Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ein]

When I smile, it's pretty much the closest a normal person can get to the :3 smile.
Essentially, make a frown such that your lips are curved down and bring up the corners.
I can't really smile normally anymore.
But yeah, smiling is great and you should do it more often.

[fqllve]

Eh. Smiling is great and all but when I'm smiling I'm usually too busy being happy to be thoughtful and vaguely melancholy. Which is my preferred state.

I like to smile because something made me smile.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, I don't generally smile unless something makes me or I'm trying to be creepy.  I'm somewhere between Wednesday and Daria in this regard, but male.

[Vector]

Hmm... I can usually fake most emotions on demand.  I practiced a lot in middle school and high school, because I basically stopped moving my face for three or four years after my cousin died =/

[SalmonGod]

Most introverts have a very refined public persona, myself included.  I used to wear a content smile by default most of the time (draws the least attention), but working where I do for four years has very much killed that.

[Tellemurius]

Too much extroverted as labeled by psychology but emotions can be hidden very well.

[Solifuge]

Yay social masks.

I've been wearing them a lot over the past few months, since I'd otherwise probably have collapsed from stress and intense feelings of failure accompanying some of my present life situations. Sometimes it's tough to tell where my actual emotions end, and a mask begins though, since I prop myself up against them so much. In many regards I rely on these delusions to keep myself going; I postpone the act of experiencing a negative emotion to allow me to keep functioning in the present, in favor of assuming the visage of a positive one... though sometimes resolving these emotions is postponed indefinitely, or at least until it's completely unavoidable.

When I stop to think about it, it seems a tremendously unhealthy habit, but it's tough to say whether it's any worse than having a continual mental breakdown. It also makes depression quite manageable; by assuming a mask, I can act as though it was how I presently felt. So long as I remain aware of the disparity, and can be entirely honest when it's important, it's a useful tool. I don't like feeling like a fake person, but I feel it's better than being a depressing wreck of one.

[SalmonGod]

Society couldn't function if everyone was unable to contain their thoughts and feelings when necessary.

[Tellemurius]

Society couldn't function if everyone was unable to contain their thoughts and feelings when necessary.

True but the problem never goes away unless you alleviate it.

[fqllve]

Most introverts have a very refined public persona, myself included.  I used to wear a content smile by default most of the time (draws the least attention), but working where I do for four years has very much killed that.

Yeah, I used to take great care at maintaining an air of aloof composure. It was pretty tiring. Nowadays I usually just listen to the conversation and interject without much thought when I have something to say. Socializing has gotten way easier because of that.

People still generally consider me quiet, but they're wrong.

-snip-

Far be it for me to give anyone life advice (you'll notice my implicit acknowledgement of this in my staying out of that subforum) but I went down that road for a long time and in the end I regretted it deeply. When you're depressed it's because something has made you feel that way and when you just pretend it isn't happening you negate your ability to actually do anything about it. The situation just compounds itself until you can't possibly keep up your facade anymore. As astoundingly difficult as it may be, I've found that acknowledgement and exploration of negative feelings not only helps you feel better about them but allows you to try to change them.

Of course, I don't really know your situation, so I'm probably just talking out of my ass.

[SalmonGod]

Society couldn't function if everyone was unable to contain their thoughts and feelings when necessary.

True but the problem never goes away unless you alleviate it.

Yeah.  Things need to be resolved eventually, but that doesn't happen without tact.

My wife is the type of person for whom thinking and talking are the same thing.  It works to her advantage in many ways.  She's amazing at everyday business dealings and socializing.  However, she always ends up fucking things up with people long-term.  I don't think she'd have any friends for more than a couple years if I wasn't around to run damage control for her frequently.  We wouldn't be together if I didn't know how to manage our conflicts by knowing how receptive she'll be to any thought at any point in time and saving them for when I know she'll be receptive.

[Tellemurius]

Society couldn't function if everyone was unable to contain their thoughts and feelings when necessary.

True but the problem never goes away unless you alleviate it.

Yeah.  Things need to be resolved eventually, but that doesn't happen without tact.

My wife is the type of person for whom thinking and talking are the same thing.  It works to her advantage in many ways.  She's amazing at everyday business dealings and socializing.  However, she always ends up fucking things up with people long-term.  I don't think she'd have any friends for more than a couple years if I wasn't around to run damage control for her frequently.  We wouldn't be together if I didn't know how to manage our conflicts by knowing how receptive she'll be to any thought at any point in time and saving them for when I know she'll be receptive.

That really sounds like me, i had to pull out of society last summer and just spent time in the wilderness so i can clear my head.

[Vector]

Yeah, I used to take great care at maintaining an air of aloof composure. It was pretty tiring. Nowadays I usually just listen to the conversation and interject without much thought when I have something to say. Socializing has gotten way easier because of that.

Hahahaha composure >_>  I actually get pretty scared when I meet new people, so I tend to be either a. extremely quiet or b. borderline-manic.  Oddly, this hasn't worked too badly thus far.


And, now for a big think:

I think I'm losing/have lost one of my friends.  I don't really think I'm depressed or too sad about it, but I'm starting to realize that I really don't care to know what they're up to anymore, and everything they do bothers me.  Hmm... and part of the problem is that I don't like being with them, because we fulfill the same social role in a group, sort of.  I don't know how frequently other people have similar experiences with all that, haha.

We're just too similar and too different in the wrong ways: both female, reasonably intelligent, hard on ourselves, good at languages and solving puzzles (her recreational mathematics, and me pure mathematics)... similar appearances, even, and similar interests in writing and psychology.  But we have very different personalities in subtle ways, despite often being conflated.  I tend to be more introverted and serious.  I'm less conventional, but I usually don't make as much of a show of it, I think.  I'm also more prone to arguing and getting in verbal fights, but I feel like I get out of them more easily because I don't see "positions" and "sides" so much as attempts to educate and be educated.  I'm less certain of myself, but I usually show it less.  We're both absurdly competitive.  I seem to get a reputation for being intelligent more easily than she does, though I don't really know why.  And she's the one who's considered feminine, even though I wear skirts almost all the time.  Apparently I just give off waves of "masculinity" sometimes

So then, I think we get worried--or at the very least, I get worried--about disappearing in a social sense.  I've always heard people say that there really was no reason to be scared about that, but all the same it seemed that there was only one position we could really fill, and when both of us tried to fill it simultaneously we just wound up fighting with each other.  There's a strong counterpoint, so that it feels that when people pay attention to me, she is being ignored, and vice-versa, rather than either one of us just not being the focus of attention at that moment.

I really don't understand all of this complex.  We end up emphasizing each other's bad points and making each other dreadfully unhappy.  I feel inferior because I'm not very conventionally pretty--as she always said, it's like I'm attractive despite my looks, rather than because of them.  She feels inferior because she isn't as well-educated as I am, and is never able to seem quite as intellectually gifted when I'm around.  I don't know if that's because I'm actually smarter, or because I'm just able to intimidate her into acting like she doesn't quite know what's up.

So... I guess a lot of my troubles right now come from feeling like I'm halfway between two lives--the life of a child and the life of an adult, the life of a single person and the life of a person looking for relationships, the life of someone who doesn't study much and the life of someone who studies a lot, the life of someone who makes friends out of necessity and the life of someone who makes them by choice, consumption and production.

But, because I feel that I understand how things are going right now, suddenly I'm not as worried or terrible-feeling... huh.

[Criptfeind]

-snip-

-snippety-

I would like to chime in with a dissenting opinion, I have split my facets of life completely away from each other to the point where my four main parts of myself would not be recognized by the people that interact with a differing part. Other then some minor confusion when switching between parts of life and a inability to relate to myself when I am a different part of myself then the part I am trying to relate too, I have not seen any issues.

Obviously if you use it to get away from your issues it can be a issue, but if you keep working on your issues and only use the splitting to keep them from effecting you at times when you are not concentrating on them it should work fine.

[Tellemurius]

snip

snipped

It sounds like you outgrown her and don't need her anymore. Its normal, you can still keep talking to each other but from what it sounds like you have satisfied all your emotional needs between each other.