The Alchemy of the Unexitable Loop

What happens when someone hurts you, then first denies then explains their behavior as a consequence of your personality? Literally…. a person repeatedly blames you for their mistreatment of you.

I am wired to sense shifts in energy.

I don’t mean that in some mystical way, and I don’t mean that I am fucking paranoid. I am attuned at a sensory and emotional level to things other people may have the luxury of not noticing.

Cold, detached silence. Avoidant eye contact. Being ignored. A change in tone. The almost imperceptible shift from being in connection with someone to being very clearly outside of it.

I’d sense it.

And because nothing had been said, I would ask. What’s wrong?

Nothing.

And the coldness intensified. Naturally I would ask again. So fkn earnest.

And now the inquiry itself was the only issue. Suddenly there was something concrete to point to: my questioning. My inability to leave it alone. My insistence that something was wrong when I had been clearly told there wasn’t.

And there is the loop.

I experienced the tension. I inquired directly about the tension. My asking was labeled as escalating it. The heightened tension was then used to explain the tension I had originally asked about.

Therefore, apparently, I had imagined it. Or caused it. Or manufactured chaos where none had existed.

And now my behavior could justify whatever came next.

There was no direct confrontation. No, “I’m angry with you.” No, “I didn’t love that.” No, “Can we talk about what happened?” No request in good faith to understand. Not even a simple statement of displeasure.

At least not to me.

The displeasure was expressed elsewhere, to others. So while I was being told nothing was wrong, an entirely different conversation could be happening outside of my participation.

There was no opportunity to hear the complaint, respond to it, clarify anything, take responsibility for anything that was actually mine, or repair the relationship.

Instead, the grievance traveled laterally.

Triangulation. Gossip. Division.

And if it eventually did come directly to me, it wasn’t offered as information that might help us understand each other. It came with teeth, delivered for maximum injury.

Not: Here is what hurt me.

More: Here is what is wrong with you.

There was a negative space where repair should have been, while an entire narrative could be developing outside of my participation.

By then, the equation was complete.

I had detected something I wasn’t supposed to detect. I had asked about something I was told wasn’t happening. My asking became evidence that I had created the problem.

And having created the problem, I had apparently earned whatever harmful or hurtful thing happened next.

Their harmful behavior gets explained by my character.

That’s the alchemy.

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone whose coldness you could feel, but when you asked what was wrong, you were told nothing?

And somehow, asking made things worse.

Until whatever happened next became something you had coming to you.

For being this way.