envy and attraction

There are times when I catch myself looking twice at a guy, and if I think about it I seem to feel an inward curiosity or attraction or something. Sometimes my reaction is to beat myself up over it, but there have also been times when I've decided instead to try investigating what underlies that initial impulse of interest. So I do a little retrospective introspection.

And usually what I discover is envy.

I ask myself what it was about the person that I noticed, and I often answer myself back that he seemed attractive, in shape, confident or popular. Or he might have appeared well-adjusted, well-dressed, successful, wealthy, or perhaps even smart, likable, humble or spiritual - anything from the most superficial exterior descriptions to the deepest, most admirable character traits.

I seem to make these snap judgments about strangers from glimpses that usually last no more than milliseconds. I could be passing a guy in a car, or walking by him in the mall - it doesn't happen with everybody, but with some guys the merest glance can leave me wondering about them for hours.

It's amazing that I could "know" all this about a total stranger, and in such a short amount of time! Anyway, as I further analyze these feelings - surprise, surprise, I've often found them to reflect unconscious ideas about myself, not about him, that I carry around with me - or maybe not ideas, but feelings. Whether I actually am popular, attractive, spiritual, etc., doesn't really seem to matter, only that I don't feel so.

It's as if I have this identity, composed of assumptions and fears and beliefs about myself, which I'm constantly carrying around, just below the level of consciousness, and which affects the way that I think, feel, act and see others. And because much of that identity consists of some pretty miserable feelings and low self-esteem, I apparently pick up on the presence of my missing-and-oh-so-desired qualities in other people, usually guys.

For the most part this attraction to total strangers from afar lasts only briefly, and I immediately go about my day, contemplating the meaning of it all only after the fact. But there have been times that I decided to break out of my comfort zone, and try a slightly bolder version of my research: I go up to the guy (usually rather self-consciously!) to say hello, or to ask what time it is or how to get to such-and-such a place, using the most innocent reason I can think of in order to engage him in simple conversation. The main object is to try relating to him as a person rather than a distant and idealized object of envy.

I've learned some interesting things from this.

I sometimes discover, for example, that he's a normal, average kind of guy, and after a few brief comments we part and I wonder what the big deal was, anyway. Sometimes I'll notice not-so-desirable things about him: swearing, smoking, making a rude or insensitive or stupid remark, picking his nose, kicking his dog, having bad breath, throwing litter on the ground, etc., etc. (fill in the blank with any negative trait!) This usually completely destroys the aura of "perfection" or desirability that I had built up in my head about him, and I'm suddenly left wondering how I could have created so easily such a tenuous set of imagined/false attributes, along with the consequent feelings of attraction (which die away as quickly as they came). Other times he turns out to be really friendly - perhaps even better looking than from far away - but also down-to-earth, a kind of guy-next-door that could have been a roommate, a relative, someone in my Elder's Quorum or in a class at school, the type of person that I'm more likely to know up close, warts and all, and for whom I'm less likely to feel a distant, idealized attraction. In any case, most often what I take away from such experiences is a mixed combination of all the above observations, some good and some bad.

But regardless of what I've noticed about this person, because of this little exercise my perceptions have changed - of him, and of myself. He becomes more real to me - no longer merely a distant symbol of ideal qualities, but a flesh-and-blood, fellow human being. And what initially felt like attraction - an upward look of longing from my level to his - becomes instead normal human relating, on the same level, with a guy that I'm probably more similar to than I realized.

After thinking it over, I've decided that if there's a lesson to be drawn here, it's this:

learn to defuse the power of unhealthy attraction
by confronting and releasing the envy in your life.

I'm not naïve enough to think that this will "cure my homosexuality." But I do believe that it can save me a lot of grief if I ever find myself falling back into habits of thinking - or feeling, or relating - that are as inaccurate as they are unhealthy.

I'm thinking/hoping that this is one step closer to becoming whole.