Raymond E. Feist Blog

The Raymond E. Feist Blog , what is it? Well its a place for Ray to share with the world, his thoughts, ideas and other random things he wishes. These blog, entries come direct from Ray, and may appear at any time, there is no editorial by the administrators of Crydee, other than maybe fix a typo if noticed.

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Touching greatness

June 5, 2010 by REFeist

I first saw John Wooden at court side in 1963. My neighbors had an extra ticket for the L.A. Basketball Classic, an invitational college basketball tourney hosted jointly by USC and UCLA, which at the time shared the L.A. Sports Arena as their home court (until two years later when UCLA opened Pauley Pavilion on campus).

They said, "We're going to see Michigan with Cazzy Russel." "Who they playing?" I asked. "UCLA." It was the semi-finals. As a football honk, I paid scant attention to anything basketball but the Lakers and knew nothing about UCLA.

That night I fell in love with college basketball, UCLA, and Coach John Wooden.

They were surgeons. They were artists. The were mechanics. They took Michigan apart like they were junking a beat up old car. Michigan, who had been the consensual favorite to win the national championship. It was UCLA's third win on their way to a 30-0 record (one of Wooden's 4 undefeated teams in his career) and their 1st NCAA National Championship. During his tenure, UCLA would win 9 more.

Ten national championships, seven in a row! Now team in college history, nor the legendary coaches, gets close to that. And this was back in the day when you had to WIN your conference to get in. No 2nd place teams or third place teams. In 1963 only 22 teams were invited to the tournament. In 1975 it settled at 32 for a while, and it wasn't until 1985 you get 64 like we have had up to last year. You had to be the best in your conference to even get a bid.

Wooden was a gentleman. I had the pleasure and privilege of hearing him speak on many occasions, and the honor of speaking to him a couple of times. He was soft spoken, with a glint in his eyes, a ready smile and a lovely sense of humor. Unlike the other coaches of his era who would scream and turn apoplectic, shout obscenities, rail at the officials, Wooden would sit quietly in his seat, a rolled up program in one hand, and the harshest thing I ever heard him say at court side, as his team was getting physically handled by a bigger Oregon team, and the refs weren't making calls, was him saying in a loud voice to the ref, "This isn't the pro game! These aren't pros!"

There's an documentary out there I've seen on HBO, and if you get a chance watch it. He shaped lives. More than his winning, which is unmatched at any level in the sports, listen to the players talk about him and the influence in their lives. Greg Holland, especially, who was a bit of a rebel on the team and chafed under the strict team discipline especially sang his praises, saying he hated the old guy when he left UCLA but by ten years later he figured out what the old man was trying to teach; he went back to see him, and over the balance of his life became one of Wooden's dearest friends among ex-players.

He won with big teams and small teams, quick teams, and patent teams. He won with superstars and with no stars.

He NEVER had a losing season. His worst year at UCLA was 1959 when his team went 14-12. In 11 years of coaching high school, his record was 218-42. For two seasons at Indiana State he was 47-14.

His record at UCLA was an incredible 620-147. They still hold the NCAA record for consecutive wins at 88! At Pauley Pavilion, from it's open in 1965 to his retirement in 1975, he lost two games. Again, ten National Championships, seven in a row!

No coach at any level of the game gets close to his level of achievement.

His accolades were endless, many times Coach of the Year, first person to go into the College Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and coach, Sports Illustrated Man of the Year, and many others.

His "Pyramid of Success" model of life says, "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming." The Pyramid shows a foundation labled Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, Enthusiasm, upon which rests other qualities of being and ends at the top with Competitive Greatness. Coaches around the world use this to teach his philosophy.

Once in a while there is someone in your life, no mater how tangentially or indirectly, that shows you something. What John Wooden showed me is that you can be a human being of profound integrity and honor who can be successful. You hear the term "beloved mentor," and that was Wooden. There are many great athletes, from Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Gail Goodrich, all agreed on something Wooden was found of saying, "Love is the most powerful four letter word in the English Language." To quote Bill Walton, "He didn't teach basketball. He taught life."

99 years is a long haul and in this case a great one. We will never see this man's like again in sports.

Barbara A. Feist 1916-2010

March 10, 2010 by REFeist

I probably spent more time with my mom than any other person on this planet. The first nineteen years until I moved out. Then some years later when I relocated to San Diego I spent six months sleeping on a fold-out in her apartment while I figured out what my next move would be. She was very patent with a late blooming son. Later when I returned to college I lost a roommate and she had to quit her job because of health, so we became roommates when I was in my late twenties. She believed in me, and was the first person to read my first novel, because she retyped ever page (she was very good) so that my manuscript would be presentable when I sent it in.

Born Lulu Estelle Allen, my mother changed her name when she began her singing career in 1936. Leaving her home town of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1939 she moved to Chicago where she lived for a short while with her oldest brother, Lyle, and his wife Mabel.

While there she was told by her close friend Norman Luboff that the Xavier Cugat Orchestra was in the city and auditioning singers. She won a spot as a back-up singer. My mother traveled around the country, recorded albums, worked in films with the band, played live on radio and at many USO concerts and met my father, Raymond Elias Gonzalez. They were married in 1944.

My mother was widowed twice. First in 1950 when my father died of complications of pneumonia and a reaction to penicillin. My adoptive father, Felix E. Feist, died in 1965. They had been married since 1955, and he was pretty much the only father I knew.

She was a rabid Dodgers fan from the day they signed Jackie Robinson until the day they traded her beloved Dusty Baker to the hated Giants--for which she never forgave them, At that point she turned her back on them and embraced the San Diego Padres in her adopted home town. That was 1984 when the Padres won their first National League Pennant, so she picked a good time to switch loyalties. She suffered and rejoiced with the Padres from that point on, listening to just about every game on radio if she couldn't watch on TV. Legally blind from macular degeneration for the last ten years, she could still rise, bathe and dress herself, get down and make her own breakfast, and go shopping until about two years ago. Since then she's had assistance.

Late in life mom developed Alzheimer's and the last three and a half years have been difficult. But throughout that time she managed to stay mostly independent, living in her own home all but the last three weeks of her life. She was the second youngest of eleven children, surviving them all but one, her younger brother Lloyd. She is also survived by my younger brother, a younger half-sister, a bunch of grandkids and a lot of sweet memories and a few dark ones. Mom traveled, sang, and raised two sons and a step-daughter. To say her last days were good would be false, but they were managed, and the best they could be. Her life was just that, a life. There were great memories and some not-so-great, but she touched a lot of hearts. Since the Alzheimer's began, I've been missing my mom. I miss her even more today than every before.

Best, R.E.F.

Ghosts and Echos

August 25, 2009 by REFeist

Last night, about 3 AM, I woke up with heart pounding, a profound sense of dread filling me up, accompanied by a deep sadness, and sense of loss. I'm not given to full blown panic attacks, having had maybe two or three in sixty years, but this one got close.

It also reminded me of how I felt when I was caught up in the depths of clinical depression. That cost me seven years of my life, a marriage, and a lot of money.

A short digression into this subject is in order: clinical depression is the most common mental illness out there. It is also the most treatable. If you've never suffered through this, let me explain I'm not talking about being "down in the dumps" or "the blues," or "being sad," or "feeling depressed over something," but rather a state of altered brain chemistry, specifically, a lack of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin, along with endorphins, enkeplyns, dopamines, and other chemicals are what makes the brain work the way it's supposed to. Without them, you get seriously funky in little to no time. Well meaning people who don't understand the problem will say, "Hey, cheer up!" "Go out for a walk; you'll feel better," or other things that sound like they're speaking in a foreign language to the person who's depressed. Because the trap of clinical depression is you think you're supposed to feel that way. You can't imagine getting up off the couch and going for a walk, and if you know how to cheer up, you would, but you don't know how. You do, however, know how to do misery really well.

So at 3 am feeling deep worry over something really doesn't derserve to be worried over, I'm in the grips of "Oh my God, not depression again!"

See, when you've survived it once, when you have a bad moment, you don't think "I just had a bad moment." You think, "Oh no, not again!" It's a real worry, even if it's not a real problem. Such is the nature of the subjective reality of the human mind.

I call these events "ghosts and echos." See, there's a young woman about whom I care a great deal; she's been a good friend and I enjoy her company. I thought she was going to call. She didn't. So, I shrugged and got on with my day. But at 3 AM my subconscious is churning up old crap, completely unrelated to the here and now and suddenly I am wrestling with a ghost. It's like she caught someone else's paybacks. So, the mental stuff are ghosts, haunting the here and now. The echos are the feelings that come back to you, even if they are not remotely related to your here and now. Suddenly I'm feeling abandoned, betrayed, whatever, but again it has nothing to do with what's going on today.

That's the trap of clinical depression if you let it be, a smooth transition from the real world into a world filled with cognitive distortions and emotional land mines. It's a bad place to find yourself.

The trick is to recognizer the feelings as being false. Oh, they feel real enough. There were moments at 3 AM I wanted to call and shout, "Where have you been! Why didn't you call!" and any other nutty, irrational things totally unrelated to her, in reality, and very much related to someone in my past who put me through hell. Now, most of you I suspect would not appreciate being awoken at 3 am. Even fewer to be awoken at 3 am to have someone yell at you. And I doubt one of you would appreciate being awoken at 3 am to be yelled at for something someone else had done in the past.

In mentioning my lousy night on a couple of the social networks, some people sent me some e-mail and that caused me to think it was time for this blog post.

Clinical depression is crippling if you let it be. It can be cured. Exercise, diet, rest, SSRI medication if needed, and therapy can all take care of it. If you think you might be suffering, there are a dozen web sites with self-tests you can take that will give you a better insight into this. if you know you're depressed, get help. It is beatable.

See, I work up at 3 am with my heart pounding through my chest, convinced I was being lied to, used, taken advantaged of, and played for a fool, and that I was once again heading back into the deepest, darkest place I've ever been, and then after a few minutes I went, "Oh, no, that was last year when all that was going on, and I'm never going to be depressed again."

You can win this one.

The reality of asking "why?"

June 28, 2009 by REFeist

The Why?

It's been over five weeks now since I got the word that I was being played.

I've done what all of us do in those circumstances and reexamined every odd bit of behavior or possible clue in all of our interactions over the previous nine months looking for that one sign I missed. It's the "if only I had realized this meant that . . . " trope, that somehow I could have been smarter, could have been more protected.

I've gone through every stage, from disbelief to heartbreak to anger to rage to resignation, and still there's this one nagging question? Why?

You see it in news footage after natural disasters. Here where I live you'll see pictures of people standing in the smoking ruin of their homes after a fire asking, "Why?" Why my house, God, and not the one across the street?

With the help of good friends and some perspective after the fact, there is only one "why?" that makes sense. As Sherlock Holmes observed, in The Adventure of Beryl Coronet, "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The truth is she's sick. She can't help herself. The little liar most likely is suffering from what is known as a Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm certain there are mental health professionals who might dispute this; I am not a psychologist. My training was at the para-professional level pretty much concentrating on crisis intervention and referral to long term care. So, when she told me she was in love with me, she meant it. Just as when she betrayed me, at that moment everything made complete sense to her.

See, with this type of malady everything in her little world makes sense moment by moment. There's a disconnect between what happens now and before. "I loved him with all my heart an hour ago, but now I don't" is entirely reasonable for the person living in that world. What doesn't seem to work for the victims of that disease is the rest of the world around her, and the people in it. See if it's reasonable for her to love me with all her heart in December, but want to use me and lie to me in March, there must be something wrong with me for objecting to that change in behavior, because in her world it makes sense and is reasonable. She sees no contradictions. She got fired at one job because of this, yet somehow it's my fault she got fired; there is no view within her world that makes her culpable.

The problem with BPD people is that most of them are what psychologist call "high function." She can hold down a job, drive a car, socialize with people and do many other things that give no hint of her problems. In fact, there are people who go through their entire lives without being treated. The problem is that it's a scary, empty life. No intimates, because that's one of the biggies when it comes to this disorder; the manner in which relationships form is narcissistic in nature. It's all about her. How much she loves me. How much I mean to her. How much joy she gets from . . . whatever. At the moment of betrayal, it's still only about her. How she's justified in lying. How she's not cheating, but taking care of her own needs.

It's a pretty complicated diagnosis, but there are some very common facts about BPD.

Most BPD patients tend to be young. Early 20's is really the point where this comes out. Females are far more likely to have this disorder than males. In general, it can be summed up as a pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, starting with family, close friends, and romance. There are maybe eight or nine criteria that define it; anyone with more than five is considered to have BPD.

The little liar demonstrated the following:

She put frantic effort into avoiding abandonment. She told me "I love you" from the first date. The fear of abandonment is there, even if the risk is unreal. My rejection of her after I found out about her lying and cheating punched that button hard. Suddenly I was evil because I abandoned her.

She has intense but unstable relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Hence she could tell a co-worker one day, "I like what I see in that guy," then later tell me I was "perfect" for her, yet later tell another co-worker, "You don't think I'd seriously date a guy that age? I just want the money."

She has what is called an "identity" disturbance, though in her it's low level. She's uncertain. She came to California to study cooking at the Culinary Institute, without any thought about what it takes to function in that business--she identified with the role of chef. She got caught up in the Presidential race last fall and changed her major to Political Science. There's a serious disconnect between what she does (stripper/waitress) and who she wants to be. She damns and rejects the other dancers, yet behaves worst than most.

She is impulsive in areas that are potentially self-damaging, substance abuse and sex, money management also being a problem. Non-suicidal self-destructive behavior is a biggie with this disorder. The men she cheated on me with are by common judgement "losers." She seeks out bad men who can hurt her emotionally, psychologically, and potentially physically--her alternating between idealization and devaluation works with them, as well. This is the heart of the denial that's part and parcel with this disorder; it doesn't matter if the guy is a good guy or a bad guy. It's all about how she feels and her feelings are quicksilver.

She suffers from affective instability as a reaction to mood. We were making love one night and a half-hour later she was ranting about things that were so far removed from our personal experiences as to resemble a therapy session. It's easy to miss this one because her personality is often "bubbly" and "excitable."

She has transient stress-related paranoid ideations. If something bad might happen, it will, and the consequences will be the worst. Also, her reaction to stress is high, hinting at dissociative behavior.

I can not speak to her having chronic feelings of emptiness, but I can also buy her constant use of marijuana is self-medicating and not solely recreational.

There is nothing I've seen to indicate she's at risk for suicidal behavior, or self-mutilating behavior.

That puts six out of the nine clearly in the "yes" column as far as I'm concerned with two more possibles.

Why bother? Why dig this deep to come up with a reason to cut her some slack?

Not trying to cut her any slack. I'm back to trying to answer the "why?"

If someone breaks into your house and harms your family, it's academic if it's because he's an evil bastard intent on robbing you and willing to hurt you to get what he wants, or if it's some crazy guy who broke out of a mental ward and is just randomly causing havoc. Either way you're an injured party.

But the law and society look differently on evil vs. sick. There is no straight simple line. If the little liar were busted for a crime, it would be very hard to prove Mens Rae, or diminished capacity. That's because there's a different standard for law and medicine.

Should I ever have contact with her again, I suspect my reaction would now be very different than a week ago. I might take a chance at saying, "You need help," but everything I know about BPD tells me it's as much a waste as saying, "You should learn to grow wings and fly."

But this realization makes me understand things about myself that I needed to discover. First, I did nothing wrong. But more importantly, there was nothing I could do to change how things went down. Secondly, she was not evil, but sick and nothing short of a full blown intervention getting her to a shrink to get therapy and meds might have changed things. Lastly, I still love parts of that person, but must face the reality that even if she got help, the person who would come out the other side of treatment would resemble none of the various personalities I met. She could not love me as deeply and as profoundly as she did when she loved me, because as wonderful as it felt to be the object of such adoration, it was just a symptom of her illness. Rational people do not fall that deeply into an idealized fantasy of their lovers and then hang on to it. Love at first sight? Sure. It's happened to me, once and it was what my wife said happened to her when we met. But that's the "jumping in" point in a relationship, not the end all/be all. She might come out of that looking at me and saying, "Sorry, dude. You were just in the wrong place. Nothing personal, I was sick."

And that's what it comes down to: she is sick.

What do I wish?

I wish she gets help and stops harming herself and others. But that's just my personal distaste over human wasted potential. Statistics provide the likelihood she'll continue this way for a long time to come.

I hope next time I run into "crazy girl" I catch a hint a little earlier and run away very quickly.

And I hope those of you who have been reading this account of my own journey might catch an insight into both how human experience can lend itself to writing and to growth, and maybe catch a few clues that will save you some pain along the way.

The essence of the emotional narrative or how to make revenge work for you.

June 23, 2009 by REFeist

So, last I posted, I was wrestling with the somewhat admirable goal of discovering what it was I could learn from all the pain and anger generated by the little liar in my life. Still working on that.

Here's the thing: writers as you might guess often think a bit differently from the rest of you. It may be I'm touching on the single most significant difference: the narrative.

Narrative as any wannabe writer or first year literary student can tell you is simply a story, a constructed series of events where one thing leads to another and at the end you have an outcome. Writers think in the narrative.

What's that mean? It means that the very thing that can make a writer effective professionally can also screw up his/her private life to a fare-thee-well.

When you were a kid, they called it "daydreaming." You were sitting in class and while other students were trying to pay attention to the teacher you were staring out the window imagining something.

It is almost pathological at times, the inability to look at events or data and not extrapolate a narrative out of it. "If they did this, then the next thing to happen will be . . . "

So, to recap, the little liar embarked on a campaign last July to get me to fall in love with her so that she could reap, to her anyway, large monetary benefits. When I found out, I was devastated. Let's skip the disbelief part of it, and move straight to the second phase. A sense of loss. OK, what did I lose? A lying, cheating whore? Absolutely, but it didn't feel that way. It felt as if I had lost someone very dear to me, someone who had brought wonderful things into my life. That sense of loss was profound for days. Why? Because she had engaged the narrative, she had created something for me that allowed me to take what lies she spun and build them up into a narrative far greater than the reality.

Had I been objective, I could have looked at our entire relationship from a functional point-of-view, a causal one-thing-leads-to-another and I would have come up with a vastly different analysis of the situation. Inconsistencies that should have been red flags with her were easily explained away because I had already committed to a narrative.

She had convinced me certain things were true, therefore as I extended the narrative to say "then this will happen, than that will occur, leading us to this outcome," I began to modify my view of process to fit the expected outcome. The expected outcome was not the product of data, but rather something I had created within myself.

Are you beginning to see the trap here?

Strengths are weaknesses, as the old saying goes. Let me illustrate by using a friend as an example of exactly the opposite problem, no narrative in the term I'm using it. She certainly can view a narrative from hindsight, but the forward projecting type, not so much. Sure she has her ambitions and dreams of the future, but they are abstracted, vague at times, "I'd like to be successful," "I'd like to be happy" and can even break those concepts down to what success and happiness mean and their constituents, but the one thing leads to the next path to get there? No so much.

So, what was her take on the entire series of events with the little liar? She listened, nodded, and said, "That's horrible. I'm sorry you got hurt." Then she paused and said, 'Still, I haven't heard the other side of the story." OK, here's where things get weird for me.

I was lied to, cheated, misled, and worked like a rented mule. What "other side" is there? Some sort of defense of that behavior? Justification? Some hidden motive that somehow makes what the little liar did less onerous? Less vicious? Apparently my friend considers the possibility. Now, she neglects to realize what this says to me about her view of my credibility, not to mention the simple fact of, "the little liar hurt your friend." In short, she looks at this in a way that almost is beyond my ability to understand.

See, she had this need to be "fair" in a very abstract fashion. Her view of self appears to have some kind of judicial robe wrapped around it.

 But this was very instructive, because it drove home the fact that not everyone out there looks at life as a series of narratives, but rather can look at life from any number of views, process, outcome, balance, "rightness," or a host of other things that push the narrative into the background.

Now, the thing about being inclined to the narrative is that while it's a great gift to have if you're writing fiction (or a political PR spin doctor) it can be a bitch in your real life. For example, I'm cruising down the freeway minding my own business and my mind turns to something, let me say the little liar, and before I know it I'm pissed off again. Why? Because I didn't just have a passing recollection of her, but before I could stop I launched off in an entire movie in my head, complete with dialogue, sound effects, back ground music, and no popcorn.

The only good thing about these spontaneous little dramatic moments is that you can use them as some of a barometer of how you're doing. If you've gone from murderous rage to only slightly annoyed, progress is being made.

So what does the narrative fantasy tell me right now? Well, it shows some progress, but in an unexpected way--which is really the entire point of this posting: be ready for the unexpected.

After I got over the sense of loss and hurt, and the rage started coming, there was a very long period of over a month where I just wanted to hurt her. I mean chase her down and kicker around like a soccer ball. Hardly the mature response, but then feelings rarely have anything to do with maturity. That's a non-affect concept.

So this morning I find myself in a different place; my narrative imagination wanders and suddenly I'm an objective observer witnessing a phantasy whereby she is suffering greatly, but not at my hands. Her agony is the undeniable result of some stupid thing she did, and she's in tears, winging her hands, begging the universe for forgiveness with no one coming to her aid. In my imagination, she even came crawling back to me as her last resort and, boy, did I get to tell her what for! All kinds of pithy aphorisms and blanket declarations of my moral superiority and why I'm going to have thousand of people at my funeral and no one will even notice when she's dying in some alley . . . . Then I tell her the secret of being good and she promises to go and sin no more.

All it all, it was a pretty bleak image. So why the shift? I think because it is my nature to see good in people. As I said in the first blog I posted on the matter, it would be swell if she could somehow evolve into the person she pretended to be, because I can attest that person was very lovable--realize it's almost choking me to say it. Still, the universe would be a better place on average if she morphed from that lying little whore into the bright young woman I thought she was. Maybe it wouldn't raise the average of the world all that much, but any bit helps, right?

So, I'm now struggling with redemption fantasies, and next on the list is to examine the reason for that shift in the paradigm, because if it's just a case of "there is great rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents," well, that's cosmic enough. But if locked deep down inside is some neurotic hope that somehow she'll return to me as I once imagined her to be, that's a bad thing.

 Here's the thing: I can spin narratives over either one, so how am I to know? That, boys and girls, is the subject of the next exploration.

I don't mind not having answers as long as I have some really good questions left.

On Personal Growth and Harsh Lessons

June 21, 2009 by REFeist

So, what have we learned today? is often the question.

In reflecting on the turmoil created by the little liar, detailed in my last blog here, a couple of realizations came to the fore. Some people have better instincts than others, especially when reading people. Now, writers tend to be vain creatures if that isn't already apparent to you. We fancy ourselves "students of humanly," and to be fair, some of that is true. Many of us write because we look at weird stuff going on all around us and ask, "Why are people doing these damnfool things?" (And some of us fancy ourselves dashing romantic figures, too, but that's another topic for another time). But just because we think of ourselves that way doesn't make it so.

The first love of my life, many years ago accused me of being a little naive. She thought it was charming and kept me open to other people who I might otherwise be closed to; I don't know. I suspect she was/is right, though I rejected the notion lo' those many years ago.

Here's what I do know; when I told my kids, ages 13 and 16, what went down (without the sordid details--they didn't need that) both reacted in a fashion I found surpring. My daughter said, "I didn't like her. There was something phony about her. She just paid attention to you like she was trying to convince us she was in love with you and ignored us. When you talked to us, she just lowered her eyes and stayed silent." Fair enough. I could spin that one to say she was really nervous and wanted the kid's approval and thus and so forth. It was my thirteen year old son who nailed it. He said, "She was fake. The entire time she just looked as if dinner was something she had to get through so she could go back to whatever she was doing before she got there."

See, somehow my kids have a better radar about people than I ever did at their ages, or now it seems. Which is how I would have it. A parent always wants to see his/her kids do better. I think it safe to say that my two are on their way to being happier, better adjusted adults than I was then.

So, now that I've seen this harsh lesson from their point of view, what did I learn today? Well, I learned that it's easy as hell to get involved in an outcome while you're deluding yourself that you're being "objective." There is no objectivity when it comes to excitement, fun, sex, and romance. Sorry, no one "looks at themselves objectively." It flies in the face of the term. If you've ever said that, YOU WERE WRONG!

So how does one tune one's "people radar?" I don't know. I think there may be a few things I need to try. First and foremost, I have to be more in tune with my own bullshit. Here's what happened with the lying little whore; she came at me like a pit bull and I thought it was "cute." But like a Chinese reeducation camp, if you hear the same thing over and over and over long enough, you'll start to believe it. Gobbles and the Nazis got it. "The Big Lie." But here's the thing, when it's just a one-on-one interpersonal relationship, rather than being bombarded by propaganda 24/7, you need one thing: a willingness to believe. It would be really nice if that hot little blonde really was in love with me. Not because I was in love with the hot little blonde, but because it gives an illusion of youth that a lot of guys my age desire, and there's always sex as a drug, and then there's just the almost universal desire to be loved and admired. So without being aware of the process, I go sucked in. Because I wanted to get sucked it. This is what I tell my kids is called "owning your shit." You screw up, you own it. You don't look around for other people to blame. It is the foundation, along with core principles and moral beliefs, of what makes one a principled human being.

This is maybe the hardest aspect of growth: we humans, for the most part, tend to be change adverse. Sure there are adrenaline junkies and thrill seekers among us, but for the most part change is scary, something to be avoided. Internal change, that's maybe the toughest of all. That's why there are "life coaches" and self-help books, because some people know they need to make changes but are at a loss how to go about those changes.

Now that you accept you own your shit and you must be ready to change, what next? In this case, speaking of personal relationships and being blind-sided by the lying little whore, I guess it means getting back to the fundamental axiom: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Sure, there may be some 22 year old hot little blonde who is going to fall over in a faint when I walk into the room, but chances are pretty good there are not a lot of them out there, and the odds of me blundering into one randomly are pretty low. So if that happens, what do to? Reality test.

Reality testing is simply not letting things slide by. She would often dismiss my concerns over the age difference by saying, "Age is just a number." If I persisted, she's smile, kiss me, and say, "Oh, stop it."

It's not very romantic, but I really needed to press on that issue. Because had I, I suspect the truth would have come out far earlier. The best technique is the open ended question, that is one that can't be answered "yes," or "no." Had I simply said, "OK, what does our relationship ten years from now look like to you?" I suspect that might have made her work too hard to come up with a reasonable reply. You can't kiss, smile, and dazzel your way out of that one.

Even if I don't get better at seeing people for what they are, at least I know two things: my kids are already better at it than I am and I must keep trying.

Old dogs and new tricks . . . .

June 13, 2009 by REFeist

There is a perception among many that two things happen when you get older. The first is you're supposed to have learned enough not to make mistakes. The down side is the other one, that you are so stuck in your ways that you can't change.

I avow both are false.

Here's the thing; anyone who's read my regular postings on MySpace and Facebook knows I've been on something of a depressive rant for the last month. I have toyed with the idea of posting the whole sordid affair for the world to see (and perhaps for some random person to acquaint the object of my ire with the fact I've "outed" her for the world to see she's a lying cheating . . . choose whatever noun works for you; I'm trying not to offend.) And of course, to vent.

The short of it: a young lady with whom I had a relationship for the better part of a year lied to me. Hardly a unique experience for any guy whose dated more than a couple of ladies after the age of twelve. You kind of expect that stuff when you're young.

Young? Yes she was. Embarrassingly younger and unapologetic about it, I might add. Every time I cautioned this difference might prove critical, she would dismiss those concerns with the cliché "age is just a number."

OK, so I started off thinking this was going to be a "fun thing," but she kept coming at me about how she was really into me more than I was into her. Flattering. A little unbelievable, but she just never broke character. Every friend who met her said, "Wow! She's really nuts about you." The first time I said, "I love you," she shot back with "I love you more."

So, I got worked like a rented mule. She is what my 92 year old mother would call a gold digger. Or as I said, a lying cheating . . . fill in the blank.

OK, so what have we learned?

First, betrayal is a great source of rage. It wasn't that she changed her mind and decided she wasn't in love with me any more. With someone that much younger, I figured that was a pretty likely outcome. No, it was the fact that she worked her pretty little ass off for seven months to get me to fall for her. Suddenly there was this emotional presence in my life and it was taken from me.

So, immediately I had to deal with was the knowledge the object of my affections did not exist in the real world. I was in love with a masterful con job, a stage performance that should have gotten her a Tony. She worked it up to and including "I have to meet your kids; they have to like me." You don't mess with the kids. And it was all lies. She was a brilliant actress. One friend of mine who's an ex-stripper of fifteen years experience and has an excellent BS detector, actually complimented me on finding a "good girl for a change." Another former dancer (I know a lot of dancers) said, "Dude, she's going to get you to give her a ring."

Second, you are overwhelmed with the anger. For a month I want to hunt her down and use her as a piñata and I'm not a guy who's prone to violence. Not that I would in the real world, obviously, but that's how I felt. It was a profound, unrelenting rage that just would not stop coming in waves the second week, after the hurt faded (once I finally got she was a lying, cheating . . . whatever).

Third, the anger lingers. It just would not fade after a month. So today I ask myself why is it so hard to lose? Yes, the betrayal was the worst in any relationship, and she messed with my kids, but there had to be more.

Then it occurred to me that one of the problems was that I cut off all contact as soon as the betrayal had been relieved. I refused to talk to her. I sent her a message telling her were were done and no discussion was going to take place. (It's a little tough to sell me that sleeping with another guy for a couple of months, then a second guy part time for another month was an "accident.") And a lie is a lie is a lie. Nothing to discuss.

Lastly, what that left me with was a total lack of first hand unpleasant memories. Because she was always performing we only had about sixty seconds of a bad vibe, once, which quickly got put paid to and was over. Otherwise, she was prefect. She was loving, affectionate, funny, sexy, adoring, and just about everything else that any of us want. When my wife divorced me, after twelve years, I had an apple collection of unhappy memories to point to, to lessen the shock and make me feel as if this might not be the worst thing that could happen. But when the little liar left, every though of her was one that would have made me smile before I learned of the betrayal. I have an illusion with no sensory, emotional rebuttal. It's all knowledge, not feeling.

So, now that I understand this, perhaps I can begin a new course of approaching the question and maybe now I'll start to lose the anger (makes it tough to write the funny or romantic scenes when you're chewing off your cheek from the inside).

So, ya, even at my age you can learn. What you have to do is stop making excuses for wallowing and start looking for things that give you insight into why things happened, what you can do to keep them from happening again, and put the past behind you.

All it does is take time. And a lot of work. A quick contrast before I quit. There's a wonderful young lady (who actually has an account over on MySpace where I found her, and no I'm not telling) with whom I had a relationship some years ago. She chose to vanish out of my life without so much as a goodbye, and hurt me very deeply. Again, YOUNG. But while my feelings had nothing to do with her decision, she at least never once lied to me (that I know of) and didn't put any effort into manipulating my feelings. I sent her a message not too long ago telling her that I wish her nothing but good things. Because that's how I feel.

How do I feel about the lying, cheating . . . oh, hell, little whore? I hope the karmic crap she's going to get from this (and it's already cost her a job--don't ask, it's not pretty) teacher her. See, if she could learn to be the person she pretended to be, that would be a swell thing, because the person she pretended to be was someone worth loving. The one she turned out to be in real life, not so much--you don't mess with my kids.

So, I'll get over this, and I hope it's sooner rather than later, and one of these days this will be just one of those things from which I learned and grew. (Though I still want to punch her out if I see her--I'll get over that)

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