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Killing Softly
Part of the price of having lived with neuroses, epilepsy and a hidden agenda in virtually an entire life has been that my turnover of spouses, cohabitants, jobs and home addresses have been significantly higher than the corresponding average of my colleagues. During almost 40 years, I have saved my thoughts, concerns and frustrations about what has happened to me, so I have in retro perspective, a good background, to analyze with sharp memory to which extent my epilepsy and the neuroses that come with it, has caused my apparent capriciousness.
The crucial dynamics that arise in me are: The feeling of being stuck and not being able to get out even though I'm struggling for a long while without giving up, leading eventually to a crippling sensation that makes me desperate. During this paralysis and despair, something extreme often occurs that makes me turn 180 degrees and like the birth process, I’m pulled out of the inhibitory situation which is about to destroy me. From job history, these radical changes have been due to mergers, closures, offer from a headhunter, promotion to a new job, being dismissed, or that I applied for another job. These have been the best moments in my life, and I have been able to start afresh with the sense of unlimited motivation and the feeling of being stuck has temporarily receded. With new experiences and knowledge and often at a new place, with a new job and sometimes with a new language to learn, life felt easy.
Identical feelings and patterns that existed in my career were repeated in my private life. It is hence the similar basic underlying currents which have propelled my changes in both my career and in my social life. Employers with tempting assignments or women with a seductive look could temporarily overturn my plans, but not for long periods of time. I could not escape the forces of the engraved patterns, which represented my nature, which had existed in the brain since birth. It has by a law-bound force created the same reactions, whether I worked with Dutch tiles, hats, corsets, toys of all categories, fashion clothes, sports equipment, plastic products, analytical instruments, high pressure laminates or furniture components. Similar results, whether I have been married / living together with a 16 year younger Spaniard, an eight year older Danish, a 4 or 12 year younger Swedish or a German of the same age.
Although my psyche has undergone many crises and traumas caused by my compulsively repeated life patterns, I have only fond memories afterward of all I have been through and there are few experiences I would like to have undone. The same is true for all the great people who have crossed my path because of my compulsive behavior. Many of these people I continue to have contact with. From a professional point of view, my neurotic wanderings definitely meant that I was capable of dealing with difficult change situations, which of course have been a major reason that my life has been possible to implement.
From a private social life point of view, I have obviously also improved over the years, but here I feel, however, a greater sorrow over the injuries, I may have caused family members because of my obstinacy due to my hidden agenda, to which they of course, were innocent. The best I can say to my defense regarding my three surviving children is that they all were wanted and loved. It is harder to bear that regarding two of the children, I was often not on hand as a father when they needed it, which certainly is the big blob of a painful but fascinating epileptic adventure.
The relationship with my second spouse followed the pattern described and have been especially difficult to overcome. It was not just a romance, a marriage, a crisis and then a divorce. Through the fascinating and dramatic events we experienced simultaneously, the various transformations that we went through jointly and individually (I by Primal Therapy and she by an exciting design education) and because that we really enjoyed being together for many years, it has taken a very long time to get over the loss of this relationship.
Killing Softly
Over two years I changed jobs two times, which meant that the earliest move took place in 1972 from Malmo to Hillerød, Denmark and then the second move to Gothenburg in spring 1974 and that fall back to Denmark. Then my first spouse said stop. She was tired of me, on the moves and wanted to stay in Gothenburg and develop other solutions there. This was a traumatic shock for me, and it took me a few months to work out myself of the crisis. However, a new, exciting, reasonably well paid job as head of a toy company with in-house production and wholesale activities took my time and being taken care of by Danish friends, the feeling of being abandoned turned while thrilling opportunities developed. December 13, 1974, I met, at the headquarters in Osby, my future spouse. Admittedly, my first spouse had begun to doubt her Gothenburg Project, and since I met her and the children regularly she had failed glimpse that they would be willing to move to Denmark again. This thought tempted me for a while, but then I met G. and after during a period have felt through the situation the decision was made steadfast by my first wife when she realized that she after all had had enough of me.
From spring 1975, and until 02/16/1982 I lived with G., who was more than 12 years younger than I. We lived in Denmark, Jyllinge to 1977, in Sweden (with housing in Malmö, Gothenburg and Olofström) for the remainder of 1977 and subsequently in 1978 and 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. From 1980 to 1982 when we parted, we stayed in Brokamåla, Olofström in Blekinge. 1976 G. was very close to death when she received prenatal poisoning during her last week of pregnancy. She was rescued by the life because the same week in which she suffered from fetal poisoning, there was an international gynecologist Congress in Copenhagen where she was transported from Roskilde. She was treated by an American specialist who saved her life. During the two years that I had arranged in the U.S., first for myself to go to Primal Therapy, G. avoided therapy and studied textile art at Passadena Art School in L.A., and she took weaving classes in St. Barbera.
After our experience with fetal poisoning, my new insights through Primal Therapy and the dramatic development of my primal experiences when returning home in 1980, I was not interested in having more children, which developed into a conflict issue between us. Furthermore, G. studied from 1981 onwards at the Art School in Gothenburg, while I worked as a consultant to the Bonnier Group's leisure division, and visited the retreats which DR Janov during those years arranged in Europe.
Already in the years in California I had the first feelings that our relationship might not hold. This was due to the fact that I was not interested in getting more children and partly because I thought that G. needed therapy (which view, I based inter alia on her unreasonable jealousy of my first wife, who G. was reminded of every time we discussed my children and it was often), which she didn’t want and that this eventually would make our relationship difficult. However, I felt that G. was at that time dependent on me and I postponed the decision to end our relationship.
During a Primal retreat in Frutigen, CH, at the end of January 1982 I sat listening to a discussion, between Vivian Janov and a male patient, about a relationship in which one of the two parties did not love the other but didn’t dare to conclude the relationship. "Killing Softly" suddenly flew out of my mouth without being able to stop myself. Shortly afterwards Vivian came up and spoke with me and during our conversation, it became suddenly clear to me that I was in a relationship that I did not dare to leave. Two weeks later I had made up my mind, and I left G., house and home on 02/16/1982 at her 29th birthday.
From 16.02.1982 onwards, I had many dramatic feelings and dreams around G. and it took several years to get over the divorce. Dreams are the brain's own way of resisting and trying to solve problems and they have often been followed by primal feelings that activated the neuroses that have been behind my unreal needs and practices.
The mice
The night between 27 and 28 July 1984 I woke up after a nightmare and primal birth feeling. The nightmare was about two mice whom I had hunted and killed. The hunt took place at the end of my bed, and my tools were my legs and feet. One of the mice had a thick and blond curly hair that was identical to G’s. The non curly mouse was attracted like a magnet to the curly mouse. The painful and exhausting dream ended up with that I squeezed the two mice to death between my feet and the floor. First I squeezed the curly mouse to death because I sensed that the non-curly mouse's death would follow automatically. The non-curly mouse, which had an unlimited willpower, tore off its head while the body was jammed between my feet and the floor. I had a constant fear that the curly mouse would become entrenched in my penis. A piece of the non-curly mouse's head and spark of life disappeared out to the right, and I felt in the dream that it was no longer dangerous, and that it should disappear.
The night before the July 27, G. visited me in Karlshamn, since we had met in Brokamåla together with some friends from Denmark. We had been separated for more than two years, and I had slowly started to get over our divorce and hung out some with a Hungarian woman, Hh from Stockholm, who I met at a retreat in Bergen, Norway. Hh was a non-curly psychologist and was a sensual experience of a new kind for me. I felt strong and independent after an inspirational dance evening at Ronneby Brunn with Hh., G. suddenly showed a new seductive interest to me which I to her disappointment, however, managed to ward off, which seemed like a liberating response to the fact that I just a few months ago failed to reestablish a relationship with her. It turned out that I mentioned the meeting with G. to Hh., when I later during the evening spoke to her on the phone, and she got the idea that I was dragging myself out of our newly established relationship.
The G. incident on 27 July and the following dream during the night made me both sad and happy. Sorry for getting rid of the beauty which G. represents and the imaginary symbols of success she brought with her, and because she is a sweet and lovable person. Happy that G., in front of herself and in front of me had been able to make up her feelings with me. It is easy to understand the emptiness I felt by the exciting development and transformation, we both had been part of. However, it was a relationship which, had started on distorted conditions: I didn't dare to say no and challenge my loneliness when the exceptionally beautiful, blonde and curly G. suddenly decided to, certainly after subtle invitations from me, to move in with me in my house in Jyllinge during the spring of 1975. As a result, I took the responsibility to be loyal and did my best to rid G. from sad childhood memories and try to make her as strong as I had hoped that my mother would have been against my father.
The greatest sorrow is to recognize that we ourselves are the cause of our misfortunes. Sophocles
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