Gone Fishing!

this was initially a response but i'm making it a topic....

in thinking about my "pisces" bff (still getting used to that), it really is like fishing! bare with me but i'm about to get very metaphorical...

if she's in a mood, the worst thing i can do is chase her...indeed, she'll "swim away." she has cut off many of our friends because they pushed her emotionally. like if she came to them about some bf drama, they may have told her to "get over him" or "move on." BIG mistake! see, when they were going through their bf shit, she sat and listened and was supportive. she didn't judge them, how dare they judge her? their being right about the guy doesn't matter.

so she still talks to them but doesn't trust them with her inner most thoughts. whatever personal details she shares with them now is all surface. i think the reason why she opens up to me is that i've never judged her. whatever she's feeling is "right." it doesn't matter what it is. if i want to get her to see that what she's DOING is wrong, i don't go about it in the way our friends have. it's either break out the rod or the spear. it's one or the other but chasing her?...ain't gonna happen. it's counterproductive. i'm in her emo-waters and she'll always swim faster than me.

initially, i allow her space. she's entitled to be sad and have a good cry. if she doesn't come out of her funk herself, if it's been going on too long, it's rod or spear.

rod: be patient and see if she comes to you. most of the time she does and when she does, i listen and ask coaxing questions. she's very transparent emotionally but instead of asking her directly, the way we talk it out is me asking suggestive questions...questions that steer her/the convo in the direction i want it to go. in other words, i don't say, "he's a jackass you need to leave him alone." instead, i ask her about him in ways that highlight his aspects. if those aspects just so happen to be all negative, she'll begin to see/acknowledge it on her own. the key is, to let her come to it with a bit of coaxing. if i'm too direct, if i push too hard, she'll become defensive and "swim away."

it's funny cause she's the only person i deal with in this way and i think the way i've handled our friendship is why our bond has become very strong over the years. i don't chase her, i don't push her, i either coax her (rod) or spear.

spear: rarely used but basically, if the argument is about something stupid or she's being emo for no good damn reason, get the spear. if i've tried the "rod" method and we're at a stalemate (she hasn't come clean or i'm not understanding what she's feeling), get the spear. in other words, it's time to be direct but ONLY after she's within striking distance...only after i've attempted to reel her in. so in these moments, i don't pull punches. i say exactly what i'm thinking. i.e. "you need to leave him alone."

if i'm right, i caught me a fish. she will take my advice. she'll snap out of whatever funk she's in and it's all good.

if i'm wrong, if i struck too soon or missed with my "spear," it's "when sharks attack." she will negate my assumptions and where this may seem like a loss, it's not. it ends the stalemate. i now know what she's feeling and we can start the whole "rod" thing from that level of understanding.

one thing i have noticed though, if i'm going to use a "spear," it's never as sharp as it could be. so i'd never tell her "you need to leave him alone." what i would say is, "he may care about you but..." in other words, i soften the blow. by being a little less direct, she's less likely to be defensive and to hear what i'm saying than reacting to being judged alone.

overall, in dealing with my "pisces" bff, i never let her get too far (swim too far away). i allow her to have her moment where she processes her feelings or emotions alone but NEVER do i let her wallow in it. if she doesn't come to me, i will go to her and if i have to go to her, it is like sneaking up on a fish. you don't anchor your boat directly where they're swimming. you get close enough to cast your rod, use good bait and wait for them to come to you.

crap...got distracted...i'm going to start turning my ringer off after 10pm. anyhoo, to continue^

now i'm not sure how to translate this into a relationship with a pisces but if any of what i've said is true, i do feel like i have better understanding of fishies and how they operate and what i read about pisces doesn't seem so cryptic now.

initially, it felt like a relationship with a pisces would be a downer. and when i asked other taureans how they dealt with pisces, it honestly made me think of drowning/choking. i could get what they were saying about the good aspects of pisces but things like "needs reassurance," "sensitive" and "touchy feely" made me want to put up a hex sign.

but now that i know my bff is a pisces, i reread both aqua and pisces in the context of her and where she does have aqua aspects (most likely due to aqua placements), she really is a fish. i'm still kicking myself that i didn't see it. our mutual virgo friend has said for years that she's a pisces but (and sorry), pisces, as a sign, is a boring read. it's a whole bunch of nothin...or so i thought. i just needed a working example to connect with it and voila!

of all my friends, my "pisces" bff knows me better than anyone. she's the only person i can be "weak" around. i feel comfortable enough to share my inner most thoughts. thing is, our bond wasn't as instant as it was with my cancer bff. with the pisces, it developed over years and did so naturally. in fact, when we first met, i called her "mute." i thought of her as being "delicate." not exactly a pushover or anything. she just came across as a "nice person." that's it.

overtime, i came to realize that she can be strong/forceful when need be. that if i'm going out/partying/whatever, where she was initially among the last people i wanted to hang out with, she's now the first. i don't care where we are, if there's music and a dance floor, all she wants to do is dance and have a good time. yes she's "nice" and kind but she's no fool. my point is, i would've never expected this initially. i read her wrong on first sight but with time, the person i've come to know is far more complex than the "nice person" you first meet.

so i guess what's funny is, i was thinking before that i wouldn't be able to tolerate a pisces for long and ironically, pisces is the sign i've "tolerated" longer than any other. in fact, it's the sign i like the best. go fuqn figure!

Cool analogies, Tubbs.


I didn't quite see it that way, but I can totally relate when you put it that way. It really sounds like my good pisces friend even moreso..and god, can she frustrate the hell out of me a lot....but perhaps the reason is because I am a lot like her and I don't even realize it.

Yikes.

This gives me a lot to think about lol

MsP, i'm probably making her sound a like a fruit loop. and yeah, i think sometimes it's difficult to see ourselves in other people so who knows, maybe you are like your pisces friend. i dunno if i'm right about any of this but what i described above has been our dynamic for like 10+ years.

she's also not perpetually emo but i do recall what our mutual virgo friend once said about her... "she likes being miserable."

where i don't take the same interpretation, i get my virgo friend's point. "suffering" has been a common theme in my "pisces" bff's life. even when she's happy, she can be sad. ultimately, there's always "feeling" in the air.

her tolerance for "suffering" is immeasurable and i guess that's why i misinterpreted her as being an aqua. i thought she was resisting change (fixed) when in reality, she was "embracing" suffering. intellectually, she knows she needs to give up on a person but she's definitely a "stand by your man" type girl once she's been hooked.

yep, she's been running game on me for over a decade.

now you...you go fuck yourself.

I love my Pisces buddy. I can talk to him about anything. And I do mean anything. Known him for 12 years now.

yep, vb.

it's a shock for me i must admit. truthfully, i never really paid attention to signs with respect to my fem friends...sans virgo. which is ironic given what their opposite sign is.

I know my friends signs, and their SO's, but I'm goofy that way. 🙂

well i know them, but never bothered to research them. maybe if i had, i would've known my bff is a pisces. i have a gf who's a gemini and love her to death but reading about gemini puts me to sleep too. if i met a dude who was a gem, i'd probably take more interest in learning about it. as far as she's concerned though, we're cool so nothing to figure out really.

Ahhhhso. I see now. I crack up every time my female Pisces friend calls me. I'm the 'go to girl' for her cooking questions. She could burn water, bless her. But when I pick up the phone she always says: "Um, question from the land of the tiny brained people." Really she's the most grounded woman I know. She'll give you the straight deal. On anything. Now I'm curious about her placements because she's quite an atypical Fish. Hmm.

well mine is a moat 🙂

Dear Tubby Butt

I will personaly put your name forward for Drama Queen of the year next January.

shhhhhhutit!

Posted by seavixen2
Jeeze. I can relate.

Oh, Lordy, so do I!

Tubby... sometimes your words make me raise an eyebrow, sometimes they make me turn my head sideways a little bit, and sometimes they outright amuse me. But THIS time, you hammered the railroad spike in one blow. Guh.

I was fascinated and enthralled through your whole read, really I was! MY BFF of over 20 years (a crazy Sag I love to DEATH!) could have written this about ME.. she's my ONLY friend who has survived start to present with me AND deepened our bond to Unbreakable! My other "friends" are generally only a few years (or less) or much more uhh.. superficial and casual, friendly but not deep... because that smart Sag girl GOES FISHING. Yes, she uses the Spear, but only sparingly, and ONLY after exhausting the Rod. My other friends do not fish. They don't know how, or haven't figured this out. They come at me wrong (read: ineffectively, or it backfires), or they push me (emotionally) in the wrong ways, overwhelming me and driving me deeper. (Another Sag friend I had a couple years ago did this, the pushing, the BE HERE FOR ME, the LET ME HELP YOU, the FRIENDS TALK EVERY DAY, the DRAAAAAMA... drove me down, she KEPT PUSHING no matter how many times I told her I needed SPACE and to let it be, and I finally never resurfaced for her, sadly enough. I friggin' HATE drama!) You cannot deal with me the same as you do your other friends, it simply doesn't WORK.. I WILL swim away, I WILL emotionally close off from you.. and you will probably forever stay Sorta Friend, or maybe Just Acquaintance... at least until you tire of never getting inside me, of realizing you're not REALLY CLOSE friends with me, and YOU fade away.

She's only one example, my EX Sag friend.. variances of this script have played out SO many times, more times than I can count over the years. Maybe this means I'm friggin' nuts, I don't know. But I won't be pushed, I'll ask you to stop putting so much on me, or to stop emotionally hammering me, and if you don't.. I'm SO gone, you can't even see the ripples. And they never used the Rod in the first place, so they never use it THEN, when it's the ONLY way to reach me again. They stay on the shore empty-handed, and I stay in my depths, unseen.

yes, i do play crazy quite well.

and yeh, my "pisces" bff has walled herself off from quite a few of our mutual friends too and the reason is ALWAYS the same. the person told/suggested she do something in the emo-arena when she wasn't ready. they didn't respect her slow emo-process and for her, why burden someone with your woes if they're going to be dismissive and effectively tell you to "get over it?"

i guess i just have a higher tolerance for "woe" than most. not sure if that's a taurus thing or not but my cancer friend was going through a tough time last year, she called and said, something like i feel like shit and i knew if anyone could put a good spin on this, you could. i didn't know if i should be flattered or if that meant i excuse too much bull's shit? in the context of my pisces bff, i'm starting to question if i have enabled her "woe" by not using my spear more often? it's kept us close but i don't want my friend to suffer needlessly.

i think, and this is the hard choice, it's like if you had girlfriend who's in an abusive relationship. i think sometimes people will get fed up and tell her what she needs to do only to realize that in the end, she's shut her friends out and remains in the relationship with the jackass.

for me, i'd much rather be a constant in my friend's life. the hotline that she can use in emergencies. the rescue worker who's there when things get bad. but maybe it's better to not need a rescue at all? but i fear in being too direct because it will invariably lead to being shut out. NO woman likes to be told she's a fool. NO woman likes to hear bad shit uttered about her man. hell, she can say it, you can't. and if she shuts you out, who does she have to turn to when she does finally wake up and want to escape into the night? what does she do when she's burned all her bridges and the only constant that remains is the jackass who's using her as a punching bag?

ultimately with my pisces bff i've learned that you can't make people do anything. any choices we make are better made on our own accord. the key i guess in friendship is guiding a friend who's in trouble to make the "right" choices but doing so in a way the decisions are all theirs.

Be her constant, Tubby. That's what she needs from you, and it's only "enabling" her to be herself with ONE person, to truly know she has that ONE lifeline, ONE port in the storm when it falls apart. The rest can (and do) give her the well-meaning but ineffectual "advice"... which she HEARS, I'd wager. As a Pisces, I HEAR what you're saying.. but *I* will choose how much importance to place on it. And if I'm not ready to heed that sage advice... I simply WON'T. It's not that I'm ignorant or stupid. It's not that I like the "bad situation" everyone seems to see. It's that I must make my OWN choice, in my OWN time. I must do all I can, exhausting every hope and avenue... only THEN can I dust off my hands and say, "I truly did my best, tried everything. I'm empty, I'm done. I have no shame, and no regrets. *swish* *swish*" And THAT'S when YOU can do for her what no one else can, because you've been her rock.

And the Sag girl is my lifeline, always. She can have my last dollar, the shirt off my back, my kidney, my liver, MY HEART... and I would KILL a mofo for her or hide the body in my freezer, as she would for me. Honest truth. 🙂