Health And General Life Care: Re: [loveshy_drgilmartin] Re: I am in a world of hurt.

Thank you for your kindness.

I'm sorry if I offended you..

Love-shyness according Dr Gilmartin seems to be carefully defined, but my son does seem to match some of the profile I have read so far. (I haven't read it all) He was definitely regarded as shy or described himself that way, and yet he was an actor who loved to perform for everyone so I wasn't sure about his shyness. He was smallest guy in grade school, not so small later but still slight. He was sort of a Niles Crane type - you know on Frasier - the tv show. He was good looking and had a sweet sense of humour. His peers saw him as quite bright even brilliant.
Part of my problem in seeing he had problems was that he was in a lot of ways like my father, a sweet gentle quiet man who I adored. He was not physically matured and my partner and I had warned him that this of course was hereditary. If he had chosen to live he would have turned into a gorgeous man.

I am at fault in that I thought he was doing very well. I thought he was smart and was going to mature just fine. Some things went on with friends that I still don't know and they aren't going to tell me. He had fallen in love with a girl who initially expressed interest and who raised his hopes but who rejected him. He seemed to be telling me he had moved on although I know the pain lingered. He was brave enough to ask another girl out but I suspect she did not see him as more than a friend. When he first asked her out, he wanted a male friend to be with them, so he was playing it safe.

I knew he would experience rough patches in the dating game, but I always thought he was going to end up wowing everyone. This by the way wasn't just my view as a lot of people seemed to think he was confident and bright. I think he was being labelled gay by a lot of people which hurt him deeply. I think he took abuse from both the neanderthal's and the gays. He was very serious and probably romantic about girls.

As a lot of parents I was concerned more that he get a good education and I thought the girl thing would happen more in the future. Obviously that was stupid on my part. He and I talked and I thought the bond between us was strong, but he downplayed his feelings to such a degree and he seemed so sophisticated, I failed to grasp the degree of pain he was enduring. I will never be able to forgive myself for not stopping him. The pain is unrelenting.

----- Original Message -----
From: Talmer Shockley
To: loveshy_drgilmartin@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 2:12 PM
Subject: [loveshy_drgilmartin] Re: I am in a world of hurt.

Ruth, we are sorry about your son. You are welcome to stay. We can
always use a woman's perspective.

We appreciate you opening up about your son. Is that why you are
here? Because you think he was love-shy and the depression from that
lead to his suicide? This can be hard to express, because not only
are you suffering from the loss but you probably feel that somehow it
was partially your fault.

If you think that your son may have been love-shy, then it is actually
quite important that you stay here, so that we can learn about what
can go terminally wrong. One reason love-shyness isn't cast as a
serious condition it that it causes no physical harm, but love-shy
suicides contradict that. Also being here will help you work on
expressing your situation publicly.

Do you understand, Ruth, that if you introduced yourself as someone
searching for answers to her son's suicide, you would have received a
much warmer welcome here.

Bratt is right there is no requirement for being here. Just expect
some animosity if you do not open up about your true intentions for
being here while expressing antagonistic or at least ignorant views.

--- In loveshy_drgilmartin@yahoogroups.com, "Ruth Ahlgren"
<ruth.ahlgren@...> wrote:
>
> Believe me, I don't know your parents, and my agenda was to
understand. Perhaps it would be better to take me off this email
list. I will read Dr Gilmartin's book and not intrude on your support
group, as I really don't have anything to offer. My son killed
himself and I
> too am in a world of hurt .

--- In loveshy_drgilmartin@yahoogroups.com, Bratt <bratt@...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Talmer Shockley wrote:
> > Thirdly, this is a very intimate discussion group. We discuss
> > extremely embarrassing and extremely personal details of our lives.
> > Yet you disclose nothing about yourself even when directly asked. Did
> > the men you mention have difficulty getting married?
>
> Now you are being unreasonable! There are 2437 members in this group.
> Maybe 20 of those are active on this list. There's maybe a 100 fake
> profiles for spammers? The 2317 members remaining could be anyone. You
> don't go around requiring a reason for every one of them to be here I
> assume? There could be a million reasons why people don't want to talk
> about themselves, and people on this list should have the right to
choose
> that for themselves.
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]