On Relationship Incompetence

Something I've noticed and that has been commented upon ad nauseum is the main-streaming of Nerd culture. Comic Book movie blockbusters, Apple/computer product fetishism, shoe-gazing singer-songwriter outcast indie music explosion, Zooey Deschanel horn-rimmed eroticism. As a nerdy person it's like becoming the popular person in high school. Which I think any nerd will tell you wasn't so much the goal as it was an idealized juxtaposition to your own life. You didn't want to be the popular person. You just wanted to envy them, and their life. If you became "popular" you wouldn't know what to do with that any better than you did before that transition. Because what it comes down to is how well you handle relationships.

I'm incompetent at them. And I'm going to transition now between talking about general "relationships" and talking about romantic relationships, because I figure the latter is just a micro-analyzed version of the former with greater stakes and even more self-doubt.

So yeah, I'm incompetent. No matter the setup, be it my "First Crush" or my "Perfect Woman" or my "Best Friend", I'm unable to handle these things into the long term. Some of my acquaintances have deemed me a little "Aspergian" which is a label that sometimes seems fitting and other times seems totally crazy. But maybe they're right and there's some mental block in my head that keeps me from understanding or considering the sensitivities or even just the cognition of other people. Take my most recent (failed) relationship. During our final encounter I consistently had trouble explaining what I meant, and how many of the things I've done have been misinterpreted. I just didn't understand how she would react to so many things I did. Nearly all of them turned out to be hurtful. The final sticking point was that she needed me to say (I think), "I won't be mean to you again. I will exhibit patience and try to understand your intentions before I get angry. I will do whatever it takes to make this work." And I couldn't bring myself to say those things, partly because I didn't really grasp that that's what she needed me to say at the time, and partly because I couldn't envision a scenario in which I ever exhibited perfect patience or wasn't mean to her again.

So that's it. That's my autopsy on this most recent disaster. I hope in the future to be able to more fully understand and appreciate those I love. I just don't have the first clue how to go about it other than living through it. So it goes.