“Sticking around” and how it can be either the most romantic thing or simple abuse

When you drill down to almost anyone’s ultimate “what you want from OUR relationship”, the answer, always, to a True Emotion Mirror (and to a Precious Soulmate) is “so you’ll stick around. I want you to just stick around!” However, when someone who isn’t either will forcibly, against your true will, push themselves into your life, in order to show to you how they’re the sticking around type, it’s called abuse.

This is kind of the same thing as “consent is the king”. It is one thing to give consent to A level of friendship, to a sexual act, and another to give consent to a full-blown committed relationship, either friendship or love relationship. If you get consent for one, doesn’t mean you have got consent to another, but people often interpret certain things for consent for another. Such as… Someone might consider exchanging Christmas presents as consent to a full-blown committed friendship, and another person may regard consent to sex as the same as consent to a full-blown committed love relationship. Neither is neither.

How do you know?

If someone is constantly pushing you away, and if you stay regardless, and they STILL seem short-tempered, displeased, or downright angry with you, the likelihood that they actually want you there is slim to none. If someone is TESTING your willingness to stay, by being a bit of a brat and annoying, and you decide to stick through it and tell them that you’re sticking around, and they seem pleased and happy about it – different matter. Then they DO love you, and they’d love you to stay.

Obviously, this situation can change, too, if your relationship doesn’t work out at the end of the day, but if someone wants you around, they will not be able to help to look pleased when you stick through a tough spot for them. Otherwise, it’s just annoying. (Just imagine someone who you wouldn’t want around you sticking around you simply because they took you saying “good day” to them at the supermarket as consent to loving you.)

Indirect signs of consent and how they mislead you

There are plenty of people who take little signs of a relationship to mean A WHOLE LOT MORE than they were ever meant to. If a person has never been invited to a party in their lives, and someone asks them for a party, they may take it as a full-blown proposal, REGARDLESS there are other people at the party, too. The logic, then, would work somehow like: “Those other people have always been ‘on the inside’, but that person didn’t think they were enough and WANTED ME THERE because I’m better than them, therefore, they want to marry me.” These kind of people don’t think you feel you owe them an invitation because they feel they deserve to be on the outside, therefore, once invited in, they believe they’ve suddenly proven to be worthy.

To another person, consent to sex is consent to a relationship, EVEN IF that person was known to sleep around. The logic here is, that the poor thing is looking for a relationship with all of these people, but they all just use him/her for sex and won’t make a real commitment… That person decides to be the good person and give them what they want, even if that person was sleeping around because the last thing they wanted was a committed relationship with anyone.

These signs are NOT real consent. There are tons of reasons why people do what they do, and EVEN BETWEEN TRUE EMOTION MIRRORS, this consent, this wish to be together and stick together, must be expressed somehow before it can be physically acted on. (As in, before you can move in with someone, declare them your possession, chase other romantic rivals away from them etc.)

It is truly difficult to break away from someone who thinks they are doing you a favor by “sticking around”

The reason why this turns into what we know as domestic abuse so easily, is that the abuser believes they are doing the other a favor by sticking around. They believe that when the other argues back, they are “being difficult” “testing them” or “have intimacy issues” or something else that they try to make sense out of. “Someone hurt them bad before”, or many many other cliches.

The victim often turns “toxic” because they are trying to regain control over their own lives, by arguing, trying to chase the other one away. They use disrespectful language, they “misbehave”, and sometimes, they turn physically violent in their attempt to break the other one’s illusion that they are in a love relationship together. Sometimes physical violence goes the other way: “You are not committing, therefore, I’m teaching you that I NEED YOU to submit to me and stay because you don’t seem to trust your luck here. You actually HAVE ME for a partner, lucky you.”

This behavior often gets rewarded

While one person is CONVINCED that the other simply doesn’t believe someone would stay with them, they can allow that other person to get TRULY horrible with them without realizing they are not wanted in that relationship. Instead, they’ll take pride in “having the patience” and “being able to take it” while they wait for the other to calm down.

Many people are also not willing to truly fight for their freedom. Even though they are NOT really interested in the relationship, they may be reluctant to be impolite or too strong-worded to say no to a relationship. They may raise some feeble objection, like “I’m not sure I want a relationship right now”, or “you know I just got out of my marriage and I need some time to myself” or “you know I’m not really LOOKING to get serious with anyone right now” or “it’s not you, it’s me, but…” They might even try and convince the other that THE OTHER doesn’t want a relationship with someone like themselves “look, I’m so much older than you…” But when the other simply stands their ground, they give in and get into a committed relationship with them thinking they can always end it later if it doesn’t work out.

Often, the efforts of “the abusive stayer” are rewarded by their target simply running out of strength to fight or running out of excuses. Then, they reluctantly accept their fate of being tied to someone they don’t love at all. So this behavior often gets the reward of seeming success, regardless of the fact it has nothing to do with true love. The next step is them trying to portray the picture of a happy relationship and being in love with their partner, basically out of societal pressure to do so.

The Stayer may still be displeased with what they snared

The relationship may continue with the Abusive Stayer’s displeasure of what they actually managed to catch. When the other partner is not truly in the relationship out of their own, free will, they won’t put much effort into it, will they? The rationale is, that “if you are satisfied with a pretense of a relationship, then why should I put effort into something I don’t even want?” So the catch will remain wishy-washy, non-committed, reluctant, displeased, even. It seems they have to be ushered into every romantic action and gesture of commitment. The reason being, they never wanted this relationship in the first place, but the ‘stayer’ was pushing thinking themselves to be a catch for ANYBODY.

The Abusive Stayer may try to push the other party into action by violence sometimes. The logic may be, that they see this other partner as “everybody’s dream partner”, which means they “must know how relationships work”, as a kind of a job position. They expect certain types of actions to follow as a matter of course when the other one knows certain actions are reactions to LOVE they feel for their partner. If the love is missing, they don’t want to express it, as that would be false and fake. Instead, they do certain actions that are OK within a “for the cameras” relationship, they’ll do their part, but refrain from expressing real love that is, actually, not there.

While the Abusive Stayer will try and get romance out of their newly acquired partner, the said partner tries to fall in love with their snarer… Most likely failing, because that’s how life goes… You either love a person at first sight or you don’t. That’s how it goes.

This is a great relationship skill to have ONCE YOU HAVE CONSENT

The truth is, that showing that you want a relationship with someone is actually kind of scary to a lot of people. The fear of rejection is strong in many, but if you’re one of the people who is willing to show you’ll stick around, it is a great thing to have the balls to do ONCE YOU HAVE THE CONSENT to do so.

The consent to stick around (no matter what) is given to someone only after some time getting to know each other. This is often called “dating”. 😉 You’ve heard of it. 😉 This is the pre-relationship part. Feeling your way into it. Seeing if you actually want a relationship with this person.

The truth is, that true love strikes you at the first sight or it doesn’t. Interest certainly does. However, you interest is also flattering as f, especially interest from a good-looking person. Therefore, people are prone to WANTING TO fall in love with a beautiful person who is interested in you. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean they ACTUALLY love you, and people who GET A LOT OF INTEREST from people tend to be rather used to rejecting even good-looking people because they’re not exactly the right kind (and they believe they can get closer to their ideal in time). (For a monogamist, this is a relatively simple process. Poly… Oh my. Where to draw the line?)

The purpose of dating (or courting or having a fuck buddy semi-relationship or…)

Dating is often the function of figuring out whether you’re falling in love or simply flattered by the attention you got from someone good-looking enough… or whether you are infatuated by someone’s looks or their personality – in other words, did you assign certain character traits on a person because they look the way you wish the kind of person you love would look… Or is it actually them you love? Many people are flattered by simply ATTENTION from their preferred gender, without much focus on looks or other traits.

Sometimes dating is a process of falling in love with someone you didn’t previously think would be your type. Either way, the green light must be given after some time of seeing each other, and ONLY IN VERY RARE occasions, both partners agree from day one, that this is TRULY it and we’ll do whatever to stay together, especially if they are not actual True Emotion Mirrors, which is another complicated equation to solve.

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