greenstorm | Entries tagged with doingthework

I read a meme this morning about a broken window. It's the thing that most folks have probably done whether renters or owners: a thing in the house breaks, it seems like some work to fix, it gets backburnered until it's time to move out, then you fix it in half an hour and the next person gets the benefit. If the half hour had been spent a couple years back you would have had the fixed thing all along, but that's not how folks often work.

I can be like that with my home, though I pick away at things when I have extra energy (that is, rarely).

I don't have a long tolerance like that with relationships, usually. I'm pretty proactive. I like to talk about the shape of the relationship in the beginning, bring up stuff that looks a little weird when I see it, and not let stuff accumulate or wait too long.

I get the sense a lot of folks are not like this. They prefer the wake-up call of a breakup to change something in their behaviour, so maybe they can act differently for the next person. Checking in on the relationship regularly, shifting a little thing here or there, having occasional larger repairs to keep everything smooth: I don't think it's normal practice? The poly podcast I listen to advocates for it and so the folks in that poly group talk about doing it. You don't join a poly patreon unless you're a bit of a relationship geek though.

Anyhow, because I tend to bring stuff up early, if a partner doesn't bring things up or if they'd normally wait till it's a Big Problem, it means I end up doing the work. I not only say "you're acting like this, is something amiss for you?" but also "something is amiss for me". I surface all the issues. That's... too much work.

But worse than that is time when it is too much work and I back off and everything just... accumulates. Each time something that is an easy fix gets put off and folks decide to live with a less-good relationship for awhile, that erodes trust. It makes the quality of the relationship a little less. Now maybe there are trade-offs that make it worth it for a bit... but the issues keep piling up. They do not tend to go away without a little discussion. And if they're just left, and left, and left... you end up with a lower-quality relationship and less faith that the folks involved will actually do the work to fix anything at all, and a very large pile of work.

A lot of that work is better done when you have faith in each other. If you've fixed issues with a partner before, it strengthens the base you have to work from. A stronger base means easier work.

And if the pattern is to put off fixing everything until someone threatens you with a breakup, well. There's a ton of work to do. There's little faith to support doing it, little sense of achievable it is and how nice it'll be when it's done, because there's no experience in that.

And there's a reasonable expectation that to fix the next thing, the threat of another breakup is required.

A dynamic where someone threatens a breakup to make the relationship tolerable to them is not ok. A dynamic where someone only goes relationship work because they're terrified of a breakup is not ok. I won't engage in those.

PS The meme was about mental health, about how if you're depressed or have ADHD or whatever seeking treatment before a breakdown is advisable, because then you can enjoy the benefits. I think that untreated mental health issues map very cleanly onto not being able to handle relationship work.

Sometimes life is really, really hard. But sometimes I find love and softness where I never expected it and life feels weightless for awhile.

I'd been close to functionally monogamous for awhile when I started up this most recent thing. I'd invited some folks up this spring in anticipation of Tucker being mostly-away for a couple months: I'd needed to start reintegrating into humans after my honeymoon with Threshold and my change in work hours. Coronavirus got all Tucker's stuff cancelled, including his going to see his people. He decided in there he needed to move away from this little town. And I still had my people, and turns out one who came up turned into a Thing.

On top of that, Tucker had been the one driving time apart in this relationship. He's away from this town at least one full week per month plus another month or so of travel in there, and I'd always worried about how it would feel if I were to start driving that time apart too. He has abandonment triggers. I find it hard to hold boundaries when they make someone I love sad.

So last week when Avi came up I was pretty worried. I've had so many partners be awful to me around my poly stuff: basically around them not being in control of who I see or when. I had, nor have, any intention of granting that kind of power to anyone again. Tucker and I are pretty much on the same page about wanting that in the relationship, but.

Our triggers interacted pretty bad with each other during the week. I also lost a litter of piglets, which was pretty hard. Objectively none of the interpersonal was that bad, but at the time it didn't feel great. But a bunch of pretty hopeful stuff happened at the end of the trip: he held some good boundaries and offered affection, and then we got together and had a truly wonderful discussion where we listened to each other and loved each other and it didn't have that edge of spite or hurt that I'd come to expect over the last fifteen years of relationshipping.

I came out of it feeling like I was in a relationship of equals, where when one of us slipped the other would hold fast and vice versa in a hard situation. And I felt loved, like my listening with empathy wouldn't be punished with snide asides but instead welcomed. It's pretty great, to be honest. And now I can employ my love language of "getting better with each iteration" which makes me super happy.

So there we go. It wasn't a dramatic emotionfest with a reconciliation, it was two people holding space and love for each other.

I feel pretty lucky these days.

Crossposts: https://greenstorm.livejournal.com/821718.html

So.

Every one of my relationships comes with personal work that needs to be done. If I want the person I must do the work. To be with Angus I needed to learn to be kind. To be with Josh I needed to learn to allow a partner autonomy. To be with Tucker I need to learn patience, and to hold space for feelings even when I can't fix them.

To be with Avi with any depth I'll need to learn not to be avoidant. That's one I've been nibbling at the 3edges for years but I haven't ever faced it head-on. My coping mechanism has been either to observe when I'm becoming avoidant and then to leave, or to find someone more avoidant than I am.

Factors:

I need time and space to myself and have often felt guilty about that when I'm needed. I don't know what it looks like to balance someone else's need for me and my own needs or desires; I have no model for how that's well-handled. If someone has lots of other supports the pressure on me is eased so this might be a societal issue, but still it is a real issue in this society.

I like to really super focus on my people or things sometimes. I like to dive in and immerse myself in a person or an activity. My attention is seasonal, it comes in waves. So don't even want a consistent hour a day with everyone; I want weeks on and weeks off with maybe a little connecting thread of contact through the whole.

But also.

In NRE people are super inspired by me and their lives look different. Then the NRE fades and I can no longer make people's lives better by loving them a lot. I see people attribute wonderful things in their lives to me, wonderful developments, and then... they stop. And I feel useless, like a damaging influence, like I've failed, and I don't want to be part of it anymore. But I still love the person, so I remove my presence so it stops hurting them.

It's tough for me to hold space when my actions make people unhappy. I've only recently learned I will always make people unhappy when I rub my life up against theirs, and that the goal is not to never hurt anyone but is instead to hold space when I do, and to decide how to proceed. So I figure I'm poisonous to folks' lives because I hurt them, and I spend less time in their presence to hurt them less.

I can't hand over my bodily autonomy. It's a given in our society that if you love someone you'll grant them some level of control of, or exclusive access to, your body. I can't do that; I've been told to me face many times that means I don't really love people. I believe my love is broken, is flawed, and that it can't be good for anyone. So I withdraw my presence because I don't deserve to be near my partners.

I can't be there 100% of the time for anyone. I no longer trust my ability to know when I'm really needed. If there are folks who seem like they really really need me or else their lives will fall apart, I really want to be there for them but I am terrified of letting them down that one time they really really need me. So I control expectations by never being there when needed instead; that way I can never let anyone down.

I don't trust my ability to not hurt people. I learned to defend my needs, not with open vulnerability, but by tearing down any competing needs. I try so so hard not to do this but. I'm terrified of folks who won't push back against it, who won't say "that's unacceptable, please don't treat me that way". What if I spiral back to the way I grew up relating? So I give space from folks who are bottomlessly soft and accepting because I don't want to spend my life tearing them apart.

And then once I've started avoiding I feel bad about it and avoid more, because I don't deserve the presence of someone I love when I can't be forthright about my fears to them, and instead just leave them hanging.

And it spirals. It compounds.

I've done some work on parts of this.

I've been forthright in new relationships that I won't have constant availability and that I'm cyclic. I've worked, and always will work, on holding space when I cause pain. I've tried to select partners that don't believe my style of loving is innately flawed, and I get rid of ones who do so I don't reinforce those notions. I try to be clear when I need space, to own time apart as my own thing and not a punishment for my partners; I also try to be forthright about what kind of time I like to spend so folks know what to look forward to from me, not just what they won't get.

But.

It may be time to integrate it now. No, it's definitely time to integrate it now, regardless of what else happens.

These are deep old habits that hide behind avoidance and shame. There will need to be habit-breaking exercises, maybe a weekly assessment and check-in when I'm in unsettled relationships.

It's definitely something to dig my teeth into.