Oh God, Don't Tell Me That. Seriously.

[itsallovernow]

One of the adventurous parts of my job is that I'm pretty much the only woman in a sea of men. Occasionally, they have personal problems (read women trouble), and they bring them to me despite the look of serious panic that crosses me face. Because the only thing more inappropriate than them talking about their relationships is me explaining that, "Dude, I am the LAST person you want relationship advice from. Seriously."

I make Britney look like she's good at relationships!

But I get stuck as a woman who's basically in charge of them because I do adopt the automatic sympathy face, and yet, then I still have to say, "I'm really sorry. But you still have to get it done. You still have to leave it at the door."

I have less trouble doing this with my dancers, all of whom are women, and all of whom I've always had a hard and fast "leave it at the door" rule. I think I'm just so surprised when it's adult men just as bowled over and wrecked about the end of their relationship, carrying it with them instead of compartmentalizing. Yeah, it's sexist and unfair, but it's sort of how I've always seen it (except for every single guy I've ever dated who've all been way better at relationships than I was, and would get utterly disgusted at my inability to discuss emotions and the way the relationship was going without retreating to non-verbal panicked whimpering or chain smoking.)

Despite my hippy-dippy, it's allright to cry, let's talk about our feelings upbringing, I am a good Scandinavian at heart. It's all about the repressed emotions. (Except, sometime around the end of my time in therapy, a floodgate got opened and I'm an absolutely sputtering font of tears and emotion that I STILL can't talk about.) I'm getting better at the crying, at losing the inherent embarrasment over tears.

We watched Children of Men last night, which I was prepared to loathe, and despite some wacky narrative issues (meaning there were parts that made absolutely no sense), I was blown away by how well it worked as a piece of visual art, how well the whole lack of explanations worked most of the time and how much I cared about the characters despite a variety of cliches that drove elements of the plot. And god, there's a scene near the middle, set to a strange, haunting version of "Ruby Tuesday" that just had me silently weeping for so many things.

Over in indie_movie, we're getting ready to discuss both Ran, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which I haven't seen yet, so head on over!

Comments

[lomer.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of ignoring emotions too, despite hippy-ish tendencies. One of the reasons my last relationship didn't work is I felt like the guy in it. My boyfriend always wanted to talk about his feelings and cry while I was all "um, wanna watch Battlestar Galactica instead?"

Children of Men was fantastic! It wasn't the movie I expected at ALL, but I loved it.

Also men suck at leaving feelings at the door. It's possibly also that your dancers are performers and used to the concept of "I have a show. I'll deal with this AFTER the show." Performers tend to get good at leaving things at the door, or they don't last very long.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

It's not that I tend to ignore my emotions, more that I'm terribly at actually verbalizing them. (But yeah, in past relationships, I've definitely been more of the, "um, tv?" type:)

And yeah, my dancers were equally terrible at leaving there stuff at the door, but there's something about putting on that performance mask that helps.

[suenix.livejournal.com]

Oh God! I love my husband but often times I feel
that we are gender switched. He wants to TALK
and I want to run far far away.

I feel as if I have to " do something" to relieve his
distress and have no IDEA how. This isn't an everyday
occurrence but still makes me feel like a failure now and then.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Children of Men very much. More than the book in fact (which I read after the movie, bad me) -- I couldn't quite get past the narrative voice, which was very donnish and stuffy. I couldn't quite see someone supposedly our age writing like that, even a Cambridge history professor, and it kept distracting me.