Why does your (male) True Emotion Mirror pick fights with you?

I’ve seen this exact scenario play out time and time again. This is not limited to just True Emotion Mirrors, but that’s where it matters. So many women have told me the same thing, you like him, but he acts like an idiot, picks a fight, calls you names, idiotic stuff.

Here’s ONE possibility of what’s happening, if it is not a deliberate the Normal Person* bonding strategy, that is: He is irritated by the fact he doesn’t hate you. And the logic is as follows:

Pretty girls have a certain reputation of being narcissistic, entitled, self-assertive, bitchy girls who think they can boss men around at will – and often successfully does so. Now, when a guy approaches a pretty girl expecting to be belittled. To his surprise, she acts NICE or coherent or logical, and all the things a man THINKS they want out of a woman, he’s caught off guard. He knows how to handle narcissistic women, how to pull the rug from under their feet in a split second and reveal her true, annoying, self-centered, and entitled way of thinking, but if you turn out to be NICE, he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with you.

Your True Emotion Mirror feels you’re dodging the main game where he gets to point out that you’re nothing, and he’s out of there as he picks up a nice chunky girl on the way out.

But he doesn’t have a reason to LEAVE when you’re nice. NOW WHAT?!

It is unlikely he’d notice this happening at the time of it happening; all he knows is that he’s pissed off, and you’re the reason for it. So he tries to pick a fight, but as you’re not that kind, you just get baffled, or you turn the tables and point out to him that HE is being an absolute twat, and now he doesn’t know how to handle THAT little dilemma.

It took a very smart man over 20 years…

I tweaked this through the WEIRDEST of coincidences. First of all, I watched Pierre XO’s old video about how women get treated in Los Angeles, and it got me a bit baffled. Nowhere where I’d lived would GROWN ASS MEN treat women like that? The behavior was JUVENILE. The stuff only a 13 or 14-year old would get away with where I come from.

So my spirit companions started asking me what’s the worst I’ve experienced, and I told them the one or two physical incidents, one at the age of 13, and maybe some random, rare instances at rock festivals or places where people are hammered… Anyway, YOUNG. Stuff that only a freaking male virgin would be tempted to do where I come from.

My old website had a gem hidden… WELL hidden

Then, I remembered my old website and how I used to publish emails I received from men who I thought to be moronic to encourage SOPHISTICATED MEN to keep mailing me because my wrath and displeasure came from this other lot entirely.

Among those men was a man who figured that he could tell by my nose that I was a feminist. He then insulted my small chest because he was sure I prefer the missionary position (true!), that I don’t swallow (heck, that’s for men I love!), my elitism, and possible lesbianism… At least the last bit was wrong. But. You know? Now that I think of it, PIN-POINT accurately snapped at everything I was secretly insecure about, full-blown True Emotion Mirror style.

As I read it, and as they tend to, he was pulled into this conversation, and try as I might to dismiss him as an unwanted intruder, he kept nagging in a similar tone but a little less aggressively as back then. Finally, I asked: “Bitch, please, what’s fucking eating you up? Just dig it up so we can talk about it. Is it because you fear I MIGHT BE RIGHT about being better than you, or that you are HORRIFIED about the fact people DO NOT think of each other as their equals even though we’ve been told to do so?”

“I came on to be irritated…”

He didn’t reply at first and I already half forgot I had asked, then, all of the sudden, he exclaims: “Oh no, not that! I came there (onto my website) to be irritated, and I wasn’t irritated. And then I got irritated!”

Why do I call him smart? FUCK. The ability to pick that kind of detail out of oneself is FUCKING RARE. I have NEVER in the ten years had ANYBODY pick it up for themselves; I’ve ALWAYS had to get to the point myself.

Also… Only intelligent people feel threatened by those who value intelligence. Dumb people only pass it off as “stuff that doesn’t matter in a relationship,” and there’s no convincing them that, indeed, it does matter.

Not the one in control of the situation

When it comes to anyone’s True Emotion Mirror, we do not feel in control of ourselves and the situation with them. Different people react differently, but picking a fight is one way of dealing with nerves and tension. Some people freeze and go quiet, put up a wall of sorts. Others start babbling complete nonsense, and some LITERALLY move out of the state to avoid the date on Friday they spent 6 months begging for. (True story – not a personal one, tho.)

Nobody feels SUPER CONFIDENT with their True Emotion Mirror, and if you’re usually the one in control of a potentially romantic or sexual situation, it may catch you completely off guard, and the way you react can be unsavory.

My True Emotion Mirrors started nodding.

Every one of my True Emotion Mirrors started nodding, amused at themselves. “We’ve all been there, some of us with you!”

And the thing… There’s been this nagging tension with me for so long I didn’t realize it was there. The annoyance lifted like magic the moment this guy arrived at his conclusion. Like… Whoa. Everybody with me felt it, and I must confess, I felt like crying with relief and… Some kind of a weird feeling I don’t recognize… Ooh. Forgiveness. 😉

I’m joking, I recognized it, but I TRULY don’t feel FORGIVENESS often in myself. Like… Never. Not like that.

My ex-husband chimes in: “I think at that point I felt I needed to protect this girl. These men were vicious, and I didn’t even know as these conversations were written in Finnish. Still, I read the blog and sensed the danger brewing”. We met relatively soon after this. However, he’d been reading the blog for a while. We still live together. Still, we are no longer married, as you can conclude from the “ex.” I felt safe with him for the moment we met, this was one of the most stand-out feelings I had with him, that I’m “safe” and “home.” However, more like with a brother or dad than a lover…

I wasn’t TOO worried about the men, even despite some pretty severe threats I received for no particular reason. For thinking, I’m too good for them, or whatnot. Imagine that! I thought I was too good for a female-student harassing a University professor and all these cock-pullers… But yeah. Still. None of them, or anyone else, actually physically grabbed me.

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