joreth: (feminism)
Country music has a bad reputation for being pretty misogynistic.  The current crop of pop country is especially bad about that, sparking an epidemic of songs about girls in tight shorts who do nothing but sit in the cabs of pickup trucks.  But like most genres, country is actually pretty diverse and has a prestigious lineage of feminist music.  I've been building a playlist of "feminist" country music and I'm up to more than 50 songs so far.

Unlike Hollywood, however, this list is nuanced and shaded.  The movies would have us believe that there are only 2 kinds of feminist representations - the badass Strong Female Character who can kick ass (except when she needs to be rescued by the leading man, of course) and has no other personality, and the man-hating harpy.

But this playlist shows many sides to the "strong woman".  It's not all about women beating up their abusive men in retribution, although those songs exist too.  In many places, it intersects with classism (although, to be fair, it's still predominantly white, as is the larger country genre, but there is one song in there about interracial relationships at a time when they were still taboo), where sometimes some ideals have to be sacrificed for the more immediate need of survival. Sometimes it's not about triumphing at all, but about existing in a misogynistic society.

There are tales of revenge, of liberation, of parenthood, of singlehood, of being caged, of sexual freedom, of running out of choices, of standing up to authority, of making the system work in her favor, of rejecting her circumstances, of accepting her circumstances and making the best of them, of birth control and abortion and sex, of career options and motherhood choices, of sorrow and pride and love and heartache and loneliness and optimism.

They are all stories of being a woman. This is what feminism looks like.

joreth: (boxed in)
I wrote this post on Facebook 5 years ago. It turned out to be disturbingly prescient for a relationship I started after this post was written and ended more or less for this reason.


Me: I need this information to assess where I should place my boundaries.

Them: It hurts me that you would even ask me about that!  Don't you trust me to tell you?  Your boundaries make me feel bad.  Don't you care about me to let me in?

Me: Sure, it's cool, I'll just do the emotional labor so that you don't feel bad.
If people wonder why I'm so standoffish and hard to get to know on an interpersonal level, this is why.  It's easier to keep people at a distance than get into fights over who should be shouldering the burden of emotional labor.  If I push, I'm a nag or I'm disrespectful of someone's hurt feelings.  If I don't push, then I don't feel safe so I place my boundaries farther out and then I'm "cold" and "emotionally distant".  Which hurts their feelings.

When I was a portrait photographer in a studio, I used to have lots of clients bringing in their toddlers and babies.  It was my job to make their bratty, cranky, frightened children look like the advertisement photos of baby models who were deliberately selected for having traits conducive to producing flattering portraits (including temperament and parents whose patience was increased by a paycheck).  I would spend more time than I was supposed to, patiently waiting for the parents to get their kids to stop crying and fussing.

Every single session, the parents would exclaim how patient I was!  How did I do it?!  What I couldn't tell them was that I had built a barrier in my head to tune them out.  I just ... spaced.  I did not notice the passage of time and I wasn't really paying them any attention.  I just let my muscle memory control the equipment and make the noises that got kids to look and smile.  It's an old trick I adapted from getting through assaults by bullies as a kid - tune out, mentally leave the body, make the right mouth noises to get the preferred response.

That kind of emotional labor management takes a toll.  I couldn't express any irritation or annoyance at the client and I couldn't leave to let them handle the kid and the photographing on their own.  So I learned to compartmentalize and distance myself while going through the physical motions.

But the price?  I now hate kids.  I used to like them.  I was a babysitter, a math tutor, and a mentor and counselor.  I originally went to college to get a counseling degree so that I could specialize in problem teens from problematic homes.  Now I want nothing at all to do with kids unless it's an environment where I am teaching them something specific and I can give up on them the moment I am no longer feeling heard or helpful.

That's not what made me not want children, btw.  I was already childfree-by-choice at that time.  I just still liked them back then.  Now I can only stand certain specific kids who are very good-natured, interested in my interests, and able to function independently (as in, introverted and not dependent on my attention).

So, yeah, I can do the emotional labor.  But the cost is high.  Doing the labor for too long, to the point where I have to shut myself off from empathy to bear the consequences of doing that labor, results in my emotional distance.  That's what happened with my abusive fiance.  He wanted a caretaker, not an equal partner.  Everything I did to remain an independent person "hurt" him. I bent a little in the beginning, as I believe partners are supposed to do for each other.  But eventually catering to his feelings while putting my own on the back burner took its toll.
 
So I shut down.  In the end, I was able to watch him dispassionately as he lay on the concrete floor of our garage, supposedly knocked unconscious by walking into a low-hanging pipe conveniently in the middle of an argument.  And then calmly walk upstairs without even a glance behind me to see if he was following.  He described my breakup with him as "cold", like a machine.  I had run out labor chips to give, even to feel compassion as I was breaking his heart.

Of course, I didn't recognize his behaviour as "abuse" until years later, or I might have bothered to get angry instead of remaining cold.  Point is, emotional labor isn't free, and if you don't pay for it in cash or a suitably equitable exchange, it will be paid by some other means.  I don't mean we should never do emotional labor for anyone, just that it needs to be compensated for because it will be paid one way or another.

Since this method has served to end several relationships with abusive men where I never felt "abused" because it didn't "stick" (I just thought of them as assholes), I don't feel much incentive to change it, even though it would probably be better to either not take on so much emotional labor in the first place (which is hard not to do because I *want* to do some forms of emotional labor in the beginning as an expression of love back when I'm still expecting a reciprocal exchange) or to leave or change things before I run out of fucks to give.

But I do eventually run out of fucks to give and I do eventually stop taking on too much emotional labor.  And it always seems to surprise people when I do.  Because I was so accommodating before so that I wouldn't push "too hard" or seem "too selfish".  But that always comes with a price.  People are often surprised to learn that.
joreth: (boxed in)
From April 30, 2019

Y'know what? Breakups are not any easier when you're poly, and not even when you have casual hookups.

I knew before we started that my FWB and I had an expiration date. I knew that it was always going to be literally good friends with some extra and then back to friends. I "knew the deal going in" and it was always a lower emotional involvement than other relationships.

By mutual decision and a calm discussion, it still fucking hurts to lose a relationship. Having existing partners, having a really good date recently with a new person and feeling some NRE and hope about its potential, knowing ahead of time that the end was coming, knowing ahead of time that it was always temporary ... none of this stops it from hurting.

Poly people are still people. Loss isn't any less painful just because we have other partners. Loss also isn't any less painful just because we accepted the price when we accepted the deal.

I'm fine. I'll heal. But today I'm going to be sad.
joreth: (boxed in)
www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-considered-being-dumped-as-a-blessing/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever considered being 'dumped' as a blessing?

A.
Yes. I was dating a man who was abusing his other partners. I do not feel that he abused me, but only because I, coincidentally, hadn’t done anything that triggered his insecurities that led him to abuse his partners.

Abuse comes from a belief that it is OK to control another person. At the time, how I behaved was exactly what he wanted from me. So he had no need to attempt to exert his control over me because I was already doing what he wanted.

Then he got another girlfriend, and shortly thereafter she started dating someone else. That triggered his insecurities. So he attempted to control her to assuage his insecurities. She resisted that control, so he tried harder to control her, and it spiraled into abuse.

By the time I finally saw what was going on between them, *really* saw what was happening and not just believing what he was telling me about their relationship, I was in a position to be open and available to new relationships myself.

But because I saw how he was treating her, I got angry at him. I decided that I would not coddle him by making any concessions in my new relationship to make him feel better. I was just going to throw him in the deep end by allowing my new relationship to progress however it wanted, with no feedback from him.

He *really* did not like that. He had never before had a partner who didn’t give him a voice in her other relationships. He felt personally betrayed because his vote in my other relationship didn’t count.

Because his relationship with his victim had escalated to a ridiculous level, *all* of his other relationships were suffering. So he was constantly putting out fires - first trying to rein in his victim, and then trying to soothe his other partners (who he had already cowed into submission) who felt neglected by how much time he was spending reining in his victim.

Every relationship in his life was falling apart because of his one partner who kept resisting his control. His other partners had long since given up control to him, and I (until that point) hadn’t needed any controlling.

So his reserves were low. He had no more patience and no more ability to handle a partner who resisted him. And then I came along and did something that freaked him out (I started dating someone new), and not only did I resist his control, but I did so easily and without any conciliatory or apologetic attitude about how my resistance to his control might make him feel.

His victim, who did not realize he was trying to control her and all the drama was because she knew something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out what - she would resist his control but she would feel really badly about it because she couldn’t seem to understand why she kept "hurting" him.

I, however, had no such confusion. When he attempted to insert himself into my other relationship, I said plainly and immediately that he had absolutely no say in the matter of what I did with my body or time or emotions and he certainly did not get a say in what my new partner could do with his own body, time, or emotions.

I stood my ground. This shocked him so much that he dumped me with almost no build-up, surprising everyone around us. To all of us in the network, it seemed that my relationship with him was the only stable one he had. We didn’t have any of the constant drama that came with his victim trying to figure out why the gaslights kept changing levels (that’s a reference to the movie from whence the term "gaslighting" comes), and we didn’t have any of the arguments that he had with his other partners about how they never got to see him anymore because all of his time was taken up trying to manage his victim.

He and I were wickedly compatible in almost every way. We were even more compatible in some ways than he was with his wife of 20 years. So, to everyone in our network, our breakup came out of nowhere. It took one email exchange over this new partner of mine, where he insisted he should have a say in our relationship and I said absolutely not, and then he dumped me.

At the time I was hurt and angry. I had just lost my place to live and had to be "rescued" by a friend offering me a spare room, only to have that "friend" torture my cats while I was away resulting in both of their deaths. That was the 2nd of what turned out to be 7 moves in 2 years. I lost my housing, my cats, my boyfriend, and even my new partner decided to move to another state right when we got started (although we did not break up), and even my local community staged a coup against me when I tried to oust a guy who was beating his wife so I lost my entire social network too.

It was too much for me all at once, and I fell into a suicidal depression. A few months after that breakup, his victim finally escaped and she and I had several opportunities to talk about our experiences with him. I learned about a lot of things that happened in their relationship that I hadn’t known at the time because of the way that he controlled the narrative of their relationship.

So, in hindsight, him dumping me was probably the best thing he could have done. If he hadn’t, I would have stayed with him and continued to try and work with him on getting past his insecurities when he actually had no intention of getting past them because they were too valuable as a tool he could use to control his partners. I would have continued to minimize his abuse of his victim because I couldn’t see her side as clearly while I was romantically linked to him (although I had begun to see more of the truth before we broke up).

I was not ready to leave him, so I would have stayed with an abuser for much longer had he not made the decision for me. And I’m glad now that it didn’t drag on longer. I didn’t get out of there without scars. I’m not sure how bad the damage would be if I had stayed longer. As it is, I’m still not fully recovered. So I can only be grateful that he didn’t string me along any further.

When I look back over my past and think "would I really erase this from my history if I could?", most of the time I don’t think I would. As many people have said in other contexts, the experiences I went through have made me who I am today. Going back in time and preventing myself from having some of those bad experiences means I would not have come out the other side as the person I am now. So a lot of those experiences I would go through anyway.

But not this one. I would erase this entire relationship if I could. I would erase all the good memories along with the bad ones. I would do this for a couple of reasons - 1) I don’t like having all those happy memories tarnished by the after-knowledge that he was ultimately abusive and he fundamentally does not believe his partners can make decisions for themselves; and 2) I do not think that he deserves the memories of our good times or of my intimacy and vulnerability. I would take that away from him if I could.

Since I can’t rewrite history, all I can do is be grateful that he ended our relationship before I would have.
joreth: (sad)
www.quora.com/What-is-a-common-sign-that-a-marriage-relationship-is-heading-for-a-breakup-which-many-people-often-neglect-or-dont-know/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a common sign that a marriage/relationship is heading for a breakup, which many people often neglect or don't know?

A.
Dr. John Gottman and his team of relationship researchers have identified what they call the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse. When these 4 traits appear in a romantic relationship, Dr. Gottman can predict the demise of said relationship with a ridiculously high degree of accuracy (most reports are over 90% accuracy). So if your relationship has these 4 things, it's probably doomed.

The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

2 things that most people don't know is that 1) just having conflict in a relationship or feeling anger is NOT, by itself, a sign that a relationship is heading for a breakup - people have arguments and conflict and feel anger and that's just the nature of interacting with other people in intimate settings, so just having arguments doesn't mean that the relationship is unhealthy or about to end, but that 2) there is a ratio of how *often* or how *much* conflict or unhappiness a relationship can withstand and it's much lower than most people think.

In a relationship, Gottman and other researchers also discovered that there should be a ratio of "negative interactions" to "positive interactions" overall in a relationship that is 1:5. That means that for every bit of ";negative interactions", there should be 5 bits of "positive interactions". Lots of people think that they should stay in relationships until the happiness ratio tips over to where you are unhappy more than half of the time. That's not true.

The Magic Relationship Ratio, According to Science - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-magic-relationship-ratio-according-science/

So, the predictors of the ending of a romantic relationship are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Anger is not among the predictors. If you have these criteria in your relationship more often than 1:5 compared to positive interactions, the relationship is probably on its way out.
joreth: (being wise)
www.quora.com/When-doesn-t-a-pre-nup-work/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q.   When doesn't a pre-nup work?
Joreth Innkeeper, is currently writing a book with her ex on how to break up

A.  Times when a pre-nup doesn't work:
  1. When you don't have one / haven't signed one / don't use a proper pre-nup form, etc

  2. When you don't disclose or include something so that it's not accounted for in the contract and/or it can be contested in court because it wasn't disclosed or included.

  3. When you focus only on tangible or liquid assets and then you start a business with your spouse but don't include any exit strategies on how to divide up the business in case of divorce.

  4. When you're talking about things with emotional value, sentimental value, or intangible things like the well-being of the participants.

  5. When it's clearly one-sided and a judge rules that it's not a fair protection of both parties and is therefore null.

  6. When it's signed under duress or false pretenses or otherwise one or more signer is not eligible by law to sign a legal contract.

  7. When it's not valid in the region or jurisdiction under which you are trying to enact it.
Since I am not a lawyer, do not take anything I've said as legal advice. I may be wrong, and I am certainly not familiar with contract law in any region I haven’t tried to engage in contracts under.

GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP. GET A PRENUP.

I can’t stress that enough. I don’t care how much in love you are or how pure of heart you both are, if you are going to entangle yourself legally with another person, get your exit strategy down on paper in the most legal way possible, and do it while y’all still like each other so that it’s written as fair as possible.

No one has ever walked down the aisle and thought “I bet this person whom I love dearly with all my heart and am choosing today to commit to for the rest of my life will probably turn out to be a raging douchebag and someday try to leave me penniless.” Every single person in divorce court, at one time, thought the person they are now squaring off across the table with was a decent human being.

If you turn out to be right, and your spouse is a decent human being, then this is just a piece of paper that probably does nothing more than spark a conversation between the two of you about entangled finances, turning some implicit assumptions into an explicit discussion about expectations and intentions. Yay!

If you turn out to be wrong, this document could save your ass, or even your life. And you don’t want to wait until after you discover that you were wrong to also discover that you have no safety net.

By the way, there is also such a thing as a “post-nup”, although that’s not what it’s called (it’s not technically called a “pre-nup” either, but most people know what you’re talking about when you say that). It’s basically the exact same thing as a prenup except all the verb tenses reflect the fact that the marriage has already happened.

Like a will, the very last document signed is the one that rules in the courts. It is to your benefit to revisit your prenup after the wedding periodically and update it as a post-nup with however your assets have changed over time.

And if you got married without a prenup, you can still get a post-nup. Just like responsible adults have hard conversations about wills and what to do with assets in case of death, you should have this conversation with your partners in case of separation too.

This doesn’t have to be framed as “so, I’ve been thinking about divorcing you, and I thought we should hammer out the details early.” Nobody says “so, I’ve been thinking about intentionally dying in the next few years and I thought we should work out how to handle my arrangements now.”

Just be a grown-up and sit down to discuss worst-case scenarios with your partner - you know, that person who you pledged yourself to supposedly because they were your “best friend”? If you can’t have these kinds of hard conversations with your life partner, your helpmeet, your “best friend”, your soulmate, well … perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen this one to marry and these documents are more necessary than you think.
joreth: (polyamory)
www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-be-in-an-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever been in or seen an open relationship that worked?

A.
These are always such weird questions.  Even though the divorce rate for monogamy is around 50% (for first marriages, it’s way higher for second and third marriages) and basically 100% for every relationship prior to the marriage, and even though abuse runs rampant in monogamous relationships, and we all know and have all been in relationships that ended and that the people came away with regretting ever getting into, nobody asks “have you ever been in or seen a closed or monogamous relationship that worked?”

And, as someone else already pointed out, you have to define what you mean by “worked”.  Some people think that the only marker for a “successful” relationship is if somebody dies.  Personally, I think that’s rather gruesome, but some people seem to think that one person outliving the other, no matter how happy or unhappy the people were before death claimed one of them, makes a relationship “successful”.

I’m of the camp that thinks any relationship that makes the participants feel content or satisfied with the relationship for the majority of the time together and/or accomplishes the goals they set out together, is a successful relationship, no matter how long it lasted.  As the saying goes - sometimes people come together for a reason or a season in addition to those that happen for a lifetime.

If I have a relationship with someone and we have certain goals or purposes for our relationship, and we accomplish them and then go our separate ways, happy with the outcome, that relationship would be successful to me.  If I have a relationship with someone that lasts only for a short time, and life then takes us in different directions, but we were happy and satisfied with our relationship while we were in it and content with the way that it ended even if we are also saddened by the separation, that would also count as a successful relationship to me.

By those measures, I’d say about half of my relationships since I started having polyamorous relationships have been successful, including the relationship I have with my spouse, who I’ve been with for over 14 years now (and in an openly poly relationship from the beginning).  One of my former romantic partners has transitioned to a platonic friend and business partner and we are writing a book together on how to break up ethically.  I’d say my relationship with him is one of my greater successes, as we’ve managed to find a way to make our relationship work for us through a bunch of different life stages and different needs from each other in ways that we are both happy with.

I’d say that’s also a pretty average track record for all of the poly relationships of all the people I’ve known in all my years as a community organizer in the poly community (which means I’ve known a TON of poly people).  Considering poly people have the potential to have more partners than monogamists do (unless someone is a *very* active serial monogamist) since we can overlap them, having a 50% or better success rate is pretty good.

However, since most monogamous people I know consider the mere act of ending a relationship to make it a failure, I’d say that, of all the monogamous people I’ve ever known (and since this is mostly still a monogamous society, I have also known a TON of mono people), the vast, vast, vast majority of monogamous relationships I’ve ever seen have not worked (using their own definition for “worked” or “worked out” or “successful”).  50% success vs. way more than 50% failure might imply that open relationships are probably more successful than monogamous ones.

The truth is, that all relationships work or don’t work because of the people in them, not because of the structure.  Some people are compatible together, many people aren’t, some people are compatible only in certain kinds of relationships (while many of those kinds of relationships are prohibited by the culture around them so they often don’t even get to try the one where they might actually “work” out), and some people are compatible together for a while and then less compatible as they grow and change over the course of their lives.

It’s never the structure of the relationship that makes it “work” or not “work”. It’s the people in the relationship.
joreth: (sex)
www.quora.com/I-m-having-casual-sex-with-my-ex-We-only-talk-to-meet-There-s-still-feelings-from-both-sides-and-I-sometimes-want-to-text-just-to-chat-but-I-don-t-do-it-We-are-not-compatible-to-be-togheter-but-I-can-t-doing-this-Is/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q.  I’m having “casual sex” with my ex.We only talk to meet. There’s still feelings from both sides and I sometimes want to text just to chat, but I don’t do it. We are not compatible to be togheter but I can’t doing this. Is this normal? What to do?

A.
  I’m not too worried about what’s “normal”.  I prefer to pay more attention to what makes me happy.  I find that not being concerned with what’s “normal” actually contributes to my happiness in general.  One of the things that makes me happy is finding the right relationship structure for the people involved.  There are plenty of people who are more compatible with me as casual sex partners but who don’t make very good long term romantic partners.  And vice versa.

Sometimes it takes us a couple of different tries at finding out which structure fits us best.  And sometimes certain structures work best for us *at that point in time* but not at others.

If you are not happy with a casual sex relationship with your ex, then this relationship isn’t working for you and that’s OK.  You don’t have to have casual sex, and you don’t have to have it with any particular person.  But there’s nothing “abnormal” or wrong with people who tried a romantic relationship, discovered that they weren’t compatible in that way, and who then try a casual sex relationship with each other afterwards.

A not very popular opinion that I hold is that everyone needs to take some “cool off” time after the end of a relationship before they try to transition to something else.  After ending a romantic relationship with your ex, you ought to go no-contact with them for a period of time.  This gives your brain a chance to “reset” itself regarding your feelings for them and to break old habits.

If, after having the chance to mourn the end of your relationship and start out fresh, you meet up again and discover that you have some sexual chemistry where a casual sex relationship would be appropriate for both of you, then great! Have fun!

But, chances are, if you’re not happy in this casual sex relationship, then you probably jumped into it too soon after the breakup when your brain hasn’t had a chance to grieve and move on.  So now you’re confused and experience mixed emotions and holding onto something that is over because the old habits are conflicting with the new structure.

I’d recommend not talking to your ex for a set time limit.  Don’t ghost them - that’s cruel.  But say that you need time to process your breakup so that your old romantic feelings can stop interfering with your new post-breakup relationship, and that you’ll call them in a few months.  Then take some time and really go through that breakup.  Then you can call them up again with a clear head if you’re still interested in some other kind of relationship with them.
joreth: (boxed in)
https://www.quora.com/Would-you-ever-consider-a-new-relationship-with-someone-who-previously-dumped-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q.   Would you ever consider a new relationship with someone who previously dumped you?

A.
  I have considered it.  I have given second chances.  I have gotten into several relationships with people who dumped me previously.  I have regretted every single instance of this.  Without exception.

Every time the second chance ends, I get bitter and say “no second chances ever again!  If we break up, it’s for a reason!”  And then someone comes along and, for some reason, I justify to myself that this one is different because of whatever specific circumstances.  It’s never the exact same thing twice, but that’s because everyone I date is a different person.  The relationship itself was different.  The breakup was different.  The reasons for the breakup was different.  I wanted different things back then than I do this time.  Whatever, it’s always “different”.

And not once have I ever been correct.

Not only have I never once been correct, but I regretted the second chance to the point of actually wishing I could undo the entire thing.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but for the most part, I’ve learned things from those mistakes that make me who I am today.  If I were handed a magic telephone booth and told I could go back in time to change whatever I wanted about my own life, most of those things I wouldn’t actually change.

These second chances?  Yeah, I’d change them.  I’d erase the whole fucking thing.  I’d get rid of all the good times that went along with them.  I’d delete any lessons I supposedly learned from them.  I’d get rid of the whole second chance for each and every one of them.

So here I am, still stinging from my most recent poor “second chance”, still angry about it, telling everyone about how I keep saying that I don’t do second chances and that each time I do is somehow an “exception” to the rule, knowing that I will probably find some other “exception” to justify doing it again in the future.  And that I’ll write another blog post or social media post or advice column or whatever, telling people that second chances are bullshit and I don’t like to do them.

I am, apparently, an incurable optimist hiding in the skin of a cynic.  I ought to listen to the cynic more often.
joreth: (feminism)
https://poly.land/2017/06/22/crumple-zone-partners-bear-impact/

This feels like a very surface-level introduction to something that I've been complaining about for some time.  I don't have time to go into it more right now, but I think this will become inspiration for a longer post.
"if a person within the web is particularly skilled at doing emotional labor? They’ll often end up as a lightning rod for it."

"Folks who are in emotional crumple zones are the ones others worry the least about upsetting or hurting.  Not because they don’t have feelings.  And not because they don’t get hurt easily.

Indeed, many folks in the crumple zone are actually quite sensitive — to their own emotions and to the ones of those around them.  But the reality is that their own hurt feelings don’t cause inconvenience to others."
In my case, it plays out that I take responsibility for my own emotions and don't expect other people to "fix" me or do something about a problem that's internal to me.

The double edge to this sword is that I end up dating men who *like* the fact that I don't make them responsible for my own emotions.  But how is that a bad thing? you might ask.  Well, it becomes a bad thing because it attracts both emotionally mature people AND people who don't like to do any emotional labor in relationships and expect their partners to do it all for them.

So my partners get complacent that I'll do the work on myself and compensate for their lack of relationship management skill and they coast along in a relatively drama-free relationship.  Until I have an actual problem that requires their participation.   Suddenly it's all "drama" and "I can't handle this right now" and "I'm overwhelmed, I need to leave" and "you're too much work".

My last major breakup was with someone who ghosted me slowly.  After not having seen him in literally months, I asked him to tell me what kind of time commitment he *could* agree to.  He insisted that our previous agreement of spending a long weekend every other week at my house was doable.

After another couple of months of still not seeing him, I mentioned one date night per month, where we leave the house and do something that requires focused attention on each other. One date night per month.  Another month or two passed by with not only not seeing each other, but he also just stopped responding to my text messages.   I finally got to see him when he felt obligated to a favor he had agreed to a long time prior.

In that confrontation, his response was to accidentally admit that his video game time was taking precedence over my request for one date night per month of concentrated attention.  You see, I was fine to spend time with, as long as he didn't have to feel any inconvenience from my feelings.  As soon as I started expressing unhappiness at his lack of participation in our relationship, he got "overwhelmed".

When we saw each other regularly, he told me how soothing it was to be in my presence.  But when he stopped seeing me regularly and I started expressing sadness and disappointment, he pulled back even more to avoid facing my inconvenient emotions.

My most recent "minor" breakup was with someone who I knew would feel challenged by polyamory.   So I was as up front with him as possible, telling him that there would be challenges, but that I would work with him every step of the way.  After all, he was the one who insisted that he try, and I quote, "all in with an emotional connection or nothing".   I would have accepted a quick rebound fuck and moved on, but he insisted that it had to be a "real relationship" and I was dubious at his ability to handle that.

Just as I started to let my guard down and show him my vulnerabilities as part of this intimate relationship he insisted we have, he tells me that "a relationship shouldn't be this much work" (keep in mind we *hadn't yet actually started dating*, we just had 3 dates where we talked about what we were interested in) so he's getting back with his ex-gf because she already knows him and won't put any demands on him to grow or challenge his preconceptions of love.  Of course she won't, that's why he dumped her in the first place - he was bored and envisioning a lifetime of beige.  But now, faced with potential "challenges" and "growth", suddenly that life without challenge seemed safer.   Yes, he actually said all that.

I am always the partner who has to deal with my emotions on my own.  I'm the "poly veteran", so obvs I'm an expert and don't need help.  As soon as I exhibit any difficulty or ask for someone else's help in managing the relationship, I become "inconvenient", "challenging", and "difficult".

I'm the one people date because it's so "easy" to be in a relationship with me ... until it's not, and then I'm the one that gets dumped because fuck forbid my partner have to take the reins for a while and give me a space to be the mess in the relationship.
joreth: (Default)
As I sit squarely in the middle of the season that triggered my last bout with depression, I came across this Facebook post I wrote towards a lull in the depression.  It's interesting reading it again almost 2 years later.  Although I think I have pulled out of the depression itself, I have not, in fact, gotten past my self-doubt of my character judgement, and I wonder how much of my inability to trust my own judgement has interfered with my ability to date and meet people in the past couple of years (really, this year shouldn't count, since I'm also not meeting people because I refuse to date in person, which, on top of my prickly online personality, means guys don't generally stick around long enough for me to consider them worth dating):

REALLY long rambling.   Basically, I'm just doing some introspection out loud.

My last several breakups have severely undermined my confidence in my ability to judge character and make good partner choices.  First was the guy who managed to date 2 feminists and then go full on misogynist "but misandry!" after we all broke up (his choice to breakup, btw, he's not doing some incel "the feminists dumped me, therefore women suck!" thing).

Next was the guy who abused all his other partners and I didn't see it.  Then was the guy who ghosted me and I gave him another chance, only to have him ghost me a second time.  Before that second ghosting was a casual partner who ghosted me once, I gave him a second chance, and he also ghosted me again.

Then came the dude who was so terrified that I would find someone to replace him that he dumped me for his ex-gf, because that makes sense.  #HeLiftedMeUpAndThrewMeDownCryingPleaseDontHurtMeMama

So in the middle of my depression, I'm having a serious self-esteem issue over my ability to make good choices for myself.  Which leads me to questioning and probing at some of my patterns, trying to identify and recognize them.  I noticed one pattern several years ago, but couldn't really identify it.  I could tell *something* was a common thread, but not quite sure what. I think I may be zeroing in on it.

I have different kinds of attractions to people.   I'm sure others do too, but I'm interested in mine right now, to troubleshoot, not trying to identify some Grand Unifying Theory Of Attraction that other people might also feel.  The most obvious is sexual attraction - we have a chemistry where we feel drawn to each other, aroused, can't keep our hands off each other, etc.

And I have an aesthetic attraction to someone where I just find them so pretty that I have to keep looking at them.  For most of my life, I mistook this as sexual attraction.  This partly contributed to my early confusion about my orientation.  I thought I was bi because I found some women so aesthetically attractive that I felt I had to keep looking at them.   But, it turns out, at least in me, the aesthetic attraction and the sexual attraction are two separate axis that may or may not cross and when it comes to women and femmes, they do not cross.

I can have an intellectual attraction to someone where we click really well on intellectual interests and pursuits.  I get excited just thinking of the conversations we could have together.  I also discovered something that I'm starting to call my Fascination Attraction.  I have noticed that there are a few people in my past who I felt drawn to in a unique way.   I felt a kind of fascination with them that wasn't really any of the above attractions.

It's kind of similar to the fascination that some people might feel when looking at a particularly interesting insect.  Some people find insects gross or creepy or weird or scary or whatever.  Some people find insects beautiful.  But some people don't find them to be either, they just find them *fascinating*.

And, of course, it's not purely aesthetic for me, but chances are that the person I feel this attraction to isn't necessarily *conventionally* attractive.   Not that they're *unattractive* - I mean, they often are considered attractive - just that, well ...

Let's say that the Avengers is a lineup of what counts for "conventionally attractive".   If you look at the whole cast, there's actually a pretty decently diverse range of appearances, given that it's still Hollywood.  I've seen a handful of different Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic/Good/Evil charts using Avengers characters.  There are quite a few archetypes in that cast.  But, because it's Hollywood, for all their diversity, they're still *conventionally attractive* within their archetypes.

So, let's say that the people I feel this Fascination Attraction to fit a description more like "interesting".   Even given the range of Avengers-attractive, they might be more aptly described as "interesting" *even if people also happen to find them aesthetically attractive*, if that makes sense?

That's really my type, if I could say that I had a "type" at all - interesting.   I like people with interesting faces.  Sometimes that falls under the category of "conventionally attractive", sometimes it doesn't.

So, I have this Fascination Attraction.  I'm not entirely sure what is drawing me to this person, because it's not aesthetics *even if they happen to be conventionally attractive* and it's not intellectual attraction *even if they happen to be intellectually stimulating* and it's not even sexual attraction *even if we happen to have sexual chemistry*.

I don't really know how to describe it, except that it's recognizable to me as this kind of attraction.  I can go through my romantic and sexual history and pick out which of my previous partners I felt which of these attractions for that drew me to them initially (over time, as I get to know someone, my attraction tends to be more nuanced and pull from several different directions).

But the point of identifying all these different types of attractions is to recognize patterns associated when I act on the different types of attractions.

For instance, when I act purely on sexual attraction, I tend to find out after the fact that we have radically different political views and I might regret either getting to know them better or having started a sexual relationship.  Like my mechanic, for instance - the homeopath conspiracist who thinks cigarettes won't kill him but chemotherapy will and that David Hoagg is part of a troupe of "crisis actors" who fake mass shootings.
 Like, sure, he was a good fuck back in the day when we were sleeping together but holy shit! I still haven't decided which is worse - finding out just how much of a barking moonbat he is or knowing that I used to get naked with him now that I know his bizarre ideas.

So, when I feel an instant sexual attraction to someone, I probably ought to rein in the hormones a bit and ask myself, do I really want to fuck someone who will very likely turn out to be my opposite, politically speaking?  Or am I willing to have the sexual experience and just go out of my way not to get to know him, so that I don't have to deal with that knowledge if he turns out to fit squarely in my Sexual Attraction : Wild Beliefs bell curve.

This Fascination Attraction, now ... that's an interesting one.  See, when I have casual sex with someone with wildly divergent sociopolitical views, I don't feel anything particularly strongly, except perhaps some embarrassment in some of the more extreme cases.  But with the Fascinators, that's where the roller coaster rides seem to happen.  Extreme highs and lows.  More regrets.  More "I wish I had known that up front" thoughts.  More "maybe I shouldn't have" or "maybe I should have gone more slowly" or "maybe I should have taken the other option".

I'm not yet sure if this is consistent across the board.   I have to do more plotting of my history chart to see if the correlation is steady or if there are any exceptions.   But with my recent self-doubt, it makes me very nervous when I find my interest in someone hitting that Fascination Attraction button.  I feel drawn like a moth who knows exactly what will happen when I touch that flame but I go anyway.

So I hit the brakes and pull back, and then I second-guess my second-guessing, and down goes the spiral.  With my depression and my recent painful dual breakups, I find myself less inclined for emotional attachments and more interested in casual relationships or hookups, but that leaves me open to the Fascination Attraction, which I am now second guessing because of the depression making me doubt my ability to judge people well or make good choices.

And 'round it goes.

I'm really kinda anxious for this whole depression thing to fuck off for a while.   It's making me lonely and driven to pursue finding partners but also to back away from potential partners because I assume I'm going to fuck it up by choosing poorly.  Catch-22.
joreth: (boxed in)
How Not To Break Up With Someone:
  • "I totally can't do this polyamory thing. What if you find someone better than me?!"
     
  • "Nvrmd, I totes can! I'm definitely ready to try polyamory! Let's do this!"
     
  • "JK! I'm getting back together with my ex and she won't allow me to be poly, so I'm blocking you now."
How Not To Break Up With Someone:
  • Spend a solid week convincing them to give you a chance over their concerns that you don't have enough relationship experience for them.
     
  • Make a date with them explicitly to discuss whether or not you can date each other.
     
  • Stand them up for that date.
     
  • Block their methods of contact so you aren't tempted to respond and they don't know that you're not getting their attempts to reach out.
     
  • Leave them a message on Facebook to read when they get home after spending all night wondering where you are, saying how much you learned from them about ethics and personal growth, but sorry, you can't ever talk to them again in any capacity.
     
#ThisIsWhyINeverAssumeAnyoneIsLyingInADitchSomewhere #TheyAreAlwaysAtHomePlayingXboxJustAvoidingMe #GhostingSucks #BreakingUp #HowNotToBreakUp #EthicalBreakups #YallHaveShittyBreakupSkills
joreth: (boxed in)
www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-move-on-from-a-friendship-relationship-that-ended-badly-and-abruptly/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How long does it take to move on from a friendship/relationship that ended badly and abruptly?

A
. As long as it takes.

This may sound flippant, but it’s true. There is no magic formula that will let you predict how any given person will “move on” from any given breakup. There are far too many variables.

It’s kinda like how Ian Malcolm describes chaos theory in the movie Jurassic park:




The person, the breakup, all their life experiences up until that point, the specific things going on in their life at that same moment like work or family relations, hell, their hormonal balance at that time, who else they have in their life to support them through the breakup, their diet, everything in their life current and past adds up to how any given person will handle any specific breakup.

It will take as long as it takes.
joreth: (boxed in)
www.quora.com/Has-someone-ever-left-you-midway-in-a-relationship-without-even-explaining/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Has someone ever left you midway in a relationship without even explaining?

A. How do you leave a relationship “midway”? Isn’t leaving pretty much the definition of the end, not the middle?

But if you mean, has someone ever surprised me by ending a relationship with me when I thought the relationship was going well or at least not at the point of ending it, and didn’t explain to me why they were leaving, yes. Several times. It’s called “ghosting”.

When two people go through a painful breakup that both are aware is a breakup, and one of them chooses to cut off contact with the other after the breakup, that’s not ghosting. Ghosting is when one person chooses to end a relationship when the other person has no indication that the relationship was problematic enough to make the other person want to leave, and the person doing the ghosting cuts off all contact and leaves no explanation. I have 4 examples I’ll talk about, but they’re not the only examples in my life.

The clearest example I have of someone doing that to me was when I had just started dating someone. We had been dating for only a few weeks, but he had already started saying that he loved me. He called me one night to say that there was a death in his family and he needed to go out of town (only a few hours away) to handle things. He would be back in a few days. His last words to me were “I love you baby, and I can’t wait to see you again.”

This was back in the MySpace days, where blocking people wasn’t an option and their profile showed anyone who visited when they last logged in. So I could tell that he was regularly logging into his MySpace, so he wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere halfway between my town and his family’s town where the funeral was.

Eventually, I camped out in front of his house and waited for several hours for him to come home from work. When he did, I confronted him. He gave me all kinds of bullshit excuses and promised we could work things out. I left that night knowing that I would never hear from him again, and I didn’t. I still don’t know why he did it.

I wasn’t asking him to get back together, I asked him why he would say what he said and then disappear. He tried to give excuses for why he hadn’t contacted me, but they were obvious as he was saying them that they were excuses. So I let him say them and I let him give me more false promises to call me and “work things out”, and I just left.

Another time, I met a guy who was quite a few years younger than I was, but he developed a crush on me. I figured, why not? We opted for an FWB relationship, but he kept having these intimate, vulnerable talks with me after our booty calls, so I developed feelings for him. He seemed to have feelings for me too.

Then he stopped responding to my calls. Just dropped off the face of the earth. Nobody seemed to know where he went, at least, that’s what people said to me.

Nearly 10 years later, he messaged me out of the blue. Still a little hurt, but hey, 10 years is 10 years, I answered. He wanted to talk on the phone, so we did. He said something about being young and immature and having family issues that overwhelmed him so he moved out of state to escape everyone. But since then, some shit had gone down that made him grow up fast. Now he was back in the area and he wanted to be friends again.

He started calling me while working his night job, and I would often fall asleep on the phone from talking for hours at a time. Eventually, he came to see me and talked about trying a real relationship with me, not just the FWB we had before. I expressed my doubts that he could do it, but he insisted he could. He also wanted to explore some kink with me, knowing that I was experienced and he had none.

We had one make-out session, which I ended by saying we really needed to discuss what kind of relationship we were going to have and what he wanted from a kink relationship with me. He said he was really excited about exploring something, but he didn’t even know where to start. So I suggested we go to a local kink club and a regional conference where he could be exposed to a variety of options and other people who might have some ideas or suggestions.

He sounded excited about that. We made plans to go, which he canceled on. And then he never responded to another text or phone call or online message again. So he ghosted me twice.

About 3 or 4 years later, he re-friended me on Facebook. I accepted the friend request but I didn’t message him. A few months after that, he sent me a message apologizing for disappearing, saying family shit overwhelmed him and he had to escape so he moved to another state. I said something like “huh, imagine that?” He asked what that meant and I said that was the same thing he said last time he ghosted me. He said something about his life being kinda dramatic. That’s the last thing we said, over a year ago.

The most recent example was someone else who did it to me twice. Many, many years ago, we met and had this amazing chemistry that he seemed to fight. But then one day he came over and said he was done fighting, we should be together. Then, literally in the middle of having sex, he got up, said he couldn’t do this, and left, half-dressed. He didn’t return any of my phone calls and the one friend of his who I knew would only say that he “moved to Texas” (he didn’t, as I found out later).

A few years later, we ran into each other again. It was awkward and uncomfortable and I got out of the encounter as quickly as I could. A couple years later we ran into each other again. It was slightly less awkward, but he apologized and said he was immature and frightened and didn’t know how to handle it. He wanted to be friends again.

Dubious, I gave him my number. We didn’t really keep in touch much. I invited him to a handful of social events, he would never go, I stopped inviting him.

Then, a few years after that, one day I just decided to invite him to something because I was inviting *everyone* in my address book. That thing he attended. So I invited him to another thing. He attended. Suddenly, we were talking to each other. After some very intense conversations, I decided that 10 years was enough for him to have grown up, to feel real remorse, and to be ready to try again.

So we did. This time, things were going well. We got along great with each other. We were open and intimate with each other. We both happened to suffer from a depressive episode at about the same time (unrelated to our relationship) and we were instrumental in each other’s recovery.

3.5 years into our second try, he started getting “busy”. When he used to spend 2 long weekends a month with me and constantly text me throughout the days apart, we very slowly started seeing each other less and less. I brought it up, he promised he was “working on it”, nothing would change, I’d bring it up again, he promised things were “getting better”, nothing would change, rinse, repeat.

Almost exactly a year after I noticed and started commenting on the problem, we had a Talk about it. I told him it was not acceptable to me anymore that he go 3 or 4 months without us seeing each other, given that we only lived a few miles apart. Since spending several days at a time seemed to be so taxing for him I offered him the option of one date night a month where it was focused time together. He turned that down and opted instead for our regular “weekends” together.

We never had another weekend together. Almost overnight, he stopped responding to texts, phone calls, and online messages. Finally, one day, I had been having things shipped to his house because things got stolen off my porch in my neighborhood and his neighborhood was safer. Something I had ordered weeks prior arrived at his house, and he texted me to let me know it had arrived. He offered to bring it by.

Having read the writing on the wall this time, I had all of his things that he left at my house packed up and ready. I didn’t plan to break up with him, but I was going to be prepared if he decided to break up with me. I was still hoping for some kind of answer and a change in his behaviour. Depending on how he handled the conversation I was going to make him have when he dropped off my package, I would either hand him his things or I would quietly unpack them after he left and not even let him know I had packed them..

He chose to come over when he knew I had only a few minutes left to get ready for work. I asked him “so, are we still dating or what?” As soon as he started with “well … you didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that I’m not fulfilling you, and …” I interrupted him and said “yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say,” and went into the other room to get his things and dropped them at his feet.

I told him that ghosting me was the absolute worst way he could have chosen to break up with me, given that he had done it to me once before and I only got back with him on the condition that he would not break up with me in that way again. He protested, saying that he never ghosted me. I pointed out that he stopped responding to all forms of communication for weeks and he only deigned to speak to me when a package arrived. That’s ghosting.

He said that he just didn’t know what to say or how to do it. I pointed out to him that I’m writing a book on how to ethically breakup with someone and I already have an online document titled my User Manual which gives instructions for exactly how to break up with *me*. Of literally anyone in the world, I’m one of the last people anyone should be confused about how to break up with me. I come with instructions.

I have no doubt that if he hadn’t needed to get my packages to me, I would never have heard from him again unless I chased after him.

So then, while I’m still nursing my hurt feelings over this breakup, a friend who I’ve had a thing for asks me out. I tell him that I’m not in a position for a big-r Relationship because I’m on the rebound and he’s never been in a poly relationship before, but perhaps we could talk about a fling. He says it’s an emotional connection or nothing - no casual sex for him.

So we talk and talk and talk, and eventually decide that we might try some kind of relationship and see where it goes. We have a couple of good dates, and our last one is really hot and heavy. We have so much chemistry between us! We continued texting on the way home and through the night when we got home. I have texts from him that night telling me how hard he’s falling for me and how safe and loved he feels with me.

Literally the next day, he texts me to say his ex wants to talk, do I mind if he goes out with her? I’m poly, so although I’m concerned about an ex, I say he can. He texts me that night to say he wants to have sex with her, do I mind? Again, I’m concerned, but as I’m also working on another FWB of my own, I say OK and thank him for telling me.

The next day, radio silence. He doesn’t respond to any of my messages. The day after, I message him to ask why the radio silence. I can see that he checked the message. After a long pause, he messages back to say that he’s getting back together with the ex and she “won’t have it”, meaning she won’t let him date me too. He has since blocked me from contacting him.

So, yeah, I’ve had lots of people ghost me, or break up with me at points in the relationship that I felt were “midway” or when things were going well, or at least when I felt that things were not at the end. I find it to be one of the most cruel ways to end a relationship with a person and I am permanently scarred from all the times it has happened to me.

This latest one happening on the heels of the one prior to it has triggered my depression again, so now I have to have people check in on me to make sure I’m OK. And all for someone I didn’t even want to get involved with in the first place because I didn’t think either one of us was ready for a relationship.

When people give you that aphorism “when someone tells you who they are, believe them”, believe them. There were plenty of signs, but I keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I pay for it every single time.
joreth: (polyamory)
Q.  How do polyamorous people handle break ups? Do they have an easier time moving on since they tend to have multiple partners?

A.  We handle our breakups the same way we handle literally everything in our lives - in the same way monogamists do. Which means that there is a diversity to how we do things because we are a diverse group, just like monogamists are.

Some of us have better communication skills than others and some of us suck at them. Some of us get into (and subsequently out of) relationships with people who similarly have good communication skills and some of us get into relationships with people who suck at them. Sometimes, regardless of how good anyone’s skills are, the relationship itself has a particular dynamic that either brings out the best in us both or the worst in us both, and that affects how well we handle the breakup.

When I was 18, I had a small, close-knit circle of friends and a handful of other friends who weren’t part of that circle. I also had a high school sweetheart whom I loved very much. And I had a “best friend” who was part of that small, close-knit circle of friends. She and I were closer than either of us were to anyone else in the group.

On our high school graduation day, I threw a co-ed sleepover party. Of course, she was invited. Of our close-knit circle, she and I were the only seniors so the others weren’t graduating with us, although they were also invited.

On our graduation day, she seemed distracted and distant. Well, it was a busy day and we all had a lot going on. During the day, after the ceremony, the party was mostly my family. It was only after dinner when friends were supposed to show up and it would turn more into a teen party.

So when she didn’t show up during the day, I felt her absence and I was sad, but I get it. She had graduation things to do too.

But as the night wore on and she still didn’t show up, I started to get hurt. I started paging her (because nobody had cellphones back then) to find out where she was and when she would be there.

She finally showed up late, with her boyfriend and several of his friends. None of them had been invited (because my mom was already freaked out at the idea of a coed slumber party, there was no way she was letting boys she hadn’t met yet stay the night). She came into the house but didn’t speak to me, she only spoke to other people.

Finally, I had been hurt enough and I ran out of the room and into my parents’ bedroom to cry. While my mother was in there consoling me and I wondered why my best friend was being so distant, my sister poked her head in to tell me that my friend was leaving, without saying goodbye.

I ran outside to find her already in the backseat of the 2-door car. I asked her if she would at least give me a hug goodbye, and she shouted from the backseat “I’m already in the car and it’s hard to get out.”

That was the last time we spoke.

My best friend dumped me on our high school graduation day and then ghosted me. My high school sweetheart, whom I loved very much, was there with me. My loving parents were there and my mother consoled me. I was surrounded by friends.

But I still hurt. And it took me a very long time to get over this breakup.

Having other people around does not make breakups hurt less, it just gives you a softer place to land when you fall and people around to help nurture you while you are feeling your pain. It doesn’t matter if it’s polyamory or monogamy or even not romantic at all. Breakups hurt, and they hurt in varying degrees depending on the circumstances of the breakup, and no amount of other people make them better because people are not interchangeable and you still have lost someone who meant something to you.

I have lost other friends when we simply mutually faded away. Those endings didn’t hurt as much. I have lost some friends after big arguments. Those hurt. I have been surprised to lose friends because I thought our friendship was a good one but they didn’t, so they “broke up” with me when I didn’t realize there was something to break up over. Those hurt. I have had friends have mature, reasonable conversations with me over what kind of friendship we had and whether it was bringing joy and value into each other’s lives, and when it wasn’t, we weren’t friends anymore. Those hurt too, but not as much and not for as long.

Everyone goes through “breakups” with people, and everyone has some category of relationship in their life that multiple people hold. Some people have multiple siblings. Lots of people have multiple friends. Losing one of them doesn’t hurt less just because you have others of them. Having a support structure might help with the healing process, but it’s the specific nature of the relationship and the way the breakup was handled that really affects how much the breakup hurts.

Very little that poly people do is specific to polyamory. It’s usually not a poly problem, it’s a people problem.

www.quora.com/How-do-polyamorous-people-handle-break-ups-Do-they-have-an-easier-time-moving-on-since-they-tend-to-have-multiple-partners/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper
joreth: (Default)
Someone shared something on Facebook that has since been deleted or made private or something so my share of it says that the content is not available.   Judging by my commentary, it was probably something about "what kind of advice would you give to the current partner of your ex-partner?"  So, here's mine:



As long as you don't actually expect him to be present or do any work to maintain the relationship, things will be great, because he's genuinely a nice, friendly, charming person.  He just wants things to happen without any effort on his part.

#MostRecentExAnywayBecauseIHaveHadMoreExesThanMostPeopleCertainlyMoreThanMonogamousPeople



He's actually a pretty decent guy.  He does a fair amount of Relationship Maintenance.  Our breakup was amicable and due mostly to outside political pressures.  If you have enough in common with him to like him for dating in the first place, he'll probably be a good boyfriend for you.  I was recently reminded to thank him for being a good boyfriend, actually, thanks to a comparison to the most recent ex.

#2ExesAgo



Oh sweetie.  Well, good luck!  And here's a domestic abuse hotline, just in case.  And remember, going catatonic every time you have an intense disagreement is not normal and you should not end up apologizing for bringing up your concerns over his need to control your body.

#3ExesAgo



Just remember to never date anyone else who might make him feel threatened (i.e. anyone else) and to magically divine what he wants of you, because he won't actually tell you if something about you bothers him since he's so concerned with not "making" you "change who you are" for him even if it's literally not a big deal that you wouldn't mind compromising on, but he will dump you for not having made those changes anyway.

Oh, and don't be a feminist.  Things will go much more smoothly if you can only see how much shit men get for being men.

#4ExesAgo



Congratulations!  He's one of the good ones.  If he wasn't so damned monogamous, I'd probably try to get back with him myself.

#HighSchoolSweetheart



I hope you aren't one of those people who needs "closure".  He likes ghosting.  And if he does it to you and comes back to say he made a mistake, he didn't.  If he did it once, he'll do it again.

#MoreThanOneExFitsThisDescription



Don't ever leave your computer or devices out where he can get them unattended.  He works in IT and knows how to install keystroke logs and doesn't see anything wrong with using them.  Also never tell him about any fantasies involving coercion - no "scary burglar takes advantage of the poor helpless college student" role play or whatever.  He can't tell the difference between "fuck off, I said not tonight" and "oh no!  There's a burglar in my house who bears a striking resemblance to my boyfriend!  Whatever shall I do?!"

#IAmLosingCountOfHowManyExesAgoTheseAllAre



Cupcake, his 20-year-older, Scottish truck driving buddy who thought hanging around with a high schooler in his thirties was a great idea and who sounds suspiciously like him talking with a bad Scottish accent with the phone pulled away from his mouth while you're on the other end wondering where the fuck he is, is not real.

Neither is the extremely jealous ex-girlfriend with the body of a professional weight lifter who somehow has natural DD cups and who magically seems to find him and try to "win him back" every time you have a fight who he has to "protect" you from by never letting you meet her because she's such a badass fighter who has spent time in jail that she would kill you.

Neither is his dead ex-baby-mama from middle school (yes, she got pregnant, lost the baby, and then died of cancer all before she could legally drive) who is the most delicate little feminine doll of a girl who nobody will ever live up to because she died so she's fucking perfect.

His disapproving, old-fashioned, stay-at-home mother whom he expects his wife to emulate, however, is very real.

#MyAbusiveExFiance #ThisIsWhyWeNeedDomesticAbuseEducationBecauseNotAllAbuseIsPhysical



Actually, since he threatened to kill me and has been stalking me for most of my life, the fact that you use access to your children as a method of controlling him and keeping him near you is kinda helpful for all the other women he can't tie down because you keep cockblocking him, and also for me because he won't leave the state to come find me as long as his kids keep him there.  So, I'm worried about those kids of y'alls with the both of you being such shitty people, but honestly, you're doing me a favor, so carry on.

Unless you finally wise up and just have him put in jail.  I'm sure you can find some legitimate reason.  And then maybe get some therapy.

#MyExStalker
joreth: (feminism)
There is one good thing that seems to come out of most of my bad breakups.

If I have made any kind of connection with some of the women in my exes' lives, and those women aren't also total assholes (or haven't internalized the abuse he has subjected them to, causing them to side with their abuser and turn on his victims), then when the ex turns into a jerk during the breakup, sometimes the women reach out to me and I discover that I wasn't alone in being mistreated, and I end up building some pretty amazing friendships out of the wreckage.

My best friend is a metafore (metamour from before who still feels close enough that we don't want to give up the metamour connection even though we're technically not metamours anymore) whom we both broke up with our mutual partner for the same reason - his mishandling of all our various relationships.

I have another metafore who was smarter than I was and dumped his ass when he started to treat her the same way he treated me right before he dumped me.  Neither of us speak to him anymore, but I still consider her a good friend.

I also know a few other women who were friends with various exes of mine who have shitty breakup skills (or, at least, they did with me) who I felt that we got closer after talking about the breakup because they also went through some shit, but as a not-girlfriend while I was a girlfriend, maybe didn't have anyone else to talk to about our similar experiences until I was also not a girlfriend and they extended some compassion over the guy who introduced us.

I have quite a few former metamours with whom I am on good terms with, but whatever breakup that happened to separate us as metamours didn't fall into my "bad breakup" category for me, so it's not a surprise that we're still on good terms.

But there's something that seems to happen among women (probably our socially-required emotional labor skills that facilitate our relationship building even among extended acquaintances like metamours and partner's friend) when the dudes in our lives do shitty dude things and we reach out to each other for understanding, compassion, and healing.

Something that polyamory in particular has brought to my life as a huge bonus is a connection with women.  I was a classic Chill Girl, having exclusively male friends and all-male social circles, until I started having poly relationships.  Then, dating straight men, I was introduced to some amazing women through my male partners who I would not have gotten to know if we hadn't had that male partner bringing us together, since I didn't seek out women as friends.

Before I was poly, my experience with monogamous culture was that my male partners would tend to separate "girlfriends" from their women friends because monogamy, jealousy, possessiveness, etc.  So it had to wait until I started dating people who fundamentally did not compartmentalize or separate out the women in their lives and who had women in their lives that did not compete with each other.  Polyamory was the catalyst for me in finding these sorts of people.

Even when those women weren't poly themselves and they were platonic friends or family, it wasn't until I started dating polyamorously that I had the sorts of situations that fostered sisterhood bonds and taught me the value of relationships with women and non-cismen.

So, one thing that I can take away from even bad breakups, is that sometimes I get to build closer connections with women whom I would not otherwise have met if I hadn't dated a man they knew, and those closer connections came out of commiserating and expressing compassion and sympathy for said mutual man behaving poorly.  This doesn't give men an excuse to behave poorly, of course, but it does at least give me something to take away from a bad situation that will bring value to my future.

Thank you, "women" in my life, for all your emotional labor and Relationship Management skills.  Even though it's ridiculously unfair that we share the brunt of all that work, at least some of us recognize and acknowledge the value of that work and I am grateful for it.
joreth: (anger)
I had a partner once and we bought a house together.  We had an arrangement - she had a full time job and went to school part-time so into our joint checking account (for shared expenses) she put about 2/3 of our necessary money, an amount that was equivalent to the mortgage payment.

I had a part-time job and went to school full time, so I put in the amount equal to all the rest of the expenses, including the utilities, the groceries, etc.  I even applied for food stamps and used my EBT card for the household groceries.  I also managed the household - I paid the bills, I did the grocery shopping, I made sure repairs, maintenance, and cleaning got done.

We had another partner who lived with us but was not on the mortgage.  For reasons I don't want to go into, he did not have a job, so he was expected to do all the domestic duties - dishes, trash, vacuuming, etc.  Within a very short time (less than a year), we were broke and struggling to pay all the bills.  So I took a job that took me out of the house for 6 weeks, including 2 first-of-the-months when bills were due.  I gave her the checkbook, told her the bill schedule, and took off.

At the end of the 6 weeks, I came home to find the power, gas, and water had been shut off and nobody had done anything to get any of it turned back on.  They were both just kind of camping in the house.  So I asked what happened.

Somehow or another, she didn't pay the bills.  I don't remember now if she didn't pay them at all or if she didn't pay them enough or what.  This is when I found out that her usual bill management system was to simply write out a check for the same amount on the 15th of every month and send it in to all the credit card companies she owed money to (except for the ones she was merely transferring balances between, to whomever had the lowest interest rate, but still, that happened on the 15th).

I exasperatedly explained to her that this is not how utilities work.  She has to actually look at the bill, pay the amount they ask for, and do it by the due date.  All the extra money that I had made on that job, that I was hoping to cushion us for the next couple of months went to paying reconnect fees and we were back to being broke.

So I took the checkbook away from her.

She and I both put money into a joint account, out of which our household expenses were paid.  One month, shortly afterwards, I started receiving calls from several bill departments that my checks were bouncing.

After some investigating, I discovered that she had gone to the bank late one night to deposit her share of that month's money and looked at the balance.  It had more in there than the amount she just put in.  So, resentful now at having to pay a higher dollar amount than the rest of us (even though that was the agreement, and she had not even bothered to ask if we could renegotiate our arrangement), she took several hundred dollars back out to pay for her own mounting credit card bills.

When she told me that there was "too much" money in the account, I yelled at her that this is what the account looked like before all the bills were paid.  The mortgage was not the only bill that needed to be paid, so yes, several hundred more dollars than the mortgage payment was in the account to cover those other bills, and that came out of *my* pocket.  Now we had Insufficient Funds fees on top of the bills that were still due.  So I took away her ATM card too, and insisted that she just start writing checks directly to me that I would deposit in our account.

Recognizing that she was getting stressed over money, even though she *still* refused to set up a discussion with me to talk about renegotiating who ought to pay how much, I started telling her every month when I knocked on her bedroom door for the mortgage check that if she couldn't afford it, then she needed to say something, so that we could figure something else out.

Every month she always said "no, I'll get the money", and every month she did.  I found out later that she was borrowing from relatives and taking cash advances out on her many credit cards.  Until one day, she came to my room and told me that she wanted me to leave, that it was unfair that she had to pay more money than anyone else, and since she was the one paying the mortgage, then she ought to keep the house and I should get out.

So I had to explain to her, again, that it didn't work like that.  The bank loan we took out for the house had very specific rules for changing the names on the mortgage.  If she wanted me off the mortgage, she would have to buy the house from me, and she would also have to show that she made 3x the mortgage amount for the bank to accept her as the sole name and transfer the loan to her.  But, since my name was the one in the signature line of every mortgage check, as far as the bank was concerned, *I* was the one who had been paying all this time, so if they were going to approve anyone for a sole mortgage, it was going to be me.

She insisted that I just walk away from the house, that she put in all the money, therefore it was hers (again, completely ignoring all the money that I put into electricity, gas, water, trash, repairs, and managing our partner into doing his chores - which is a whole OTHER rant - or that I furnished the entire house with literally everything in it because I was the only one of the 3 of us who was not previously living with parents or couch-surfing) and I had no claim to the house whatsoever.

She then just refused to give me any more money, and she started sleeping away from home so that I couldn't find her and demand money (no cell phones back then), and she would sneak back in during the day when I was gone.

I am reminded of this story because I was talking with a friend of mine who is going through what is effectively a "separation", even though he refuses to call it that.  His wife lives somewhere up north and his retail job here in Florida is currently supporting both the house they own here and her apartment up there, as well as all her bills and shopping and whatever else she decides to use their joint card for.

She has a job, of sorts.  But it doesn't pay enough to cover her own rent, let alone everything else she spends money on.  He was telling me the other night about his wife doing essentially the same thing that my ex did - looking at the shared account, thinking there was "too much money" in there, taking out a bunch right before bills cleared resulting in bounced checks, and yelling at him that she doesn't need him or his money.

In group of 3 other women and one single man, all of us were telling him that if she thinks she "doesn't need him", then he ought to let her prove that and just get out.  I'm not sure why, but he thinks he needs to stay with her, and is actively trying to build up his retail business so that it can run without him and he can then move up north to be with his wife.

I am also reminded of this story because my friend is not the first person who has told me a nearly identical scenario to the one that I went through.  For some reason, people seem to think that other people would be willing to build something with them, and then when it's time to part ways, those other people will simply give up any claim or compensation to the thing they built together.

I put a lot into that house, and my ex seemed to think that I would be willing to just pack up and move without receiving any compensation for it.  She was livid when I found a house-flipper who was willing to pay us the same amount we paid for it just a few years prior, giving us each a few thousand dollars after the sale because of the equity we had put into the house.

I mean, there was no way the bank was going to put the mortgage in her name.  She *had* to buy me out of it.  Since she clearly didn't have half of a house mortgage, I found a way for us both to part with a small sum, and to do it quickly before the bank foreclosed, since by this time she had just outright refused to write me a check for 3 months, which is when the bank starts sending foreclosure notices.

But, somehow, *I'm* the bad guy here.

My friend has been paying for his wife to live a separate life for a couple of years now, and she expects him to just walk away.  Which, honestly, I kinda think he ought to do.  If she thinks she doesn't need his money, he should just stop paying for her shit.  But he isn't willing to cut his losses yet, and I'm surprised that his wife thinks he would be. #SunkCostFallacy

A couple of exes of mine went into business together, and then one of them brought on a third business partner who made all the wrong business decisions and ran the business into the ground, and then the one who brought in the third person expected the other one to just walk away from the business without buying his shares of the company from him.  Like, in what fucking capitalistic universe does anyone build a business with someone and then just *hand over* their half of the company without compensation when the people involved want to part ways?

So, as I was talking with that friend with the wife, I and the other guy in the group got off on our own conversation (as side-conversations are wont to happen when larger circles break down into twosome and threesome conversations), and somehow or another I mentioned having a pre-nup with Franklin.

The guy said "good! Oh, wait, sorry..." because, as a guy, he's kind of expected to be in favor of things like pre-nups and he's also learned to expect that the women around him will not respond favorably to his response.  He quickly backtracked to fix the implication that he might be suggesting that my relationship with Franklin was not trustworthy enough and *needed* a pre-nup.

So I waved away his apology and said "no, get a pre-nup, get a pre-nup, get a pre-nup, absolutely put all this shit down on paper."  And then I explained to him what a post-nup was, because he had never heard of one.

A post-nup (that's not what they're called, but if you Google search them, it'll still come up with the right thing) is basically a pre-nup but with all the verb tenses changed to indicate that the marriage has already taken place.  It's otherwise the exact same document.  Just like a will, the most recent post-nup supersedes all previous post-nups and any pre-nups.  And, also like a will, it's basically a legal document that says who legally owns what, and how y'all will split your shared property when you separate.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP and if you are already married, it's not too late, GET A FUCKING POST-NUP.

And then, if you go into business WITH ANYONE, but especially your romantic partners, write down somewhere a plan for how to separate the business in the event that the relationship ends before the business does.  Write all this shit out while you still like each other, so that when you write it down, it will be at its most fair.

I've made at least one post like this before (and it will probably show up sooner or later in my official page's From The Archives posts). But I'm saying it again.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP

Here I'm using that term "pre-nup" as a catchall phrase for any legal document, or hell, ANY document at all, detailing how property will be divided or handled in the event of a romantic or platonic relationship ending, necessitating a division of property and assets.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP

If you're already married, get a post-nup.  If you're not married but you live together or otherwise have shared property (like a joint checking account or both names on a vehicle registration), use a pre-nup as a template and change the "marriage" language to suit your situation.

If you're not in a romantic relationship with someone but you are in a platonic relationship with someone and you have shared property or joint business ventures, unless your specific case already has existing contracts to cover it (such as the co-author agreement I have with my co-author to determine intellectual property ownership), use a pre-nup as a template and write your own damn document discussing how to divide up your business or shared property in the event you either don't want to be friends anymore, or you want to stay friends but don't want to be in business together anymore.

Some business plans will have rules about this already, like non-profit orgs that dictate how board members are voted in and how they leave and stuff.

WRITE OUT YOUR EXIT PLAN.  That's basically what a pre-nup and a will really are - an exit plan for property.  If one of you wants to leave, this is how you will split up under these conditions, and that is how you will split up under these other conditions.  Write this shit down.  If one of you dies and your beneficiaries come knocking on the other one's door, this will tell them what property is shared and can be handed over to them and what can't.  If one of you gets divorced and the ex-spouse starts taking half of all your shit, this will tell the courts what the ex is allowed to take because of what belongs to whom.

If you collaborate on projects together, if you take pictures of each other or give pictures to each other (intellectual property), if you share space, if you share toys, if you exchange money, write out something that clearly spells out your intentions for compensation when you split.

And, I mean, spell it out.  Write down that money spent on "dates" are to be considered "gifts" and no compensation is expected, because that shit will bite you in the ass later.  Obviously, not everyone is going to be that petty.  But the problem is that you won't know which one of your partners will be that petty until they are.  And then it's too late.  Like the ex who sent the man who killed my cats into my room to retrieve his spare hairdryer (purchased explicitly for leaving at my house) and was surprised at how pissed I got about that.

If the both of you think it's ridiculous to be writing down stuff like "when either party purchases a sex toy for the other party, that toy falls under the category of 'gifts' and no compensation is required, nor are there any expectations of exclusivity of said toy or reciprocal behaviour or gifts", then great, have a giggle while you make up your document together.

It can be a silly, fun date night, thinking up all the absurd things that other people do to each other that you both know neither of you will ever do to the other.  Congratulate yourselves on how emotionally intelligent you both are, that you will never need to reference this document because you would never even try to do the things that this document is intending to prevent you from doing to each other.

And then make the documents anyway.

Because that one time you guess wrong, you will need that document.  Even if it's not technically legally binding, write it up, sign it, and have someone witness it.  For accountability.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP
joreth: (::headdesk::)
OK, I'm waiting until I finish the whole show (up to wherever is current) before I give a full review of The Magicians, but this line really pissed me off:

She says "that's what I'm mad at you for - not the cheating part.  The part where what you did made me lose you."

Here's what happened -

A guy and a girl (both socially awkward) finally hook up after months of tension.  They start a relationship.  No conversation about monogamy takes place on screen.

The girl comes from openly poly parents.  Both the guy and the girl have a couple as their best friends who are clearly in a primary but open relationship with the guy in the couple being flagrantly bisexual and fucking every cute boy that moves.

So one night, after partying particularly hard to celebrate something big, the guy in question ends up in a drunken, debaucherous threesome with the open couple.  He wakes up the next morning with very little memory to find the girl sitting on the edge of the bed where the 3 of them are sleeping, pouting.  She storms off.

With no conversation about what any of this all means, they just assume that they're broken up now and the girl goes and has angry revenge sex with another guy in the social group.  They spend the rest of the season mad at each other and awkwardly tying to complete the tasks that make this a show in the first place.

What is pissing me off about this line is that it is totally devoid of personal responsibility.  She is not mad that he cheated, she's mad that his cheating *made her so mad that she broke up with him*.

WTF DUDE?

What he did absolutely did not "make her lose him".  That is a choice she made.  And she's totally free to make that choice, but it's still her choice.  Thousands of couples experience cheating every day and choose to stay together and work through the circumstances surrounding the cheating.  She of all people has a background in how to deal with this.

In fact, her own mother managed to have an affair and make it work.  Her parents have one of those toxic "poly" relationships where they only ever do anything *together*.  But her mother started a relationship with a guy without the father, and that counts as "cheating" in their relationship.  Eventually, they hashed it all out, and the Other Man joined the couple in a triad and everyone was happy.

So, I mean, toxic and fucked up, but even they had the tools to deal with it that didn't resort to ending a relationship for a first infraction and without talking about it.

If she didn't want to "lose" him, she could have prevented it.  He never intended to break up with her and regretted (what he remembered of) his night with the other couple.  It was a casual fling borne of high emotions and copious amounts of alcohol.  It was not an action *intended* to end his relationship.  That was not its goal.

She didn't "lose" him.  She rejected him after his infidelity.  Then she deliberately set out on a course of action intended to hurt him with her revenge sex (which he pointed out the difference when she got mad at him for judging her for it - "what I did was a mistake, what you did was on purpose and malicious").

And she's mad at him for it.

No wonder finding him in bed with their friends hurt her - she has no concept of owning her own shit, of accountability, of knowing her own emotional landscape, or of taking responsibility for her actions, let alone how her emotions dictate her actions.

I didn't much like her throughout the show.  Now I hate her.

If she is to be mad, she should totally be mad at the betrayal of their (implicit) agreements and promises to each other.  That's OK to be mad about.  Weird to me, because I don't operate that way, but a broken agreement is worth getting upset about.  But to be mad at him because *she* got so mad that she broke up with him?

That's some impressive mental gymnastics to abdicate any responsibility right there.
joreth: (boxed in)
I am a science enthusiast.  I have also experienced a lot of things in my life.  Both facts about me are true because I am a curious person.  I like to learn.  I like to know.

But when it comes to breakups for romantic relationships in particular, I have learned that curiosity is not the most practical or helpful of my personality traits in building emotional resiliency and healing after the breakup.

One very huge lie that our society has taught us about breakups and endings is that we need "closure".  Not only do we not need it, it is not always possible to get, so we have to learn how to live with uncertainty anyway.  That needs to be our "closure".  We need "acceptance", not "closure".

I didn't get this for a very long time.  And, ironically, it was my late-blooming interest in science that taught me that not having the answers is an OK state to be in.  It's OK to not know something.  It's OK to live with the knowledge that I will probably never know something.

Our collective need to Know All The Things is what drives scientific innovation and exploration.  But it drives us "crazy" - it leads to a culture that accepts, encourages, and supports things like stalking, like harassment, like dismissing agency, like questioning our own self-worth, like doubting our own value, like creating and building entire mythologies out of thin air because we can't just fucking deal with "I have no idea why the world is the way that it is".

We, as a species, seem to need definitive answers, even if they're completely made up.  We seem to feel better with some kind of resolution.  So we either make shit up (some of which can be actively harmful to ourselves or others), or we drive ourselves "crazy" trying to find some kind of answer that we'll never get.

We may never understand why someone would do the things that they did.  We may never understand why the world is the way that it is.  If you want to make a career out of studying big questions starting with "why", then great!  We can always use curious scientists and philosophers with a commitment to rigor and reality-based truth-seeking methods!

But if you are just sitting at home being miserable because you don't know a "why", learn to accept that you may never know why and that it's OK to not ever know why.  Especially if attempting to answer "why" is a violation of someone else's privacy or agency (even if they were a jerk to you and you think they deserve "justice" or "payback" or whatever, or that you "deserve" answers or control over the ending).

Just let it go.  You may not ever know.  And the world will not end because you don't know, nor will you actually die from not knowing "why".

But you will continue to feel miserable as long as you keep insisting on asking yourself the question when no answer is forthcoming.  Like any really useful life-skill, it may seem difficult at first, but it will get easier with practice and your life will become immeasurably better for the practice, no matter how far along you are at mastering the skill.

Just let it go.
joreth: (being wise)
PSA: When your friends are going through a breakup, if you are particularly close with them and have previously been in the role of support for them with their relationship stuff (or they have for you), and your friend reaches out to you for support during a breakup, you may choose to be there for them, or you may choose not to take on that particular role for yourself at this time.

But if you have not already established this kind of supportive role with your friend who is going through a breakup, try to resist the call to suddenly be their sounding board.  Even if you think you can handle it.  Even if you think that you truly have the purest of intentions.

Some people want to manipulate social circles with sordid stories of the breakup or the ex.  Some people want to gossip.  Some people want to elicit a more active role from you in revenge, punitive action, or other things.  Abusers, in particular, are *very* good at convincing others that they have been harmed and making it look like they're just "reaching out" for support when they're actually undermining the other person's ability to find their support.

Some people just don't have very good boundaries and don't recognize what is appropriate and what isn't in terms of sharing private and personal details of a relationship and a breakup.  There are tons of reasons - both benign and harmful in *intent* - for someone coming to you with the story of their breakup.  But there are very few times in which accepting that role is actually *helpful*, either for your friend, for you as the support, or for the community everyone is all a part of.

So if you don't already have that kind of relationship with someone and they contact you from seemingly out of nowhere wanting to connect or looking for support for a breakup, and *especially* if you *do* have a connection to the ex, it's probably best to clearly state your own boundaries that this is not a role you feel suited for at this time.

If *you* are going through a breakup and you have somehow managed to lose or avoid building your own support group with a very small number of people who can handle being in the role of "I will listen to you trash talk your ex so you can vent" buddy, you may find yourself now needing to reach out to people you haven't before.

Some advice:
  • Keep it to a small number of people, preferably people who are at least on the next closest ring of your concentric social circles, so it would seem like a natural next step in a progression of intimacy when you reach out to them, not a weird, out-of-the-blue request.  Don't spam dozens of people, you really only need a small handful of close confidantes, and they should be people who are close *enough* that it doesn't seem like a leap of intimacy.
     
  • Try to pick people who are not also friends with the ex, or who are more distant friends with the ex than they are with you.  That way you don't unintentionally (or subconsciously intentionally) fuck up their friendships, support networks, or social circles too.
     
  • Focus on YOU - on what YOU did, on how YOU feel, on what you could have done, on what you plan to do from here, etc.  Leave your ex out of it, other than the fact that being an ex is what makes you need support in the first place.  Your breakup is about YOU, regardless of what they did or the details of what happened.  Support is about YOU, not about your ex.
     
  • Be clear on what you are asking for.  Do you just want someone to listen while you sort through your thoughts and that takes speaking them out loud?  Do you want advice?  Do you want someone to hear your story and give you reassurance?  Do you want someone to hear your story and give it to you straight, whether that turns out to be reassurance or some hard truths?  Do you just want to sit with feelings of being petty and a space to be ugly for a while with someone who won't judge you for it?  Be clear.  Tell people which role you want them to play, and be prepared for them to tell you that they can't play that role for you.
Breaking up is hard. It's where your ethics meet the road.  And we ALL fuck up here.  This is how to fuck up a little bit less.
joreth: (anger)
I'm starting to think that when men go through a breakup, there should be, like, this mandatory "rehab" building where they get put, where they don't have any contact with any people for a few days, they get fed, get comfy accommodations, and are only given squishy things or non-breakable things. They have to go there and just feel like shit for a while, all by themselves.

Only after a couple of days when the most acute pain has faded, then they get to talk to counselors who are especially trained in anger management and loss processing. The counselors can make a judgement call about when to let them out, whether to allow contact with loved ones and when, and whatever else needs to be decided for their recovery.

Only when they're deemed to have processed their anger and grief in healthy ways are they allowed back into society. They may still be going through the process of loss, because some breakups take time, but its that initial destructive period of anger and hurt that is the most threatening.

And if men can't figure out how to feel angry and hurt without property destruction, revenge, control, or making a "statement", then they ought to be put in isolation until they can get a handle on it.

Women too, because I've seen some really fucked up shit from women going through a breakup, but men have the power of society behind them and much fewer resources for helping them process difficult emotions.

Sometimes I see men going through breakups and I just want to lock them in their rooms for a while and take away their phones and internet until they calm the fuck down and stop trying to *make* their exes do whatever it is they feel entitled to making them do ("pay for it", "come back", whatever).

I recently had a friend who, until their breakup we all called *his girlfriend* the problem child (and she really was - manipulative, controlling, the whole 9 yards), ended up getting Baker Acted by his ex-girlfriend because he used a suicide threat to get her attention. He was held for several days with minimal contact outside.

I think that was probably the best thing she ever did for him. When he got out, we still had to metaphorically spank him occasionally to get him to stop fucking calling her and trying to "win her back", but it was *much* less destructive than before.

The longer it takes me to finish this breaking up book, and the more breakups I witness because of how many people now come to me with their breakup stories, the less lenient and lovey-dovey I become over how people should breakup. Now I just want to lock everyone in padded rooms until they come to their fucking senses and stop being jackasses.

Maybe we should pipe in some pro-agency inspirational messages to the rooms like 24-hours a day for some cultural reprogramming or something. Apparently it's going to take some sci-fi Russian super-soldier training methods to make people just STOP FUCKING TRYING TO CONTROL YOUR ROMANTIC PARTNERS, INTERESTS, AND EXES AND DEAL WITH YOUR OWN GODDAMN EMOTIONS
joreth: (boxed in)
The thing about new partners, is that I end up revisiting a lot of memories of old partners. When I'm in a new relationship, we talk about ourselves, and part of ourselves is our past that made us who we are today. So I end up going over a lot of old stories, partly as illustrations for how I want to be treated or want not to be treated, and partly because I'm just sharing stories of my experiences and who I am.

I don't know if "ironic" is the right word, but what got me on this tangent tonight is not a "new" partner, exactly, but talking with my most recent ex-FWB during our breakup, rather than as part of the "get to know each other" stage in the beginning. Perhaps because our relationship was less than a month, and the breakup came suddenly, and he's actually doing his part of the breakup well, some things that I associate with a "beginning" didn't happen until the end. This isn't really relevant, I'm musing tonight.

Anyway, during one of our breakup talks (because a good, compassionate breakup where both people are being kind and considerate of each other often takes several discussions and check-ins to make sure everyone is OK), I got to talking about some of my abusive exes.

Here's the thing... when I was growing up, all of our "afternoon specials" about abusive relationships were about domestic physical violence. I knew all the warning signs for a physically *violent* partner, but I knew absolutely nothing about an emotionally abusive or psychologically controlling partner.

Over the years, I've told a lot of stories about a lot of exes. In the last decade or so, as I've had the opportunity to meet and know some truly amazing people, when I've told these stories, I've been met with horrified reactions. I was not prepared for the strength of the horror in these reactions. To me, these stories were about jerks, sure, but "horror"? I mean, they weren't great stories, but I also thought they were run-of-the-mill "bad", not "abusive-bad".

Now, with a lot more education on what abuse is, I can look back over my relationship history and see that I've actually been involved with a whole bunch of abusive men. Remember, when I started telling these stories, I was not aware that they were tales of abuse. So I'm not retconning my memories, which can happen pretty easily. I can look back over the time I told one particular story, and at the time I thought it was normal-bad, but now I can see that *the story I told at that time* was actually abusive-bad.

So I've been in a lot of abusive relationships. But what I always had going for me is a strong sense of self. You can ask my mother about this. She and I have been locked in conflict over my agency for literally my entire life. She describes me as "headstrong" and "independent". From day 1. What would happen is that I would get into a relationship with someone who I saw as confident and "strong", and because I was excited to be in that relationship, he would treat me well.

But eventually NRE would wear off, and I would start showing more enthusiasm for my own life than for his. And, being an abuser (which means he believed he was justified in controlling his partners behaviour to match what *he* thought they ought to do), he would employ various psychological tactics to bring me back in line and to behave more like I did in the beginning of the relationship when I was drugged out on NRE.

But my strong sense of self would kick in and I would always resist. And he would escalate, and I would resist harder. In a very short span of time, one of us would get pissed off enough at the other to break up. So I didn't recognize these relationships as abusive because the conflict would be relatively short-lived and always resulted in a breakup, usually with me angry rather than sad over it.

Over the years, I have been faced with some form of the question "how would your exes describe you?" from a variety of sources - Cosmo quizzes, new partners, friends, etc. One of the things I pride myself is on being honest about my "flaws". So I would usually answer these questions with something along the lines of "cold-hearted bitch". That was, I believe, the most common parting shot I would get from exes.

I have always been described as "cold", as "unfeeling", even been accused of sociopathy on more than one occasion. Some days I would agree with those descriptions. Other days I'm baffled how anyone could think that of me. You see, one of the reasons why I'm polyamorous is because I feel. so. much. I have so many feelings that I'm often overwhelmed by them. I sometimes feel like River Tam from Firefly, when her brother finally starts to make progress in diagnosing what her captors did to her when they experimented on her brain - "She feels everything; she can't not."

I went out with a guy not too long ago who is way into the woo. I find his beliefs to be completely absurd, but I do find some of the language he used to be useful as metaphor. When we first started talking, he described me as "empty". He said that he "looked into me" and found just this empty space where he expected to find ... I dunno, "me", I guess. Later, as I began to trust him and to develop feelings for him, I let my guard down and he noticed. He discovered what all that "empty space" was for. Whatever emotion I was feeling at the moment floods into all that space. He said he had never met anyone who felt so much at one time. He said he couldn't even see how he once thought I was "empty" before. I said that I was never "empty", I just had walls up and was only letting him see me controlled.

I feel a lot. I feel so much that it's just too much to keep up continuously. I have to shut down every so often, just to stay sane. In fact, one of the primary symptoms of my depression is apathy. When all the bad shit gets too overwhelming and sends me into suicidal ideation, I just stop feeling anything. I think this is the main reason why I haven't managed to kill myself yet - I want to be dead but I don't feel strongly enough about anything to go through with it.

Back to my long history with abusive men. Gendered abuse has some particular traits. Women are socialized to be nurturers, caregivers, to be polite, to consider other people, to do emotional labor. Men who want to control women can use this as a form of control.

"Why would you hurt me like that? You don't want to hurt me, do you? You should stop what you're doing so that I don't feel hurt by it."

"Now, now, be a good girl..."

"Stop being so hysterical..."

"Pull yourself together, you don't want to make other people uncomfortable, do you?"

When my former metamour was being abused by our mutual partner, he accused her of hurting him for wanting to be with her other partner. She wanted to do a thing, he would get upset by it, she would try to understand why he was upset, he would accuse her of hurting him. This would immediately stop her in her tracks, as she spent the next several days wracking her brain to understand *why she was hurting him* so that she could stop.

Not me.

I moved in with my abusive fiance, against everyone's advice. Almost immediately after moving in together, he began trying to control me. He wanted to change my clothing, change my career, force me into a homemaker role. I even asked him several times why he said he loved me, since he didn't seem to like me very much.

One of the many things that he would do was coerce me into sex. He would try to initiate sex very late at night when I had to wake up early the next morning. I would reject him, so he would wait until he thought I was asleep, and put his hands between my legs and try to take my underwear off without waking me. Most of the time I had not fallen asleep yet, but I would pretend to stay asleep, hoping to discourage him but it never did. Every single night I would "wake up" to him molesting me and I would yell at him to leave me alone, and he would start an argument that would keep me awake for *hours*, trying to talk me into having sex.

After a few weeks of this nightly molestation and some chronic sleep deprivation, I started trying to leave the argument. I would get up to go sleep on the couch. As I reached the door, he would threaten to break my prized figurine collection unless I remained in the room. So I would grab my pillow and sleep on the bathroom floor, which was *technically* still in the room.

When you're in a relationship with someone, you typically work under the assumption that both of you are operating in good faith. At least, people with reasonably healthy views on relationships do. Sure, there may be conflict, but we assume that we are both on the same team and that we both want to resolve the conflict, and that we both care about each other so nobody would want a resolution that actually compromised the other person's integrity or sense of self or value system.  We might be *angry*, but we don't feel that our partners are out to get us deliberately.

This is how abusers get their foot in the door. They are not operating in good faith. So I spent those weeks arguing with him because I earnestly believed I just had to make him see why this was hurting me and he would stop because he didn't *really* want to hurt me.

But by the time I was willing to sleep on the tile floor with my head next to a toilet? I no longer believed he was operating in good faith. I was not able to leave right away, but with all my big emotions and the constant attempt to wear me down, I had to find some way to live there until I could leave.

Enter the coldness.

Once I started to believe that he really did not have my best interests at heart, I went cold. I shut down. We weren't simply not seeing eye-to-eye, he fundamentally did not see me as a whole person. He saw me only in terms of how I could support his story arc. So I stopped caring about him in return.

One of the things I had suspected him of, was being a pathological liar. At first, his lies were ridiculous but, again with the good faith thing, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Looking back on them now, I can't understand how I ever thought they could even possibly be true. But I was young and naive and in love. He made up all kinds of outrageous stories, which I will save for another time because this is already very long. Now that I had lost the rose colored glasses and I could finally see the flags were red, I decided not to believe anything he said and to start calling him on his shit.

One day, we were driving home from my parents house (where I did my laundry) and we got into one of our repetitive arguments in the car. We lived in an apartment complex with a carport underneath the apartment units. I pulled into our slot, got out of the car, got my laundry basket from the back, and started walking across the low-ceilinged carport towards the stairs to our unit, all with him still arguing about whatever.

I had gone cold. I was simply refusing to argue any further. I just couldn't expend any more energy or emotion on this same fucking argument one more time.  I said what I had to say and that was the end of it, as far as I was concerned. He did not like that, and kept arguing at my retreating back. He hated it when I went cold.

Suddenly, he stopped talking, mid-sentence. I heard a rustling, and when I looked back, he was lying on the ground, seemingly unconscious. I assumed he was faking. I stood there for a moment, watching him to see if he would get up. Then I adjusted my grip on the laundry basket, turned on my heel, and walked up to our apartment, leaving him lying on the oil-soaked concrete.

I went upstairs and started putting the clothes away. Eventually he came into our bedroom, holding his hand to his head and walking unsteadily. Slurring his words, he said that while we were arguing, he somehow managed to walk into one of the low pipes in the carport and knock himself unconscious (he was 6'4" and the carport ceiling was about 6'6" high so he had to duck under the plumbing pipes).

And THEN, while he was unconscious, a mugger came and stole his wallet. He woke up just as the mugger grabbed it and ran away. Most of his fabrications were stories intended to illicit sympathy from me, so that I would stop being mad at him and start feeling worry and concern instead. This was the most transparent lie he had ever told (and he had told some whoppers!).

So I said "oh my god! A mugger! We better call the police right away!" He immediately tried to talk me out of it, while I "argued" how important it was that we file a police report. I mean, what if the mugger came back? What if he tried to rob *me* while I'm down there alone, at night? He doesn't want anything bad to happen to me, did he? I picked up the phone and actually hit 9-1 before he finally came clean.

He made the whole thing up because I was so mad at him and he just wanted me to stop being mad at him. So I dropped the act and the phone, said "no shit", and gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the night.

This story, and several others, have been running around my mind for the last week or so. Particularly the part about being "cold". It used to bother me. At least, when I wasn't actively in one of my defensive modes where all my emotions shut down, it did. But this week I realized something. I frequently go "cold" at the end of a relationship, but talking with my ex-FWB about some of my experiences with abuse, I noticed the pattern. I go "cold" as a response to abuse.

This abusive fiance was deliberately trying to manipulate my emotions to control my behaviour. In this particular story, I finally got him to admit it. He didn't want me mad at him, so rather than address the thing I was mad about, he tried to make me feel sorry for him and to feel concern for him. Because he was trying to manipulate me into *feeling* what he wanted me to feel, my response was to stop feeling entirely.

Well, not "entirely". Like Hulk in one of the Avengers movies, I still always feel rage. That's always bubbling beneath the surface, all the time. But it gets compartmentalized, and in these situations, I just stop feeling.

Abusers are not evil super-villains twirling their mustachios and consciously plotting the manipulation of their partners. They are quite often people in pain. They are people who feel fear, as we all do. It's just that their reaction to fear is to hold a metaphorical gun to someone else's head and make them do things to prevent themselves from feeling fear. They are calculating to a certain extent, but mostly they just feel fear and they feel *justified* in reaching for tools of control to address their fears.

My abusive fiance abused me because he was afraid. He was afraid to lose me. So he tried to direct my feelings towards those that would tie me to him. So when I stopped having feelings, he was terrified. Apparently it's very scary to have someone you love go cold on you. I wouldn't know. If any of my exes ever went cold on me, it was towards the end of a relationship where I was probably sliding into apathy myself.

But as I looked back over my history, at all the people who accused me of being "cold", these were also all the same people who, when I tell stories about them to relatively healthy, non-manipulative people, are the ones that my friends recoil in horror about and tell me that they were abusive. Apparently this is my last defense mechanism for abuse. You can't manipulate my emotions to control my behaviour if I don't feel any emotions.

I'm kind of surprised at the realization that all those accusations of being "cold" were A) probably all true, but because B) were in response to abuse. When I think of abuse victims, I see mostly afternoon special TV characters and my former metamour who was an emotional wreck at the end of her last abusive relationship. I see people who are beaten down, dejected, shells of their former selves, but most of all, *emotional*.

But when *I* face abuse, I get hard. I get cold. I get sharp. There may be a reason why I like knives so much.

I'm not saying that being in abusive relationships doesn't leave long-term damage on me. It usually takes me a while to trust people again. And I'm very cynical. I don't like to open up to people. It seems like I'm very open because I talk about so many personal things in very public spaces. But I can talk about things while being guarded. I'm not really sharing any intimacy, even though I'm sharing a lot of details.

Apathy and coldness and hardness are my defense mechanisms. It's when you know I've reached the end. These are what come out in response to abuse, control, manipulation. I can only extend my compassion so far. When I feel like the other person is not meeting me in the middle, when they're not operating in good faith, when they're trying to control me, I take away those parts of me that make me vulnerable to harm and control - my emotions.

Becoming a knife edge is my response to abuse.
joreth: (polyamory)
Q. If you could reconnect with any of your exes, who would it be and why?

A. Almost without exception, my exes are exes for a reason. Some of them became friends after we broke up, but I wouldn’t get back together with them. With very few exceptions.

I have an ex who I broke up with because of political pressures. We remain friends and I still care about him. The pressures on our relationship have not changed. But I did recently consider having sex with him when an opportunity came up that was uniquely suited for a fetish we have in common. We will probably never get back together, but I might possibly consider the occasional hookup if the circumstances are exactly right.

I have another ex who I broke up with because we wanted different things from our relationship together. It has now been more than a decade and we are still friends and business partners. Every so often I consider possibly getting back together with him and then I realize that neither of us has changed what we want out of a relationship, so it wouldn’t work.

However, I have a much wider range of acceptable structures in my Friends With Benefits category. The things that we want out of a relationship are irrelevant if we’re not in a romantic relationship but we are friends. It may be possible to find a FWB type of arrangement that would work. I have not yet decided if I really want to pursue this or not, so I don’t even know if he would be interested either. But it’s something I’m thinking about. I’m on the fence and leaning towards “not likely, but not impossible either”. Our platonic chemistry was always stronger than our romantic or sexual chemistry, so I don’t know, we’ll see.

The only ex I would definitely get back together with if I could would be my high school sweetheart. We broke up because we went off to college and neither of us wanted to be tied to each other over the distance and with new experiences and opportunities to explore. A few years after that breakup, I discovered that I was polyamorous, while he remains steadfastly monogamous.

That difference is not a problem between platonic friends. Since he is still the same considerate, caring, intelligent, clever, funny, creative, and passionate person he always was, and since the years have taught him to be more worldly and aware than either of us were as teenagers, I continue to love him all this time.

But it is a love that can endure whether we remain platonic friends or not, through time and physical distance. It is a love based on character and compatibility and respect and admiration, which does not require any sort of romance or sex. So, as long as he is monogamous, our friendship will remain platonic, because he is honorable towards his commitments and I respect his loyalty and honor among everything else that I respect about him.

But he is one of the greatest loves of my life and I would pursue a romantic relationship with him if we were romantically compatible. Since we are not, I cherish the platonic relationship with him that I do have, not as a consolation prize, but because it is valuable all on its own.
joreth: (feminism)
Some day, I hope to cease being surprised at how many people are REALLY offended at the idea that a person might be able to end a relationship with someone *just because they want to* and not because the other person is a horribly abusive person.  I mean, if we can just end relationships for *any reason* or no reason at all, what's to keep our own partners with us? What's to stop everyone from breaking up with us just because?!?!

Uh, well, maybe how you treat them, for one thing. This might actually require you to keep putting in effort into your relationships because there's no point at which you've "won" and you're done.

But for another thing, nothing. There is nothing to keep our partners with us or to stop them from breaking up with us. Nothing at all. Because if there was something preventing people from breaking up with us, THAT WOULD BE COERCION.

Which is a consent violation.

And abusive.

If your partners are not with you because they actively want to be with you every single day, then you're duin it rong. Your partners can leave you. Your partners can die. There is nothing in the universe guaranteeing your relationships.

Now accept that and appreciate every day that you *do* have with your partners for the gift that it is, not the prize that you are owed for having completed the appropriate levels and making it to the castle.
joreth: (Purple Mobius)
https://www.morethantwo.com/gamechanger.html

"The game changer is the relationship that comes along and turns everything upside down. It’s the relationship that changes the familiar landscape of life, rearranging the furniture in new and unexpected ways."

"“Yes, you will always be #1“ is true until it isn’t, and there is no rule that can change that. If someone comes along who your partner genuinely does love more than he loves you, whatever that means…well, his priorities are unlikely to remain with abiding by the agreements he’s made with you. Game-changing relationships change things; that’s what they do. They change priorities, and that means they change rules. Expecting an agreement to protect you from a game changer is about like expecting a river to obey a law against flooding."
One of the drawbacks to choosing a life off the relationship escalator - of deliberately choosing to be poly, to be "single", to be a "bachelor" (none of which are interchangeable terms) - is that having more partners than most means that I probably have had more breakups than most too.

But that's also one of the benefits. Not really a set of benefits that I'd like to have, mind you, but I did benefit greatly from going through as many breakups as I have. I've learned, the hard way, about the Game Changer. I've seen from both perspectives how Game Changers change the game. I've seen people who had every intention of following through with their rules and agreements encounter a Game Changer of some sort and the rules turned out to have no power at all in the face of it. I've seen what happens when you let go of the control and just let it go where it wants to go - I've seen relationships thrive with that kind of freedom and I've seen relationships die, either due to lack of nourishment from "letting it go" or due to the relationship "going" in places that couldn't sustain it.

I've experienced just about every kind of breakup imaginable, from the fade-away to the better-as-friends to the all-out-war to the cut-them-off-and-never-speak-to-them-again to even the death of a former partner. And what all this experience has taught me is that the future is uncertain, the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, rules only work until they don't, and no matter how bad it gets - if it doesn't kill me, I will survive it.*

People are afraid of loss.  People are afraid of change.  People get comfortable and don't want to lose their comforts.  So people create all kinds of rules and structures to protect themselves against loss and change.  But the #10 bus careening around the corner doesn't care about your rules and structures.  It will cause a change and a loss and laugh in the face of your rules and structures.  The #10 bus is a Game Changer.  A new baby is a Game Changer.  Sometimes new partners can also be Game Changers.  These are forces of nature that will upset your apple carts.  No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and all that jazz (and all those cliches, too).  You can make your rules against Game Changers, but when someone or something comes along who is a Game Changer, all your rules will change.  That's the point.  No take-backsies doesn't matter anymore to someone who is no longer playing your game.  And rules preventing people from ever backing out of the game A) don't work; and B) if they did, would be coercive.

I fear loss and change just like most people do. But I've learned that fearing loss and change doesn't matter to loss and change. Loss and change happen whether you deal with them or not. The best way to handle them is to accept that it'll happen, take a deep breath, and jump off that ledge anyway. With each successive breakup, I have learned a little more about how to handle Game Changers and my own fears of loss and change, and with each breakup I have gotten better at constructing my relationships to be flexible and accommodating of Game Changers. This, ultimately, actually builds relationships that are better able to withstand those Game Changers than any other method that attempts to prevent Game Changers from happening.



*That bullshit about whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger is crap - sometimes if it doesn't kill you, it still maims you pretty damn good, leaving you worse off than you were before. But if I'm not dead, I'm still alive, and that's not nothin'.

joreth: (Purple Mobius)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-01/sp-auw010615.php

The researchers specifically looked at "self-concept reorganization," the process of seeing and defining yourself separate from your ex and from the relationship. Asking the participants to reflect on their relationships helped the participants "build a stronger sense of who they were as single people," Larson says.
in close relationships, people begin to feel as though they overlap with the person they are close to. "The process of becoming psychologically intertwined with the partner is painful to have to undo," she says. "Our study provides additional evidence that self-concept repair actually causes improvements in well-being."
The recovery of a clear and independent self-concept seems to be a big force driving the positive effects of this study, so I would encourage a person who recently experienced a breakup to consider who he or she is, apart from the relationship," Larson says. "If that person can reflect on the aspects of him- or herself that he or she may have neglected during the relationship but can now nurture once again, this might be particularly helpful."
Although this article was about breaking up, recovery from breaking up, and the study was most likely exclusively about monogamous relationships, my take-away from this article is that solo poly is one relationship style that can give people a leg-up in breakup recovery. Since solo poly is defined, more or less, by the individuality of the participants, regardless of the emotional connection, and the intentional relationship structure is based on communication and self-reflection of needs and wants, it seems to me that people who practice solo poly well probably already have the tools necessary to recover from breakups quickly and in healthy ways, and also that people who practice solo poly well probably have the *potential* to have less painful breakups in general since there is less entwinement happening in the relationship to begin with.

With only a few exceptions, I have always felt that I "got over" my breakups faster than it seemed other people did. Some people have accused me of not really loving my exes if I could move past a breakup quickly, and in my blacker moments, I have wondered the same thing. In my most self-doubtingier moments, it has crossed my mind to wonder whether or not I don't feel as deeply as others.

But then I swim out of my morass and realize that the whole reason why I get so upset at the shit I rant about online is precisely because I feel so deeply about things that I get overwhelmed by bad stuff. And then this study comes out, and it just reinforces the high-self-esteem-voice in my head that, no, I'm just fine, I love just as "much" as anyone else. I just probably have more tools in my toolkit for handling breakups because I always maintain my sense of self as distinct from my relationships. My relationships are things that I do and connections that I treasure, but they are not the entirety of my identity. They aren't even a large portion of my identity, in spite of *how* I do relationship (i.e. being poly) being a large part of my identity.

And, it turns out, this thing that I've always done instinctively is probably what makes it possible for me to have had as many breakups as I've had (and also to have withstood as many attempts of people to trap me in abusive relationships as I have) and to still be able to trust in the next one, to open up and risk being vulnerable the next time, and to still believe that I'm worthy of love and that there is more love out there for me to find even after yet another breakup.
joreth: (Purple Mobius)
http://www.businessinsider.com/lasting-relationships-rely-on-2-traits-2014-11
"Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife — a sign of interest or support — hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird. ...

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t — those who turned away — would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being."
This is especially true for introverts and passive communicators. By the time they get to the point of mentioning something, it's already an important thing. The mere act of saying something out loud takes emotional effort, so they don't waste that effort on unimportant things. When someone brings their partner's attention to something, it's a signal that they're trying to connect with them, even if that something is fleeting or ultimately unimportant in the concrete; but it's important in the abstract.

This is something my extrovert ex-boyfriend learned the hard way when he thought I was just passing along random information that he could take or leave but I was sharing something important with him, so when no action resulted, I felt rejected. I'm not a passive communicator, so I was clear that I was sharing something; it was the *importance* that he didn't get, because he shares things that pop into his head all the time with no emotional attachment to that thought. It might even be a thought he disagrees with, but it popped in, so he shared it, because he's an extrovert. We both had to learn to interpret the other's communication skills through these filters in order to respond correctly.
"Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there."
This is something that Sterling & I mention in our How To Break Up workshop. Anger and disagreement in a relationship aren't indicators of trouble by themselves; that's all part of the normal range of human interaction. But CONTEMPT is a relationship killer. This is why I have a list of traits that a person can have that means that I can't date them even if I otherwise like them. If they have certain traits, then I know I will lose respect for them, and after loss of respect comes contempt, and that means the relationship is doomed from the start.
"Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work."
People are not "good" or "bad". Kindness, courage, and love are all things we DO, not things that we are or that we have. They take regular practice. Franklin talks about this in the book More Than Two and I talk about it in my 5 Love Languages workshop. "One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions." - this is also something mentioned in the book.
“It’s scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation.”
There's a Sex and the City episode where the main character starts out having a relationship with someone she once characterizes as "we're PERFECT!" and ends up having a breakup conversation that says "when did you stop being on my side?" There's a reason that dialog led to a breakup:

joreth: (polyamory)
I've lost it now, but someone once wrote a blog or a forum piece about the failure rate of polyamorous relationships.  This is one of my pet peeves - polyamory is held up to impossible standards of "success" by monogamists, yet those standards are not applied to monogamous relationships.  What I mean is, when a relationship ends, the Monogamous Mindset declares that relationship a "failure", whether it's poly or mono.  But when a poly relationship "fails", it's a sign that polyamory itself is doomed to failure.  Yet, when a monogamous relationship "fails", monogamy itself is not seen as inherently flawed, just that couple is seen at having failed in their relationship.  I HATE this double standard, and I also hate the bunch of assumptions that underlie the idea, including that longevity is the sole measuring stick for success in a relationship.

So, someone wrote a piece somewhere on the internet asking how many of our poly relationships have to fail before we give up clinging to the idea of polyamory and just admit that it's doomed.  Naturally, I had a few things to say about that:



How many monogamous relationships have you witnessed that ended? How many were great for a year or two before some form of amicable split? How many went down in flames? How many people have you witnessed that got involved with a single person EVER and remained with that person until death? Personally, I know only a few, the majority of whom are in my grandparents' generation (and even my grandparents are divorced). I also know more monogamous people who remain involved with someone who tried to hit them with their own cars than monogamous people who haven't (seriously, I can give you 3 names just off the top of my head, and more if I think about it). Should I then extrapolate that monogamy is bad because so many monogamous people try to commit vehicular manslaugher on their spouses? Or is it perhaps more likely that I know a lot of dysfunctional people and it's not necessarily monogamy's fault?

Of course I'm not saying that monogamy is always bad or a "failure", or even a death sentence. But I am saying that confirmation bias is a logical fallacy. Statistical analysis requires a large sample population to be representative of the population as a whole, and a method to remove personal bias from interpreting the results. "What I've seen" does not count as representative, nor unbaised. It especially does not count when coming from counselors whose sample population is made up exclusively of their own therapy practice. They (and you) have a skewed sample popluation because of the types of people they are likely to see - in the case of the counselors, people whose relationships are already in danger, hence the reason for a trip to a therapist. People with functioning relationships don't tend to seek counseling, don't tend to make headlines, and don't tend to get noticed by friends and neighbors without intentionally sharing the details of their relationships.

Also, because of the stigma, and in some cases, legal threat, you probably know more poly people in "successful" relationships than you're aware of because a large number of poly people are still in the proverbial closet. There have been countless people who were rendered speechless upon discovering old love letters and other evidence of lives they never knew their parents had, when going through their personal effects after death: same-sex love affairs, mistresses, swinger partners, kinky sex lives, even whole other families. My paternal grandmother was completely unaware of my existence until 30 years after my birth (and to this day, she refuses to believe I'm not a charlatan trying to scam her family out of money and not really related).

If people can keep secrets this big from their spouses, children, and parents, it's ridiculous to think that your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances aren't also keeping secrets from you, let alone the cute waitress who serves you coffee at your favorite restaurant, your hunky UPS guy, the guy sitting next to you on the bus, or your kid's soccer coach, especially if you have ever exhibited the subtle and unconscious signs that you are not accepting of the idea of polyamory and are therefore not someone who is safe to confide in. You have no idea what people are doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms (or kitchens, or dungeons, or play parties) if you aren't there to witness it and you are completely unaware of what you don't know.

I'm also saying that if you hold these standards up to polyamorous relationships and suggest or imply that polyamory doesn't have the appropriate numbers to count as "successful", then you have to hold monogamous relationships up to the same standard. And, as studies have actually shown, people are NOT clamoring for the end of monogamy when shown the high "failure" rate. In fact, when we see headlines like "49% of first marriages end in divorce", the article is not usually calling for an end to monogamy, it tends to be calling for a tightening up of the standards of monogamy so that we can get that failure rate down (and even in some cases, a "redefining" of monogamy so that people can broaden what "counts" as a "successful" monogamous relationship). As for that statistic, keep in mind that it's for "first marriages" - second and third marriages have an even higher failure rate and every relationship prior to the first marriage had a 100% failure rate. Monogamy's track record for longevity is really not very good at all.

Longevity alone is not a good measuring stick for "success" in a relationship, be it polyamory or monogamy. Millions of people are stuck in loveless, even abhorrent, marriages because of pride, of religious edicts, of legal complications, of "family values", of social stigma, of emotional restrictions, and more. If those relationships last for life, should they be counted among the successes? If they were to end, would they be counted among the failures? And how would we know which relationships they are? Relationships are rarely what they appear to people on the outside.

A relationship is successful if it meets the goals set by the participants. For some, longevity may be the only or most important goal, and in that case, simply ending *would* be considered a failure. But for others, the happiness of the participants may trump that. Some may be to raise a family. Some may be for financial incentive. Some may be for companionship.  Some may be a combination of goals.  Personally, since you asked for personal stories, my goals tend to be about intent, rather than longevity. I intend for my relationships to emphasize communication, for the participants to actively contribute to (but not try to be responsible for) each others' happiness, to find compromises and common paths, to support each other in our endeavors including personal growth and discovery, to be compassionate, to learn from my mistakes, to grow as a person through the influences of my partners & metamours, and I intend to be ethical and considerate in my breakups should the relationship no longer be a source of happiness to all the participants.

My relationships almost never end because of polyamory. They end for the same reasons that monogamous relationships do - compatibility. They end because we eventually figured out we are not romantically compatible in some way, just like how most monogamous relationships end. They end when we want different things from our relationship, or when we have different goals, or when we have personality conflicts that just can't be overcome. So many people want to blame polyamory for the ending of a poly relationship even when the polyamory part wasn't the problem, but when a monogamous relationship ends, it's not the fault of monogamy.

A relationship can also be "successful" when it has a successful transition from one form to another, and sometimes that means transitioning from a romantic relationship to a platonic one. As a line in a movie once said, I don't tend to think of breaking up as a relationship ending, I tend to think of it as two friends getting back together.

People change over time and sometimes they just don't change in the same way or at the same rate as the people with whom they are in relationships, and sometimes the relationship cannot remain in the same state when the people have changed in certain ways. That doesn't necessarily indicate a failure of the relationship. It indicates the luxury our society has of demanding such an enormous amount of responsibility from a romantic relationship. Insisting that marriages include love is a relatively recent addition to the structure, and with the almost-equality between the genders regarding income and independence in our society, we can now have the luxury of requiring higher demands of our relationships than ever before in our history, and the luxury of ending a relationship when it doesn't meet all the demands we place on it.

The "failure" rate of relationships is not a sign of degrading family values, as some would like to think. On the contrary, it's a symptom of HIGHER family values, demanding even more from relationships than ever before and not settling for less. Relationships are no longer simply about property and alliances. Now our partners are expected to be our best friends, confidantes, lovers, and co-parents in addition to securing property for our offspring and allying our families. Because of all that monogamous relationships have to live up to, monogamy itself has a very high "failure" rate.

One of the advantages to polyamorous relationships is that they do not need to live up to this high standard of a single person being everything to someone else, much like past relationships did not need to - with family, friends, church, and lovers taking up the slack for emotional intimacy and child-rearing since the spouse was not supposed to fulfill all those roles. Poly relationships have a lot of flexibility and they can look like a lot of different things without being a "failure" or coming up short in comparison to some Happily Ever After relationship that has been pre-charted for us in fairy tales and romantic comedies. A poly relationship can look like whatever it wants to look like, and if it doesn't look like someone else's relationship, or if it ends without one of the partners dying, if the participants think it was successful, then it was and no one else has to agree or approve of it.

If I fall in love with someone who is not compatible with me as a live-in partner, I can enjoy that relationship as it is without ever having to cohabitate. Since monogamous culture has a prescribed path for relationships (first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage), a loving relationship that doesn't have the goal of marriage and cohabitation might seem like a failure. But in polyamory, it doesn't have to be if we are happy with the arrangement.  And if a cohabitation situation is still desired, continuing to enjoy this fulfilling but non-living-together relationship does not prohibit a cohabitation situation with someone else who might be more compatible in that role. Rather than being disappointed at the relationship for not living up to its enormous expectations, I can enjoy the experience for what it *does* provide, which is usually fulfilling in its own right if not constantly being compared to a fairy tale.

This is fundamentally different from "settling", by the way.  "Settling" is "taking what you can get", it's accepting something you are not completely happy with because the alternative, which is to go without, is worse.  I'm talking about liking my roasted chicken because I like roasted chicken, and not being disappointed in my chicken just because it doesn't taste like grilled salmon.  Settling is more like eating a rice cake because you're hungry and don't want to go without *something* but you're on a diet and you'd really rather have a chocolate cake instead, so you munch the crispy rice as a diversion just to shut your stomach up so you won't keep thinking about chocolate cake when you know you can't have it anyway.

If my relationship does not follow the love-marriage-baby path, if we do not cohabitate, if it ends before one of us dies, but we are all happy at the time and we do not regret it when it ends, why should that be considered a failure? And if you're going to hold us to that standard and declare "success" or "failure" on other people's relationships and an entire relationship style, that standard ought to be held up to your own chosen style.

So, I ask you, when do you call monogamy a personal failure and move on? Do you just keep trying? Or redefine and create relationships of a different type?

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August 2024

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