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

All parents pretty well blame themselves for whatever happens to their children, but most as in my case, have their child's best interests at heart even if we get it wrong. My partner and I will never forgive ourselves for what happened to our son. In my case I try to understand it as best I can, but there are limits to my understanding of my son and myself. Sometimes the emotional pain is too much. It is easy to blame other people for what goes wrong and it takes strength to face up to your own part. Of course I struggle with this. I do have an ego and now that ego is deflated to nothing as I try to live with what happened. Shall I die, or should I try to continue and why? Unlike most of you, you look forward to having sex and relationships. I don't have that, but of course my life has been blessed with some fine moments, and some of the finer moments I can attribute to the pleasure I received from seeing my son laugh and all the wonderful interactions we had.

I thought my son was doing well. I thought he was doing better at everything than most young men I observed. I thought he had grace, charm wit, intelligence, good looks. He didn't talk a lot but my father did not talk a lot so I thought this was acceptable. Teachers told me he was shy in speaking up, and I guess now I should have realized this was problematic, but as my father seemed to be a wonderful man who didn't readily share his thoughts, I just accepted that this was a hereditary trait that was ok. My son could write beautifully and draw beautifully so I thought he has creative outlets for expression. I had no brothers and no male models in my life other than my father so I thought my son was living up to what I thought was a fine model of maleness. My father despite being shy and introverted was respected by everyone who knew him, males and females. He was exceedingly stoical and although there are absolute drawbacks to how he operated in the world he gave respect and it was returned.

My son didn't have Aspergers as far as I know. I have limited understanding of Aspergers, and that experience seems to suggest that people with Aspergers have great difficulty interacting smoothly with others. Of course this is a matter of degree. All people have difficulty at times interacting smoothly with others. I am not an expert on Aspergers, but I have known parents who have tried to help their children with Aspergers in all sorts of ways. If you go to a website about Aspergers you find that it is attributed to a problem in a part of the brain, and is evidenced by certain behaviour. That behaviour suggests the person with Aspergers has difficulty reading/understanding certain non-verbal cues of others. I am not an expert so I'll leave it at that. If you have Aspergers, you should tell me what it means to you, and perhaps I will have a better understanding.

My son didn't engage in conflicts with other people and perhaps that was evidence of some underlying problem. He avoided conflict, and that is not always a good thing, but of course teachers and adults like that quality in children, because dealing with conflict in schools is problematic and time consuming.

Some of you have been kind and some not so much. To those who wish to villify me - go right ahead. You can't hurt me any more than I have been. If you want to believe women are evil horrid creatures, well you will certainly find evidence but that view won't bring you much peace love or happiness, and you sure are going to miss out on seeing anything but what you have convinced yourself is the reality. Gilmartin's work is becoming your bible and some of you sound like fundamentalists. I would encourage you to sometimes look at life beyond your problem and don't limit your vision.

I am beginning to bore myself, and undoubtedly you as well. Take care. I need a break from the pain.

----- Original Message -----
From: Talmer Shockley
To: loveshy_drgilmartin@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 1:01 AM
Subject: [loveshy_drgilmartin] Re: I am in a world of hurt.

One slight mistake love-shys often make when reading Gilmartin is that
when they don't fit his love-shy profile 100%, they can seriously
question whether they are LS or not. My feeling is that Gilmartin
studied the most serious and obvious cases to make sure he achieved
definitive statistical results. For example, if a shy man happened to
have any kind of sex, including only with a prostitute, he was
discounted from the study.

Judging by the facts that you state, I would assume your son was LS.
You seem like someone knowledgeable about Asperger's. (Which made
assume certain things about you.) Did your son have Asperger's? AS,
your husband being shy, and your son being slight and bright all point
to love-shy. Niles I would consider gay, and having slightly feminine
(or non-masculine) characteristics yet being hetero is also a
suggestion of love-shyness. Being an actor is not unheard of in
love-shyland, just not typical.

How old was he?

Sorry about the continued negativity against women expressed on this
board. Love-shyness is usually passed down from generation to
generation. While it is something to be overcome, you can't blame
yourself for raising your son as best you can. Congrats on finding
this forum. It may help bring closure to your situation.

You could not have know exactly how he was doing romantically anyway.
If he was an actor he could probably hide his pain better than
almost anyone on the planet. Love-shys usually keep it secret
especially from their parents.

Yes, it is stupid to think that the girl thing will come after
scholastic or career success. But everyone thinks that. I even
remember telling family and relatives when I was in high school
discussing college options that I would worry about women after I
graduated and had a good job (so who cared about the M/F ratio of the
student body.)

You haven't given us full details, but I doubt you could have stopped
him. It sounds like he was an extra sensitive human.
Once a male is out of high school, his mother should stay out of his
romantic life because there is nothing she can do about it. THE
LOVE-SHY'S MOTHER IS THE LAST PERSON WHO CAN GIVE HIM ADVICE AND HELP
HIM ONCE HE IS AN ADULT.

Ruth, unless he said to you, "I'm going to kill myself tomorrow,"
THERE IS NOTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE. nothing.

--- In loveshy_drgilmartin@yahoogroups.com, "Ruth Ahlgren"
<ruth.ahlgren@...> wrote:
>
> 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.

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