April 7, 2013 My Fear Of Abandonment II Luke Ford No sacred cows.

My Fear Of Abandonment II

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Luke Ford

* I tend to cling through hell and high water. Because of my fear of abandonment, I put up with more abuse than most BFs, so GFs to get rid of me, have to go bang someone else, at which point, I lose my mind and don’t crawl back for at least a few weeks.

* Do you do things to deliberately wound the people you love most in the very places where they are most vulnerable? Then you are part of the 100%. It’s normal relationship/marital sadism. Abnormal sadism means calling the police, drowning their laptop, getting them fired, etc.

* We marry the person who will hurt us most deeply. That’s the point of marriage, to experience your deepest fears, to marry the parent who most wounded you, and perhaps to heal.

* That you don’t feel abandoned has nothing to do with whether you were. We develop psychological defenses as children so we don’t have to feel the bad stuff. As we grow up, these defenses however interfere with normal human growth.

* When your abandonment issues kick in, you’re going to act drunk. You’ll be irrational and accusatory. You’ll likely be paired up with someone who distances and abandons. How should you react when somebody is out of control? Back away and get space.

* Dad is working, mom is in bed depressed. Child develops abandonment issues, falls in love with psychological terrorists.

* When someone important to you starts backing away, how do you react? Do you cut them out of your life to avoid pain to yourself? Do you try to be perfect so they will come back to you? Or do you snoop to try to understand what is going on? Do you threaten? Do you issue non-negotiable demands? These have been my responses (the most common has been for me to cut the person out of my life).

* I bought a bunch of fruity calorie-free mineral water last night because I hear the bubbles fill you up and I can get back to my Stayin’ Alive weight.

* And so it begins — I just deleted the photo of the blonde biting my tzitzit.

* For years I conducted purges of my Facebook friends akin to the show trials of Joseph Stalin, but eventually I learned to stop hating and to start embracing the on rushing tide of friends that my charisma commands.

* I never fully became comfortable with cursive, in large part because my block script was hard enough to read. I started telling people in the 1980s that cursive skills were not important as computers were taking over our writing.

* I’m watching In Treatment while I pump iron and chat on FB, and I’m realizing I must be abnormal because I have never yelled at my therapist or said anything hostile, ever!

* A few years ago, my GF told me, “A girl came over Friday night and we played around. How do you feel about that?” I hung up. She wanted to get rid of me. After a few weeks of discussing this in therapy, my therp (with whom I was in love along with loving my GF and some women at yoga) suggested I write out my feelings and email them to my GF, which I did at great length. I found out later that she deleted the email after reading the first line. I tend to get quite long-winded in love and loss.

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Is The RCC Covering Up Its Role In The Doheny Meat Kosher Scandal?

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Luke Ford

Are the shul rabbis assisting the RCC (Rabbinical Council of California) in a cover-up? Does the RCC have any credibility left? What about its rulings that kosher meat bought from Doheny Meats up to 3pm on the Sunday before Passover was kosher?

These are some questions I’m hearing from Orthodox Jews in Pico-Robertson.

In his sermon on the last day of the Passover holiday, Rabbi Kalman Topp of Beth Jacob called for the RCC to do a transparent audit.

I suspect that such an audit would show this kind of incompetence to be rife at the RCC. What the RCC is very good at is knee-capping their kosher competitors.

Here the RCC pleads its case. Jewish Journal coverage.

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Converting To Judaism

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Luke Ford

I’m noticing folks going through the Orthodox conversion to Judaism not only throwing away all their pants and only wearing skirts, covering up tattoos, dropping off Facebook, and severely reducing their social life so as to minimize potential trouble. They would also do well to quit drinking because that lays the groundwork for trouble. One Orthodox rabbi I heard about kicked a guy out of his conversion program because he was tired of hearing this potential Jew complaining about the lack of religious observance by born Jews.

if you want to become Jewish, get along with people and don’t rock the boat. Be a tranquil classy guy like me.

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A Big Secular Vs Religious Difference I See In Jewish Life

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Luke Ford

I hear secular Jews complaining frequently in public about their spouses while I almost never hear that in Orthodox life. It’s simply not an acceptable thing to do in the Orthodox world I know.

Why is this? When marriage/sex/food/drinking are no longer regarded as sacred obligations, they become abused.

There’s a much greater sense of obligation in Orthodox life (obligations to each other, to God, to the community, etc) and a much greater sense of entitlement in secular life.

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My Fear Of Abandonment

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Luke Ford

How do you react when people start backing away? I tend to freak out. Even if I make no outward sign of being traumatized, my thinking becomes obsessed with solely the looming abandonment. My work and writing suffer. I can’t sleep. Each new loss is like directing a fan on a desk of my loose papers, arousing all my past fears of abandonment (Stephan Poulter).

I grew up repeatedly abandoned by my parental figures, so I tend to fall in love with women who abandon me. My deepest most passionate loves and heartbreaks have been for women who cheated on me.

You can’t just cut fear of abandonment out of your system. It’s more like diabetes. You have to manage it. Set boundaries. Get therapy. Understand your part in staying healthy. If you don’t, your abandonment issues will take you to bad places. There’s no solution.

I don’t sense that most people are ready to make meaningful change until they’re at least 40. Earlier than that, they think they can get better on their own without making painful change.

There are no victims in marriage and affairs (short of criminal acts). These are opportunities to work on yourself.

People with abandonment issues bond deeply with their partners. They’re willing to go through more hell than most people, but when it ends, for both people it’s like ripping the heart out. Two primitive people joined at the hip, you have to take a chainsaw and cut them apart. (Mark Smith)

If you’ve got fear of abandonment, your inner GPS system is faulty and it will send you to bad places. I tend to freak out when those I love back away, and either I make crazy demands (rare) or run away for insufficient reason and against my own best interest. In love and relationships, you’re going to seek out your worst nightmare. (Mark Smith)

“The brutal thing about abandonment issues is that you will be attracted to somebody with the disguised worst qualities of your parents.” (Mark Smith)

If your mother was a psychological terrorist, that’s the type of woman you’re going to date. You’ll pick her out of a room of 50 nice women.

I grew up in some abusive homes, so I seek out employers who treat me like dirt. I’m used to that. I’m a beaten dog (in much of my work and love life).

Recovery is not about techniques and tools, but feeling and knowing. (Mark Smith)

Your best therapy sessions might be when you say not a word and simply cry for 50 minutes.

You’re gonna marry the parent with whom you have the most unresolved issues. You’re going to seek the type of love you got in your childhood. If you grew up in a family filled with aggression, you’re going to seek that in a partner.

If your parent/s loved playing bridge more than you, religion more than you, work more than you, you’re going to grow up with toxic shame. You don’t fix such shame or fear of abandonment. You only learn to manage it. Recovery begins with knowing painful truths about yourself, but self-knowledge without change of behavior avails nothing.

* My Chinese GFs never appreciated it when I pretended to speak Chinese. Harrumph! Not only did I give these sheilas a plentiful helping of my troth, I offered to make them honorary whites so they could live in Australia and cook and clean for me. In this case, two Wongs could make a white.

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There’s Only One Reason To Go To Work – To Help God’s Kids

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Luke Ford

Awesome video: “I am the seat and the source of my separation and conflict. My ego exists to justify itself. Chuck Chamberlain hit me with something. I was getting ready to quit the ninth job I had sober because of them. He said to me, ‘Kid, you have it all wrong. How much you’re appreciated or paid and how much more work you do than anyone else, all that stuff is none of your business. You’ve got to go to work for one reason only — to help God’s kids. If you go to work to be of service and to forget yourself and to ask God to help you to put you aside, then things will change.'”

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Rabbi Prof. Marc Shapiro on the need for Kashrut Organizations

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Luke Ford

Date: 11/11/2003 8:02:00 AM
Subject: Clarification

Message: I have noticed that many people don’t understand the basic shitah of this website. With your permission, let me clarify something.
Rav Henkin, who together with R. Moshe Feinstein was the leading halakhic authority in the U.S. in the 1950′s and 1960′s, is quoted as saying that the entire basis for the existence of the kashrut organizations is the view of the rashba. What did he mean by this?
There is a machloket rishonim and the rashba holds that if a non-Jew, in the normal process of making a food product, adds some non-kosher element, even a very small percentage, then it is not batel. Bittul only works when it falls in by accident. This view is known by those who study Yoreh Deah since it is quoted in the Beit Yosef.
If you look at any of the standard Yoreh Deah books you will find, however, that the halakhah is not in accordance with this rashba. Rather, any time the goy puts a small amount of treif into the food it is batel, even if it is intentional on his part. There is a famous Noda Biyehudah that discusses this at length. See Mahadura Tinyana, Yoreh Deah no. 56 where he permits a drink that was produced using treif meat in the production but the amount of meat was very small and could not be tasted. He states that it is permissible. There is a Rama who has a teshuvah and states similarly. (I am sure if you describe the Noda Biyehudah’s case to people, even learned ones, and say that there is a contemporary rabbi who permits this, they will mockingly refer to him as a Conservative or Reform rabbi since in their mind no “real” rabbi who knows halakhah could ever permit something that has non-kosher meat in it!)

So now we can understand R. Henkin’s comment. If you go to the kashrut organizations’ websites and speak to them they will tell you that you need the hashgachah because sometimes the runs are not properly cleaned between kosher and non-kosher or milk and meat and some slight amounts of the objectionable ingredient might remain (yet here even rashba will agree that it’s not a problem!), or they tell you about release agents or that small amounts of ingredients are not listed on the label, etc. etc. The rashba indeed holds that these last cases are problematic, but the halakhah is not in accordance with the rashba. The hashgachot have raised the bar and are now operating at a chumra level here as well as in other areas. But the average person has no idea about any of this and has never even heard about the concept of bittul. Even if you explain the concept of bittul to him, his response will be: “OK maybe this is the strict halakhah, but I’m not starving so why should I eat something that we had to rely on bittul for. A person who cares about kashrut won’t eat something that has even the smallest amount of treif.” Since people haven’t been educated about the halakhot, they assume that bittul is a kula to be used in emergency situations, and it is not their fault that they believe this, since this is the view that the kashrut organization hold and publicize.
There is a good article waiting to be written about how in the last thirty years we went from halakhah to chumra when it comes to food issues.

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Love And Loss

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Luke Ford

* I usually see a gulf between the stability of those women I date who come from solid homes and those who come from broken homes. Women with troubled relationships with their father in particular are usually a horror to date while women who love their dad are usually a delight. This one ex-GF of mine, her parents started out Orthodox, became swingers when she was about five and walked in on her mom in bed with a stranger, and then the parents divorced and split custody. So my ex-GF grew up in tiny apartments having to listen through thin walls to her father bang an endless variety of amazon blondes. She could never see me for who I was, but only for who I represented to her.

* When you bond with someone, you put yourself at risk of having your heart handed to you on a platter. (Stephan Poulter) Because that frightens me so much, I’ve long sought controllable intimacy (an oxymoron), hoping that if I could become a famous writer, I could have intimacy on my own terms with less risk of heartbreak. So I stay home on Saturday nights and FB instead of date.

* Every boy’s first love is his mother (and vice versa for girls) and the way that relationship played out is going to shape all of your future loves. For instance, if you found your mother untrustworthy, you’re likely to view all women as untrustworthy. If you found your mom manipulative or cold, you’re likely to view all women the same way. If your mom was attuned to you, you’re going to expect that from the woman you love.

* Most of us have just three or four emotions that dominate our inner landscape. If you’re habitually angry or depressed, you most likely have hidden hurts in your attachment to your mother (you felt ignored, put down, etc). Through psycho-therapy, what is hidden can become revealed and healed.

* Single women (under 40) I know have an insatiable appetite to be desired and to have attention paid to them, but 99% of the time, they have utter contempt for those men who want them. This comes to mind because a buddy today told a woman, “All these guys at shul are asking about you,” and then she pushed him for names. And he responded accurately, “You’re not interested in any of them.” But she kept pressing him for names because she wanted to build herself up, even though she would never go out with any of these guys and had turned them all down right quick.

* Which types of people are my favorite? Those with good values, clarity and courage (the rarest of the virtues).

* Shunning is a big part of Jewish life but it’s a trait that’s foreign to me. I’m on friendly terms with child molesters and pornographers and all types. I do make judgments about people and I am careful about who I allow to get close to me (I’m never wrong so far in those I’ve chosen to trust), but I can’t for the life of me think of anyone I shun. As a writer, I like observing all of life.

* Wherever you’re at in life, you can always increase your mastery and that will always make you feel better and live better. When I was bed-ridden by illness (from age 21-27) and unable to do anything but lie there most of the time, I worked on abstaining from complaints, developing my character, and finding meaning in suffering.

* I had several girlfriends who poured on the contempt for me because I liked mainstream pop such as Barry Manilow, ABBA, Air Supply etc and not so much alternative rock. They made CDs to try to convert me. I can get someone who appreciates classical music having contempt for someone stuck in pop but to have contempt for someone on the basis of taste in pop music (if you like Justin Timberlake, however, please explain yourself)?

* Everybody who believes in his religion finds other religions goofy much of the time. I would never treat someone badly on the basis of his religion/race/orientation etc, but I love sitting in shul and making fun of other religions (and other approaches in my own religion), orientations, race, etc. The Orthodox shul is one of the last bastions of being un-PC (along with strip clubs).

* About 10% of the time when I’ve broken up with a woman, she’s set about doing everything she can to hurt me (including a lot of nasty things inconceivable to guys because we’re used to competition and playing by the rules, things like faxing your work to try to get you fired, writing your parents/Dennis Prager to inflict maximum pain on them, etc). I wonder what warning signs I missed? I didn’t understand love addiction back then.

* My greatest fear is abandonment. All significant rejections (ejections, firings, break-ups) feel similar to me because they all bring up my unresolved issues from earliest childhood. I feel driven to cling and to suck the life out of those I love. I suck furiously at the breast that will run dry any minute. When I moved to LA in 1994, I had the delusion for the first few months of popularity that there would be plenty. I sucked the city dry for a year until people got to know me.

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Believe The RCC?

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Luke Ford

Y. emails: Luke,

If you don’t expect us to believe the RCC’s narrative, whose should we believe? Rabbi Kligfield’s of Temple Beth Am who was quoted in this morning’s LA Times as implying that this is all about “power plays” by rabbinic bodies? Kligfield is encouraging his congregants to keep buying at Doheny “Kosher”. But he never mentioned that one of the store’s key employees is the son-in-law of Beth Am’s Rabbi Emeritus.

You see, everyone has an agenda. Make money, standardize kashrut standards, protect friends and family, you name it.

Until I hear a more believable story, this is all about trust. I cannot trust a vendor who violates standards that he represents himself to be upholding. And although they can be heavy-handed, I trust the RCC.

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Do You Want Turbulence?

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Luke Ford

On his radio show Mar. 28, Dennis Prager said: “I comport with the conservative love of non-turbulence. I am not bored by my society enjoying itself, by my society continuing with obvious fixes where things are broken, but I don’t want turbulence. In private life, every one of you knows a drama queen, people who thrive on emotional turbulence. The left thrives on social turbulence. It comports with every poll done — people on the left are less happy than people on the right. When you are not happy, you think the world around you is awry and you thrive on turbulence. This feeds the left-wing love of change and drama and radical transformation because what exists now doesn’t make them happy.”

“This notion that government should get out of the marriage business is tough for me to understand. So then nobody is married or everybody is married? What does that mean in terms of divorce and child custody and alimony? How is that determined? Children will be able to say my parents are married about any group? So polygamy is marriage? What happens to atheists? They don’t get to marry. If society does not decide marriage, then there is no such thing as marriage because everyone makes up his own definition. Why is that libertarian as opposed to anarchic? For libertarians who believe in that, do you have any antecedents in terms of the founders?”

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