Slow Collapse
Dec. 16th, 2016 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI'm good at doing things in my life that I'll like; good at making it into an edifice that suits me, that fits me. In general I'm purposeful about shaping my life to fit myself. I consider knowing what I want and need to be a practice, an ongoing activity that requires increments of time and effort on a regular basis to achieve. I get some pretty good results this way.
People are a little more difficult. My relationship to my relationships with people (apologies) is more complicated than I can easily get a handle on. Maybe it's only difficult because I don't like the answers.
I've been reading a bit of poly stuff lately (seems people have continued writing and evolving ideas on it in the last fifteen or so years) and a bunch of terminology has been helpful: comet, nesting partner, anchor partner, relationship anarchy. No one's used the term kite string, but I can visualise it as a slender anchor that would snap with too much wind. These words have been helping me to think about what I want from relationships, especially romantic or sexual relationships. I haven't really been mindful about them lately.
There is some degree to which I take what I can get. In general I like people, and I like being close or intimate with them in a lot of cases. Any one person is fairly unique, an opportunity I will not get again, and I don't like losing those opportunities. I want to experience people.
There is some degree to which I want more than I can have. I've been in a lot of relationships. Very few were entered with the idea they would end, and yet somehow here we are, with so much water under the bridge. There was something about all those people that was not a good fit, was not right, was not enough to stay together. Sometimes it was only they didn't want to stay with me. Sometimes, I didn't find them a good match. Here's a secret that's maybe not a secret if you've been reading all these years (I know you haven't, but I have): I want someone to stay, to weave through my life for a really long time. Many of my relationships are founded on principles that should lend themselves to some form of permanency, but I think those principles are inherently contradictory; I want someone sturdy and independent enough to survive me, but pliable enough to shape their life around mine; I want someone who grows and changes enough to keep my interest, but who retains a recogniseable self to which I can attach. I want someone who can live with me, share the daily routines of breakfast and bedtime, but I don't want my home or my heart to need to exclude my many loves for someone else's comfort. I think many of these may be impossibly contradictory, even granted that humans can contain multitudes.
There is some degree to which I want less than I get. My life is intensely engrossing and fulfilling. I really like my life, I really like engaging with it, and a relationship where I feel I need to stop my life or put it on hold is frustrating. It's a waste of time when often there are things I'd enjoy more, but frequently as a relationship gets older I feel like time spent is a duty rather than a joy or contribution, and yet I'm committed to it. Truth is, sometimes I'd rather be writing (or brewing, or on the pottery wheel, or dancing, or reading, or staring out the window, or researching houses, or or or).
There is some degree to which I don't trust other people. I have spent a great deal of time and effort shaping this life, and it's easy to steamroll someone else who likes it, and equally easy to be uncomfortable with how little mindful effort some people put into their own lives. I see that one's own user manual is becoming a Thing, now; I've been working on mine for more than a decade and someone who hasn't put that work into their own, who doesn't engage in /both/ introspection and active self-work, just seems like a lot of extra work for me. If you haven't bothered to learn how to make your life work on your own, how can your life work with mine, and why on earth should you think I should bother to put that effort in for you?
There is some degree to which I don't like other people near. This springs from the lack of trust. People are messy creatures, walls and emotions everywhere, and learning to navigate that together is a lot of work and gets in the way of other things I might be doing. More to the point, it often hurts and is disruptive and is made worthwhile when it becomes a shared journey. I don't like someone flailing in and it becoming my job. People are not my job, though partnership might be. People are their own job. I consider myself my own biggest work. If someone does not consider themselves significant work, pretty much all they can do play bull in my china shop.
Well.
No answers here, but there is a little clarity.
People are a little more difficult. My relationship to my relationships with people (apologies) is more complicated than I can easily get a handle on. Maybe it's only difficult because I don't like the answers.
I've been reading a bit of poly stuff lately (seems people have continued writing and evolving ideas on it in the last fifteen or so years) and a bunch of terminology has been helpful: comet, nesting partner, anchor partner, relationship anarchy. No one's used the term kite string, but I can visualise it as a slender anchor that would snap with too much wind. These words have been helping me to think about what I want from relationships, especially romantic or sexual relationships. I haven't really been mindful about them lately.
There is some degree to which I take what I can get. In general I like people, and I like being close or intimate with them in a lot of cases. Any one person is fairly unique, an opportunity I will not get again, and I don't like losing those opportunities. I want to experience people.
There is some degree to which I want more than I can have. I've been in a lot of relationships. Very few were entered with the idea they would end, and yet somehow here we are, with so much water under the bridge. There was something about all those people that was not a good fit, was not right, was not enough to stay together. Sometimes it was only they didn't want to stay with me. Sometimes, I didn't find them a good match. Here's a secret that's maybe not a secret if you've been reading all these years (I know you haven't, but I have): I want someone to stay, to weave through my life for a really long time. Many of my relationships are founded on principles that should lend themselves to some form of permanency, but I think those principles are inherently contradictory; I want someone sturdy and independent enough to survive me, but pliable enough to shape their life around mine; I want someone who grows and changes enough to keep my interest, but who retains a recogniseable self to which I can attach. I want someone who can live with me, share the daily routines of breakfast and bedtime, but I don't want my home or my heart to need to exclude my many loves for someone else's comfort. I think many of these may be impossibly contradictory, even granted that humans can contain multitudes.
There is some degree to which I want less than I get. My life is intensely engrossing and fulfilling. I really like my life, I really like engaging with it, and a relationship where I feel I need to stop my life or put it on hold is frustrating. It's a waste of time when often there are things I'd enjoy more, but frequently as a relationship gets older I feel like time spent is a duty rather than a joy or contribution, and yet I'm committed to it. Truth is, sometimes I'd rather be writing (or brewing, or on the pottery wheel, or dancing, or reading, or staring out the window, or researching houses, or or or).
There is some degree to which I don't trust other people. I have spent a great deal of time and effort shaping this life, and it's easy to steamroll someone else who likes it, and equally easy to be uncomfortable with how little mindful effort some people put into their own lives. I see that one's own user manual is becoming a Thing, now; I've been working on mine for more than a decade and someone who hasn't put that work into their own, who doesn't engage in /both/ introspection and active self-work, just seems like a lot of extra work for me. If you haven't bothered to learn how to make your life work on your own, how can your life work with mine, and why on earth should you think I should bother to put that effort in for you?
There is some degree to which I don't like other people near. This springs from the lack of trust. People are messy creatures, walls and emotions everywhere, and learning to navigate that together is a lot of work and gets in the way of other things I might be doing. More to the point, it often hurts and is disruptive and is made worthwhile when it becomes a shared journey. I don't like someone flailing in and it becoming my job. People are not my job, though partnership might be. People are their own job. I consider myself my own biggest work. If someone does not consider themselves significant work, pretty much all they can do play bull in my china shop.
Well.
No answers here, but there is a little clarity.
