Greenstorm's Journal

Often, when we are setting a boundary, the need for the boundary arises from an emotional experience. And at the same time, boundaries that are built around our emotional, subjective or qualitative experience of something can be hard to maintain because they can be hard to measure in a concrete way.

This means: the need for the boundary arises from an emotional experience, but the boundary itself will be more effective if it’s nestled in a concrete way of measuring its effectiveness.

For example, when I experienced burn-out or exhaustion in jobs I’ve worked in non-profit settings I may crave feeling less tired, to have my labor and time be more appreciated or acknowledged, or to be heard more clearly by the folks I work with and for.

These are all totally valid and healthy needs and they may be hard to manifest if we don’t have a way of measuring them. This can especially be true when our boundary rests up against a system of power, and especially when the person or system in power wants to undermine our perspective of reality.

A solid boundary in this case could be:

“I won’t work hours for which I am not paid.”

OR

“I won’t work with co-workers who won’t use my pronoun.”

OR

“I want my name to appear on this report and not just the name of my superior, because I came up with the ideas he is using here.”

In these examples we can measure how the boundary is working in our lives by being able to see clearly if it is being adhered to.

Okay. This is something I can use to figure out my work situation. Saving for later.

One of the aspects of codependency, poor boundaries, and the lack of individuation that comes from those is an underlying sense that other people should know and do things for you, that if you ask for something it doesn't count, and that if they force you to ask for those things they are doing you an injustice.

This is... not quite like whack-a-mole for me, but more like weeding a garden with a very thick weed seedbed. There are a lot of ways believing other people should read my mind and preserve me from discomfort manifests. Now, I'm weird, and there are a bunch of things I learned early on I need to ask for; some things I sorted as I went along. I *still* remember learning to ask for the support I wanted around poly; I still remember how hard it was to ask for time or sex or attention in the beginning.

Thankfully I no longer feel like, if I ask for something and my partner does it for me, that act of service doesn't count. In some ways nowadays I feel like it counts more than if they spontaneously did the right thing; it means that they listen and put energy into acting on what they hear.

I've been thinking about the thing with A&E and how that is going. I've been pushing for written budgets, for written and discussed vision and values statements, for discussion on visitors and autonomy and expected daily interaction. I've viewed me being the one pushing for this as a sign their commitment is less, that they haven't thought this through, that they're naive and setting it up to fail where I'm the realist. And I've been resentful at initiating this stuff, feeling like they should know better than to leave it without discussion at the outset.

I think it's time for me to dig into this a little more, though. I'm asking for what I need to feel secure and they are stepping up and providing. They do need some specifics, some details, some structure, but they have so far come through when I provide that.

I do think a group like this needs structure is likely to fair or at least be hella stressful at the worst possible times without it.

I also think that anyone in such a group needs to be driven to ask these questions of themselves on some level, in some way-- they need to be a little bit curious or accepting of how other people work, and to be able to accept systems in which people are truly different from each other and yet where everyone's needs and preferences matter. They need to be, on some level, active rather than reactive. I remain a little concerned about that.

But as for me not being provided with what I need to feel secure around structure before I ask? For being the one to drive spreadsheets, lists, budgeting, formal (as in articulated statements, not as in signed in blood) of values and intentions? Can I accept this as my role, complementary to E's role as the social interactor, or A as the financial end, accept the work of making these asks as in service of my own comfort, as long as it's not onerous, without resentment that I am the one doing it? Evoking people has always been something that I'm good at.

Funny enough, I may need to run that by folks, say, "look, I'm doing this work, I see you are each doing this other work, are we agreed that this is a division of labour that's occurring and we're good with?" before I can let it rest, but maybe if I do that I can.

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

Today I can hopefully take the tiller in to get it looked at. Josh says it's probably the carburetor.

In the meantime my plan is to plant spinach and grain, and maybe pick up a bale of straw for the pigs tonight.

Planting continues: I got the rest of the melon seeds into pots yesterday, and hopefully by the end of today I'll have the squash done.

Josh is doing the expected trajectory with the new relationship. We usually talk once a week and he's like, "no change" but then it turns out in the ensuing conversation that they're gone from one weekend a month to seeing each other a couple times a week, or the "maybe we'll see how this goes" has changed into "this is definitely a permanent relationship" or whatever. You know, the exponential growth that is NRE.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of talking about it, I'm tired of thinking about it.

In actual fact I'm pretty tired of dealing with relationship stuff at all right now. I want to be outside fixing fences and putting things in the ground.

It occurred to me that the folks I relationship with tend to go on trips for a couple weeks a couple times a year where they're largely-to-completely unavailable for contact. I don't tend to travel, but there's... actually no reason I can't deliberately block time off away from contact even if I'm not travelling. I mean, I tend to fade out a bunch at this time of year anyhow but I can be more deliberate about it if I want.

Once the boundaries door is wedged open it seems to just keep creeping further and further open. I hadn't realized how many things I was doing to make the people around me comfortable, or how many things I was not saying and not doing. I can hold up my poly lens and say, I tended to be punished for doing relationships in an atypical way so I tried to be as typical as I could be, allowing what I absolutely could not avoid and shoving down my discomfort about anything where I could pretend to the standard narrative. Interestingly, I can hold up the autism lens and say the exact same thing.

My highschool friend -- the one who was close friends with me for years and years and then never responded to a single word after he got into a longterm relationship, such that I only learned he was 1) in a relationship 2) married and 3) had kids from mutual friends -- said that I only ever talked about relationships and plants, but that I made it interesting.

This week, or this month, I guess I want a break from talking about relationships.

Maybe living somewhere with non-gardening winter really is bad for me. I'd really missed immersing myself in my garden.

You know, I've never actually run a car out of gas. I've tried: buy a new-to-me vehicle, put a jerry can of gas in the back, fill it up, and tell myself I'll run it dry so I know just how far I can push it in case I need to later. I never successfully push it until it dies. Once I managed to make it 10k after the low fuel light went on before I broke.

I'm much harder on myself. I guess I'm more aware of my internal reserves and the consequences.

Josh did some bad communication about starting a relationship abruptly with someone I had concerns about and who he'd definitively taken off the table awhile back because of some red flags, and who as far as I knew was out of contact with him, and then being unavailable for discussion for awhile. Previously we'd talked about what I needed/wanted from a partner who was poly, but that was very theoretical since he hasn't had emotional connections with anyone else before.

So I spent the long weekend he was gone, in full knowledge of the irony, stewing about how I didn't have the energy to train up another pup and being angry at him for making me figure out and set boundaries around this. He came back, we talked, he apologised without getting defensive and listened well, and I had been able to state some pretty clear things that I want from relationships.

It's good (though the process was hard) to have figured out those boundaries and be able to clearly state them. It makes me feel lighter, more able to say what I need in advance and then enforce my edges. Goodness was it hard work though: both being angry (anger is how I know my boundaries are being infringed) and trying to figure out what, exactly, I wanted. It's work done now, though, and I can cruise into the upcoming long weekend with some spring farm work to restore my soul.

Basically:

I want to know how many (love and sexual) relationships my partners are in at any given time, give or take a day or two of these things changing, and if something comes up with potential I want to be kept in the loop about that. Yeah, definitions of relationships can be fuzzy but this isn't a place for rules-lawyering. Yeah, things happen and folks don't always know what's coming.

I want to know if someone is going to be unavailable for communication in a way that will impact my normal rhythms of communication with them: if we normally text every day, if they'll be offline for a day I'll worry. If we normally talk once a week, likewise if they're unavailable for a longer stretch I want to know. I want this even if we don't have formal days or times that we talk to miss.

If someone goes on a Big Thing with a metamour I'm wobbly with, I'd like to have the date and time I'll talk to that partner pinned down before they leave. It really helps me feel more secure. I'm usually wobbly the first couple dates with a new person or after relationship structure changes.

I want to know the good experiences my partner has in their relationships. In general more partners means less flexibility on my partner's part, so I need to be more flexible to keep seeing them. I need to do internal work if something triggers bad feelings. So I need to balance that with hearing good stuff about the metamour, to remind myself that it's a good thing and worth it.

I want to know if my partners' thing with someone else is going to change my relationship with the partner structurally (less time together, limits future commitments, will use all their vacation time, changes in sexual stuff including barriering) and I'd like to feel seen and heard around that change.

I don't want to have to guess or interpret what a partner means by something, or ever need to go searching or putting two and two together to learn any of the above stuff. I want those things to be told to me directly. I do not want to have to spend mental or emotional effort being suspicious about this stuff, I want to be able to accept what I'm told and not think about it otherwise and still have full information.

I definitely feel like I'm getting sucked down. I'm keeping my head above water when there's no extra stress, and then get sucked down into dysfunctionality when anything extra pops up. For instance, I had to corral a whole bunch of pigs the other day and sell/trade them, and that was definitely stressful enough that I couldn't function well. Likewise with deadlines at work.

On the other hand, I do have functional days and I am getting things done. As per the last to-do list I've got the ancona ducks separated, got the boars traded and the piglets sent off, got hay, took the winter pile of garbage out, tidied up the yard a little, eaten a bunch of meals, and arranged a food date on Monday.

There's always more to do: the garden and fencing needs to happen real soon now, for instance. I could do with getting more hay since I found a good supplier. I need to pot up my transplants and to do that I need to set up another shelf. I need to have more conversations with Tucker.

Yesterday I noticed the ducks are escaping to eat bits in the neighbour's lagoon during the day. There's a lot of water down there right now; my own pond is brimfull. I worry about it because the dogs can't protect them out there -- I need to fix that fence so they can't leave -- but they're realy good at foraging, and they come home very full of food in the evening.

A week since snow is off the garden and rhubarb, comfrey, stinging nettles, chives, lovage, a tiny bit of mint, and some raspberries are coming up. It will be good to be eating green things again. I think the raspberries may have got overenthusiastic last year, I think they've sent out a solid wall of runners for a couple feet. That means I can transplant them up somewhere else, yay!

I'd forgotten how hard it is to deal with the "other" grain guy -- he makes grain pickups easy and loads my trailer -- now that Ron's trailer is gone I can't self-load at the original place, and this guy puts peas in which are better for the pigs, but he also doesn't believe in global warming because God wouldn't have put oil in the ground if it could harm us, and covid is just the flu and all those grandmas were going to die anyway and US-style health care is better because it's only $50/month and there are no waits for things. Hard. I wonder if there's a third guy in town? I should ask around.

And finally I need to do some thinking on what my risk tolerance is around covid. Because my network is so small and I feel so responsible for folks' touch and well-being, it's super hard for me to exclude someone after they've done something that exceeds my risk tolerance. So it's better if I have some fairly easily-stated boundaries to begin with. And, oof, Avi is definitely more cavalier in some ways than I like.

On to work now. It's definitely time to take out my bicycle: snow's all gone, ice is getting puddles on top of it on the lake and the bets for when it will breakup are happening. I hope the tyres still hold air.

My heart hurts.

Josh and I are deciding whether we will stay together; he wants to be friends, ditch the sex, and keep the rest of intimacy n steady-state, or rather, when he's available. I need a minimum of in-person time to avoid cometing, and am not super happy at the idea of "it'll be hard for me to find a relationship if we keep having sex so let's stop the sex and keep everything else". I'll likely need a year or two off contact to let bitterness subside and hurt heal. Nothing is finalized yet, but there aren't too many options with him down there.

This is probably the most respectful, talked-through breakup I've had.

And in the middle of this I'm thinking about how to handle stuff with Tucker. He came up here and the idea was we'd get to see each other more and spend more time together. However, in the last 2 months we've spent only 3 full days together and assorted after-work evenings, and one of those days was discussing the poly date trip he's on right now. It's been a long time since we've had a relaxed, loving day where no one has to run off to do something. So I'm taking a look a what I need out of a mostly full-time relationship, I'm looking at what I'd be ok with as not full-time, and I'm feeling so. Tired.

I'm tired of second-guessing myself: do I feel distant and lonely because my mind is playing tricks on me, or because I'm not getting what I need out of these relationships? I'm tired of holding boundaries and having folks skate close to the edge and being reasonable about it and bringing it up politely and having it only be noticed when I get visibly upset.

I'm tired of being upset. I'm tired of being the one with a list of possible solutions. I guess I can step back on that role and see what happens.

And I'm tired of breakups, I'm tired of loving people and them passing out of my life, I'm even tired of people being in my life right now. I want to lie down on the first bits of grass and outside sink into the soil. I want nothing to do with humans and I want nothing to do with people who don't know what they want, or who say they want one thing and then aim their life at something quite different.

I have 17 apple trees, 7 plum trees, and a couple apricots to plant this spring. I have some birches and burr oaks to plant around the edges and wild spaces. There is nothing in the world anywhere better than planting a tree. Nothing. I have several dozen haskaps and some sour cherries to put into the ground. I may have piglets soon; I have goslings and will have some more, and maybe some ducklings.

That's where my soul is, in those trees. It isn't with people. Work can be engaging but mostly lately it's just ridiculous, no one at the top can make up their mind so everything gets redone and nothing can be planned; we're a week from the start of field season and no one knows what they're doing. My heart is no longer there.

Josh was the first person I met who really likes plants. He kept them in his dorm at BCIT, and when I woke up the first morning at his house all the plant lights were on timers and came up one after the other in the livingroom, on placed carefully and lovingly over each plant.

That house is sold now. The lights are moved to his next house, in Vancouver.

Oh, self, I am so so sorry. Someday maybe you will be seen again in that place, though never quite the same way.

Last week I picked Tucker up at the airport. The week before that I had counseling, and my counselor asked me: "why don't you like the idea of veto?" A lot came up, and over the two weeks a lot has been flowering from that.

My first thought was, I don't want veto power because I don't want to do the work of screening my partners' people; I don't want to be the one entrusted with the work of saying no all the time while they get to frolic around starting pretty things and not thinking hard about consequences and using me as (I'm unsure of this metaphor, but still) a backstop. I don't want the responsibility of making sure my partners' relationships don't do terrible things to my own relationships, and I don't want the responsibility of hurting two people who care about each other by coming down hard on them.

So I guess I see veto as what's necessary when my partner doesn't take my concerns seriously, or doesn't believe me when I say "hey, this is a problem". I see veto as a way for my partners to avoid doing their own work around whether a relationship is a good idea or not. I see it putting me, again, in the role of gatekeeper or hard-ass or logistics coordinator.

I think those are valid concerns.

But, having been setting boundaries and seeing how that feels lately, avoiding veto is also a way of avoiding my own work, of asking someone else to set boundaries so I don't have to. And, um... seems I'm dating someone who is just barely learning (actively, actually learning, but still) to set boundaries. So maybe one of the things I need to accept about the relationship is that I'll need to be extra good at my own boundaries. And that means maybe doing extra boundary work.

And if I am going to do that work, if I choose to do it, if that extra work is honoured within the relationship: then I shouldn't resent it. If I don't choose to do it, then I should actually not do the work rather than doing the work and harbouring resentment about it.

Which means... I need to be clear on my boundaries around how much work I'm going to do. I also need to be clear on what work my partners are currently doing, otherwise I feel left out to dry.

Recent talks have been going in this direction, and that's good.

Underlying all this is the question of what this work is shaping towards; what's the ultimate goal? That's a question I'm still working with. It's a lot bigger.

Experimented with setting boundaries. It went really well.

Makes it easier to try setting them in other ways.

Therapists' tool was: take your worry (I worry you won't have time for me anymore). Flip it into what you want (I want to spend [a lot] of time talking to you most weeks). There you have what you want in a relationship.

I have been applying this to everything with the delight of a kidlet given a hammer for the first time and finding that the whole world is a nail.

It's been really good. I feel centered, not off-balance or reactive.

Had relationship discussion and agreement around including me in planning big things/escalations where possible. Planned a week-long first visit without telling me until basically he was in the buying plane tickets stage of finalizing plans. Asked him a couple times about plans during the time he was making these plans with the other person and he said there were none, thereby deliberately lying to me.

When it came out he said there hadn't been time since he started making plans to tell me. Later it turns out the plans had been in the works for awhile. Another lie.

Later it turns out the plans were for a longer time than he told me they were going to be when it came up too, so he not only avoided telling me about it and then lied when I asked, but lied to minimize the extent of the lies.

Turns out he was going up to do kink stuff based on rules-lawyering an agreement without running it by me too. Currently he seems pretty ready to stand by "don't do kink with her by text until we have time to talk about our own kink dynamic [if you want to continue to engage in kink with me ] and I'm more comfortable generally with one-offs than an ongoing dynamic" meaning "I'm ok if you go up in person and do kink stuff with her for a week."

And... it's part of a pattern of late communication and general lack of consideration around poly stuff. There are reasons, of course, and they are the same reasons every poly person has ever had for doing these things and they are the reasons I had when I did these things: NRE, don't want to hurt your partner, don't want to admit that you might have to compromise, so just make the problem go away. Big side helping of "can't say no, can't state boundaries so can't negotiate them."

I am not new to poly.

I don't do that shit anymore and haven't for a long time now. It's not always easy, especially with someone who has a lot of discomfort. I do it anyhow. You can't get real emotional intimacy any other way.

I also tell people up front when there's something I can't do, like I cannot tell my partners who I'm going to have sex with before I do it and I cannot let my partners decide who else I date.

And now I decide what to do. I have to figure out how to be compassionate but also how to navigate my needs. I hate this shit.

So I've been reading about rebuilding trust in relationships. I don't think he has been. I guess that says something.

There's a lot I like there, and maybe it'll help me figure out where my lines are around this and what to do next. It's good to have language for some of the stuff I've been feeling:

"Accumulations of trustworthy behaviour have to continue to the point where a subsequent mistake that breaches trust will be seen as an exception that proves the rule."

"How can your partner trust you if you always say yes? How can you rebuild trust if you say yes to something you don't want?"

"Do they consider the consequences of their actions?"

"Trust is comfort in your partner's presence, while distrust is unease, anxiety, and discontent. Overall, trust is willingness to be vulnerable because you know you'll be cared for, while distrust is an unwillingness to be vulnerable because you're afraid you'll get hurt"

"three dimensions of relationship trust: preductability, dependability, and faith [...] evidence of predictability and dependability are established by going through situation after situation in which your partner could potentially be secretive and selfish, but instead chose to be open and kind" (I really like the focus on kindness here)

"Letting yourself be vulnerable is the only way to discover if your partner will be responsive and caring, or will let you down again"

Well, fuck.