Stifling...

So I have this thing where I can usually tell a lot about somebody I don't know at all by a photograph of them that most looks like them (i.e. not a picture that shows them badly). And I also have this thing where I can tell what it is about my closest friends that impedes their progress as a person and I may be a little driven to fix those things. But somehow, neither really applies to my guy. Well, the first one doesn't apply to any guy I'm interested in. I end up going in blind when I would otherwise be able to tell the worst things about them almost immediately, prior to any sort of interaction. It's weird.

That's what was interesting about seeing my guy walk down the steps to his apartment that time when he shaved his beard off and I didn't recognize him. I got to see him as if I wasn't attached to him, as if he was a stranger who I could read objectively. And my judgment that day was that he was the kind of guy I could never get. It was like how I saw my friend Josh about ten years ago. In Josh's case, he was this intriguing guy who, by default, always had a girl he adored and treated so well. Being that he always had a girl, he was so off the market that he wasn't even an option. It was only a couple of years ago that I found out that his girl left him abruptly to marry somebody else and that he'd been equally intrigued by me too.

But still, even knowing that I wasn't totally out of Josh's league in terms of datability, I still felt, as my guy walked down the stairs with that equal aura of impossibility, that he was the kind of guy I just couldn't get. He was that nice guy with the girl he adored and to whom he was totally devoted. He was that kind of guy. I guess it's the kind of guy who is so sweet and caring that he's just never not in a relationship so there's just never any point in even asking yourself whether or not he's attractive or whatever, you know?

Except that this time, he was in a relationship with me. All of a sudden, I was the girl this caring, sweet, devoted type of guy was with. How bizarre.

Along the way, I guess I forgot that he's a human being too. None of us is perfect, and I knew that he had some things that he had to work on (mainly things he had to detach from), but I never really saw anything too serious blocking his progression in life. But somehow in the past couple of days, as I stopped trying to make everything so perfect all the time (mainly by screwing everything up all the time), I've seen this other side of him that I didn't really notice before.

Maybe it's not proper to air it out on the blog, but I guess he'll tell me in the morning...

I've always pushed him to say things in certain situations, mainly (I thought) because I'm a far more confrontational person than he is, and when things would go badly, I'd feel responsible because had we done things his way (passively and silently), bad things wouldn't have happened. But this week, I started to wonder if I was right all along. I started to wonder if his passiveness isn't just rooted in kindness and a lack of desire for confrontation, but a general shyness. Shyness isn't bad or anything, but when it's the stifled kind, that's something that has to be worked out, you know?

There are a bunch of reasons somebody might be stifled into shyness- a lack of confidence, being beaten down for opinions or during discussions or whenever they speak, having your words constantly not be taken into account- that sort of thing. But somehow, I can't really figure out why he'd be stifled. I guess he has been shot down a lot. And he's been bullied into silence in a variety of ways over the years too.

I hope I don't do that to him.

Anyway, my point wasn't to point out his junk, but to say it kind of sucks that I can help everybody work through their stuff, even my dad sometimes, but not my guy because I simply don't recognize what he needs. I wish I could. It's just sort of this block thing, I guess.

Anyway, it's way past my bedtime...