What Could be Wrong With Me Part Thrice: White Knightin'

I debated whether to include this in this series at all. Largely because it overwhelmingly just effects my love life, not professional relationships, career choices, living arrangements, animal husbandry etc.

The other aspect, is that I've been well aware of this construct, how it applies to me, and how to manage it for over a decade now. I'm sure back there somewhere there's a post about it.

But, recently I've been pondering a question that means I could get something out of writing this up, then I think that already in this personal journey, the value of considering, as it were, interaction effects between the possible things wrong with me, can certainly help make salient how complicated shit is and that answers and solutions are not easily come by.

Think back to the disclaimers I wrote out (or alternatively, go back to) about how lay person or 'popular' psychology appears to be in this space right now where the modal person has two hammers and too much confidence, one being ADHD and the other being ASD. 

I've chosen to word these posts 'Could be' for twofold reasons, with the obvious being the subjects of each part may not prove to be something wrong with me at all, but there's also a bunch of things that are wrong with me but I don't have under consideration. For all I know ADHD and/or ASD could be in my personal mix somewhere, the reason I find them annoying is because what they may explain explains nothing I care about to the extent I don't even find them interesting, and I have entertained these run-of-the-mill suggestions not only in the past, but whenever they come up. eg. "Could autism explain why I get irritated by people who chew with their mouth open?" Fucking maybe, but in terms of shit that debilitates me it's just not even on the radar.

Reading your Unauthorized Biography

This construct is not any kind of official DSM-IV type pathology, it preexisted as a colloquialism much like a 'Peter Pan' complex for people who err towards pathological attempts to affect a youthful experience. Though to my knowledge, there's no well known literary 'White Knight' the trope or meme referred to. I know in old US TV shows like the Lone Ranger, due to shitty reception and resolution and black and white pictures, storytelling was visually aided by having the good cowboys wear white hats and bad cowboys wear black hats so the action could be followed in the wide shots.

And it's been a long time since I read any version of King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot, maybe somewhere in there a particularly chivalrous and heroic knight wears all white at some point and bests Lancelot in a tourney. 

Regardless, I already understood "White Knight" to be widely understood to mean a rescuer. Typically boys who wound up in relationships with emotionally unstable girls and tried to rescue them, via a relationship.

By the time I was entertaining, in response to a pattern that had been emerging, whether I might have a compulsion to date hot-messes (more on this terminology later) I just plugged it into google hoping for a wikipedia entry and finding instead a book: The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself from Your Need to Rescue Others by Mary C. Lamia & Marilyn J. Krieger.

Books written by clinical psychologists typically feature case studies that are 'constructs' taken from several patient histories and given a pseudonym to keep it all confidential.

When I picked up a hardcopy of this 2009 book in a store and opened it to a random page, I found a case study in the chapter "White Knight's in Training" about a construct named 'Ron' who's mother had confided in him her fears and anxieties as a child, seeking an empathic listener to self sooth her own stress. 

This happened to me throughout my adolesence, my mum kept me up to date on the challenges my dad faced at work, the bullying she was experiencing from her vice principle and all the outcomes she was stressed and worried about. 

We have to presume, that this activity made her feel better, saying it aloud maybe arrested her rumination for a while and allowed her to get on with her day. Her behaviour was as instinctive as mine.

I, for example, assumed my mum was telling me all this shit for some reason, she needed my help, wanted to pick my brain, was looking to me for solutions, I was likely, simply a captive audience. 

Below the level of my conscious awareness, coming to someone with problems they can do nothing about creates a profound sense of impotency and frustration. Not erectile dysfunction impotency, but the impotency of the sports fan watching their team lose in the clutch on TV. You care and yet can do nothing.

I sell myself short. I have an innate talent at not getting bullied, though not a violent person, or a particularly powerful person, not of intimidating physical stature and so forth, I have no memories to draw on of when anyone who tried to fuck with me. I have only ever been fucked around by people, and probably even as a youth, I would have been full of good advice, and even been in a position to correct bad advice as regards being bullied.

Anyway, similar to how I had a meta-analysis of research into adult children that go no contact, like most adult children I am more than willing to forgive behaviour for the past. It wasn't malice, it was incompetence driven by someone's own story. 

Furthermore, even though the behaviour persists, I am a) an adult not a child now, and b) capable of setting boundaries. 

So let's talk about the book and how it helped me: Though my story resembles strongly the construct of the "overly empathic" White Knight, reading and rereading the book, the White Knight Subtypes: Overly Empathic, Tarnished, Terrorized/Terrified and Balanced Rescuer.

I mean I'm kind of already bored. The subtypes map kind-of onto attachment styles, anxious-preoccupied (lay term "needy"), dismissive-avoidant, anxious-avoidant, and secure.

I don't think the book from memory quite spells it out for you, but with attachment styles, generally it's arranged in a 2x2 grid with postive-negative thoughts about self-other. So for example, if you have positive thoughts about your partner and negative thoughts about yourself you get anxious-preoccupied, I'm going to guess negative-negative produces anxious avoidant, and positive-positive gives you secure attachment.

Secure attachment translates to "Balanced rescuer" subtype, where you can support your partner through difficult times without losing yourself nor becoming overly identified with this White Knight role, such that when it's time to take off the armour, it's no big deal.

The other thing to note, is that while "balanced rescuer" sounds temporary, it's more that you play heroics if and only when it is called for, but there's also just a temporary or transitional white knight experience, and that is where your environment has you play one of these dysfunctional rescuer roles, but change the environment and it is not an issue.

That was my main takeaway from the book and processing my unconscious behaviour with it to understand my own history. Generally I have positive self-regard, and positive regard for my partners, I lack the fear of being alone to actually be with anyone I don't regard positively. (Indeed, I have only recently been contemplating whether the times in my life I have told someone that I would rather be alone than with them, either directly or indirectly [eg. rejecting/breaking up without excusing myself via an attraction to someone else or being observed happily single] was something damaging given societal norms where men are often asked to accept this kind of rejection, but women aren't.)

But I can transition through these negative subtypes, particularly the overempathic/tarnished. There was little about the terrified/terrorizing subtype that I could relate to, and frankly it is what I would be afraid of.

The main difficulty, is that I don't easily recognize what I am attracted to in a person. It is where I seek the familiar on the basis of emotions motivating me, not conscious thought.

I came to think of it in terms of two Tarot Major Arcana - Strength, representing one of the four Christian virtues, and The Moon, that speaks to me about undiluted anxiety, but Tarot's arcana are very very Christian in theme, and not even mystical, but like book of revelations shit.

Basically, I very often mistake behaviours that are adaptive for anxious women, as strength.

It's pretty much the same logic as Homer's "A man with lots of ivory is less likely to harm Stampy than a man whose ivory supply is relatively low."

One of the most charismatic women I ever met, took me a very very long time to come to appreciate the charisma was riding atop a lot of anxiety. Anxiety I can offer little to remedy, and didn't.

The second time I came across this correlation, I had a panic attack, and cut off all contact and sought advice. In that situation, I had much to remedy my own anxiety.

The third time, well, I set boundaries. I remained calm. Had a very turbulent relationship, and with some irony, whereas my efforts to "rescue" in the past, based on a delusion of the curative properties of my love, produced resentment; in one of those bitter twists of irony, my refusal to play the role of white knight, particularly a dysfunctional subtype, induced resentment.

So I was already providing support so others could rescue themselves. 

That's the clear distinction, and to one set of purposes, where this post could end, as, if it is something wrong with me, I've had a handle on it for quite some time, it doesn't damage me anymore, nor others. 

But where rescuing others with magical love is a delusion, support is a skill that can be acquired through practice, I can't provide my own testimony as to whether I provided sufficient or insufficient support, competent or incompetent. It is likely I haven't yet attained journeyman status in that skillset.

I consider any white knight syndrome in myself, resolved. While this is a personal triumph, I have actually experienced devestation on the faces of some people when I've explained when and how I overcame this. As though self-rescue, as a concept, is threatening and/or alienating.

Vestigia

The last part in this series I speculated on the highly speculative construct of plutophobia, an irrational bigotry against riches. A section of that meandering post rationalized the bigotry as debilitating on account of the disproportionate destruction of poor heritage, compared to the rich. Namely poor people's stuff rarely gets heritage listed, and is often first to be demolished and replaced. 

That sent me to google maps satellite view, to check how much of the public schools I attended remained.

In a pleasant surprise the loooooooooong rows of portable classrooms where I did year 7 remained, but a few had been removed and replaced with new buildings. Specifically the old home-economics classrooms where I recall making tea cakes and fruit salad in year 7 that seems to be gone and it kind of makes sense that it would be replaced with a proper culinary instruction facility. 

Betwixt the chaplains office and the old home-ec rooms, was a little courtyard, a bbq area and that seems to be gone. Here I have memories that for a while, our recess thing to do, was play "perfect match" an activity if not conceived by my friend Bryce, certainly lead by and maintained by him for what could have been a week, a fortnight, three months worth of recesses. 

I mean other weird shit happened too, and I can't really recall how I spent all my recesses, I feel at some point we just had a bbq worshipping ritual. The memories have decayed, at least in my ability to retrieve them as I hadn't thought about Year 7 recesses since maybe my first months in year 8 at a new school.

Anyway, back to "perfect match" I remember very little detail. I remember I was in 7K our homeroom was down that bbq end of the corridor, and 7J was across the hall, and with 11 classes of 30+ students in year 7, we were all kind of ghettoised into clusters of two or three classrooms that functionally where our year level, like we had nothing to do with 7A or even 7F. 

The game would have been more akin to an improv-theatre sports style game, where we were pretending to be characters rather than ourselves on a dating show, but I kept matching with this girl pretty much every time we played. I remember Bryce was there of course, and I'm fairly confident Shannon was in that group, Heff was in that group but we never matched, the girl I matched with, I don't know where she came from, where she went, she definitely made an impression and having unwittingly scratched at this geographically cached memory, it is now itching like a motherfuck.

Let's call her Husqvarna, because she had a husky voice. She was vivacious, confident, extroverted. She had a nice beak, natural blush, hammed it up acting wise like what a Los Angelino would consider a very natural personality. And when we were paired it felt very natural. Yet, I never crushed on her as evidenced by the fact that I don't know her name. I recall being made nervous in an exciting way by her physical proximity, dare I say contact, when we were matched. For fucks sake I am only now just experiencing limerence with respect to her, from the shelved perspective of my 12 year old self.

Likely somebody did crush on her and she disappeared into a relationship. Now, I know I crushed on our editor for The Arch Magazine, the school paper, a year 12 girl and I can't remember her name either. I was a frustrated young man for my first years of high school, and it's unremarkable that little boys who barely have pubes but have begun that magical journey are attracted to girls and women much older than them - physically. But also are attracted to girls their own age, who enjoy the advantage, such that it is contingent on wanting male attention from boys their own age, of being around, sharing classes.

My asynncronious cognitive development though, probably means I struggled to relate to girls my own age, I had a natural affinity for the company of adults. I could converse fairly competently with adults, especially since I had no qualms about saying piss, shit, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker et. al. So I suspect I just struggled to be attracted to girls my own age and in my vicinity, who ironically in their relentless pursuit to pass as more mature than they were, struck me as very immature.

But this is the vestigia of my White Knight Syndrome, Husqvarna is actually relatively rare. The simplest explanation as to why I didn't crush on her, ask her out, make a move etc. was that I didn't know how, I had no experience. Me and my fellow loser friend Q, for which that's shorthand, his name is Quentin, spend many many many hours during our teens discussing 'signs' that maybe the girl we liked, liked us back and maybe we should ask them out. 

This may clash with gender stereotypes, that you know, it's girls and their girlfriends that see questions like 'okay but how did he say it?' as valid and useful, but my other friend Paul once turned to me and was like 'Yes! she borrowed my pencil! It's a sign.' and in my experience rejection anxiety was pretty common, it's a post mobile devices thing that guys started just sending pictures of their dicks to girls and getting done for distributing child pornography.

Bleh, so in hindsight, it seems clear to me that we were matching in a game where we were pretending to be dating game show contestants largely so Bryce could live out his fantasies of being a gameshow host, because incidentally we were likely attracted to each other. I was, in other words, in. And it was likely a clearer sign than other bullshit I'd agonize over with Q and certainly the bullshit he agonized over with me.

What is rare about Husqvarna, is that she is a figure from my past that I recall liking but didn't approach, didn't even think to approach. That's really rare.

For example, in my senior high school years, I experienced strong limerence that kept me up all night for this girl in my year that had become single right when I had become entangled with a very hot-mess. In a rarity for me, I was already dating a troubled girl but was then frustrated by feeling circumstance had cheated me of a relationship with a troubled girl I had much more in common with. 

After a few weeks, my relationship was over and I was clean and free to ask out this girl. I just choked up any time I saw her, I wanted to approach her but couldn't. Husqvarna by contrast seems potentially to be "here's this great person, she'd be a great girlfriend for some lucky somebody." Without out it occurring to me that I could be some lucky somebody.

When I was unpacking and processing this white knight shit, with a psychologist, which I needed to do to get out of a bad place I was in, a problem I came across again and again, was that I could easily identify better prospects for partners than the ones I became enmeshed with at that time, and this vestigia is hard to put into words - something like 'appeal without attraction' 

I would put it to my shrink like thus, "it's like I'm rich, I have heaps of money, and like the girls that promise a nice stable relationship to be with seem like they are rich too, and that seems pointless - like giving a million dollars to a millionaire. what seems logical and sensible to me, is that I should share my wealth with someone poor."

And you know, there was a lot going on there, including the painful realities of life that love at best, can support and comfort someone, but can't cure or fix anything. And that often an opposite is alien, frightening, disturbing and that keeps us all apart. As Alain de Botton, who was not my shrink says in a bunch of his talks - what we mean by true love is not someone who can fix us, who can make us happy, but what we are actually looking for something familiar, someone who can make us suffer in a way we recognize so we know the love is real.

My dysfunctional white knight tendencies have been, by my own estimation, sufficiently bounded for so long that they at least, do not make me suffer anymore. Those boundary fixes were quite easy to implement, a simple recognition that people's issues they bring with them, are theirs to resolve, and to usurp that responsibility is unloving and disrespectful. 

Acceptance is not a passive act, I also positively accept, that due to my own attraction to a type I will describe, as convenience, as "hot messes" that there's always a high risk that the relationship will fail, and I will be powerless to stop it, all I can do is my best to do right by the relationship, by doing right by myself. 

What was hard and first discovered with the panic attack incident, was coming to terms with the fact, that I was always going to be attracted to hot messes, and even with my experiments to go out, run in the opposite direction, and find women who weren't hot messes, in getting to know them, the most promising prospects of life beyond my type, we would achieve a level of intimacy, of familiarity where they felt comfortable, to be vulnerable, to reveal to me, that they in fact were, also hot messes.

This phenomena that I had to come to accept, with difficulty, I refer to as "The Lesbian Bar of My Life Has No Fire Escape."

So let's try and see if I can't shake something loose from the vestigia that does interest me:

Hot Messes vs. Trainwrecks

Have you heard? tohm's a White Knight, you know, one of those guys who has a chronic need to rescue his lovers. [breaks into run] Hey tohm, tohm! Hey, hi. So...um, funny story actually...I don't know if you've heard this, I told some people and you know, maybe it's getting around but yeah like so yeah um like anyway, funny funny story btw. Yeah, I've been seeing a psychologist aaaaaand...yeah well it turns out I have anxiety...[pause]...[searches eyes for human response]...yeah, I'm kind of a hot-mess.

The above is a type, a type I will refer to as a "train wreck". My type is the "hot mess" and not my type is the "train wreck." 

The thing is, I can't put it into words, some women when I discover the damage they live with, it becomes compelling. I experience limerence, it draws me in. When Ale and I went on our first date, the way she complained about how life had screwed her over was on the verge of causing nervous ticks, and it just made me want to kiss her, which I did, and then a rejection and a month of precious time we could have had wasted, we were a couple. The secret was getting rejected.

Then and obviously I'm not going to name any train-wrecks or even drop breadcrumbs on the bent tracks that point to the wreckage, there are women whose damage brings out the Jerry Seinfeld in me, that almost sociopathically wishes them "good luck with that." or a simpler "yikes."

What is, however, the difference? 

The simplest one is likely just a matter of attraction, as in physical attraction. In this regard, I am similar to what I understand a 'nice guy of okcupid' to be, often simply shortened to 'nice guy' which crowds out 'guys who are nice', for those unfamiliar, and too lazy to start googling just as I am too lazy to go find links for you, the 'nice' is sarcastic, 'nice guys' need their scare quotes because they are not nice at all. They view sex as transactional, and the currency as some form of chivalry, they do not see women as people, and as such do not understand that women are entitled to have friends. They get upset because they view behaviours that are banal in the context of friendship as courtship, that is taken.

Basically every woman they are attracted to, is running the Tinder scam of going on dates to get guys to pay for stuff. 

The all important regard though, is that I have heaps of female friends, and generally more experience of 'nice girls', than being a 'nice guy' myself. My test for "nice"-guyness is fairly simple - how do you treat people you don't want to have sex with? 

But under the White Knight delusion, the false conceit that love can cure all ills, that's where my double standard certainly kicks in. I am not a free-lovin' dirty hippie, there are only certain people I am willing to love.

Bringing me back to Husqvarna, again sticking to simple explanations I know so little about that girl from another home room whom for some innumerate iterations of a pretend dating gameshow I matched up with most frequently if not every time, that I have no idea what damage she may or may not have, whether she was on type or off it. 

Simplest explanation was that nothing happened due to inexperience. A real "what was that?" after something flashed before your eyes and after the fact someone explains "that tohm, was a romantic interest. It's gone but there'll be others, many others."

But why did it flash by? Because I can remember my first experience of limerence, of crushing on someone, and that went back to primary school. I'm not talking about playing mummies and daddies on the playground where it's just blind imitation, but the psychological experience of getting someone in your head like a song can. That first happened to me in grade 3, so about age 8, a romantic attraction without the sexual. A desire to simply be in someone's presence.

Flashforward to post Husqvarna, I became aware of the distinctions in my own heterosexuality. Firstly that there were numerous girls and women who are sexual non-entities to me, I understand them to be women, but to suggest that I could just decide to find them attractive is frankly ridiculous. Then there are a large number of women I find attractive, but among other things, I don't want to spend time with them, don't want to talk to them etc. post my sexual awakening in adolescence, it was far more frequent to encounter women I'm physically attracted to but not romantically attracted to or interested in. 

Apologies, I'm doing too much unpacking of my sexuality. But yes, let us not lose sight of the simple explanation that for me the difference between a hot-mess and a train wreck is the presence or absence of romantic attraction.

Where I feel this differential is inadequate, is that if I add men into this Venn-diagram I'm going to get men I behaviourally do a lot of emotional labour for, and gladly, that I have no romantic attraction to. There are other men that while I'd never go so far as to stick a hose down their throat while they are drowning and turn it on a la Ray Crock "The Founder" of McDonald's corporation, there are men whom Seinfeld like, I can only wish "good luck with that."

And here, there could be a sexual component, in terms of, does my care factor diminish if I esteem them as a sexual rival? I can only say no, for twofold reasons - some of my best friends have been sexual rivals. Just yesterday I was chatting to Rolphy, we have an ex in common, Bryce, gameshow host that kept matching me with Husqvarna, we have an ex in common, Brenton one of my closest confidants in high-school had many a crush in common, Stacey cut my lunch once, but it wasn't really a rivalry because I didn't have a chance...I could keep going, and Intrasexual competition tends to settle down in adulthood. 

The other fold, btw, is that I at least, experience pronounced sex differences between heterosexual men and heteronormative women, and am often mistaken as to who I should have regarded as a sexual rival. My late 20s early 30s in particular was eye opening, as many women often opted for men they could have a parent-child relationship with, and whose emotional immaturity rendered them quite dangerous, more so than the bad-boy archetype, I had nothing on the anxiety-boy archetype.

Now, I feel like there is a qualitative reason I perceive and experience a difference between what I'm calling Train-wrecks and what I'm calling Hot-messes. But yes, you can't spell Hot-mess, without "Hot" there's probably something telling in that.

What I'm not going to do, beyond my opening paragraph which is a psychology book style construct of amalgamated conversations I've actually had, is write up any case studies of "train-wrecks" under my general policy of not saying behind someone's back, what I am not willing to say to their faces. Now often people hear me talking about people behind their back, and assume I am a hypocrite who does not live up to their own standards, in which case they are usually underestimating what I am willing to say to someone's face, but in the case of Train-wrecks, that's beyond my courage, particularly since intrinsic to my usage, is my unwillingness to get entangled in their problems.

So why do I even use train-wreck? It feels kinder than dumpster-fire, but still implies a kind of public spectacle. And there's something there...yeah, feels right. Oversharing, definitely which can take too forms, firstly being indiscriminate in the audience you share your vulnerability with, that is not intimate but public. Secondly, overly impatiently sharing when we have not built up that kind of relationship, in fact, I hardly know you.

Like I definitely understand theory of mind; such that, while I know I'm trustworthy, I know that you can't know that, and I judge your judgement in oversharing with me. It is more so that, than thrill of the chase, but maybe that as well, given that it's a reasonable inference that a good place to start with any personal issues we have, is to take stock of our own judgement.

It could also be something to do with me, with affiliation, that's the real demarcation for me as train-wrecks have not cropped up randomly in my life. The people we know are seldom an accident. Just doing a short mental inventory, a single connection has introduced me to two-thirds of the train-wrecks I've encountered in my life. At least. But a third is significant, like I don't think it's the stink of affiliation.

Coming back to the labels I've chosen to use, I'm thinking "hot-mess" is also a kind of oxymoron, especially if we are treating 'hot' as a synonym for appealing, whereas "train-wreck" is not an oxymoron, it's possibly a subject and a preposition, and as such a valid sentence in English, I'm not a grammarian. But it's obvious. A train-wreck is a big obvious spectacle. It is obviously a bad idea to get involved, whereas a hot-mess is a paradox, it's intriguing, a seeming gamble.

Yes, this feels promising, like I've put my finger on an intuitive filter I have. Train-wrecks are the people that when you get trapped in an abandoned carnival at night, and all the rides suddenly and mysteriously turn on, and just as you are in the middle of remarking that this situation is "like the beginning of every horror movie ever" they interrupt with "I think we should split up."

There is also a synthetic vs. organic component, chance vs. non-chance. Here it is likely that we are all by default hot-messes, born into confusing circumstances and guided largely by inexperienced and/or unqualified fellow travellers in a vastly chaotic closed system. A Hot-mess reminds me more of headphone wires that will become tangled through the stochastic motions of being in a pocket while we walk, though in people that tangle can become a veritable Gordian knot, particularly if a White Knight attempts to untangle it with love instead of fingers. A train-wreck is engineering error, or driver error, the wreckage is characterised in my experience, usually by a brash overconfidence - someone has typically bought into a narrative uncritically and literally full steamed it until they are sitting among the wreckage of their life in a state of confusion, or worse, when observers can plainly see the engineer is going to derail, but the engineer is too self-unaware to see it. Sorry, I should have been clearer that many I unconsciously class as "train-wrecks" are really "pre-wrecks."

My life however, doesn't provide me with any real control. For example, and this is a safe example in terms of anonymity, I don't think I've ever met any women who lives with the horrible affliction of OCD, certainly in terms of a White Knight Syndrome, OCD is not going to be cured by a lover's love, so a control condition would be if I had met two women with OCD and come to regard one as a hot-mess I was drawn to romantically, wanting to help them, and another I regarded as a train-wreck firmly in the friend zone.

Let's get this train moving along though, because I think I've gone as far as my thoughts can take me on this question, I'll have to dredge up more into my active memory from long term storage.

The Ironic Safety of Train-Wrecks

I just want to make clear, the only sense in which I am repelled by train wrecks is romantically. And I am attracted to few enough people for it really to be a major source of feelings of rejection, besides if you are a train-wreck, you have bigger problems to concern yourself with than what I think of you, except in the sole instance where you aren't aware you are a train-wreck, and that happens in this era of normalized conspiratorial thinking.

I am happy to be friends with train-wrecks and can even be concerned for their wellbeing. This is motivated by my belief in a more universal human dignity, but in that concern it has historically been no issue at all to just accept my own impotency as a person of no particular qualification to help get a life back on track. 

But my white knight issues then, are, and have always been, no issue for the train-wreck. The subtitle of the book is "Rescuing Yourself from Your Need to Rescue Others" I feel no need, and to be clear it is the felt 'need' of the White Knight that is the problem, not that you keep rescuing people. Most often people in relationships can't and don't rescue their partners. 

I would almost bet, that while many clinical psychologists may recommend to a patient that they need to 'get out there' close to none would ever prescribe that someone 'just needs a boyfriend or a girlfriend' Relationships can be something that enriches our lives such that we highly value them, but good relationships are more likely a symptom than a cure.

As Dr. Gordon Livingston prescribes: First Earn, then Expect.

Mama Mia!

We are going to have to get over something, and it may come up when I say this next thing: I likely didn't know what to do with Husqvarna, my recurrent "perfect match" because she in no way reminded me of my mother.

Believe me, I have been fucking freaked out by some resemblances between my friends' partners and one of their parents. It's nothing we like contemplating, how common it is for someone to want to fuck their own mother or father, but it is also banal.

Take me for example, you've just met me, and drawing on a real example this time, you hit me with the small talk 'what are you going to do this weekend?' and I respond 'Killing prostitutes' how do you respond? I would guess the most likely response would be to call me out for my problematic views that must certainly propagate male violence against women, and marginalised women at that, but that's not the way to my heart.

We're talking about attachment theory here, and my response to your question is an implicit punishment for attempting to initiate an obvious conversation aka small talk. If you want us to grow closer, you need to pick up on that and 'yes-and' me. Something like "I've read about that, did you shave off your moustache because of the police sketch?" to which I might say "the repressed homosexuality comments really got to me, I abducted that journalist and showed him a slide show before setting him on fire in a wheel chair." 

Now we are bonding over our contempt for the social safety of banal conversations about weekend plans. 

None of this, has anything to do with my mother. I raise it though, as an example that if you hadn't guessed the thing to do, we are quite unlikely to wind up in a relationship. Equally, there's going to be a bunch of potential romantic partners permanently out of my reach, because I don't really know how to have small talk. 

And if you and your dad just love puns, this is how you wind up with a partner like your dad, because eventually at the watercooler you are going to be fucking in with the guy who loves puns, whereas I would throw my glass of water in your face.

Ironically, even though I only recall Husqvarna from a context where we were both entirely performative, pretending to be game show contestants, my feeling is that she was quite authentic, a WYSIWYG person aka the best kinds of persons, which was true of the other female contestants Heff and Shannon that I can recall too, when I come to think of it, all very unlike my mother.

Where my White Knight Syndrome was at its most literally overempathic, and therefore dysfunctional, when it was doing the most damage to my mental health and fostering the most resentment, where it was, in other words - least safe, least bounded and at breaking (me) point - a friend of mine pointed out that the catalyst for the expression of my dysfunction was "quite performative" in their persona. 

Something that had never occurred to me, but once pointed out, obvious. My own version of mistaking danger (performance) for safety (authenticity) and safety (the "Strength" tarot card) for danger (the "Moon" tarot card)...that half I'm less sure about.

Because the authors of The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself from Your Need to Rescue Others, in an interview I found with them, told an anecdote of telling a colleague about their idea for the book they were working on and the colleague said "so you mean...women" which is to say, this behaviour is so widespread among women that it is almost a universal, at least a fairly safe, generalisation.

And here I arrive at the vestigia best characterised as "the law of large numbers" to which I made an aforementioned allusion that we are all hot-messes, but not all of us are train-wrecks. Another book helpful, but more recently consumed by me on this front, is "The drama of the gifted child" which is not about the lay understanding of giftedness, not the 2% of the population who could in theory excel at schoolwork, but the gift every child has for surviving childhood emotionally no matter who their parents are, by subduing themselves in whatever way necessary to become the child their parents want them to be.

If it helps, think of dogs, dog's intellectual capabilities sort of max out at somewhere near the cognitive capacity of 5 year old children, where they excel at is in attuning themselves to the owners they depend on in order to survive. For many dogs this works out fine, their needs are met in a stable, predictable routine throughout their lives. Other dogs get all kinds of mental and emotional issues, sometimes translating into physical ailments like hives.

Author of "The Drama of The Gifted Child" does not mention dogs or dog ownership, that's my own analogy, but what it suggests is that pretty much everyone once you get to know them, is a survivor of their own childhood. So even if I were to successfully navigate around the hot-messes with their tattoos and piercings, their interest in crystals, their disorganised chaotic lives and go on a date with a successful career woman, overeducated and over travelled, member of a mixed netball league and paying off a mortgage on a townhouse, by the third or fourth date as they became more relaxed and more vulnerable I'd likely be beginning to learn the hollowing out of their personhood they feel is a result of chasing a perception by their parents that is acceptable.

It basically means, that my ability to throw a stone with my eyes closed, and hit someone with long intractable issues is not as impressive a magic trick as it seems. It's kind of like a mentalist guessing that someone in the audience today likes pizza.

That I have tended to romantically gather the low-hanging fruit of woman with an interest and side hustle in Wicca, is a product of my plutophobia, my asynchronous cognitive development "avoiding the middle" wasteland of mediocrity.

When I became conscious of my unconscious tendency to mistake "The Moon" for "Strength" I started actively trying to break my own patterns, to date the unfamiliar. It was a formula somewhat like (physical attraction + friendship = ask them out on a date) and I had some success at going on dates, but no relationships came from it.

The last time I experienced an adverse affect to my white knight predisposition however, was a panic attack I suffered when I came to recognize patterns between someone new and the person who had forced me to learn about my white knight tendencies.

Instead of donning the armour and riding out to the rescue, I panicked, fled and sought rescue myself. 

Q answered the call giving me a book on the hippocampus that explained mindfulness techniques I could use to get a hold of myself. Rod answered the call by welcoming me to the human race, pointed out that in my panic I'd just gone and done the thing I was afraid of happening, and had a good chat to me about how anxiety is not in fact a condition or affliction but a normal human emotion felt in the presence of uncertainty, that what I needed to do was not flee anyone and everyone that might tempt me into white knight mode, but come to accept that we all have head candy and that that's pretty good. A more nuanced view of not optimising our lives, but accepting a standard we can be happy in the presence of.

After that I understood, and even though life hasn't constantly come up tohm since, I don't think about it too much, it doesn't need much managing. Except...

The Worst Managerial Arrangement

My university, RMITU, most often referred to as what it likely really is RMIT, sells itself on "Work Integrated Learning". At about the midpoint of my first business degree, growing extremely frustrated with my inability to select electives and even more frustrated with how often a subject had 30~40% of its assessment be a dreaded "group assignment" I realised with horror, that RMIT was trying to sneak by us that group assignments were a direct manifestation of "work integrated learning" presumably because in real workplaces people contribute as teams like departments. 

I still find this assertion so annoying that I am tempted to waste words here, as to why group assignments are a false analogy to office work. Fuck it, two obvious ones is that office teams don't change every class - four times a day, and the work is often routine and in a linear flow, not simultaneous, and workplaces also generally have layers of management, not flat organisations like every fucking group in "group assignment." This lack of management is a kind of decent segue though and why I brought up the group assignment obsessed RMIT business courses.

The most common solution to the myriad problems of group assignments - namely the coordination costs and trust issues, was that one person volunteers to do the assignment and everyone else shares in the grade. Logically, the person with the most to lose, is the best student, the one most capable of achieving a high grade if the work isn't diluted by lesser contributors. They can effectively bribe their group members with a higher grade than would be achieved if they contributed.

But I noticed this didn't happen, as often I was the student in the group with the best grasp of what was needed and how to go about it, but I was the least motivated to do the actual work. I resented, and resent, to this day, the implication that I don't have anything better to do with my time than get high grades.

What most often happened, was that the group let the most anxious manage, they got a sense of control that relieved their anxieties, and we got to slack off.

The thing being, that highly anxious students can also be C, D and even F students. There was more than one occassion where I got emailed the assignment a day or two before the due date, was horrified, and had to redo it in an all nighter.

What of relationships? Given the romantic nature of modern relationships, my experience is that many resent or find insulting any parallel between a romantic relationship and a working relationship.

But relationships require management, and as Gordon Neufeild pointed out, two people can't drive a car, both he and his wife can't both be on top while having sex. He points out/asserts, that healthy relationships involve switching of Alpha roles. Taking turns. 

My Aunt Nancy says the way of our family is "if someone's more eager we get out of the way" and I have to trust she's observed enough of a thruline. I feel it is certainly true that both my father and I in relationships defer to the most anxious to manage the relationship.

I certainly, almost never seize control, deferring in relationship decisions, but this is not all.

I also shoulder the responsibility of making the marriage work, so in other words the worst managerial arrangement of all.

Last year, I was literally in this managerial arrangement, I had a boss that made shit sandwiches and I was expected to eat them. Without any romance though, I quit instead, albeit responsibly rather than dramatically.

In relationships however, this has not been the case, I've been fired. I experience relationships largely as an accumulation of pressure until it breaks. Even with my newfangled boundaries that have me supporting my partners to step into their own agency rather than appeal to me to rescue them.

I am always at my unhappiest though, when made to feel not a romantic partner, but a wish fulfilling genie. 

Envidiosa

My stories I'm watching at the moment, is an Argentinian comedy series on Netflix "Envidiosa" or "Envious" in english. I recognize, but cannot relate to the protagonist of the series Vicky. 

The premise is a 39 year old woman who is recently seperated from her fiance of 10 years David. Though she broke it off because David wouldn't marry her, David went on a trip and married a Brazillian dance instructor he met on that holiday. 

Vicky has a circle of female friends, and her envy expands beyond David and his new wife he married quickly after delaying for 10 years with her, to her friends who are getting married and having children. 

She has two love interests, Nick her boss who is wealthy but unreliable, and then the obvious right guy for her Mattias, a 40 year old guy who works in the Chinese restaurant next to her apartment building who keeps helping her pick up the pieces after disastrous melt downs.

All the while, episodes are often framed with Vicky sitting with a mysterious rash across her face, or a torn dress and gum in her hair, arguing with her psychotherapist that she isn't motivated almost entirely by envy and comparison.

By around the 4th or 5th episode of season 1, it's super obvious that Mattias is who Vicky needs to be with, and the plot starts to feel contrived that she keeps going back to  Nick and blowing off Mattias or friendzoning him.

Where the viewing experience is therapuetic for me, is understanding via Vicky's experience of dominance of the narrative, that she foregoes love with Mattias because Vicky's envy and comparison rule him out via an inability to meet her material needs. Whereas Nick has the distinct possibility of being an instrumental partner that can validate Vicky's esteem she needs from her friends, from David and so on.

But there's 4 seasons, I'm sure unless they kill Mattias in season 2, that the show will lose my interest because Vicky has no uncontrived reason not to learn the lesson she needs to learn by the end of season 2. For now though, I'll keep watching and might update this post.

I don't know, if I identify more with Mattias or David, certainly I have the experience of being either transitionally or more enduringly made to feel that I as a partner am a means rather than an end, and I suspect in many ways the vestigia of White Knighthood has been making my bed to lay in for all of my adult life.

When you companion yourself to someone who is muchly defined by their attempt to outrun the darkness they feel is chasing them, this is a romantic risk you will always face.

What's curious is, the question of whether I can ever consciously identify a Husqvarna in time to act, and whether I can bring the energy, the enthusiasm, necessary for someone healthy to accept a relationship, convinced, that I want to be there, and not pondering the inner workings of a hot-mess as I hold her hair while she pukes up another bad decision.

Conclusion

We must imagine Husqvarna happy.