I paid a price for falling into a foolish trap when trying to defend Aspies in my post Adult Aspie Compromise.
I didn’t realize back on the 7th day of April that what I did was only a compromise in my own mind. It was not a compromise as most people would view one. That revelation didn’t hit me until just a few days ago. I began to wonder why one particular man (who is the ‘some people’ I was referring to being upset) is not only unable to see how nice I am—but also on top of that—pays attention to everything I write in order to look for ways to attack my character.
Now I finally understand the reason for my not receiving any kindness in return for caring about his feelings. It boils down to two basic reasons: one belongs to me and the other belongs to him.
I value meekness as being an admirable virtue. I’m not accustomed to the world’s view of seeing it as being a weakness.¹ When you combine two opposite types of characters (in this case, we’re both neuro-a-typical, but he’s an atheist and I’m a Christian), there will be two different outcomes. If someone acts towards me the same way I act towards him, I would respect him, appreciate his thoughtfulness, and view him as being a nice person. However, it’s not in my nature to act unjustifiably aggressive.
On the flip side, he lost whatever little respect he might have had towards me when I exhibited meek behavior. He perceived my actions as me being like a doormat for him to keep under his feet. I can only guess (but I’m probably correct) most people would not perceive what I did as being a compromise. After all, a compromise is an accommodation in which both sides make concessions.
Since I figured I might find some clues at his blog to help me understand what would make someone (like him) be so different from me, I read a few of his posts. It didn’t take long to find the answer. I don’t want to get too close to using his words. I don’t want to embarrass him by combining what he says with what I’m saying here. He shouldn’t feel embarrassed anyhow, especially since the way he wrote about his insight on why he has related with people the way he does is a very touching and wonderful story. I don’t know whether he realizes it or not, but he still hasn’t changed in spite of his awareness. It’s something that will always continue as long as that’s the way insecurity is dealt with.
Everyone battles insecurity in different ways. We all have different levels of it at different times. For some, it remains at a more stable level than for others. Insecurity itself isn’t necessarily bad, but it can cause bad behavior. It’s not restricted to bad physical actions like stalking and/or spousal abuse.
There is also a variety of bad psychological behavior. On the ‘victim’ end, there are such things as being attracted to abusive people and/or hoping for acceptance by being a doormat. On the ‘bully’ end, there’s the need to psychologically control those who don’t agree with you, especially so towards those who you desperately want to like you. Insecure people care a lot less about what others think and/or believe if they [the potential prey] are of no personal importance to them [the predators].
When an individual has a need to control the way another individual thinks, that’s a sign that he’s looking for reassurance of his own worth by having his ‘victim’ fully comply by succumbing to his thoughts. As long as he sees resistance coming from his target, he will remain obsessed over whatever conflicts with his views.
Now I see that my dilemma is in figuring out how to stop an insecure guy from continuing to be attracted to me. I’m not sure I can. If posting this doesn’t get him to quit paying so much attention to me, I’m going to have to either create a new blog using a pseudonym in order to resume posting or I’m just going to quit blogging altogether.² I’d prefer to not risk having this situation fester into something worse. Whatever happens, I’ll try to avoid deleting what I’ve already published.
¹There’s even a definition of meek which now describes it as, “Evidencing little spirit or courage; overly submissive or compliant.”
²The obvious solution to ending an interest is to make what’s interesting become boring. So, if a person is interesting and doesn’t know how to be boring, then logic dictates the only answer is for that person to disappear. Even Jesus had to vanish on occasion. It’s not much different from a stray cat→ If you don’t want it living with you, stop feeding it. Eventually it will get hungry and go look somewhere else for food.
