What even is a relationship?
Sep. 16th, 2019 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThings are exciting here.
My site at the company is trying to be sold. I may or not lose my job when the sale goes through. There is some government intervention that is leading to uncertainty about the outcome.
Tucker may or not stay in my town to live but he doesn't know, and if he moves I may or not move with him.
There was this bear.
12 new piglets (10 surviving) and they are adorable.
It's been raining for the last month.
And Tucker's found a new person. Last year about this time he started something like 5 relationships in 2 months, was pretty dishonest about some of them, violated some agreements we had, and got angry at me for my boundaries around it all. I was pretty trepidatious this time. It started the same: "oh, I'm going to go see this friend I don't know well" beforehand and transitioned into "actually we've loved each other for twenty years and need to talk every day" after the fact.
I mean, at this point that's what I expect from folks new to poly. It's so hard for me to get off on the right foot and really enjoy the other folks' relationship when everything feels evasive and hidden. Don't get me wrong, I've felt poly guilt and struggled to tell partners things, and it's taken me time to be able to realistically assess my relationship patterns to have a sense of how things might proceed. Still. I do like to have some sense of what's going on if we're going to talk about it at all, and even more importantly I need to not be misled. Stepping away for some months and letting the NRE sort itself out, my preferred method, was not an option here.
So I tried another tack this time: get real clear on what I needed from the relationship, focus on that, and be honest about my terror around repeating the last experience and still not feeling heard about it. It feels especially rough when... that all happened when I was evacuated from the fire last year, and this year it's now that I'm losing my job and trying to decide whether to leave Threshold and my town. I just don't have extra bandwidth to be present and level.
The reason I stay in a relationship with Tucker, especially as close a relationship as I am, is that he does the work. It can take him some time but he certainly does not often use "let me work on that" as a way to duck out of responsibility and buy time: he actually does work on it.
After a day of echoes of last year (with "you always ruin my relationships" overtones) he seems to have figured out a way to be present and loving when we're together, to actually spend time with me, and things have been pretty great. He was even super supportive around the bear and being a second person as backup, which... well, we'll talk about the farm and how I feel about other people being involved in that some other time. We also still have some planned vacations together rather than all future planning being eaten up with trying to stay in proximity to people several thousands of miles away, which also helps a great deal.
Looks like the route forward with this one is "put my needs on the table and don't ask too many questions".
A complicating factor, not so related to the new relationship, is that I need to ask questions. Deciding which job I'm taking next is a big thing for me, and if I move again I intend it to be my last (which I also said about this one and that may still have been true). He's been up here nearly a year and maybe doesn't want to stay in Fort, which means that this would be the time to move. I'd really like that nailed down, or at least start the process of "do we want to share a house/a property with 2 houses" and "is there a place that covers his needs and my needs actually in the world where one need is affordability"
My hope is he'll do the work on that one too. Definitely I'm struggling with the uncertainty.
Phew.
Somewhere in there I ordered and planted a whole bunch of african violet leaves, so I must believe there's a future. I picked a mess of beans and need to pickle them. I ordered a sauerkraut crock. The seasons will turn, and turn again. I always find that comforting.
Here's to a boring winter.
My site at the company is trying to be sold. I may or not lose my job when the sale goes through. There is some government intervention that is leading to uncertainty about the outcome.
Tucker may or not stay in my town to live but he doesn't know, and if he moves I may or not move with him.
There was this bear.
12 new piglets (10 surviving) and they are adorable.
It's been raining for the last month.
And Tucker's found a new person. Last year about this time he started something like 5 relationships in 2 months, was pretty dishonest about some of them, violated some agreements we had, and got angry at me for my boundaries around it all. I was pretty trepidatious this time. It started the same: "oh, I'm going to go see this friend I don't know well" beforehand and transitioned into "actually we've loved each other for twenty years and need to talk every day" after the fact.
I mean, at this point that's what I expect from folks new to poly. It's so hard for me to get off on the right foot and really enjoy the other folks' relationship when everything feels evasive and hidden. Don't get me wrong, I've felt poly guilt and struggled to tell partners things, and it's taken me time to be able to realistically assess my relationship patterns to have a sense of how things might proceed. Still. I do like to have some sense of what's going on if we're going to talk about it at all, and even more importantly I need to not be misled. Stepping away for some months and letting the NRE sort itself out, my preferred method, was not an option here.
So I tried another tack this time: get real clear on what I needed from the relationship, focus on that, and be honest about my terror around repeating the last experience and still not feeling heard about it. It feels especially rough when... that all happened when I was evacuated from the fire last year, and this year it's now that I'm losing my job and trying to decide whether to leave Threshold and my town. I just don't have extra bandwidth to be present and level.
The reason I stay in a relationship with Tucker, especially as close a relationship as I am, is that he does the work. It can take him some time but he certainly does not often use "let me work on that" as a way to duck out of responsibility and buy time: he actually does work on it.
After a day of echoes of last year (with "you always ruin my relationships" overtones) he seems to have figured out a way to be present and loving when we're together, to actually spend time with me, and things have been pretty great. He was even super supportive around the bear and being a second person as backup, which... well, we'll talk about the farm and how I feel about other people being involved in that some other time. We also still have some planned vacations together rather than all future planning being eaten up with trying to stay in proximity to people several thousands of miles away, which also helps a great deal.
Looks like the route forward with this one is "put my needs on the table and don't ask too many questions".
A complicating factor, not so related to the new relationship, is that I need to ask questions. Deciding which job I'm taking next is a big thing for me, and if I move again I intend it to be my last (which I also said about this one and that may still have been true). He's been up here nearly a year and maybe doesn't want to stay in Fort, which means that this would be the time to move. I'd really like that nailed down, or at least start the process of "do we want to share a house/a property with 2 houses" and "is there a place that covers his needs and my needs actually in the world where one need is affordability"
My hope is he'll do the work on that one too. Definitely I'm struggling with the uncertainty.
Phew.
Somewhere in there I ordered and planted a whole bunch of african violet leaves, so I must believe there's a future. I picked a mess of beans and need to pickle them. I ordered a sauerkraut crock. The seasons will turn, and turn again. I always find that comforting.
Here's to a boring winter.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 08:56 pm (UTC)I know you probably want and certainly deserve more than being in the role of teacher-to-others but if you can stand to accept a compliment on the matter without it uncomfortably pushing that button: I have learned a hell of a lot from you, directly and from observation, about how to do these sorts of relationships with integrity, critical honesty, give-and-take and fulfilment-of-needs for all involved (not to say that I usually hit the mark, but still). Your heart's kinda amazing; I really hope you're well cared-for.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 09:46 pm (UTC)I am definitely seeking peers rather than students for relationships.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 11:02 pm (UTC)amen to that.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 11:04 pm (UTC)i am definitely a fan of getting as clear in your own needs as humanly possible and putting it all on the table. doesn't always work, either (sometimes other people's estimation of their own needs/abilities are just crap. or overly optimistic or something. and sometimes one gets halfway down the projected, desired road, and discovers it's not right after all; goodness knows i've done that too). still, at least you know that you did act with integrity and put all your cards on the table, and hopefully Tucker can do that too, and y'all can find a mutually supportive & nourishing way forward. fingers crossed it works out - and also on the job front! that is crazy stressful omg. much sympathy.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-18 01:56 am (UTC)I think this thread converges with the need to date peers, not students: people who know themselves deliberately and well enough to have a sense of those needs and abilities. As you say, of course sometimes we're all wrong but that is so different from having no idea at all what right looks like.
Thank you, I will take all the sympathy!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-18 07:13 pm (UTC)i regret the loss of a friend, there, a great deal more than the loss of the love affair. i feel like that experience was the final nail in the idea that i can ever date people who do not have similar experience-levels to mine. it's hard because i've been poly my whole life, i'm in my mid 40s, i'm queer and not interested in pursuing straight relationships, and i live in a small city where there's not a huge dating pool, and of course not everybody in the potential dating pool is compatible in other ways (like, y'know, shared interests, personality, &c). but it just has to be that way anyway. it would honestly have been better to have turned down the whole roller-coaster ride and remained casual friends, maybe flirt pleasantly sometimes, than to have gone through all the drama and agony and bad feelings.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-21 05:11 pm (UTC)It means I only date when I have room in my life for the extra work involved and if I'm able to duck out more or less gracefully if it's not working.
I am over here celebrating your "I won't be pushed". Because, yeah, if he had the experience he would maybe realize how valuable it is to have someone come to the table in good faith rather than crumple-and-rebound. _SO_ valuable. I find the hardest thing for folks new to it (<10 years active poly experience?) is knowing their own desires and limits. Without that you can't have the conversation, it's just a little pantomime for entertainment rather than actually figuring out the relationship. And while I was learning these skills most other people were learning to suppress their own needs, to be pushed, and to swallow the status quo in monogamous or pseudo-monogamous relationships, it seems. Those are the wrong skills!
I'm really sorry it went down that way for you, and that it harmed your existing relationship to that person. Bah. I have one of those hanging around I'm trying to figure out how to manage too. I hope your next one goes so much better.