Aloof

[darkemeralds]

In my research into attachment "disorders" I came across this article about cold people in Psychology Today.

If you've gotten into a relationship with a cold person, the article says, "hopefully you walked away." "Avoidant-dismissive attachment disorder" (characterized by aloofness, coldness, lack of affection, self-absorption--the list is long and decidedly not neutral) is caused by faults of "maternal caretaking". One commenter on part 2 of the article calls for finding and sterilizing women with this disorder, presumably to curb the creation of more people the commenter might feel uncomfortable with.

It's just one pop-psych article, written in a comment-baiting style, so I don't take it too seriously. But its strongly biased language and illustrations caused some disparate ideas to coalesce in my mind--ideas about myself, heredity, types of people, and the peculiarly American drive for "self improvement" that has dogged me all my days.





Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby developed attachment theory in the 1960s by studying the effect a mother's nurturing style has on the personality of her baby. Basically, "good" nurturing fosters a "securely attached" child who grows up to be well-liked, well-integrated, easy with intimacy and, if female, likely to raise good, socially-desirable children of her own. (The language in the field really is that value-laden.)

Bowlby himself questioned why the undesirable attachment styles (present in a sizable minority of the population) would persist unless they served an evolutionary purpose. Otherwise wouldn't they have been selected out of existence? Maybe attachment style is heritable--like introversion. The nurture argument still holds the field--Blaming Mom, after all, was the name of the 20th century psychology game--but the nature crowd might be making some inroads.

It doesn't matter whether I was born this way or made this way. What matters is that I am this way. What matters is that I've spent way too much of my life trying to be cured of something that's far more of a problem for other people than it is for me.



All the therapies, programs and methods I tried were aimed at fixing me. I don't blame them--I went into each of them hoping to be cured. I longed to be one of those winning, attractive people.

Funny, it was a scientifically-unsound fashion-and-beauty system that gave me the gift of self-acceptance that years of therapy withheld.

In Carol Tuttle's Energy Profiling, the Cold Person corresponds strongly with Type 4-Carbon, and Carol (quite unscientifically) contends that your Energy Type is detectable from birth--sometimes even in utero--clearly implying nature, not nurture.

Energy Profiling and Dressing Your Truth provided better illustrations than Psychology Today, and a much better vocabulary: cool, still, deep, silent, bold, exacting, striking, poised, moderate, dignified, commanding, structured, thorough, elite, serious, regal, reflective. (Also ironic, sarcastic, intolerant of fools, literal-minded, logical, and perfectionistic. So sue me.)

"But don't you pay a high price for your insistence on being an ice queen?"

Okay, a)? I don't insist; it's not like I haven't tried to change and b) Yes, there's a price. I'm not popular. Nobody discernibly wanted to marry me and hardly anyone even had the nerve to get to know me when I was younger. I have few friends: I just can't keep up a warmhearted facade long enough to win a host of social contacts. Even as a little girl I was sometimes perceived as a threat by adults. I'm looking at an old age of pretty much total self-sufficiency (which, thank God, I can probably manage).

What's more, I'm rigid, and prone to ailments of rigidity like arthritis. I have rarely been lonely, but I have been terribly ashamed of being alone, and I spent years battling the depression that arose from that self-hatred. The stress of not being able to become what I was supposed to be took on near-suicidal proportions.

So yes, there's a price. Cry me a river. The thing is, I've accepted it. I've learned how to pay it because trying to avoid it costs a lot more.



To every wonderful person who has dared to be my friend I say thank you, from the bottom of my cold (but deep) heart.

And to the name-calling institutions and individuals who can't get past the fact that I'm not the kind of lady you're comfortable with, I say NOT SORRY. FIND BETTER WORDS, OR STOP TALKING ABOUT ME.

Comments

[greghatcher]

Well, of all the people I knew at PSU, you're the one I make it a point to try and stay in touch with, I can't recall ever being so much as mildly annoyed with you about anything ever, and frankly, of the two of us, I think I'm probably the more abrasive one overall.

Not suffering fools gladly-- or at all-- is a perk of getting old. Revel in it. I do.

[darkemeralds]

Certainly not suffering fools gladly accords a little better with the gray hair than it did a 20 year old. :D

And abrasive? You? Huh. I guess I can detect a bit of the curmudgeon mixed in with the general glee of your columns about comics. It's a funny combination, isn't it--fandom and aging.

Hey, did you see Wil Wheaton's lovely little speech from Calgary Comic Expo last week?

[greghatcher]

See, that's what I mean. I never think of you as aloof and you never think of me as abrasive.

But I don't get snappish in the column very often because frankly there are WAY too many people in the fan community who are just pissed off all the time. I could have hits in the thousands and a comment thread in triple digits every week if I built the column around "Dumb things Marvel and DC are doing." And believe me, there'd be something every week.

Schaedenfruede is not my thing though. Very rarely does something actively piss me off enough to get me to write about it. This one is about as close as I get.

We DID see Wheaton's thing-- are you kidding, four people sent it to me within an hour of its going up-- and we loved it. It got Julie all puddled up.

[darkemeralds]

I wasn't at all sure whether your reaction to Wil's speech would have been as positive as my own, or more "ho-hum, that fraud." Personally, I think he's amazing--glad you do too, and that all your friends think you do.

Your Beatles-bootleg analogy is excellent in that column. It was, for me, the real door into what you were talking about. A bridge, rather, from my world into yours. And wow, look at all those comments!

[greghatcher]

The ones that get huge numbers of comments always come from poking the bear that is internet comics fandom. Our private running joke on the blog-- that is, between myself and my colleagues Kelly, Sonia, (other) Greg, and me-- is that we each take turns writing the same column about fans, and the publishers that cater to them. It's called "What the Hell Is WRONG With You?" You saw mine. Kelly's usually looks like this. Sonia's most recent one was this. And here's Greg The Other's version.

In every case, one of us is making a point so obvious that we feel foolish for even having to point it out.... boiled down, it basically is "this joyous thing that we all loved as children has actually been slowly poisoned for NEW children by your complete inability to let go of it, and now our once-beloved hobby has morphed into a key club for frankly creepy arrested-adolescents." And in every case, we are shouted down by a mob who is screaming bloody murder about having their toys taken away. We're censors. We don't get it. We're prudes. Superheroes aren't for kids any more. And so on.

I even understand this to a certain extent. I used to get beaten up for liking superhero comics. It can make you really defensive. It took me years to realize that the Adam West Batman and the Christian Bale Batman can co-exist, there's not a MORAL component to preferring one over the other.

There's always going to be factions in fandom-- whatever it might be, comics, rock music, jazz music, the Baker Street Irregulars, whoever-- and usually there's at least one feud going on. (Someone sent me a story a few years ago about a woman who dared to tell the scrapbooking/crafting community they had behaved badly and that mob summoned the internet hate to a degree that was genuinely criminal harassment.) But comics is this weird place where the whole thing is so microscopically tiny that when fans have a tantrum, it actually warps the work the professionals are doing.

It's unhealthy. My feeling has always been that artists are over HERE, doing the work, and then the audience is over THERE, talking about it and voting on it with their cash. If some of that audience is inspired to the point where they do their own stuff, great. But it should be segregated. You cater to the fans too much, put in too many Easter Eggs or fanservice moments, and you usually kill the golden goose.

In the specific case of my own little subset of pop culture, the major publishers' fanservice obsession has taken the actual work being done in a direction that is really creepy, and it's even getting into the more mainstream iterations of the genre-- the people in charge of the DC characters, especially, seem to be hellbent on removing all the humor and joyousness that made costumed superheroes fun in the first place. (All the trailers I've seen for MAN OF STEEL suggest to me that this movie was made by people that thought SUPERMAN RETURNS was too frivolous and upbeat.) You know, not EVERYTHING needs to be DARK KNIGHT.

...sorry, press the button and the lecture comes out. But there's a vicious, unhealthy side to fandom-- the entitlement syndrome, coupled with people that only feel truly empowered in their little online community-- and in comics you can't just dismiss them as 'the fringe weirdos.' For Marvel and especially DC, they're driving the bus.

[darkemeralds]

I wanted to live with this comment for a day or two before replying. I've had a look at the columns you linked to (and read all of Kelly's, which was excellent and well-reasoned); some of those ideas have filtered my way, particularly through Joss Whedon fandom, which now gives me a link into comics and superheroes fandoms.

I'd never heard of the scrapbooking brouhaha, but it sounds amazingly similar to fandom brouhahas, where trollish concerns over the morality of copyright disguise envy, discomfort with the new, and just plain pearl-clutching. It's the crazy side of devotion, and the line gets pretty hazy at times.

You cater to the fans too much, put in too many Easter Eggs or fanservice moments, and you usually kill the golden goose.

This is an interesting area. I'm old-fashioned enough that I like my fourth wall. Don't mind me, playing over here in porny fanfic, and I'll just mind my business and watch your show, you know? On the other hand, I Twitter-follow just about everyone involved in all the properties I enjoy, and when you know which airport so-and-so is at and see Vines of this one and that one goofing around like reg'lr folks--and sometimes they reply directly to you--well, that fourth wall is coming down, brick by brick.

Now and then (and increasingly often) I skitter back into hiding, when the tumblr crowd gets a bit too noisy. One showrunner I follow abruptly deleted his Twitter account when fandom turned threatening over some nuance of a relationship in the show he writes.

So, in short, I'm of two minds about the fourth wall and fanservice. The line between creator and audience is disappearing fast, and I doubt there's much anyone can do to redraw it. Publishers and networks and studios still claim the best talent because they can still pay, but they no longer have the monopoly on the media of creation and distribution, and they're polar bears on shrinking ice, desperately deploying their 20th century tools of homogenization, and lowest-common-denominator mass appeal.

This...is not as cohesive a set of thoughts as I'd like, but hey. Comments. What the hell.

[greghatcher]

Well, here's the short version of my thoughts on fanservice-- you don't give fans what they ASK for, you give them what they WANT.

The classic example of this is STAR TREK. Gene Roddenberry spent years going to conventions and being hailed as a living God. Fans told him over and over what they loved about his vision, about how inspiring his ideas had been for them, and on and on and on. So he listened to them. And when it was time to bring STAR TREK back we got STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, and it was all utopian and thoughtful and stuff. And it was a thudding bore. The truth of the matter is that Gene Roddenberry's utopia is really kind of stupid. Dull. With an ending that was a complete anticlimax. And yet...

...it had everything the fans had asked for. It was the Roddenberry meditation on humanity and morality that everyone at cons had been talking about for years, the science was impeccable, there had been consultations with NASA and Isaac Asimov... it was the LITERATURE OF IDEAS!! The hell of it was, we were so hungry for more STAR TREK, ANY Star Trek, that none of us wanted to own up to the fact that it was, well, bad. (I wince at the memory of defending it as 'almost' good, back in the day....) They even threw a few bones to the slashfic ladies ("Jim-- this simple feeling...") although Roddenberry was so embarrassed over this part of fandom he actually put a footnote in the novelization about it. --But I digress.

The point is, the Trek movie that saved the franchise was the SECOND one, Wrath of Khan. When they got rid of Roddenberry and the fan service and the carefully-extrapolated science and sociology, and instead told a very human, character-based story about mortality and legacy, using the template of the classic naval adventure. Plus they had lots of tense and exciting fight scenes, cool visuals, and warmth and humor. It FELT like Star Trek. The REAL one, not the lie fans had been telling themselves to justify a decade's worth of devotion.

And you saw the same story play out with the television revivals. The first season of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION is legendary for how awful it was behind the scenes and how many writers Roddenberry alienated with his insistence that only he knew what would work.The show didn't really catch fire until the third season, when Roddenberry became too ill to stay on as producer.

Now, you can contrast that with the first six or eight episodes of the ORIGINAL series that Roddenberry produced back when he was still trying to explain the show to everyone and create the thing, when he rewrote every script himself to make sure it was consistent. Those shows were very much written to be ACCESSIBLE, and more, they have the sense of a pro writer doing smart work. Back then, he knew that his show could be smart, but it also had to be FUN. "Charlie X," "The Man Trap," "the Corbomite Maneuver," "The Enemy Within"... those shows are all built around naval adventure tropes, but with an SF twist. The castaway has a terrible secret. The island natives turn out to be dangerous. The ship has to avoid a dangerous battle engagement. Etc. Those were shows that were AHEAD of the audience, not being LED by it.

--Wow, I said this was the SHORT answer, didn't I? But Roddenberry's is just one example. I can think of half a dozen other efforts that began to fail artistically as soon as they started overtly trying to cater to fans. I bet you could too.

Look, I have tremendous affection for fandom and especially the creative side of it, the folks who write and draw and make costumes and build models and shoot movies. But I also think that it should stay firmly behind the fourth wall. I know of many lovely stories of fans interacting with creators-- I've even lived some of them-- but for every one of those, I know a hundred more where it's ended badly. Because it breeds familiarity and entitlement and contempt. And in superhero comics it's been particularly awful. I sometimes think the internet is the worst thing that ever happened to Marvel and DC, and I say that as someone who gets paid to write about them on the internet.

But you don't need to take MY word for it. Google "Dan Slott Spider-Man death threats," or "Ron Marz Green Lantern H.E.A.T.," or "Ryan Coons Rob Liefeld." That's just scratching the surface.

In comics, these are the fans publishers cater to. That's my complaint. They should be marginalized. Instead, they're courted. It's creepy.

[darkemeralds]

This is rather a short response, but have a look at this interview with Joe Hill. Scroll down to this question: "You've mentioned in interviews that you start with a hook but that will only take you so far, and then you have to have good characters" and have a look at his reply. I think it's pretty fitting.

[linaerys]

Thanks for posting this! I think I am to some extent cold--I am not good at touching, I dislike cuddling, I am bad at forming close, deep relationships, people find me intimidating and yes, threatening...

IDK, it's good to see that others exist, even if we are all on different parts of a spectrum of coldness to warmth, there is value in the cold parts as well.

[darkemeralds]

*waves* Fellow inadvertent-intimidator, gimme five. Only, you know, not too close. :D

Attachment theory is probably valid at some level--people manifestly do have different styles of relating, and there's apparently not much we can do to change the style we're coded with. Labeling one style as good and the other styles as disorders seems, IDK, a wee bit self-congratulatory.

Some of the literature hints that the "insecure" styles might have provided an evolutionary advantage, though it's anyone's guess what that might have been. Maybe if you're naturally detached, you don't suffer as much from isolation or lack of support when times are hard. You survive by looking out for yourself. There has to be some purpose for the trait, or it wouldn't exist. Genocide is not the answer (seriously, I've seen it proposed at least twice now by people commenting on articles/books about attachment).

Science is still looking for why homosexuality exists and why lefthandedness exists. And yet somehow society has gotten over its hatred of southpaws and we're making progress on gays, so I can hope that the toxic and exclusionary language around attachment theory might eventually be neutralized.

[sffan]

I get to be a ridiculous grab-bag of "get away"/"hold me". I've never been all that comfortable with random physical contact, except with BFs and then I can be very cuddly. I totally grasp the concept of "touch-starved" that pops up in fic, because it describes me fairly well That said, even in a relationship, some types of physical contact still bothers me - like the constant guiding hand on the back or even worse, the back of the neck.

Thanks to my wonderful fandom friends that I've met in real life, I've gotten used to being hugged by people I don't know very well. But I suspect it's still hilarious watching me get hugged unexpectedly. I basically freeze, flinch, and then remember that you're supposed to hug back.

[darkemeralds]

Hee! I can just imagine the slow-motion video (or the animated gif) of you being hugged unexpectedly. I totally get that! And if anyone puts a guiding hand on the back of my neck--aaarrrgh! Well, I can't remember that ever happening because nobody would dare.

The need for touch is pretty universal. Oxytocin, baby. It's well known that petting a cat or dog can help meet that need, and that even imagining touch generates some healthy delicious oxytocin. I've never done blood tests or anything, but it does seem to be true. All that Teen Wolf fic with the scenting and body contact attests to the power of just imagining it.

Fandom friends are wonderful, aren't they? \o/

[sffan]

I haven't had the hand on the neck thing either, but I've seen it. And it just makes me cringe inside.

So, the reason I can't seem to get myself out there to find myself a new bf (despite the fact that I would honestly like to have one) is because I've got a cuddly cat and PILES of fanfic? *grin*

[darkemeralds]

BLAME IT ON FANFIC.

that works in so many situations!

[branchandroot]

*high five* Screw all the people who think it's a "disorder" that you don't want to service and ego-pet them. This is a perfectly good way to be. The other way has a high "price" too, and that price is functioning for other people all the time. I completely disregard the blithering of the people who want only to benefit from that themselves. I am not a public utility, and neither are you. Rock on.

[darkemeralds]

I am not a public utility. LOL. That's fantastic.

In a way, we kind of all are--that is, we evolved in groups, and we exist and survive only in a vast network of other people. There's a fine line between a "loner" who doesn't give much to the group and a "free rider" who actually takes. From my reading--especially in the comments sections, OMG--there's a lot of emotional and irrational anger and hatred towards "cold" people because, in failing to give enough warmth and support, they're perceived as actually taking something.

In this as in so many other respects, it's a great relief to have aged out of most of the categories where this kind of angst occurs.

[dine]

the world doesn't need more cuddly fluffy bunny people; I'm glad you've abandoned "fixing" yourself projects, because you're extremely terrific just as you are!

I think I probably don't come across as 'detached' as you may, but I share a lot of those qualities and can't see them as negatives

[darkemeralds]

Hah! Well, I don't know about the world, but I certainly don't need more fluffy bunny people. Though I think it's awesome that they exist and can amuse one another.

And thank you.

[ranunculus]

I never found you cold... but then I don't find many people "cold". :)

One of the main things I value in friends is a willingness to explore ideas and get out and -do- things. You do both, therefore I think you are an interesting person to have as a friend. As far as I'm concerned you are just right the way you are.

When I was younger I was the kind of person who hugged everyone. As I've gotten older I hug less. In fact, at this point I seldom hug anyone except my very, very close friends. In the last couple of years I've found that I actively don't like it when people hug me in that random fashion. I think that this reflects much better boundaries on my part.

As for not having met anyone during your life who wanted to marry you, Hmmm, have you not met that person, or did you never allow that person close enough to ask? I only say this because I've observed several people, including my dear Donald, who was quite literally incapable of -seeing- the people who -did- want to be close to him, even though they clearly existed at the time (I saw them...) None of which address the question of whether -you- were interested in any such person(s)!

[darkemeralds]

Hugging is problematic. I do it--it's culturally so prevalent, and hand-shaking has pretty well died, and we don't bow, and yet even I need something in those meeting-and-parting situations. There seems to be no non-awkward solution!

have you not met that person, or did you never allow that person close enough to ask?

That's the Mobius strip question, really, isn't it? The one whose ultimate answer is that it probably doesn't matter. Same outcome either way, and the implied third possibility, of being more open, warmer, more available--well, that was the rock I dashed my sanity on for at least 25 years. It was theoretically possible but practically impossible. Just too hard. Still makes me kind of sad some days--the wasted effort and time.

[emungere]

I think you're awesome. :)

[darkemeralds]

Aw! Thanks! And right back atcha!

Hey, are you watching Endeavour?

[emungere]

Yep! I like it, I think? I mean, I enjoy watching it, but I feel like there's something missing from it, maybe because they're focusing so much on who Morse will become instead of who he is now.

[darkemeralds]

Excellent point. I watch it--enjoy it, even--but because I wasn't a Morse fan and probably only ever saw one or two episodes of it by accident, watching Endeavour feels a bit like reading fanfic in a fandom where I'm not intimate with the source material.

Like, clearly, Morse the original character had a drinking problem and a problem with authority, but I haven't yet seen any evidence in Endeavour of why younger Morse drinks or gets drunk. Or why he's so shattered about women. Clearly, the Morse-fandom audience is being catered to, but I'm not feeling it myself.

Also, it's surprisingly light on slashy goodness (though I got a little bit excited about Thursday's son in the second ep...)

All that said, Shaun Evans is lovely and very engaging to watch, and the music of course is beautiful, and the attention to period detail is really excellent. So it's not like I'm not right this minute acquiring this evening's episode. :D

[emungere]

Yeah...I think they're doing pretty well with his authority problem, but the drinking and the fear of heights feel sort of forced right now (he is afraid of heights in the series and I assume they were trying to show the origin of that in the second to last ep?). But yes Shaun Evans is really pretty, and I like Thursday and Strange a lot (Strange grows up to be Morse's boss).

I have a feeling they're going to set Morse up with Thursday's daughter though, which, um, disaster lol. I hope I am wrong.

[darkemeralds]

Don't know whether you've seen all four episodes yet, so I won't be spoilerish. But I must say, 1x04 was quite satisfying. Clearly, another four-episode arc is coming. Looks like I'm gonna need an Endeavour icon!

[emungere]

I have not, but I'm looking forward to it! :)

[panisdead]

I realized this post isn't really about looking for reassurance, but I very much enjoy you like you are, and in fact was describing you to my friends this weekend in the context of, "This woman I know on Dreamwidth--she's so interesting, I totally want to be her when I grow up--was posting about this INSANE sweater pattern [cut for extensive discussion of pattern]."

[darkemeralds]

LOL! Well, thank you. Gotta say, it's bizarre to think of myself being described to someone else's friends. I feel famous!

(I keep hoping someone on Ravelry will undertake and complete that sweater, but the fact that nobody has so far (except the designer's sample knitter) tells me that I'm not alone in being defeated by it.)

[tehomet]

I applaud this whole post! And especially this bit: 'And to the name-calling institutions and individuals who can't get past the fact that I'm not the kind of lady you're comfortable with, I say NOT SORRY. FIND BETTER WORDS, OR STOP TALKING ABOUT ME.'

Right on.

[darkemeralds]

Thanks! I'm glad I posted it. I dithered about the subject for a good long while, until it finally just needed to be expressed.

Since then, by the way, I feel like this self-awareness has reached a tipping point, as if I'm done with this path of self-exploration, and don't know where the next step will take me. Over some kind of cliff, probably. :D

[tehomet]

As long as the cliff is metaphoric! :D

[darkemeralds]

I hasten to assure you: entirely metaphoric. Thanks for checking!