Relationship as Plough
Mar. 16th, 2020 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI want you to imagine a green field. Tall grasses, moss between their roots, wildflowers dotting the field. Everything waves back and forth in the wind. The field is working, it's functional, it produces grass from whatever soil is under there.
Plough that field in your mind. The plough blade drives through the soil. It cuts the grass rhizomes and turns the soil on top of them. Small creatures, worms and bugs, and the occasional larger vole are exposed to wriggle in the light. Suddenly you know - that's red clay the grasses are growing in! Or maybe it's black sand. Dig a little and you can figure an underlying landform, the age of the soil, how much water and freeze the past has given. The plough catches on bigger roots and pulls them out. Everything is laid bare for inspection. So much more is known. There's space for newly planted seeds to sink their roots. In time the disturbed rhizomes throw out fresh roots and green tops and re-grow; nothing need be lost. If there's a weed that must be removed those roots are now loosened and can be pulled free of the mass more easily.
Relationship is my plough. All my thoughts, motivations, assumptions, and behaviours get lifted into the light, examined, and leave me fertile for change or regrowth. Poly an excellent relationship plough, as are new relationships. They dig up so many things I'd never otherwise get a chance to know about myself. I need a certain amount of data to see patterns; I need novel circumstances to pick patterns out from background noise.
Once I find a pattern I can begin to look at why, and at what other patterns might otherwise fill that space:
I get frantic when people around me are hurt? Of course: it was never safe to be around dad when he was upset. It's actually ok to accept other people's emotions and support them gently in experiencing and exploring them though.
I feel responsible for people's emotions? Of course; that's a textbook hallmark of abuse. Of course people have feelings in response to our actions, but their choice about how to respond to those feelings (being vulnerable, asking for support, distancing, self-soothing) are their own and I don't really control the feelings folks will have. I only control my responses to their actions.
I am terrified and lonely when partners create distance with me? Of course; we have a social narrative that folks either share everything or they share nothing and probably hate each other. We also have poor social modeling around how to negotiate around spending time, attention, and love. The truth is that folks who are mindful about relationship with me and who are measured in the time and enmeshment level they offer are demonstrating commitment to something that is functional over the long haul, and demonstrating that they're able to look beyond conventional scripts and instead provide clear boundaries and make scripts of their own.
Those are all old examples that can always be dug deeper; there are so many more and also always new ones.
I like doing this work. I am an external processor so it comes out here or in conversation. I become more myself by doing this work. I take a better place in the world.
And there is a lot of it coming at me right now.
Plough that field in your mind. The plough blade drives through the soil. It cuts the grass rhizomes and turns the soil on top of them. Small creatures, worms and bugs, and the occasional larger vole are exposed to wriggle in the light. Suddenly you know - that's red clay the grasses are growing in! Or maybe it's black sand. Dig a little and you can figure an underlying landform, the age of the soil, how much water and freeze the past has given. The plough catches on bigger roots and pulls them out. Everything is laid bare for inspection. So much more is known. There's space for newly planted seeds to sink their roots. In time the disturbed rhizomes throw out fresh roots and green tops and re-grow; nothing need be lost. If there's a weed that must be removed those roots are now loosened and can be pulled free of the mass more easily.
Relationship is my plough. All my thoughts, motivations, assumptions, and behaviours get lifted into the light, examined, and leave me fertile for change or regrowth. Poly an excellent relationship plough, as are new relationships. They dig up so many things I'd never otherwise get a chance to know about myself. I need a certain amount of data to see patterns; I need novel circumstances to pick patterns out from background noise.
Once I find a pattern I can begin to look at why, and at what other patterns might otherwise fill that space:
I get frantic when people around me are hurt? Of course: it was never safe to be around dad when he was upset. It's actually ok to accept other people's emotions and support them gently in experiencing and exploring them though.
I feel responsible for people's emotions? Of course; that's a textbook hallmark of abuse. Of course people have feelings in response to our actions, but their choice about how to respond to those feelings (being vulnerable, asking for support, distancing, self-soothing) are their own and I don't really control the feelings folks will have. I only control my responses to their actions.
I am terrified and lonely when partners create distance with me? Of course; we have a social narrative that folks either share everything or they share nothing and probably hate each other. We also have poor social modeling around how to negotiate around spending time, attention, and love. The truth is that folks who are mindful about relationship with me and who are measured in the time and enmeshment level they offer are demonstrating commitment to something that is functional over the long haul, and demonstrating that they're able to look beyond conventional scripts and instead provide clear boundaries and make scripts of their own.
Those are all old examples that can always be dug deeper; there are so many more and also always new ones.
I like doing this work. I am an external processor so it comes out here or in conversation. I become more myself by doing this work. I take a better place in the world.
And there is a lot of it coming at me right now.
