"Humiliation - the harder you try, the dumber you look." ~ Larry Kersten
Pride, in the purest sense, is no evil, and it is an unnatural state of being to be without pride. Pride is a good, healthy feeling. Pride in one's self, one's family, one's accomplishments, or one's values. But when we strike the reverse sideof pride, shame, we nearly always shrink from the confrontation. To be humiliated - by one's self or by others, we are knocked down, and beaten into timid submission by unrelenting shame.
There is no simpler or more invasive pain than shame. And it is so easy to bring down upon ourselves, we are virtually predestined to shame ourselves repeatedly through our journey across the years. And sadly enough, a great number of these blows will fall on our love lives and sex lives.
It is humiliating to find that you have mistaken the discourse between yourself and a friend of the opposite sex as flirting, and painfully humiliating to have made a sexual advance as a result of this, and been denied by your confused and shocked friend. And what perhaps is worse than the deep personal sense of embarassment is the fear that the friendship is now doomed. What can we do in such an awkward predicament?
I would be a fool if I imagined that anyone reading this believed I wasn't writing about myself, so I will take direct credit for my foolishness. I honestly don't understand. I have thought for a long time that I was in fact being flirted with, and when what I thought was a sexual inflection in the conversation appeared to surpass mere suggestion and take the shape of an open proposition, I was sure that this was no longer a platonic dynamic. But today, much to my shame, I find that I have been entirely wrong in my interpretation.
I am left frustrated, confused, and supremely embarassed. Furthermore, I am unable to draw from this fiasco any sensible pearl of wisdom, or any benefit at all. I fear I have alienated a valued friend, and also ruined my chances of knowing her as more, if I ever had any.
No comments:
Post a Comment