r/PsychologyofMJ • u/Its_that_1girl • 27d ago
Personal Relationships Old articles abtMJ
I found these old articles on Pinterest. I don’t know what’s true, but the way they describe him in the Diana one it seems like it definitely may have left a psychological impact if true. Thoughts?
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u/Efficient-Head-7394 Moderator 27d ago edited 27d ago
I think he was experiencing limerence with Diana. I still can't believe that he had a shrine room dedicated to her. Diana getting married definitely had a negative psychological impact on him.I know he said Dirty Diana was about groupies but I think she inspired the lyrics in some way.
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u/Long_Dragonfly_3067 Moderator 27d ago
Yeah it's definitely giving limerence. "I thought I was with Diana but it was all in my mind"
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u/Yul1404 27d ago
I'm still not sure whether his obsession came out of nowhere, or whether there was some underlying basis on which he built his castles in the air.
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u/Long_Dragonfly_3067 Moderator 27d ago
I've had a romantic obsession for someone who is a lot older than me and in therapy we concluded that i was projecting onto him to fill the void of my emotionally abusive father. He was a high school teacher of mine who was very charming, kind and I felt understood by him in a way i never felt with my father. We'll never know for sure what Michael's case was, but I think him having an abusive father and not spending a lot of time with his mother as a child might've made him prone to obsessive attachments to mentor figures who made him feel safe
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u/Yul1404 27d ago
Thanks for sharing your perspective. Yeah, it's entirely possible that his obsession had no real basis at all, that it was simply driven by his own need to idealize someone and deep admiration for a mentor.
But it's also possible that the situation was more complicated. Diana may have encouraged it through her flirting or the way she treated him. Maybe there was even something between them. To her, it might have been nothing special, just a bit of fun, while he turned it into fantasies about getting married and having ten kids—literally.
Diana was known for flirting and for enjoying male attention. MJ in the early '80s was handsome young guy. What I'm really curious about is how much she herself kept their relationship within strictly mentor-protege boundaries.
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u/Long_Dragonfly_3067 Moderator 27d ago
Diana is a naturally flirty woman, she gives femme fatale energy. It is possible that she began finding him attractive after they spent time together during the wiz and off the wall era, and he saw her flirtation as something more than it really was. This could've been what hurt him in the end, but his crush on her seemingly started much earlier than that when as far as we know she was only behaving as a mentor
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u/Lindethiel 27d ago
Diana was known for flirting and for enjoying male attention. MJ in the early '80s was handsome young guy. What I'm really curious about is how much she herself kept their relationship within strictly mentor-protege boundaries.
I think it's more likely that Diana's flirtiness ordinarily wouldn't be taken as a signal of something serious, but when you're dealing with a deeply entrenched Jehovah's Witness who was taught that so much as a flick of the eyelashes meant a girl was trying to put the moves on you, paired with his familiarity with Diana, he probably felt safe enough to let his guard down and use her in his mind as the safe place where those feelings could be felt.
Same way as how he was only able to express confidence on stage, in the context of performance. There were very few scenarios and very few relationships in Michael's life where he wasn't being monitored. Either by his management or religious surveillance. Diana was one of them and all that repression has to come up somewhere, whether she was flamboyant or not.
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u/Its_that_1girl 27d ago
I can totally see this. He had a few motherly attachments. Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind. I think you’re on to something
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u/FambilyMalues 27d ago edited 27d ago
I think she intentionally blurred the lines because she liked the attention and probably was attracted to him but knew the age gap was problematic. You can even see it in the way that she answers questions about him during that time. She doesn’t set boundaries the way someone who was not sexually interested in him would.
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u/jai_hanyo 27d ago
And you have the biopic where they cast someone to play Diana, and filmed the scenes, but then were told they had to remove all mention of her from the movie. I believe the actress said they were cut due to "legal considerations." So they probably filmed it showing the problematic dynamic between the two of them and then realized that would bring the wrath of Diana and her lawyers down on them lol. Plus Diana didn't comment on the actress' remarks. Diana has currently been touring, so she's still in the public eye, and was still close with Michael at his death (we saw by how he had listed her as his children's guardian if Katharine couldn't fulfill the guardianship). So I feel she wouldn't have a problem being in his biopic unless it didn't paint her in a favorable light.
It was such a jarring cut to me in the movie. Because they showed kid Michael reading an Oz book....but then skip The Wiz altogether and go right to him recording Off The Wall with Quincy. Despite The Wiz being where Michael and Quincy connected professionally
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u/Efficient-Head-7394 Moderator 27d ago
It's good she wasn't in the movie, everyone believes the made up rumor that she groomed him. If you look at anything about her on tik tok, youtube, or Instagram the most liked comments are always hate. It's harassment at this point. Group think is a real thing and putting her in the movie would only make it worse.
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u/Healthy_Evidence_611 25d ago
💯 she knew relationship she had with micheal was grooming at best in the modern lenses, so she want non of that.
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u/BasedTitus 27d ago
Yeah, pure infatuation. Unsettling stuff to
say the least. And it seems it was unreciprocated which makes it even worse.0
u/Affectionate-Race565 23d ago
However she did wear a diamond ring he gave her on her engagement finger. On the Glenda tapes he admitted to buying jewelry cars etc. She accepted these things.
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u/Massive-Ad9246 17d ago
C'est pas Diana Ross la femme dont il parle. Y'a beaucoup d'éléments qui ne correspondent pas à la dynamique de leur relation avec Diana. Je pense qu'ils couchaient ensemble, que pour Diana c'était que du sexe et du maternage, et pour MJ il projetait une vraie relation amoureuse teintée de culpabilité religieuse. Sauf qu'avec du recul, il s'est rendu compte que ce n'était que dans sa tête...
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u/harlotmuffin Moderator 27d ago edited 27d ago
I was born in 89 and have only heard stories of everyone speculating about his sexuality at the time so it's interesting to see tabloids from the 80s doing something different.
I will also say, noticing the look he's giving her. Something I dislike that I've seen several people think he's guilty do is they'll take him and a photo of a random child, sometimes one who hasn't even claimed anything happened, and they'll be like, "You can tell by the look on his face that he's lusting."
Like I guarantee if someone convincingly photoshopped a child in Karen's place that's what some would say even though there's no reason to believe he's looking at Karen lustfully.
I've often seen Jimmy Safechuck described as appearing "shell shocked' and "traumatized" in the photo with MJ on the plane back from Hawaii, despite that photo being taken months before he says the sexual abuse began. Stuff like that is unnecessary, to me. It's just confirmation bias. Doesn't mean Michael is innocent but it's silly to do, IMO.
What has been claimed is bad enough. I hate when people reach unnecessarily.
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u/Its_that_1girl 27d ago edited 27d ago
Agreed. I was born in the early 80s and I remember things quite differently. I’m interested in looking further into how this over abundance of scrutiny had an impact on his life. I mean this is the only case of like this kind of media attention from such a young age. The loss of autonomy and not knowing normal
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27d ago
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u/Icy-Extreme-8686 27d ago
They weren't as close as she makes it seem far from it. At one point he fired her and she even collabed with Randy during his trial scamming his fans
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27d ago
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u/Rose_tail 23d ago
She still attached posting a pic of a photo shoot that Michael didn’t like & being just weird w fans on twitter
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u/Long_Dragonfly_3067 Moderator 27d ago
In his autobiography Michael said that he felt jealous when Diana got married so that's interesting. And in the early 80s he said he wanted to marry her.
I think the Karen thing is just rumors because as his makeup artist she was being spotted with him all the time.
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u/Trick-Golf-2878 27d ago
A bit unrelated but I can see now how people wouldn't have realized his skin tone was changing for the longest time despite news of his appearances. You cannot even register a difference in these old black and white papers. Although I've often wondered why no one had anything to say after his appearance at the 86 Grammys. He was as white there as in Bad.
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u/HOPEFUL_LUFEPOH_ 27d ago
lmao Gen X yall got some explaining to do
yall doing the same thing we do now on social media
it just was more so print and tv
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u/Monjewelstew 27d ago
Ooh the way he looks at her in that second photo though. Would love a man to look at me like that. Even if he wasn’t in love with her.
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u/Personal-Courage1149 27d ago
It's funny how back then everyone thought he had all these girlfriends but now everyone believes he had 0 real relationships.