emotional (un)availability

Postscript to the L.I.

Since ‘breaking up’ from the L.I. I have been doing a lot of reflection on what happened.  It’s very much a story with two halves.  One half is falling in love (yet again) with an emotionally unavailable man though this time I managed not to have sex with him – yay, progress!  The other half is having recognised it and identified it and consciously engaged with the madness in order to understand it.  So progress there too.

The latter activity has been extraordinarily powerful – watching my obsessional thought processes and the descent into emotional attachment has been a combination of claustrophobic, catastrophic, sickening, terrifying, exhilerating and ultimately liberating.  I’ve watched myself being pushed and pulled, my emotions manipulated (the L.I. is probably the most skillful emotional manipulator I’ve ever come across – he assimilated emotional information about me with the speed of a Borg and deployed it with the precision of a chess master) and witnessed my own willingness to fall for the game, to let love grow on scraps of hinted affection, to hope with psychotic intensity and to despair at my inability to get his interest.

And I feel such enormous gratitude to him for coming into my life and letting me see myself, for giving me the opportunity to free myself from this horrible curse I’ve lived with for years.  He is a lovely man by the way – not in any way evil or nasty.  He does what he does from his own set of fears and neurosis and I don’t blame him at all for the way I’ve felt.  He has his own path.   There is also a Buddhist ‘reading’ of our story, but I can’t write about this now.  This has to be about me and what I do, what I allow, what I discount, what I sacrifice, if I’m to move on to a healthier way of being.

I am determined to break this pattern and even if I never do have a healthy relationship, I am going to commit here and now to avoiding unhealthy ones.  The one insight which I am holding on to is that I saw, clearly, the first sign that the L.I. was emotionally unavailable very early on.  After our first date he asked me out for 2 dates – a weekend day two weeks ahead and an evening meal before that.  Very keen, I thought.  The meal never materialised.  Then after the weekend day which was magical and lovely and seemed to show we got on really well, he went cool and said he thought ‘things were moving too fast’.  He had instigated every move.  I did feed this back to him pretty sharply and he apologised, but there, right there, I should have said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ because a man who’s scared of a walk in the woods and a brief kiss isn’t going to cope with intimacy, now is he?  I carried on with him, however, and I saw every move he made with hideous clarity right up to his last ‘killer’ move – after he told me he didn’t want a relationship, he made a phone call which was (unconsciously) designed to ‘hook’ me back and I saw with such clarity how every tiny element of that call could have done that (and despite seeing it I still ruminated about it for days and watched my emotions being drawn to wanting to connect with him).  But I watched it, and I’ve seen it and I know absolutely the level of madness it represents and I don’t want any more of that in my life.

So I’ve been doing some research about being attracted to emotionally unavailable men and came across some really useful materials including this list which I wish I’d had years ago!  From the list, here are the ones that have been present in all the men I’ve ever been with (each man has manifested at least one of the signs).

He’s recently separated

He’s very reliant on text messages, IM’ing and email for the majority of his contact

They’re ambiguous about the status of the relationship

You’re not sure when you’ll hear from the next, even though you’ve been dating them for a while

You think you’re in a relationship, but it’s closer to a booty call

When you try to tackle the status of your relationship or any issues, he either tells you what you want to hear and then returns to his normal behaviour or he just skirts the issue. One way or the other, you wind up back at square one.

He says he’s over his ex but he’s quietly still trying to cope with the end of the relationship

He mentions his ex or things that happened between the two of them often

He’s an overt mother lover – mummy’s boy

He’s a mother hater – has an overtly negative relationship with his mother

You feel empty after you sleep with him.

He has a stringent routine that he just won’t deviate from

He won’t take calls either before or after a certain time

He is resistant to involving himself in your life

He talks about his problems, his successes, his life – it’s me, me, me all the way

He determines the momentum of the relationship – you meet up when he wants to meet up

He never refers to you as a girlfriend, partner or any form of significant other

It feels like he blows hot and cold

He’s quick out the gate in pursuing you, gets your attention, and then goes into a slow canter

He tells you that he has a lot of issues that he needs to deal with
He actually says ‘I’m not ready for a relationship’ but is still with you

He can’t commit to anything, no matter how miniscule – everything that he’s asked, such as whether he can do something with you is a big drama to get him to say yay or nay
He’s got about as much emotion in him as a stone

He may try and sleep with you on the first night

The thing about admitting that I go after emotionally unavailable men is that I then have to admit that I am also emotionally unavailable because that is what all the literature suggests – we are both as bad as each other, both playing a fear-avoidance game.  The L.I.’s pattern in the past has actually always been to pursue emotionally unavailable women and run a mile from people who show an interest in him.  I know I do the same.  It’s time I face up to my part in this mess – not in the ‘blaming’ way which accompanies the pursuit of unavailable men (“why did I say/do that?”, “why aren’t I good enough” etc) but simply be honest about what I want and what I can offer.

I feel hopeful, in a good way.

 

 

 

 

http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/how-to-spot-emotionally-unavailable-men/

my crazy life

… just keeps getting crazier.

Did you know my mother is living with me now?  I can hear your collective gasps through my computer screen as I type this.  I can’t even remember what I’ve written about this to date because, if I’m honest, I’ve been living in a bit of a dream for the last 2 months, pretending to be bumbling along as usual when in fact it is simply a coping mechanism to avoid the horrible truth that my life is TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL AND I AM COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED!!!

But I will plod on and as long I keep my head down and try to avoid allowing too many disasters to occur, I will get through this as long as I don’t give in to the chaos.

At the beginning of August my mother, who was on holiday in Germany, became ill with pulmonary oedema – basically she has heart failure and because it wasn’t being treated properly, her lungs were slowly filling up with water.  She was, effectively, drowning.  Thankfully she got to hospital in time for it to be treated and she’s recovered really well.  They treat this with forced diuresis – she lost an impressive 3 kilos of water in a week!

I flew out to Germany and brought her back to the UK with me.  As I was on the plane I already knew that she was not going to be able to return to live in Jordan.  Initially I thought I might be able to afford to buy somewhere locally for her to live.  This option began to fade as I realised how much of  a burden the mortgage would be on my already fragile monthly budget.  Then I thought she would be able to rent – she has a bit of savings – but this option also had to be abandoned as I realised that she would very quickly run out of money and also that my life would consist of her calling me with problems to be solved day and night.  This isn’t because she’s incapable – quite the opposite, she is a remarkably independent and resourceful person – but simply because she hasn’t lived in this country for 40 years and just doesn’t know how things work.  So the only solution open to us is for her to live with me for the foreseeable future.  This means she’s safe and life is relatively simple and also that she has plenty of money to do the things she wants like take taxis and buy clothes.

Regular readers with wonder at my equanimity – well, all I can say is that it is quite remarkable how quickly one adapts to the inevitable.  Lack of choice focuses the mind towards acceptance.  I could make my life very miserable with resentment and anger at this unwanted turn of events.  And yes, I do have moments where I feel furious that yet again I don’t seem to be able to hold onto more than a couple of months of stability and happiness before the universe throws yet another challenge at my feet.  I know other people have problems but I do perceive other people’s lives to have longer periods of stability.  I crave a boring ordinary life.  But that doesn’t seem to be my destiny.  So be it.

I’m going to Jordan on Wednesday to pack up her personal belongings and ship them over here, sell her furniture, car and piano and sort out her financial affairs.  Single handed.  If anything that is the one thing that I resent.  That I have to do all of this alone.  I’m tired, overworked at work and overwhelmed by the responsibility that I am only just getting used to.  It will pass.  This too will pass.

Apropos of nothing, one of my friends has started a rather wonderful blog about swimming in the sea.  Too bad it’s a Blogger blog, but it makes magical reading.  Give it a go.

 

 

tuesday challenge no.1

Ok so Lord Hutton suggested I enter the tuesday photo challenge (which seems to take place on Fridays – but who am I to question this) and it appears that I have stumbled upon the most challenging challenge of all time!

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with the most fantastic idea. What would you shoot if time, money and skills were no issue? Then work within your limitations to realise your dream. See what unique surprises occur.

So I love photos which involve exciting things with light – and I was lying in bed this morning and spotted this amazing effect on my curtain – a ribbon of light created by the gap in the under curtains:

set me a project

I need a project – otherwise I’m going to keep filling up this blog with moaning about what arses men are!  And I’m fed up of that now – need to move on.

So I need a project for the blog – something I can write about or play about with here for a month.

Any ideas?  Post them below and I’ll do one or all of them.

new york

I am so in love.  Totally enchanted.  Already missing my new love.  No, don’t worry it’s not a new man so soon after the other!  I’ve just spent a week in the US of which 4 were in New York city.  The last time I was there was when I was 17, in 1973.  I spent a summer there while my father taught summer school in Columbia University.  I remember it being super cool – well that was an incredible time.  I can’t believe that I haven’t been back since although I did quite seriously think of moving there while I was in my late 20s and I wonder how my life would have turned out if I had.

So I wasn’t expecting to love it quite so much.  A White Bear recommended a hotel in Brooklyn and it was really exciting to meet my first blogfriend in real life.  She was refreshingly similar to how I had imagined and we fell ridiculously easily into intense conversation.  Highlight of the week was going to see John Zorn and friends perform crazy improv avant garde jazz which was so totally ‘New York’ it felt like I had actually planned the whole trip when in actuality I sort of gravitated towards all the things I wanted to do with a strange magnetism.  I simply got out the map and guessed where it would be a kind of good idea to go and somehow it all worked out.

I did some classic things – walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the East River at night (thanks AWB and D!) and wandered round Greenwich Village and West Village looking at the interesting shops and cafes.  I walked around Central Park in the rain watching all the runners panting their way past me.  But it was actually the whole atmosphere which enchanted me – slightly haphazard, endearingly grubby and extraordinarily friendly.  It was very familiar – partly I think because so much of New York has been used in films.  Coming into Brooklyn the taxi drove alongside the raised railway and I half expected a car chase to ensue!  But familiar too in the sense of ‘family’ – it felt like home, I could relax and put my feet up.

It was so much the perfect thing to be doing post all the madness of the last couple of months with Mum and the L.I.  I felt I had time and space to process things – and the advantage of having AWB to talk to about it all too – and yet I was, at the same time, truly on vacation, away from work, from family responsibilities, from anyone who had expectations of me and the freedom was intoxicating.  I honestly think the last time I felt like that was nearly 20 years ago.  It’s a feeling I want to remember, to build more and more into my everyday life.  I was a creative, imaginative and energetic free spirit once upon a time.  I’ve spent too long feeling fearful and constrained and I need to be planning my escape strategy lest I forget myself once more.

Three days of the trip was also spent at a conference where I was presenting my work.  It went down a storm with some very important people in my field and I feel incredibly excited by the possibility of my ideas becoming internationally recognised by my peers.  I need to focus on my work more than anything else over the next few years because that is one area where I do have the potential to gain self esteem and the recognition I desire without it being bound to nonsensical fantasies.  Better late than never!!

Here are some photos:

co-dependency

Observant readers will have noticed that I made the previous entry ‘private’ soon after posting it.  I am always torn about posts that mention other people.  Anyway I got an email from a reader and it had a comment that I wanted to respond to:

“There seemed to be, throughout your piece, not much of a sense of agency on your part.  It was all whether you could make *him* feel things. What about you?  What were you feeling?  I mean, of course, you’ve answered that at length in one way but in another you yourself were absent.”

This is an incredibly insightful comment.  Having reflected even more on the event I’ve realised that what had been going on and probably had been happening on and off throughout the time I was getting to know him, was a resurgence of my co-dependent behaviours.  I used to be completely co-dependent but addressed it 20 years ago by going to CODA meetings and I went to a counsellor for some time specifically to address these behaviours.  But I guess some habits die hard.  Looking back I can see exactly why this person brought out my co-dependency (which I am not going to discuss as it would be breaking confidences).

Reading what happened throught this lens, it’s easy to spot the points at which I slipped into co-dependent thinking – it was always at the point when I felt that he was rejecting me (or possibly more specifically when I perceived he was about to reject me).  What looby so clearly articulates above is that at that point I cease to simply be relating to the other person and in touch with myself (when the feelings are pleasant) but because the probability of impending terrible feelings is so frightening I flipped into the co-dependent pattern of doing virtually anything to cling on to the person and engineer the situation so they don’t reject me.  This happened on two specific occasions with the L.I. and was triggered by a specific behaviour on his part (obviously this isn’t to do with him per se, but to do with me).  I actually have to admit I have no clue what was really happening on his side.  Anyway, as soon as I perceive rejection, I flip.  To be fair to myself I did spot his behaviours and call him on them but I didn’t relate them specifically to the other side of the codependency lock/key.  And all the work I did on recognising my people-pleasing and recognising the emotional unavailability on his side was helpful and sensible.

This stuff is really subtle and hard to spot, except that I did spot it and did try to stop my unhealthy behaviours spilling out on to him which is what led to it all building up inside myself.  In actuality my behaviour was fairly appropriate except for a couple of interesting exceptions (particularly linked to emails), and on a visceral level I was highly aware there was something ‘wrong’ going on.  I had a very strong awareness that as long as I felt I was still in the game, I was calm, and as soon as I became insecure in his interest, I became highly anxious.  It’s also probably not a coincidence that all of this started happening when the situation with my mother started and the L.I.’s significance in my life was artificially heightened.

Previously, when these feelings were unconscious and unrecognised, I would get myself into all sorts of crazy situations.  This time, I was hyper-aware of these feelings and stayed with them and turned towards them as my buddhist practice and that is what culminated in the crisis where I finally allowed myself to experience the crushing fear of rejection, abandonment, loss and powerlessness in its entirety.

So the comment above is insightful because it’s quite true that I was not actually feeling what I was feeling and wasn’t in touch with any healthy sense of agency – when you are being co-dependent you have this exaggerated sense of locus of control where you believe you can and should influence the other person.  I am endlessly grateful for all the Buddhist teachings and practice which enabled me to open to the pain and experience the spaciousness, clarity, sensitivity and fundamentally good core of being.

I’m going to write more about the Buddhist aspect soon.

snowqueen, unbound

ooh boy, have I been on a weird trip in the last 10 days.

So – camping.  Saturday was great, fun – rubbing along together easily with lots of nice instances of serendipity and campfire magic.  I’m relaxed and happy.  I feel normal, in control, at ease.  On Sunday I wake up early, I love waking up when I’ve been camping – and I feel happy because I think the L.I. and I have maybe turned a corner.  That he might have enjoyed the previous day as much as I did and want to continue getting to know me, to explore the possibilities there – either romantic or friendship, I wasn’t worried, because it’s the openness that I was enjoying.

Then on Sunday morning at some point I suddenly realise clearly, that he is never going to fall in love with me – that simply is never going to be a possibility.  Now, it’s not that I particularly wanted him to fall in love with me then or even in the near future, but to make it worth my while spending time with him, that possibility had to be there because I have enough friends, and frankly my time is precious and this exploration between us was clearly about whether we were going to be potential partners, not about whether we were going to be friends.  I don’t need or want new friends.

Anyway, the realisation unfolded clearly as Sunday went on.  I just knew that he did not see me a relationship potential  and at that point a kind of madness set in for me – I really didn’t know how to handle the information – was it just in my mind, some negative thought, or was it real?  I didn’t want it to be true because that meant that hope and possibility died and all the hard work I’d put into keeping possibility open, was in vain.   Up to that point I’d felt perfectly ok with the possibility that it wouldn’t work out because I had imagined that happening in the future – after all, it was only a week since we’d decided to give things another chance and we really didn’t know each other that well so in my mind, it was obvious that we would need time to get to know each other to make that kind of decision.

The thing that happened that made me know that he did not see me ‘that way’ was that his criteria for how he would know that he had met the person he wanted to share his life with was ‘a feeling’.  At that point I knew it was doomed.  This is the realm I know least about, trust the least and have the least expertise in dealing with.  There are women who know how to play this realm.  I’m not one of them.  It’s a fundamental deficit in me.  Some people know how to elicit feelings in others.  Actually this is probably what seduction is.  I don’t know how to do that.  I can elicit sexual feelings but not romantic feelings.  And it’s this deficiency which makes me feel that I’m not a ‘normal’ woman because it’s such a deeply ingrained notion of femininity – that it softens men and brings out those ‘romantic’ feelings.

Women who know how to do this, are the women who learned how to twist their daddies round their little finger.  Or maybe their brothers.  But somewhere in their childhood they picked up how to play the dynamics to make significant men in their lives ’soften’ and feel benign and safe to express their love and emotion towards them.  The Daddy’’s girls who are the apple of their otherwise very masculine father’s eye, who grow up aware of men’s ways, unafraid of disapproval, rejection or misunderstanding because they know how to bypass, cajole or downright manipulate their way back into Daddy’s heart.

So there I am with this realisation, paralysed inwardly, unable to access my thoughts, my emotions, my inner strength and I can feel reality disintegrating around me while I go through the motions of the day- we have gone for a walk so there is no possibility for me to excuse myself and go, I have to endure till we get back to the car.  I have almost no recollection of the walk back but when we get there, I have almost completely lost my inner world structure although you probably wouldn’t have guessed it from the outside.  When we finally say goodbye I am relieved because now I can release all the pent up emotion and I sit in my car and just cry and cry from sheer anger and impotence and loss.

This stuff goes so deep and is probably the source of most of my distress around relationships.  What comes naturally to many women is totally inaccessible to me.  The way I gained my father’s approval was through being clever and intelligent and debating with him, not by climbing on to his knee, batting my eyelids and playing little girl, mischievous, knowing, complicit in the Daddy-daughter game, teasing out his natural desire to be flattered and seduced into giving in to whatever demand was being made.

I imagine that sons of mothers who are these kind of women expect women they meet to be like this because they’ve seen this at work in their parents’ relationship.  And probably also experienced it themselves from their mothers.  These are the women who can, with confidence, say, ‘Oh you know what men are like, they just need to feel that they’re …’  (I can’t access the specifics, of course, but I know I’ve heard colleagues and friends say things like this).  Women like me who tend to be honest, open and direct, engaging on an equal footing with men (as my father always treated me) are excellent and highly valued friends to men, but I suspect rarely make it to lover unless for uncomplicated sex.

I think most men are like this – even when they say they value and like direct, open, intelligent women one sees them revert to the subtly seductive woman who defers to the man in order to control the relationship dynamic to ‘catch and keep’ their man.  I had no doubt that the L.I. liked me, had had a great fun time with me and valued my intelligence, even that he was attracted to me, it just that I couldn’t ‘convert’ that for him – and I think he needed me to do that.   He didn’t see it as his job to find those feelings for me – it was up to me to create them.

I wasn’t thinking any of this when I sat in the car crying, at that point I just felt that yet again I’d ‘blown it’.  That ‘if only’ I had done xyz things would have turned out differently.   All I knew was that I had failed to capture his romantic interest.  And I wasn’t just crying over him, but over all my failed relationships and lost hopes.

Of course he didn’t call me as I knew he wouldn’t.  And by Tuesday evening the feelings of distress had built up to such a level within me that I found myself walking and sobbing in the rain and dark around my village having an existential crisis of massive proportions and I can only credit years of sitting meditation for saving me from having a total breakdown.  I can’t retrieve the language I used to express the despair – the incoherent howlings into the wind and rain.  I felt my heart would break in a thousand pieces and part of me hoped it would so this terrible pain would end.  The pain of never feeling love.  And then something miraculous happened.  I started talking to myself out loud, telling myself to stop, to calm down, to realise that I loved me and I loved me totally, that I would never let any harm come to me, that I had done my best to love me over the years and would never give up on me.  It sounds like a splitting – but actually it felt like a rejoining.  And then I felt my heart open, what I feared did not happen, instead my heart felt like it had burst out of chains which had been binding it for years.  I had a huge surge of memories and found myself back to a time before I got together with my ex-husband, when I had been practicing meditation, was an active Buddhist, was getting my career together, was creative, independent and clean living, positive and hopeful and saw clearly how I’d given that all up for ‘love’ – for a romantic dream I’d held for years forged from novels read too young and my mother’s romance narrative of how she and my father fell in love.

I can only describe it as an emotional ‘rebooting’ and from that evening everything changed.  I felt like I had re-found myself, I had re-membered my being.  Hey, life goes on and I’m not a totally different person, nor have I miraculously become emotionally competent and literate, but I am me again and that feels really good.  It feels interesting and comforting and exciting and real.

So when he did finally get in touch a week (a week!!!  jeez, how unutterably mean is that on any level) later to say that he didn’t see me as relationship potential, thanks anyway – I was absolutely able to cope with it with equanimity and to cope with the sadness which I inevitably felt, but did not, in any way disturb or destroy my inner world.

There’s loads more but it’ll have to wait!

a few of my favourite things

the memory of my children’s fingers tightly wrapped around my index finger
looking into my daughters’ eyes for the first time
that my children are like chalk and cheese yet both are perfect in their own way

snow on a crisp blue-skyed winter’s day
green grass lit by the sun against a slate-grey sky
looking up through a canopy of translucent leaves
catching sight of the full moon through passing clouds
walking into a bluebell wood

the crashing of waves against the shore
gazing out over the horizon of the North Sea
walking along a sandy beach in Scotland
the smell of seaweed wafting into town
crouching over a rock pool and watching the mini-world inside

walking through London’s West End
sitting in a cafe in Soho watching the people go by
going to see an independent film which makes me gasp with emotion
walking over a bridge on the Thames at night

sitting talking to my best friend for hours
debating a fine point with my academic best friend
watching the face of someone I love
hearing of the success of others
noticing my students’ ideas change

getting into bed and relaxing under the covers
night night!

camp as a row of tents

I’m going camping this weekend.  It’s going to be the windiest day of the year so this could be a dangerous move but we’re camping in woodland.

I think the conversation could be more of a problem than the wind.

I’m not sure my patience will last out.

But it’s quite refreshing not being the maddest of the pair for once.

On the other hand – the conversation could be a miracle.

The universe keeps sending me little messages which I find hard to ignore.

It’s a mystery.

road to success?

I came across this rather wonderful allegorical map (click on it for an enlarged version) on the ever-brilliant Strange Maps site.  It would be lovely if life were as simple as buying a ticket at the ‘right system’ station and then sitting back reading a book until you get off at ‘Success’.  That’s probably the flaw in this map; that there is no indication of the hard work, focus, creative problem-solving, accurate decision-making, strategising and knowledge-building one has to undertake to be ’successful’.  This is of course implied by the many pitfalls (some literal, like Illiteracy, Bad Habits and Bad Reputation) which I do think are possibly the more useful part of this picture.  It’s occasionally uncomfortable viewing as I struggle to see which negative behaviours and characteristics I have managed to avoid!  Currently I’m struggling with Bad Memory, having managed to forget my Monday morning appointments on three successive weeks.  This is very unlike me and causing a certain discomfort and puzzlement in my mind.  I seem to have forgotten the need to look in my diary.

This sort of map is kind of seductive – on the one hand, the wisdom is self-evident.  I know I’ve spent at least a few nights at the Hotel Know It All and quite a few years stuck because of Vices.  On the other hand, the implication that Bohemianism is a non-starter, a lifestyle antithetical to success, suggests a definition of success based on the capitalist imperative combined with a moralising protestant work ethic.  Strangely enough this poster was adapted for a magazine on music studies – the original was clearly to inspire business people.  I suppose in that case the garden of Bohemianism, Hotel Know it All and the Mutual Appreciation Society all make a lot of sense.  To become a professional musician undoubtedly requires hard work, focus and humility.  However, it falls apart further along the path.  ‘Bad business methods’?

There is a danger in such maps (and the thinking behind them) because they imply that life is about success.  That this path is the correct path through life.  It is the path to success and by association, happiness and other attendant goodies.  This is where it falls down because I’m not sure that achievement is enough, or that achievement brings inevitable rewards.  Surely there are enough examples of how unhappy successful people can be (Jordan/Katie Price springs to mind) for us to challenge this oversimplified version of life?  There is no room here for Learning From One’s Mistakes or Happy Accidents, Introspection or Satisfaction With One’s Lot.  Perhaps the authors of the map might say those are simply rationalisations of failure.

Life is not as simply as getting on the right train and avoiding pitfalls.  I see this in other parents who feel they are setting their children out on the Right Path – instilling the virtues of Hard Work and Correct Choices in them at an early age.  Perhaps they are simply offering their child the Best Possible Chance by doing so, but I do wonder at what stage those children will wake up and wonder who chose their life?  Why is it so beneficial to fit in with The System (surely the most insidious of the messages of this poster)?  Systems are subject to obsolescence as surely as my laptop.  I prefer to teach my children the skills of Independent Thinking, Adaptability, Creativity, Assertiveness and Self-Determination with a healthy smattering of Concern For Others.  Most of all I think this poster falls down because it presupposes stability.  I suspect many of the bankers who lost their jobs last year thought they were firmly on the Road to Success.