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Because there are some people out there who forget the first rule in the Game Theory, Tit For Tat*, and assume from the outset that whatever I said must have been meant in the worst interpretation of my words possible, I want to expand just a little on my joke at the end of the latest episode of Poly Weekly.
At the end, we strayed into the concept of individuality within a relationship and how some people tend to lose their individuality or sense of themselves and instead, merge completely into a relationship, only to be devastated when that relationship ends.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tacit said that he would like to think that it wasn't impossible to retain one's individuality while being in a relationship. Clearly, as one who holds so fiercely to my individuality and independence as I do, I agree that it's possible. But I also think that an awful lot of people seem to think, feel, or believe that it's difficult or undesirable to do so. Phrases like "better half" are indicative of a societal mindset that we are not full people on our own, but partial people, only complete once we join with another person.
As most people here should know by now, I have a rather crass or base sort of speech style, and in person, it's even worse. I'm a stagehand, I hang around with stagehands. I drop my gs at the ends of words, I use slang, and I use a lot of cuss words. Basically, I sound like a construction worker. I also use hyperbole when I'm making a joke or telling an anecdote to sort of lighten the mood.
So, whentacit said that, I responded with "of course it's possible, but I'd betcha money it's the minority". cunningminx responded that she's known a lot of monogamous women in particular who fall into that trap of losing themselves in a relationship, then when it's over, they have no sense of who they are and they immediately jump into another relationship without taking time to be just themselves or to learn to survive alone. So I pointed out that a lot of males I have known do the same thing, so I don't think it's a gender thing.
But what I said was, "a lot of my male coworkers do the same thing and it drives me up the friggin' wall! Cuz they all keep coming to me when they break up with someone 'oh my god what am I gonna do?' Be alone! For a little while! Learn how to fold your own fricken' underwear, please!"
So I was concerned that my throw-away comment would be taken out of context. I want to state clearly and explicitly that I am not talking about the pain that comes from the loss of a relationship and that I don't actually say or think that a person should just "get over it" when they break up with someone. I am referring ONLY to the issue of what does a person do with themselves now that they don't have a partner anymore because they have no concept of who they are other than "Mary's boyfriend" or "Jack's wife". These are people or situations where grown adults don't know how to do things like pay the electric bill on time or find food for themselves, or even have basic laundry skills because someone always did it for them.
The joke was not meant to be insensitive of the pain that comes from a broken relationship, but was frustration at the tragedy that comes when a relationship ends and the individuals have so little sense of themselves that they can't even care for themselves.
I've written before about my grandmother who, when my grandfather died, did not know where the checkbook was kept, did not know how bills were paid, and did not even know how to operate a telephone because my grandfather always did it for her. He answered the phone and he dialed the outgoing calls, and then just handed her the handset when it was her turn to talk. This is a travesty. The woman cannot care for herself and is now shuttled around from house to house as her adult children attempt to care for her.
The sad part is that I see this all the time, in men and women, in old and young people. Astacit said earlier in the episode, you can walk out the front door one day and the number 32 bus loses its brakes and suddenly you're alone and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself against things like that happening. Someone who is grieving over the loss of their partner, either through death or through a breakup, should not have to compound the heartache with a fear of basic survival. There are a few basic skills that every adult, who is not physically incapable of learning, should learn to do even if they have a partner who performs that task for them. Every adult should contemplate how they will survive if they find themselves without their partner and, if possible, every adult should actually have the opportunity to try it. And I say "opportunity" because it is one.
Learning these types of skills does more than just knowing how to write a check or lookup the phone number to the water company does on their own. Learning these skills comes with 2 additional benefits over and above mere survival should one find oneself without one's partner. First, it is not necessary to master every single survival skill you can think of, just in case the apocalypse happens (although I'm a big fan of attempting to learn as many of those as you can, y'know, just in case). But learning these kinds of skills actually gives people confidence, the confidence of the knowledge that we *can* do something if we need to. As my first lighting instructor told us on the first day of class, it's not what you know, it's whether you know how to learn what you need to know.
I'll give an example. I learned how to start a campfire using only sticks and a knife when I was in high school. It's a pain in the ass, but I learned how to do it. I haven't yet needed that skill, and I seriously doubt I ever will, especially since I never go camping anymore. But learning how to start a fire taught me something more valuable than just how to start a fire. It taught me that I was ABLE to learn how to start a fire. That means that if I ever find myself in a situation in which I need to learn a new skill, I feel confident that I can learn it. I am not afraid to be thrown in a new situation, and my ability to learn those necessary skills means that I actually have a better chance at learning it simply because I assume I can learn it. Thinking that you can't learn something (when you're afraid, not when you actually have an impediment) is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But I can guarantee that I will, someday, be thrown into a new situation where I will not be familiar or have the skills necessary to handle it. I don't need them. I need the confidence that I can learn the skills and the skill I have already learned of how to learn new tricks.
My mother is an intelligent lady. But she is often crippled by fear of new things. She worked for years for an employer who put her down and held her back. As late as the '90s, he refused to allow a fax machine into the office and my mother, his secretary, had to go down the hall to a neighboring company and use their fax machine to conduct their business. He grudgingly allowed her the use of a DOS computer to handle the accounting, since she did that too. But my mother was convinced that she could not keep up with technology and this was the best job she could get with her skills. She was underpaid, overworked, and under-appreciated.
After years of family begging her to find another job, my mom's friend convinced her to apply to the city where she worked for a similar position. It required some computer knowledge, but by that time, we had a computer at home and I excelled at the basic office programs she was expected to know. My mom's friend convinced her by explaining that the worst that could happen was that she wouldn't get the job and nothing would change. But actually, that wasn't the worst. The worst thing that could happen would be that my mother wouldn't get the job and her fears of being worthless and stupid would be confirmed. And that's really what held her back - she was afraid to fail and she was afraid to be proven that she was a failure. So, she stayed at her dead-end job for years.
But thankfully, we all prevailed and my mom took the first test for the position. She did very well and was called back for the second test. Then the in-person interview. And then she was offered the job. It paid better, had better benefits, and better hours, plus the supervisor was nicer. My mom's confidence went up, she finally started losing weight on her Weight Watchers program, she was happier, my dad was happier, and she didn't bitch at me and my sister so much. Now, when a promotion offer comes up at work, she goes for it. She doesn't always get it, but she occasionally does, and she's overall happier with life.
The other benefit to learning to be an independent person and how to survive on your own is that it makes you a better partner. Being an individual, knowing who you are and being secure in who you are, makes you more attractive to those around you and makes you a better partner in your relationships - better able to participate more fully in the relationship. The better you know yourself, and the more confident you are in who you are, the more rich and fulfilling you will find your relationships and the more you will add to your relationships so that your partners' experiences with you will be more rich also.
There's an old trope that we only find relationship partners when we aren't looking for them. But that's not exactly true. Someone who is insecure and afraid of being alone, who gives up out of a despondent depression that he is not worthy of anyone's love and affection is not likely to find a partner just when he gave up. Of course, it happens occasionally, but it's not really a recipe for successful relationships in general.
The more accurate line is that someone who is an interesting person, whose life is rich and fulfilling all by themselves, makes an attractive partner because they are an interesting person whose life is rich and fulfilling. People like that tend not to go seeking relationship partners very often because their lives are rich and fulfilling. But they are probably open to experiencing a relationship, and that openness to new experiences combined with confidence, self-assurance, lots of interests, etc. draws other people to them with very little effort on the person's behalf. A person with a lot of interests and who is self-confident tends to go out and do things where they might meet people, and, having met them, tends to do things with those people, who have now formed relationships based on shared interests.
Of course, exceptions to the rule do happen, but when you look at someone who seems to not try at all to seek romantic partners end up with people falling at his or her feet and whose relationships seem healthy and happy, the odds are likely that the reason is because that person is self-confident, sure of who he or she is, whose life is filled with interesting things, subjects, and activities, and who treats their partners with dignity and respect, not as a savior or housemaid or substitute parent to care for them or prop up their own flagging self-esteem.
So when I quip "learn how to fold your own fucking underwear, geez!", I am speaking ONLY about developing a person's individuality, independence, and sense of self. I do not mean to downplay or disregard the emotional loss of a relationship. That is painful, and different people have different ways of coping with it, and the recovery time will vary from person to person (and relationship end to relationship end even for the same person).
Although, even the pain of losing a relationship can sometimes be lessened by positive and proactive steps to regaining one's independence.
* Tit For Tat is a game theory that was used in a computerized Prisoner's Dilemma game. In short, the scenario is 2 players, where if both players cooperate, they both gain something, but if one player cooperates and one player defects, the player who cooperates loses and the player who defects gains. Contestants were required to write a computer program to play the game against another computer program. The one that won consistently was a program called Tit For Tat. It had very simple rules: On the first round, cooperate. On the next round, do whatever the opponent did last round. People tend to "do whatever the opponent did last time" in real life versions of Tit For Tat, but then tend to forget step 1, which is start out by cooperating. For some reason, that's really hard for people to do.
At the end, we strayed into the concept of individuality within a relationship and how some people tend to lose their individuality or sense of themselves and instead, merge completely into a relationship, only to be devastated when that relationship ends.
tacit said that he would like to think that it wasn't impossible to retain one's individuality while being in a relationship. Clearly, as one who holds so fiercely to my individuality and independence as I do, I agree that it's possible. But I also think that an awful lot of people seem to think, feel, or believe that it's difficult or undesirable to do so. Phrases like "better half" are indicative of a societal mindset that we are not full people on our own, but partial people, only complete once we join with another person.As most people here should know by now, I have a rather crass or base sort of speech style, and in person, it's even worse. I'm a stagehand, I hang around with stagehands. I drop my gs at the ends of words, I use slang, and I use a lot of cuss words. Basically, I sound like a construction worker. I also use hyperbole when I'm making a joke or telling an anecdote to sort of lighten the mood.
So, when
tacit said that, I responded with "of course it's possible, but I'd betcha money it's the minority". cunningminx responded that she's known a lot of monogamous women in particular who fall into that trap of losing themselves in a relationship, then when it's over, they have no sense of who they are and they immediately jump into another relationship without taking time to be just themselves or to learn to survive alone. So I pointed out that a lot of males I have known do the same thing, so I don't think it's a gender thing.But what I said was, "a lot of my male coworkers do the same thing and it drives me up the friggin' wall! Cuz they all keep coming to me when they break up with someone 'oh my god what am I gonna do?' Be alone! For a little while! Learn how to fold your own fricken' underwear, please!"
So I was concerned that my throw-away comment would be taken out of context. I want to state clearly and explicitly that I am not talking about the pain that comes from the loss of a relationship and that I don't actually say or think that a person should just "get over it" when they break up with someone. I am referring ONLY to the issue of what does a person do with themselves now that they don't have a partner anymore because they have no concept of who they are other than "Mary's boyfriend" or "Jack's wife". These are people or situations where grown adults don't know how to do things like pay the electric bill on time or find food for themselves, or even have basic laundry skills because someone always did it for them.
The joke was not meant to be insensitive of the pain that comes from a broken relationship, but was frustration at the tragedy that comes when a relationship ends and the individuals have so little sense of themselves that they can't even care for themselves.
I've written before about my grandmother who, when my grandfather died, did not know where the checkbook was kept, did not know how bills were paid, and did not even know how to operate a telephone because my grandfather always did it for her. He answered the phone and he dialed the outgoing calls, and then just handed her the handset when it was her turn to talk. This is a travesty. The woman cannot care for herself and is now shuttled around from house to house as her adult children attempt to care for her.
The sad part is that I see this all the time, in men and women, in old and young people. As
tacit said earlier in the episode, you can walk out the front door one day and the number 32 bus loses its brakes and suddenly you're alone and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself against things like that happening. Someone who is grieving over the loss of their partner, either through death or through a breakup, should not have to compound the heartache with a fear of basic survival. There are a few basic skills that every adult, who is not physically incapable of learning, should learn to do even if they have a partner who performs that task for them. Every adult should contemplate how they will survive if they find themselves without their partner and, if possible, every adult should actually have the opportunity to try it. And I say "opportunity" because it is one.Learning these types of skills does more than just knowing how to write a check or lookup the phone number to the water company does on their own. Learning these skills comes with 2 additional benefits over and above mere survival should one find oneself without one's partner. First, it is not necessary to master every single survival skill you can think of, just in case the apocalypse happens (although I'm a big fan of attempting to learn as many of those as you can, y'know, just in case). But learning these kinds of skills actually gives people confidence, the confidence of the knowledge that we *can* do something if we need to. As my first lighting instructor told us on the first day of class, it's not what you know, it's whether you know how to learn what you need to know.
I'll give an example. I learned how to start a campfire using only sticks and a knife when I was in high school. It's a pain in the ass, but I learned how to do it. I haven't yet needed that skill, and I seriously doubt I ever will, especially since I never go camping anymore. But learning how to start a fire taught me something more valuable than just how to start a fire. It taught me that I was ABLE to learn how to start a fire. That means that if I ever find myself in a situation in which I need to learn a new skill, I feel confident that I can learn it. I am not afraid to be thrown in a new situation, and my ability to learn those necessary skills means that I actually have a better chance at learning it simply because I assume I can learn it. Thinking that you can't learn something (when you're afraid, not when you actually have an impediment) is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But I can guarantee that I will, someday, be thrown into a new situation where I will not be familiar or have the skills necessary to handle it. I don't need them. I need the confidence that I can learn the skills and the skill I have already learned of how to learn new tricks.
My mother is an intelligent lady. But she is often crippled by fear of new things. She worked for years for an employer who put her down and held her back. As late as the '90s, he refused to allow a fax machine into the office and my mother, his secretary, had to go down the hall to a neighboring company and use their fax machine to conduct their business. He grudgingly allowed her the use of a DOS computer to handle the accounting, since she did that too. But my mother was convinced that she could not keep up with technology and this was the best job she could get with her skills. She was underpaid, overworked, and under-appreciated.
After years of family begging her to find another job, my mom's friend convinced her to apply to the city where she worked for a similar position. It required some computer knowledge, but by that time, we had a computer at home and I excelled at the basic office programs she was expected to know. My mom's friend convinced her by explaining that the worst that could happen was that she wouldn't get the job and nothing would change. But actually, that wasn't the worst. The worst thing that could happen would be that my mother wouldn't get the job and her fears of being worthless and stupid would be confirmed. And that's really what held her back - she was afraid to fail and she was afraid to be proven that she was a failure. So, she stayed at her dead-end job for years.
But thankfully, we all prevailed and my mom took the first test for the position. She did very well and was called back for the second test. Then the in-person interview. And then she was offered the job. It paid better, had better benefits, and better hours, plus the supervisor was nicer. My mom's confidence went up, she finally started losing weight on her Weight Watchers program, she was happier, my dad was happier, and she didn't bitch at me and my sister so much. Now, when a promotion offer comes up at work, she goes for it. She doesn't always get it, but she occasionally does, and she's overall happier with life.
The other benefit to learning to be an independent person and how to survive on your own is that it makes you a better partner. Being an individual, knowing who you are and being secure in who you are, makes you more attractive to those around you and makes you a better partner in your relationships - better able to participate more fully in the relationship. The better you know yourself, and the more confident you are in who you are, the more rich and fulfilling you will find your relationships and the more you will add to your relationships so that your partners' experiences with you will be more rich also.
There's an old trope that we only find relationship partners when we aren't looking for them. But that's not exactly true. Someone who is insecure and afraid of being alone, who gives up out of a despondent depression that he is not worthy of anyone's love and affection is not likely to find a partner just when he gave up. Of course, it happens occasionally, but it's not really a recipe for successful relationships in general.
The more accurate line is that someone who is an interesting person, whose life is rich and fulfilling all by themselves, makes an attractive partner because they are an interesting person whose life is rich and fulfilling. People like that tend not to go seeking relationship partners very often because their lives are rich and fulfilling. But they are probably open to experiencing a relationship, and that openness to new experiences combined with confidence, self-assurance, lots of interests, etc. draws other people to them with very little effort on the person's behalf. A person with a lot of interests and who is self-confident tends to go out and do things where they might meet people, and, having met them, tends to do things with those people, who have now formed relationships based on shared interests.
Of course, exceptions to the rule do happen, but when you look at someone who seems to not try at all to seek romantic partners end up with people falling at his or her feet and whose relationships seem healthy and happy, the odds are likely that the reason is because that person is self-confident, sure of who he or she is, whose life is filled with interesting things, subjects, and activities, and who treats their partners with dignity and respect, not as a savior or housemaid or substitute parent to care for them or prop up their own flagging self-esteem.
So when I quip "learn how to fold your own fucking underwear, geez!", I am speaking ONLY about developing a person's individuality, independence, and sense of self. I do not mean to downplay or disregard the emotional loss of a relationship. That is painful, and different people have different ways of coping with it, and the recovery time will vary from person to person (and relationship end to relationship end even for the same person).
Although, even the pain of losing a relationship can sometimes be lessened by positive and proactive steps to regaining one's independence.
* Tit For Tat is a game theory that was used in a computerized Prisoner's Dilemma game. In short, the scenario is 2 players, where if both players cooperate, they both gain something, but if one player cooperates and one player defects, the player who cooperates loses and the player who defects gains. Contestants were required to write a computer program to play the game against another computer program. The one that won consistently was a program called Tit For Tat. It had very simple rules: On the first round, cooperate. On the next round, do whatever the opponent did last round. People tend to "do whatever the opponent did last time" in real life versions of Tit For Tat, but then tend to forget step 1, which is start out by cooperating. For some reason, that's really hard for people to do.
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no subject
Date: 8/23/10 02:08 pm (UTC)From:"Taco" comes over here and gets lessons in balancing a checkbook, where to go for various governmental needs, cooking, budgeting for the future, and generally - how to be an independent woman somewhere other than this small town/area we currently live in. Hopefully, she will see our kiddo learning the skills needed to survive in a city and emulate her and the get the hell out! She has gained confidence already, just because she has gained skills she didn't even know existed. Thankfully, that confidence (and repugnance) is helping to keep her from the path of her sister...
no subject
Date: 8/23/10 07:19 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/23/10 02:29 pm (UTC)From:That hits so close to home (http://petite-lambda.livejournal.com/2935.html). You all did an awesome job with your mother. It's so wonderful she has people like you in her life, who could help her overcome herself and become a better, happier person.
no subject
Date: 8/23/10 07:29 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/24/10 10:56 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/23/10 07:21 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/23/10 07:49 pm (UTC)From:When I find myself thinking or acting like someone I don't like, my solution is to change who I am (or, at least, that part of me), but apparently that's hard, or uncommon, or frightening. Sometimes we wrap our self-identities around even those parts of us that we don't like, that are broken, that are "flawed". Sometimes, there is a sense of comfort, and an illusion of control, in clinging to our self-identity as broken.
A former partner of mine is so convinced that he's a horrible person, that no one will love him once they see the "real" him, that he creates a persona he thinks is close, but more likable, for his partners and is then "on stage" every moment of his relationships. When I discovered this, I urged him to get some kind of help in becoming a more secure person. I didn't care what, it could be therapy, it could be a friend he can talk to, whatever. His response was to turn and attack me for trying to "change" him. He explained, in a convoluted sort of way, that if he got rid of his insecurities, he wouldn't be "him" anymore. I said that's true, he'd be a happier, more secure, more relaxed version of him, who didn't lose girlfriends on the rationale that if he broke up with them first, they couldn't do it to him. But he refused to do anything that would change who he was, even if that meant he spent his life in fear and frustration. His philosophy is that life is pain and suffering, with only fleeting moments of pleasure, but no real happiness. And he doesn't want to let go of that outlook because it might mean that he is wrong. It's very sad.
It's actually a fairly well-known phenomenon that people will cling to their mistakes the harder you push them because to give them up means that they would have "wasted" all that time they spent being wrong. We see this in pseudoscience debates all the time. I know that I continue to feel a sense of embarrassment every time I think of all the time I spent championing chiropractic or advocating against "Western Medicine", or even telling people that one former partner and I had a telepathic connection because we could "feel" each other. Letting go of those beliefs was hard because it meant I was wrong, and no one likes to be wrong.
I don't like pickles (i.e. my wife sleeping with other men). But I'm afraid to try eating a pickle because then I might learn that I do like pickles, and then I'd want to eat pickles, and that would be terrible because I don't like pickles.
I hope your friend finds something to help her :-)
no subject
Date: 8/24/10 10:59 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/24/10 05:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 9/12/10 08:46 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 9/13/10 12:21 am (UTC)From:That's what Empty Nest Syndrome is mostly about - the role of Parent has ended and the parent now doesn't know who they are if they are not the Parent because they have invested so much of their identity into that role. So they have to take time to rediscover who they are as an individual that is not primarily identified as someone's parent.
Yes, using one word while meaning the other is profoundly annoying, at least to me. But I think, in this case, not only did I not use the words completely interchangeably, but I do think they are very closely related to the point I was making and therefore can both be used in this context, depending on the specifics of the statement.