Masochism and Exposure Therapy

[MagOpus]

Just as a brief introduction: So I have this friend who was very socially inept since his primary school days when I first met him. We would play video games together but he was always a shy person and never fit in well with most of my other friends. High school rolls by and he was STILL like this, despite most of us are starting to go to parties, meet new people and starting to socialise in general. He would come with us sometimes but he still chose to keep to himself most of the time. Since we started university he and I are now in completely different cities/countries and has now realised the time he wasted in High School gaming instead of socialising, and is trying to socialise as much as he can.

 

The problem is that he now thinks that the best way to alleviate fear and pain was to desensitize himself to everything, through what would appear to be some kind of exposure therapy. He first started by suggesting to me that its good to talk to random female strangers in public, in bars/clubs etc. and that was fine, I could understand how this might have been helpful but recently he has been telling me that he is getting involved with a girl who is displaying mutual feelings for him, but is what people from the early 1900's might call a total 'floozy' (he has never had a girlfriend in the past, and the only girl he kissed was a random hookup with a friend while they were drunk) So I'm guessing his ideals about romance and what it means to be in a relationship might be underdeveloped and skewed. It is apparent that being around this girl is causing him emotional pain and stress but he is claiming to me that it is actually helping him become 'desensitized' and 'get better with girls'. I have been warning him, seeing as he has virtually next to no relationship experience, that it might not be safe for him to subject himself to this kind of emotional abuse, whether on purpose or without knowledge by the intrinsic nature of the girl he is involved with. My argument was that it could cause you to become more cynical, less trusting of women in general and just basically not a good idea. However I could not find research to back up my claim and I know that exposure therapy is a real thing and it can deal with anxiety issues like public speaking or approaching girls. "What doesnt kill you makes you stronger" is a sound idea but when it comes to something like this it just feels wrong to me. I know Stefan advocates to not be in abusive relationships for a reason. 

 

What do you guys think about this? How should I go about convincing him that what he is doing is wrong? if indeed it is wrong, that is. I could also be totally deluded about this but as someone with more relationship experience, this just feels wrong. (I really hope I'm posting it under the right subforum btw)

 

TL;DR does subjecting yourself to emotional abuse really make you stronger or does it cause real psychological and emotional harm that cannot be undone without therapy?

[dsayers]

Welcome to the forum. I can appreciate you wanting to help your friend. Before I try to address the issue in the moment, there was something that I wanted to ask as I was reading your story: Back in the day, why didn't you either encourage your friend to socialize with others or distance yourself from him as an incentive for him to be more social? Not saying that you're responsible, and of course hindsight is 20/20. It just seems the way you told the story that back then, you understood it to be problematic.

 

Which sort of leads into the question of why you're friends with somebody who could attract or would choose to stay with somebody that causes him emotional pain and stress. Not saying that you shouldn't. But it seems as if his problem is worth more to you than it is worth to him. Meaning ANY effort you put into it might just be throwing your time and energy away. I'm not saying do this or do that, but I think trying to answer the question will provide value for you.

 

 

When you consider that the perpetuation of our race requires genetic material from a man and a woman mixing, I think THE most tragic side effect of child abuse is the way it prevents people from objectively choosing a mate.

 

As I see it, the problem is twofold. For starters, the person is going to place more meaning into the relationship simply because they've gone decades observing a world where pairing off is normal and not having it for themselves. Secondly because I think we're generally more resilient when we're younger. There's extra value in getting dumped and/or trading up at a time when you can bounce back. At a time when making the wrong decision won't land you in court or with a lifetime of alimony payments.

 

I admit I may be biased because I had friends that weren't very practiced with girls, so they sort of clung to what they could get and couldn't at all handle rejection or be strong enough to do the rejecting when it was called for.

 

Have you studied Stef's Bomb in the Brain series? It does a good job of explaining how it is that we think. It would seem that your friend is engaging in an ex post facto justification to normalize his experience. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," is bullshit. If you break your arm, sure you can get a cast and re-set the bone, but that bone will never be as strong as an unbroken bone.

 

I would challenge him to test his theory. Corny thought it may appear, see what he thinks about setting his butterfly free. If he can get into greater than one relationships, he'll have a clearer view of each of them, as well as which characteristics of each of them he agrees with or wishes to avoid. And if he's pursuing self-knowledge (which is probably best done BEFORE committing yourself to another person), he'll attract more healthy people and be attracted by more healthy people.

 

I feel as if my input is kind of all over the place. Let me know what you think about it.