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Huh, now it makes some sense.
Dec. 16th, 2007 09:48 pmI know, both from personal experience and from the many things I read, that, in general, guys want respect more, and girls want love more. Or at least to feel as if they were respected and loved more, respectively. But someone said something on a message board that I just read that really made some things finally make sense to me. Well, I understood before, but I better understand it now. For many years now, ever since I took my nose out of a book or game long enough to realize I was lonely, I have had a difficult time with making connections with people. I get along well enough with most people, but I always struggle with the crushing feelings of loneliness, not to mention the ever so lovely bouts of depression. In particular, I often feel lonely due to being ignored. Perhaps I mostly just feel more ignored than I actually am, but that doesn't really matter for the point at hand.
What the forum-goer said was that attention can be form of respect, even negative attention. People can be scatterbrained and all that, but we naturally pay attention to people we like and/or respect. In large groups I often have the tendency to go a bit quiet and wall-flowery, which doesn't help me in the being ignored business. What I realized though, is that the being ignored feels like a lack of respect, especially when had in bulk. That's why it cuts so deep.
It also explains another reason why I've always really liked one particular girl I've known since high school. She's cool, to be sure, but she also always paid attention to me, even if it was to make some remark about how dumb my joke was. Actually, she often made little snarky comments and the like, but they were always in such a way that showed she was actually noticing things. She'd pick out some little thing that no one else noticed, then give me crap for it, but I mostly found her all the more endearing for it, because she was actually paying attention. She showed respect in that I was worth something, even it was the occasional comment about how weird I was, if that makes any sense at all. I am glad to understand all this better now. I don't know if I properly explained it, but at least I know what I meant.
What the forum-goer said was that attention can be form of respect, even negative attention. People can be scatterbrained and all that, but we naturally pay attention to people we like and/or respect. In large groups I often have the tendency to go a bit quiet and wall-flowery, which doesn't help me in the being ignored business. What I realized though, is that the being ignored feels like a lack of respect, especially when had in bulk. That's why it cuts so deep.
It also explains another reason why I've always really liked one particular girl I've known since high school. She's cool, to be sure, but she also always paid attention to me, even if it was to make some remark about how dumb my joke was. Actually, she often made little snarky comments and the like, but they were always in such a way that showed she was actually noticing things. She'd pick out some little thing that no one else noticed, then give me crap for it, but I mostly found her all the more endearing for it, because she was actually paying attention. She showed respect in that I was worth something, even it was the occasional comment about how weird I was, if that makes any sense at all. I am glad to understand all this better now. I don't know if I properly explained it, but at least I know what I meant.
