I have noticed I have another built-in defensive mechanism. I keep my life extremely busy, and I rarely have down time for myself. If I find a block of time that is empty, I fill it. One of the easiest ways for me to fill my weeks and sometimes weekends is with work. Now this past month has truthfully been busy at work, but prior to this I noticed I would work later or longer just so I would not think about things. When I am work, I am trying to be focused, and outside distractions are kept at bay.
Why would I mention this? Well, I noticed that in the past 2 years I have worked in a way that has kept me single. Do not get me wrong, I am not complaining about being single, far from it, but I have noticed that it is a bit of a defensive wall I have. How can you seriously date someone if you are always working. Most women put up with it for maybe a few dates, but when they get the 3rd, “I have to work late this week, I can’t meet for dinner/drinks/coffee/movie” I think they just figure it is time to move on. What is extremely interesting is that if I met the right person, I think I would clear my calendar for them. But I say think, because I haven’t had a chance to really test this theory out yet.
I sometimes wonder if my working so much, is me either (1) just working a lot because I like work, (2) working a lot to get stuff done for work, or (3) a defensive mechanism to keep people from getting too close to me. I am starting to think it is #3, and the reason I think this is because I have noticed most recently that it has impacted me in a negative way with someone I started to care for (yet couldn’t really explain/show/smoke signals/write how I felt about her). It is strange, I think our brain is a very complex muscle that sometimes puts defenses in place to protect ourselves subconsciously. It will do what it thinks is best to protect the entire body, and if that means being cold and distant, or working long hours…I think it creates walls around us. The problem is when you can’t override your brain and you let it put walls up around you. On that note, I have to go repair a few cracks in my defensive walls, you know…to keep the invaders out.
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