I started having lunches at a club for people with mental illnesses last Winter. Frequently there will be really attractive young social workers and students and interns of various kinds that will have some sort of doings at the place. Anyway, there was this one very attractive female student who volunteered there one day a week as part of her studies. She was twenty-seven years old, and she mentioned right off that she had a boyfriend in another large Texas city that she would see every weekend.
At any rate, she seemed to like me in spite of this fact. Her time to volunteer ended, and I was not at all inclined to pursue some angle, real or imagined, with someone who had a serious boyfriend. I just derived a bit of satisfaction from the notion that she might possibly have been somewhat attracted to me.
In the two books by Dr. David Burns that I've mentioned, Feeling Good and Intimate Connections, he emphasizes that when one discovers that one desirable person has an attraction to the reader, chances are that the reader might want to look around, because there might be others attracted to him or her as well. It's a mojo thing: once a person gets their mojo workin', it can work its magic juju on more than one person.
That means that if one person has a logistical barrier such as a boyfriend, or a huge age difference as another example, it's not exactly as if some great tragedy is unfolding such as the story of Romeo and Juliet. A person who is fortunate enough to at least maybe have more than one person with something of an interest in them can just say, "Well I like some of the qualities this person over here has, but some other qualities this person over here has don't make a very good fit, so I'll not really pursue that angle."
For me, that means that there is no one in my world who has any obligation whatsoever to follow through with me. I understand all about how the realities of an attraction can put too much of a constraint on one person in regards to another, and the notion that love conquers all, while romantic, can just hit a wall.
At any rate, she seemed to like me in spite of this fact. Her time to volunteer ended, and I was not at all inclined to pursue some angle, real or imagined, with someone who had a serious boyfriend. I just derived a bit of satisfaction from the notion that she might possibly have been somewhat attracted to me.
In the two books by Dr. David Burns that I've mentioned, Feeling Good and Intimate Connections, he emphasizes that when one discovers that one desirable person has an attraction to the reader, chances are that the reader might want to look around, because there might be others attracted to him or her as well. It's a mojo thing: once a person gets their mojo workin', it can work its magic juju on more than one person.
That means that if one person has a logistical barrier such as a boyfriend, or a huge age difference as another example, it's not exactly as if some great tragedy is unfolding such as the story of Romeo and Juliet. A person who is fortunate enough to at least maybe have more than one person with something of an interest in them can just say, "Well I like some of the qualities this person over here has, but some other qualities this person over here has don't make a very good fit, so I'll not really pursue that angle."
For me, that means that there is no one in my world who has any obligation whatsoever to follow through with me. I understand all about how the realities of an attraction can put too much of a constraint on one person in regards to another, and the notion that love conquers all, while romantic, can just hit a wall.
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