In my post, "Beautiful Women." I went off on someone in my world.  I think I managed my response pretty well to some of the issues this person brought up.  The issues have to do with this person's availability and the availability of someone else.  I talked about how I first started teaching myself to exist in a happy place without someone such as this person I went off on giving me validation of my worth.  I first started teaching myself how to be happy without such women while I was still in my twenties.

In my early twenties, I had so many breakdown experiences that centered around this issue.  I could not make intelligent decisions about this or that young woman who presented me with this or that dilemma that centered around their actual availability.  One example was "Donna."  Donna merely flirted with me and the world in general one night early in the summer of 1986 over at a friend's house.  I decided to go on a spiritual quest for love over that one.  I carried a torch for her the whole summer, even though this mutual friend told me she had a boyfriend, and it all ended up in a breakdown mess at a party at that same house where she did her little act at the beginning of the summer.

I managed to smooth things over for a bit with a transcendent moment at another party at another location the following weekend.   I saw Donna and her boyfriend at this other party and I went up and talked to her as if it were all no big deal. This transcendent miracle attracted the attention of "Wanda."  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  She presented me with issues of whether or not she was actually available as well, all while basically pretending to be my girlfriend. So yeah, my crude sexual proposition to her was not an intelligent decision, I admit.

I didn't start making intelligent decisions about unavailable women until Sara in the spring of 1988.  My only criticism of my "what if I turned my back on love?" approach I came up with at the time resides in the notion that I didn't not take that approach far enough.  So, in 2012, I once again embraced this "buddha" I follow to the utmost limits I'm able to follow it.

As the example of Donna leading to Wanda illustrates, an inability to deal with relatively minor dilemmas concerning the actual availability of an individual woman can lead to a much bigger problem with someone else down the road.  I think about this person in my world, the person I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  I don't think the dilemma she presented me with is that big a deal.  I think I can handle it in a sufficiently professional manner and come out okay.  I don't want to be vexed by whatever minor dilemma she's presented to me, because that would not bode well for my prospects for making intelligent decisions about some real turkeys out there who might come up for consideration further down the road 

In Dr. David Burns' book, "Feeling Good," He tells several stories of elusive boyfriends and wayward husbands who leave his female patients beside themselves as to how to handle it.  He counsels them again and again to learn how to be the providers of their own happiness and to stop chasing after these men.  He also encourages the patients to see things from their wayward partners point of view so these women can move on and not get stuck there.  In at least one instance, one woman turns the tables to such an extent that the man comes back wanting to deal.  

I typically don't have that level of success in the situations I find myself in. One reason may reside in the fact that I don't, at any given time, have any actual romantic love relationships with the women in question.  For me then, turning the tables doesn't matter.  The discovery by itself that I don't need to be vexed every single time someone presents me with a dilemma of whether or not they are actually available provides me with a great deal of satisfaction.

Last week I apologized to someone in my world for going off on them on this blog. My post where I talked about beautiful women is what I’m referring to. I think I was right to apologize. I’m wondering if she knows about things going on in my world and if she was trying to show support for me. I know I’m not making much sense, but it’s too soon to go into detail.  For the record, this has nothing to do with that former cashier I go on and on about.

Someone I had a bit of a run in with last year has been really sweet to me lately.  Looking it at it now, I think they were trying to make amends to me.  I got paranoid.  I'm sorry.  I'm not about to fault someone for being, in my opinion, imperfect in their attempt to do the right thing.  That would make me an a-hole. 

No one is entitled to my trust.  That especially applies to anyone who has behaved in hurtful ways towards me in the recent past.

For much of my adult life, really beautiful women, if they've been anything to me at all, have often played the role of antagonists.  It might have something to do with my mental illness.  They see me as a loser and/or dangerous, and they set about proving it to themselves and others by playing vicious, deceitful, hurtful romantic-love-oriented rejection games with me.  In several instances I knew for a fact that they did so to elevate some man in their life onto a pedestal by degrading me in such a manner.  Sort of a female parallel to the madonna/whore complex that can bedevil a lot of men.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if I didn't ADORE so many of these beautiful women.  One of the first things I taught myself to do in response to this phenomenon, in my twenties, while still undiagnosed with a major mental illness, is how to live without such women as friends or girlfriends in my life.   In my twenties, I read in Doctor David Burn's book, "Feeling Good,"  how he counseled so many patients to learn how to be happy without wayward boyfriends and separated spouses.  He emphasized that these women could learn to be happy without unreliable or unavailable partners and learn autonomy and self-sufficiency through these trying experiences.

Oftentimes the patients could turn the tables on their wayward partners through such learned behavior and be the ones deciding whether or not to have anything to do with these men.  I haven't typically had that level of success, but it doesn't really matter.  What matters is the fact that I learned to live without these women as lovers or friends eager for my company.  I simply learned to get along fine without them, because I really didn't have any other viable options.  My more trying times back then came from what I now consider relapses to my love-addicted ways.  Still, I completed an undergraduate degree, and then a graduate degree, both in studio art, largely through the sometimes reliable emotional and mental stability such cognitive behavior techniques allowed me to have. 

I'm now at a point in my life where I can employ many, many tools to bring about this state of happiness. Not only do I know how to provide myself with good company, even when alone, but I have a good antipsychotic medication, access to counseling and support groups, an understanding of my diagnosis, an ability to abstain from cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, and friends who are better, more supportive friends than many friends in my past.  All of these tools together help me to like women in general more and still have such a strong attraction to really beautiful women without feeling particularly threatened or compromised by that attraction alone.  If really beautiful women want to play hurtful games with me, still, they won't have an easy time of it.

I can't help but think a lot of these really beautiful women come from a place of unimaginable privilege with these hurtful ways they so often visit upon me.  They've simply never had to learn how to be the primary providers of their own happiness the way I had to learn at their age.  There's always been some guy ready to step up for them, maybe.

Perhaps, though, at least some of them have really painful and/or frightening experiences from their past that inform such behavior, but I don't see how attempts to punch down on someone such as myself will help them.  I can't help but wonder if so many of them come off as hopelessly needy and complex to so many of these righteous boyfriends they try to elevate by tearing someone such as me down.  I would advise these really attractive women to find constructive ways of seeking personal happiness and fulfillment that don't involve a boyfriend or husband playing the role of primary provider of that happiness and fulfillment.

I sometimes get the impression that some of the women in my world play to me as some kind of a phenomenon.  If I had to say whether I am a mentally ill man who is trying to work a recovery from love addiction or, to this impression I sometimes get, a phenomenon, I'd say that I'm a mentally ill man trying to work a recovery from love addiction.  I might seek out a support group in the next few days or so.  It's all very confusing.

My gig is one month away.  I read an interview with Tyler Mahan Coe the other day where he said that one should practice guitar ten hours a day, among other things, to know country music.  Not gonna happen.  I'm giving myself the night off from practice tonight.  No pressure.  Tonight, I'm still a mentally ill man trying to work a meaningful recovery from love addiction. My biggest push to become a better guitar player comes from trying to learn some classic rock covers that my music teacher wrote out for me to play.

The comics are coming along slowly. After all, I've got to learn all about country music and practice, practice, practice on that guitar.  I got a good review from Ryan Carey on his Four Color Apocalypse blog on Patreon for the latest book I sent him.  I'm quite ambitious about growing as a comic book illustrator.  I used a lot more light versus dark in the the last book.  I was inspired from readings of EC Comics illustrators such as Graham Ingels and Jack Davis.