Being selfish · Brojo: Confidence & Integrity

Being selfish

Here is something I have a hard time with. And it holds in my head as a great contradiction that makes me crazy and therefore doubt myself, constantly.

I said this once, early in my relationship with my wife. It was a philosophical point that I felt worth discussion. Only she doesn't really like to talk about things like this (or science, or tech, or most of the things I like). The comment was this: People are ultimately selfish. She took this as me saying that I was selfish, which is totally different.

I was not able to articulate clearly what I meant, nor did I have time to really elaborate. Its only been in recent years that I've been able to really think it through, but we are at the point where she basically doesn't care what I have to say about anything anymore.

For decades I have been just suppressing my thoughts, my beliefs, etc because few people were interested in hearing or discussing it, prime among them, my wife. She now thinks I have never communicated with her out of some kind of intentional disrespect or controlling behavior when really I just felt like I was never heard, or when I was heard, it just upset her. I think this is just the "masking" behavior. So I just didn't talk at all. That of course is on top of the fact that I just experience social anxiety anyway. I would say sometimes I just dont have anything to talk about, but thats not really true. I do. My brain is flood of thoughts all the time. I just control the flow so it doesnt drown people.

Now we are in a state where she doesn't want to hear me speak at all. Ever. So I just use "yellow rocking" which is to speak as little as possible, but not be obviously "short" which is more like grey rocking. Just simple, straight answers.

Well, I didn't even get to the main point. I will have to make another post then.

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