Mind readers.
i have been talking to a Dom guy online (from another place that is gay and has more than a few token gay folk lol). i like him a lot, and i think some of that feeling is mutual, idk. We've been talking for a few days now, and i am in love. [laughing] fuck. Feelings can be so stupid... and rich and intense. Anyway, that is not what this is about.
We wrote back and forth on the site we are on. i think part of my feminine side is the need/desire for communication? Give me a little encouragement and i will write a mini series back at you and drown you before you know what hit you (any women out there waving their hands and saying "me too"?). But during our written exchange, he alluded to how "... a sub should be able to sense what his Dom wants and how he feels" (paraphrasing), and a little red flag went up in me. Not the size of the one flying over the Kremlin, more like the one you find in a cup cake during a celebration. The kind you just pull out and set aside before devouring the cup cake. i was in devouring mode on this one.
As my notes got longer and more numerous, at one point he said: "this is getting ridiculous" then in the next he wrote: "My number is xxxxxxxxxx. Send me your number so I can add it to my contacts." Those are verbatim. So i picked up my phone and put his info in my contacts and sent him a text as a way of giving him my number. i set my phone aside and went back to the site, then about a minute later looked at my phone and realized he had called me twice and gone to voice mail (he didn't leave a message). So, i immediately called him back and his first response was to imply that i was ignoring him. When i explained my ringer was off (i had just had an annoying iphone update and it changed my settings), he didn't believe me. His attitude took me by surprise. i guess it's a part of the times we live in where mistrust is so high? He then explained how his sending me his number was an invitation to call him. i repeated to him what he had written and explained that my text was how i sent the contact info he wanted, that he had not asked for a phone call, think i added that i am not a mind reader, how would i know he expected a phone call.
Bottom line is, i don't think he saw what i was talking about and i think he remained convinced that somehow i had ignored his calls (even though i returned them in less than 2 minutes) and that i disregarded an invitation to call him in the first place. i am bothered by the thought that that idea is filed away in his brain as part of the picture he is forming of me rather than him taking me at my word. i sort of get it, we just met, so he trusts himself more than he trusts me.
We talked for 3 hours, laughed a lot, i really like him. Tied in with the conversation and subsequent written exchanges, i am still getting the feeling he wants me to know more about him than he has actually articulated (aka "mind read"). i tried to broach the topic, saying stuff like: "yeah, when a couple has been together for awhile and they get to know each other, some things don't have to be spoken." But i still have this eery feeling that he want's me to 'know' what he wants or how he feels without him having to actually say it. And that concerns me.
i grew up in a family of non communicators. my response was to lose myself in books. I was a reader from an early age, consuming books when i was eight or nine years old. They became my friends. i remember trying to continuously engage my father as a kid, to no avail (he was my first encounter with an insta dom who only uses 4 word sentences to express their deepest feelings...kidding... sort of). my dad was a great guy, never abusive, provided well, so much better than his dad who abandoned him as a one year old). He was just quiet, incommunicado. And he had a little gay kid who LOVED to communicate and turn over every thought or feeling and examine it every which way (lol, poor guy).
The result was, i grew up having to figure out what the important people in my life were thinking and feeling. i became a 'mind reader.' i even bought a book titled "People Reading" when i was 13. i actually got pretty good at reading people, but the reality is, no one can read minds. i was wrong as often as i was right, but i didn't realize. This was my 'normal', i didn't realize that people actually could speak and share their thoughts and feelings. Haha, okay, this is retrospective understanding, but that was pretty much the way it was.
i got married at an early age (i was a kid still, had a lot of growing up to do). The first couple of years were so hard. Besides being gay and religiously repressed by my beliefs, i also had this mind reading handicap. i would get frustrated and angry (read: "hurt"), when my wife would look at me and say she did not realize how i felt or thought about certain things, things i thought she knew... but had never actually articulated to her.
Turns out mind readers not only think they know what others are thinking or their intent, they expect the same from others (and they expect it to be spot on). All of this was not on a conscious level for me, it was just my 'normal,' it was all i knew.
The funny thing is, when i had my epiphany and realized how communication works, it was as if a life time of bottled up stuff was uncapped. i turned out to be the more communicative one in my marriage (she was afraid to be open, extremely smart, just hidden). And now the poor guys who connect with me often get the full force of my desire/need to communicate and connect.
Of course, i (we) still have no control over the other person. i think it's one of the bigger impediments to relationship that i see discussed on this site (i.e. communication, or the lack thereof).
i think part of this is due to the fact that many guys have had similar experience as myself, especially from older generations. It's changing, but guys are often culturally conditioned to hide their feelings. Hell, guys are often taught that "men are rational and women are emotional." When i became a nurse, a mostly female dominated profession, i found out that the women i interacted with were often far more rational than the men i had interacted with when i was in executive management. i think men are just as emotional as women (though the feelings may be different), but they are taught to bury their feelings, not be aware of their feelings.
Men often don't even know their feelings and associated thoughts exist, let alone know how to express them. But i believe they are there none the less, and men want to be known, understood and loved as much as women... but i think a lot of men are stuck in the mind reading loop.
i should qualify that i don't think this is just a guy thing, though maybe more prevalent among guys? I've experienced it as a guy and am more familiar with it with guys, so this particular blog entry is slanted that way. i don't want to come off as absolutist on this, i am not. i have met more than a few women who expect mind reading as well. i don't think its an exclusive thing, matched to gender.