like training for the emotional olympics

The insensitive jerk I have been writing about once said to me that talking to me was like training for the emotional olympics. I am not entirely sure what he meant but when  I heard that, I wanted to say, but didn't, that interacting with him felt like training for the emotional olympics.

This guy is so unconscious. He beleives all problems he has interacting with others is the other person's fault. I know it takes two people to co-create any friendship but he seems to genuinely believe, even with his fancy PhD, years as a t-group facilitator, years as a process facilitator -- but no therapy, not him, he doesn't need any or believe in it, of course -- that he has superior relationship skills.

Once he said to me "You know, I know a lot of people known for their communication skills." like that magically made him a good communicator. Golly, I was facilitating intense process seminars in the eighties. I have worked, as a paid professional, with some of the biggest names in the consulting field (not lately). One of my main mentors is credited as one of the founders of the field of organization develoment but he is showing off because he knows a bunch of tgroup facilitators. News alert: I also know lots of tgroup facilitators and was trained as a tgroup facilitator by one of the founders of OD who also helped found the National Training Labs (NTL) and trained tgroup facilitators for at least 20 years every summer in Bethel Maine. But he brags to me about all the la di dah good communicators he knows, implying that means he is a good communicator.

I'll credit the guy with being charming. Most folks think he is very charming. And he is. Some of the time he is extremely charming. When he gess the least bit close to someone, and egos bump into one another, he angers as easily as anyone I have ever known and I come from a Black Irish family. At least in the way our family used the term Black Irish, Black Irish means bad tempered. It is not about skin and haira color. It is not about alcoholism, which the Irish seem to have a stronger weakness for booze than other ethnicities (well some others, certainly a few cultures are much more vulnerable to alcohol like Native Americans.). I know bad tempers. And I do not have a bad temper. This guy sees anger in everyone and in most of what they say, refusing to beleive me when I have said I am angry.

With him, like most predators, he confuses his prey with his gibberish, telling them black is white and down is up. And I let him treat me as he did and kept showing up for more.  I don't know who I am more angry with, him or myself.  I am so angry that I accepted so much emotional abuse from him, and even angrier that I didn't run away from interactions with him when he stated rojecting his stuff on to me and insisting his interpretation of what I had said or written was accurate.

He wrote one particularly absurd attack, focussing on one sentence I had written in an email. And this, I say with shame, was many years ago.  He actually wrote, and I have his crazy assertions in an email from him if anyone doubts me, that every word had auniversally agreed upon meaning. He wrote that language is a series of agreements and words have univerally accepted meaning.

I didn't say tis to him in resonse but I wanted to (note to self:  when you are afraid to say what you are thinking, run away as fast as you can, you are not safe), which was that I could tell he had not gone to law school. Much of law school is focussed on understanding basic legal concepts, the key codes or regulations such as tax code, uniform commercial code, etc. That's just knowledge. Most of the time in class in law school is spent with the law jocks sucking up to profs down in the front (I always sat in the last raw, as far away from the arguing and the professor as I could get). They argued about what words mean. REad a law school text of two buddy, and you would quickly see how absurd your assertion was that language is a series of universal agreements. That is his delusion. I know lots of people think words mean the same thing to everyone but that is delusion, fallacy.  It is quite rare for two people to give words the same meaning. Much arguing is rooted in miscommunication that stems from the simple truth that one person thinks words they hear from another mean something entirely different than the othe intended to convey.

With this guy, however, he always 'knew' what I had intended to say and when I tried to say no, that is not what I meant, he would say 'then you must have been unconscious' which must mean he is unconscious a lot. He sure accused me plenty of being unconscious when I am pretty darn sure I wasn't. Sure everyone does things unconsciously sometimes but now a rigid, black and white thinking borderline.  And not someone who grew up in an unsafe, predatory home. I learned very early to pay close attention to everything. I had to remain conscious to avoid being incested by my dad or abused in child labor abuse by my mother. And as my siblings grew, using me was just the way things were in our family. Even I thought using me was okay but I did wish to avoid being used or abused so I developed a close consciousness to what was going on.So I could anticipate abuse and misuse of me by 'going out to play' or hide in the basement. Heck, I learned, as I began to read novels (initially children's ones like Little House on the Prairie) that I could hide out by just being quiet and reading in my closet That trick worked for years. One day, my mom couldn't find me She thought I was over at my best friend's house next door and becmae concerned when I wasn't.She had all the kids on the block looking for me Aw, she cared! When she learned I was quietly reading, and hiding, in my closet with the light on and the door closed, she was furious. So was I:  my quiet reading hide out days were over.

When I first knew the insensitive jerk, and maybe narcissist (I can't really judge whether another person is a narcissist but it is fun mentally characterizing him as one -- he sure fits the criteria for one)