The daily breakup: it keeps hurting

[greenstorm]

A couple years ago I was talking with my counselor about boundaries, and how you know what your boundaries are, and how you know what your needs are. She said something to the effect of, if you know you don't want something, you can turn that around into what you want. For instance:

I don't want to be stood up/I don't want to be waiting for someone when they said they'd show up/I don't want to have my presence taken for granted by someone who won't provide their own presence in turn

Becomes

I want someone who shows up when they say they will.

What else do I want?

I want someone who offers little bits of attention throughout the day, a thought or a meme, and who in turn responds when I offer them.

I don't want to be the taken for granted thing that every novel or new thing can displace. Er, I guess to invert that, I want reliability and consistency.

Those are how I feel wanted.

***

The problem with keeping contact, without having that break, is that the relationship basically stays in the same structure and has the same issues it had previously. It's just retraumatizing the same issues over and over rather than letting them heal. That's how folks end up hating each other; they're just too deeply hurt.

The structure of this one is: we expect to hear from each other every day at least some. We expect(ed?) to talk relatively frequently, at least a couple times a week. We expect to go to each other for some level of support, though the exact amount is debatable.

It's hard to think of what a different structure would look like. Contact limited to a couple days a week, or a week per month? I just don't know how to make it concrete enough that I can shift my expectations without restarting.

Something to chew on