I've spent a lot of my life buttonholing people to talk about myself, my thoughts, my feelings, and in particular all of the negative ways in which 'the world and its people' affected me. These conversations were not constructive analyses in order to improve my attitude or conduct or contribute more effectively to the world around me. They were grandstanding, circular monologues, with the other person playing the role of audience, prompt, or pacifier. There was a sickly sort of relief, but nothing more. No change, apart from incrementally increasing my self-absorption.
The procedure is well described by Anne Wilson Schaef:
First, when one feels one's feelings, one must learn what to do with them and how to express them so as not to puke them on everyone in sight. There [is] a tendency . . . to explode all over whoever [is] present because of feelings that were triggered by something. This frequently was not helpful either to the puker or the person puked upon. The puker often instinctively knew that the intensity of the feelings was much more than the present situation merited (in fact, it might have been building up for years!) and when the person puked upon retorted that the anger (hurt, fear, etc.) was inappropriate, the person doing the puking secretly knew that the other person was right and either quietly slinked off or came on even more defensive and attacking. Whatever the response, the potential intimacy of getting in touch with the feelings was destroyed. Also, puking feelings in the way I have described always created the potential for a horrendous backlash, from an even more experienced puker coming at us hot and heavy.
Some people actively engaged. Others tolerated it. Quite a number simply boundaried it, either by boundarying the behaviour itself, or, more usually, giving me a very wide berth and playing hide-but-no-seek. The latter group were the healthy ones.
I was really using people to provide temporary reprieve, by securing what I thought was 'love' from them. Otto Fenichel is perceptive, I think, on this:
These persons, in their continuous need of supplies that give … satisfaction and heighten self-esteem simultaneously, are 'love' addicts, unable to love actively; they passively need to feel loved. … they are characterised by their dependence and their narcissistic type of object choice … and they tend to change objects frequently because no object is able to provide the necessary satisfaction. … Without giving any consideration to the feelings of their fellow man they demand of them an understanding of their own feelings. They are always bent upon establishing 'a good understanding' with people, though they are unable to fulfil their own part of such an understanding; this need compels them to attempt to deny their ever-present readiness to react hostilely.
In AA, I learned a couple of things. First of all, I needed to find people who could help me surgically remove the spiritual neoplasms using the Steps through access to God, service, and fellowship. Secondly, I needed to learn how to actually relate to friends and others: by finding common interests.
I was horrified to discover I was not one such common interest.
Someone I have known for 18 years I used to think treated me very unfairly by showing no interest in my narratives, monologues, brooding, worryworryworry, carping, and complaining.
'He isn't interested in me.'
'He doesn't love me.'
'He doesn't hear me / see me / respect me / pay attention to me.'
'I am nothing to him.'
Dimly, I was aware that I was barking up the wrong tree with this response, so persisted with the person.
After a number of years I discovered he is actually interested in me. But the actual me. Not my egoic narratives.
The horror of horrors was the realisation that he did not take an interest in those because they were actually boring. I was dull when I was in that mode. Here was someone willing to be supportive and helpful in all sorts of practical ways, whose company I enjoyed and who enjoyed mine, when I wasn't monologing or emotionally puking, but who was not willing to encourage my self-centredness.
My sponsor refers to this as the bloated nothingness of self.
Jim W talks about long marriage requiring us to deal with our 'stuff' with an appropriate spiritual advisor or professional rather than spraying the inside of the relationship with it.
All in all, with this friend of 18 years, I've discovered I can connect by being present, and I am present by being empty of self. What works is the opposite of what I thought would work.