this young woman's facial expressions might just constitute my seemingly bottomless capacity to project my own inner life onto those in my world.  I'm aware of that. Okay?

So, what did I last see from this young woman that makes me want to write this post?  The last expression I saw seemed to convey an angered determination to WITHHOLD any concessions from said seductive WITHHOLDER concerning my last post about ingratitude.  Notice the use of the word WITHHOLD in that last sentence.  Look!  There's that word again: WITHHOLD.  Yep, a classic seductive withholder move if I ever saw one.  Yep, the very reason I let go of said seductive withholder in January of 2022 and never, ever looked back.   Time to turn the page on her, I say.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, alleged-friend-of-said-seductive-withholder.

I've been thinking about all of the stuff I've had to endure these past however many years.  Stuff that has to do with my theory that I had, and probably still have, an internet presence that I did not and still do not consent to.  So yeah, that sucked.  These past couple of weeks I've had some attention paid to me from some women as I've moved about my world.  I wonder if the women I've encountered in these ways were trying to make it up to me.  

In the 18th century English novel, Tom Jones, Henry Fielding concludes the story by saying that ingratitude is the worst sin one can commit in this life.  Fielding puts that on the antagonist of the book. That kind of stuck with me over the years.  We all sin against each other, so anytime an individual or group of people tries to make up for their sins somehow, only to be rebuffed by the aggrieved party, yeah, maybe ingratitude is the worst sin one can commit in this life. I mean, murder is definitely up there, but maybe he has a point.  Maybe Fielding was just talking about the everyday sins most of us are likely to, at some point, commit towards one another in this life.

If I lived in a perfect world.  A world where I could just snap my fingers and I could have a date with any twenty-two year old hottie of my choosing, I would certainly do just that anytime I wanted.  Does that mean I want to put myself out there socially to get dates with twenty-two year old hotties in the world we all live in at this time?  No, I don't want to do that at this time.  I think, as of right now, the decision to refrain from putting myself out there to get with twenty-two year old hotties seems like an intelligent decision to me at this time.  Maybe one day, putting myself out there to get with twenty-two year old hotties will seem like a very intelligent decision on my part, but right now, nope.

I written several times about my "standards" for who can get a date with me.  I've said, several times, that if a woman is available, interested, and acts like she gives a shit about taking care of herself, that can get her at least one date with me.  She DOESN'T have to be a twenty-two year old hottie to get at least one date with me.  Okay?

But here's the thing, here's the flip side of those standards I have.  As long as I make what I deem to be intelligent decisions about the twenty-two year old hotties in my world, I allow myself to make whatever decisions I want to make about any other type of woman in my world.  If I don't feel like pushing the envelope in that direction, today, tomorrow, the day after that, or the day after the day after, I don't have to,.  Even if those around me think my unwillingness to put myself out there socially to go on dates with these other types of women doesn't constitute intelligent decision making. Even if I myself question my reluctance to  put myself out there socially for these other types of women at this time. I allow myself to make decisions about such women I or those around me might deem unwise now or at some later date. 

Furthermore, I allow myself to reject whomever I feel like rejecting in the world of dating.  I've written about this major problem I have with the attitude I detect among those around me that seems to imply that I, as an older man with a major mental illness, that I somehow don't have the same right to reject anyone I want to reject that your typical twenty-two year old hottie has.  For some reason, lots and lots of people around me often don't seem to think I'm capable of acting in my own best interests in rejecting whomever I want to reject, for whatever reason, at any given time.

If a twenty-two year old hottie decided to reject a guy because he "creeped her out," or because he "made her uncomfortable," virtually NO ONE would likely question such a decision.  The only people likely to question such a decision from a twenty-two year old hottie would be a close friend or relative of the guy who creeped her out.  Other people around such a twenty-two year old hottie would just as likely say something like, "Yeah, your may be right about him.  You know what?  I have this cousin you might want to meet.  I bet you'd really like him."

It's not that I don't want to go on dates, or have sex, or have a girlfriend these days.  I simply don't feel like putting myself out there to try to get any of those things right now.  Maybe I will feel like it soon enough, maybe I won't, but it's my decision to make and no one else's.

I may have hit a nerve when I blogged last week about feeling "creeped out" by certain now-contrite women who may want to talk to me and get to know me some.  I don't know if my guess rings true, but I will hold off on going too much further into that particular territory.  What I will touch upon, however, has everything to do with "going there" in what I have to say about all that may or may not have transpired in these past several weeks or so.

When I saw a therapist in 1986, I remember now expressing a desire to somehow learn how to separate myself mentally and emotionally from those around me, especially women I found attractive and wanted to know better.  The course of the therapy did not go in that direction at all.  Remember, my mental illness remained undiagnosed at the time I saw this therapist, so I don't know how fair any condemnation of his competency would prove. I now realize this lack of ability to separate myself mentally and emotionally from those around me stood as a core component of my mental health problems back then.  The therapist didn't have that diagnosis to work with, and perhaps to blame him would prove pointless.

I didn't start to have the ability to separate myself mentally and emotionally from women I desired, or in this case, a woman I desired, until I had to deal with Sara in the spring of 1988.  At that time I gave a close reading to Dr, David Burns' Feeling Good, and decided to try to experiment with "turning my back on love."  My willingness to let my supposed opportunities to get with Sara slip through my fingers allowed me to also separate myself from her mentally and emotionally.  For the first time in my dating world life, I could tell where I left off and the object of my desire began.  I could see, in the midst of a dustup with her, that everything was not my fault for the first time in my dating life.

I found this revelation very important back then, and I find it very important to this day.  That's why I count my experiences with Sara as a well I still draw water from to this day.  The business of losing my virginity in 1985 now strikes me as a random, hit or miss affair, not unlike my numbers finally coming up in some lottery.  That's why I count most of the experiences surrounding that event in my life as more a product of their time.

For now, I'll try to hold off on going into why I think it is okay for me to feel "creeped out" by individual women or groups of women.  I have my guesses as to why some women, and maybe some men, may find such a stance off-putting, but I will hold off on talking  about that.  I want to observe more the goings on in my world before I raise and lower the gavel on that issue.