Academic overachiever lonely / Time to study inter/intra personal communication

DEAR ABBY: I am a 20-year-old male living what appears to be "the dream." I have completed my bachelor's degree, and I'm starting what will more than likely be a prosperous career. Still, something important is missing. All my life I have always felt very isolated. Although I have been able to develop "friendships," the more I progress in life the more these friendships slip away. I have been unsuccessful in finding a mate and I am embarrassed to still be a virgin. Is there something horribly wrong with me that drives people away? —LONELY GUY, MONTREAL, CANADA

Gabby's Reply

Hi Lonely Guy: My sense tells me that you're simply more aware than most people. I'm privileged to have had thousands of intimate conversations with fellow seekers over the past 84 years, most would affirm that what you're experiencing is simply part of the curriculum en route to enlightenment.

It appears you have been resisting acknowledging that you're a brilliant conscious person of integrity. In a world of overwhelming irresponsible hypocrisy (blatant misleading advertising, blaming lawsuits, remedial make-up classes for college freshmen) it's almost impossible to not get sucked into the game. Many teens turn to drugs because they are surrounded by adults unconsciously committed to mediocrity, they have no one in their life who is conscious, no one who truly inspires them. Most "normal" seemingly happy people have bought into the norm of dating and marrying and settling for mediocre relationships. Few couples know how to recreate at will the experience of joy that comes through communication—an experience so different from talking and sex as to not be in the same ball park. Most would say that you are approaching intimacy as they wish they had, that they are only just now discovering the ecstasy of intercourse (all that takes place between two in-communication with each other).

One pitfall of being conscious is that you can see what others can't—the folly of the game, the ignorance, the hypocrisies, the inane policies, etc. Awareness can breed judgmental self-righteousness; it can turn others off. Being right is as much an addiction as drugs. It could cause you think that there might be something wrong with you. It's altogether possible that you're one of the few sane people.

In short, there's nothing wrong with you. Now is the time for a few thousand conversations with conscious people. There are millions out here; they've just been waiting for you to find them. They flit from errand to errand, under-the-wire, on purpose, self-assured, not needing anyone. They've discovered that prolonged interactions with "normal" people are usually energy sapping.

Your letter reveals that you don't have a mutually supportive relationship with your parents, else, this would have been resolved in one sit-down with each. It would work for you to complete your relationship with them (or with a therapist who will converse with you—via rescripting—as each parent would) else you will drag your poor-confused-me act into your personal relationship(s). Few, if any, educators/clergy stress the significance and awesome importance of having a complete relationship with one's parents. The word complete doesn't mean what you or most think it means as pertains to relationships.

Many whose parents have died remain incomplete for life because they don't realize that it's possible to have mutually satisfying conversations with a dead person, via conversations that support one in completing a relationship. The Rescripting Process brings closure to a heretofore messy relationship.

It could be said that your letter is one more step toward discovering your purpose in life. People without purpose have too much time on their hands; they create undesirable problems to worry about. A person on purpose is too busy to worry about self/relationships. It could be said that your #10 is waiting for you to create a cause or to support theirs. There's nothing as inspiring as a person with a purpose.

It might be of interest to know that communicologists (leadership-relationship communication-skills coaches) do not apply for teaching positions with education systems. Why? Because the interview process is both invalidating and abusive. During such interviews to hire teachers, education administration staff use the same communication model taught to them by speech-communication professors; this model is referred to the Adversarial Communication Model. This is the same model that produces teachers whose graduates, 25% of whom, must take remedial courses as college freshman. My point being, the majority of people are not committed to living from integrity so one must be willing to choose loneliness rather than resist it. Often the entrance to a Zen monastery is guarded by two fierce gargoyles, the one named confusion the other paradox. To experience enlightenment one must go through (choose to be with as opposed to resist) both.

Having said all that, let's address why you have been creating lonely. We have to be willing to look at your creation from the point of view that for some, as yet unknown but brilliant reason, the genius in you has been intending to be alone. What doesn't work is to lie about it saying that you haven't intended this problem. Mastery is intending what so to be so. Have loneliness be your idea. One exercise is to walk around acting as a pathetically lonely person. I mean really dramatize it, Hollywood-like, and see what happens; the exercise won't work unless you truly get into the act. You become what you resist.

I suspect a part of what this curriculum is about for you is to complete your experience of self-righteousness. I know how difficult is to be among unconscious people, to be able to see what's not working and not have the communication skills to effect a transformation. A friend of mine reported that he stopped talking for a year once he found out that all he could do was lie, that nothing he said really made a difference. BTW: The silence didn't work, in part because he was still judging, but communicating his self-righteousness non-verbally, thereby still producing less-than-ideal outcomes.

I recommend that you call someone you have driven away. Begin with; "I'm doing a self-improvement exercise and would like some honest feedback about your experience of me.  I'm completely open to suggestions and tips. You have my permission to be brutally candid."

P.S. The advantage of virginity (especially if you marry a virgin) is that you have nothing with which to compare your first experience and so what happens is supposed to happen. What most people don't know is that withholders magnetically attract withholders. Withholders hide thoughts from each other; both, on their first date, will hide certain thoughts from each other. Both have lost their spontaneity. The consequences of these deceits are compounded, so much so that neither partner can trace back to the very first deceit between them. A person addicted to withholding will be afraid to tell their partner that oral sex with them sucks—compared with a former high school date. This extremely common withhold between partners becomes the cause for many infidelities and divorces. —With aloha, Gabby

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Last edited 12/7/21