People will do more to avoid pain than to seek pleasure?

I read this somewhere once, and since then have entertained the ‘truth’ of the notion various times in various circumstances, trying it, like a puzzle piece, to see if it fits.

I think my fella, who has now wandered off to parts unreachable (to *me* - but give me time, I’ll think of something :-), and has ‘disconnected’ himself from the outside world, to hole up and recharge his batteries, has a tendency in this direction: to avoid that which has hurt him before.  "Once bitten, twice shy," maybe?

The thing is: He IS *my* battery. He’s my personal re-charging device.

And what I think he didn’t recognize? Is that *I* re-charge *his* battery, too.

See, this is the thing: When men are *taught* to believe in their own self-sufficiency, and told that they are not truly men unless they *are* self-sufficient, and are able to manage to *do* everything single-handedly – well, that sets up pretty damn near *all* of us for a fall.

Because: *No* human being is self-sufficient. We *all* depend on each other in all kinds of ways for all kinds of things, constantly, every day of our lives.

The success (or failure) of a negotiation you make with some representative at a cell phone company, for example, may depend *entirely* on just how generous that particular person on the other end of the line *happens* to be feeling at the particular moment you *happened* to get hold of them.

And people are sometimes more responsive to a male voice than a female voice, or vice versa. Or maybe your *tactics* are more – successful? – with that *particular* person than with somebody else – like, maybe your *tone of voice* sets *one* person off, while a *different* person finds it entirely unobjectionable, possibly even *desirable* or attractive.

All that leads up to this: If ♥ cuts himself off from the world for a while, my *fear* is that he’ll *forget* me. Because he seems to be *really* good at blocking out things he doesn’t want to think about. Such as: *Why* does she keep calling me? He keeps positing things like, “Well, maybe you just needed your alternator fixed.” Or, “Maybe you just needed to see that one example, so you’d know what to look for next time.”

I keep feeling like he’s sort of, leading me, as if there’s some ‘right answer’ I’m supposed to give that I haven’t given him yet. It’s like I have to *convince* him that he’s – what – valuable to me? Or, valuable *enough*? Not sure.

It’s like a test. Only, we don’t *know* each other well enough for this kind of test, yet! And, dammit, if he cuts off communication for a month after only *knowing* each other for a month, what is *that* going to do to a brand new, promising relationship?

Although, I have some geranium plants that were just setting new flowers on when the latest cold snap hit, and I quickly brought them inside and set them in the back of the kitchen on the floor where it’s still on the cool side, but not ‘cold’.

So far the blossoms haven’t fallen off, though they’re certainly not getting enough sunlight in there! Speaking of which, the sun’s shining today, might be good to get both them *and* me out there for a bit during the warmest part of the day.

I want to go see him.

I want to show up, on foot, knapsack on my back, walk up to the shed where (I *imagine*) he’s working, and stand there in the doorway. Yeah, I’ve watched too many movies :-)