initiating contact / communication patterns w Kylei, Adi, Arizona / talkin w Abby about expectations
There tends to be a disparity in my relationships regarding initiating contact: I tend to do much more of it than the other person, and when that happens for a long period of time, my self-worth takes a nosedive. So my first reaction is to see if the other person is willing & able to do more initiating, and if that's not the case, then I decrease the amount I'm doing until I don't feel bad about it anymore. I get caught in horrible loops if the other person gets upset with me for decreasing, but otherwise it works.
It's strange to me how my relationships shift around in completely unpredictable ways. Currently I'm in romantic relationships with Kylei, Arizona, and Adi. Kylei I live with (and have lived with for the last year and a half) and see every day (on the days where one of us is out of town we tend to have at least one hour of phonetalking per day). Adi is extremely busy as ze's dating five other people, and ze also has ADD so we don't really talk unless we're in person. Arizona is also very busy and not much for distance communication. I have intense emotional/spiritual connections with both of them and ideally I'd like to have the kind of relationships with them where we talked at least via text at least every other day, but I know realistically that that is not going to happen, and I've come to acceptance about it. Lately I've been reflecting on it and while I'm okay with having relationships that are at this low level of communication, it's not very nourishing for me. It IS nourishing, just at a very low level and I'd like to be creating what I want.
But most people don't seem to want that level of communication, or if they do want it they are not able to do it. I was really, incredibly lucky to find Kylei, who wants to maintain our super-communicativeness as much as I do, but I want to develop at least one more bond like this. But it has to be a yearning PLUS ability on the part of the other person and that seems difficult. If Kylei and I didn't live together I don't think we'd have been able to maintain it while Kylei was dating others, because I think Kylei's lack of dating outside the house I was living in was what facilitated us staying connected like that while living apart. That sounds convoluted but I'm not sure how to untangle an explanation.
A month ago Abby and I decided to "officially" reclassify ourselves as friends because our romantic relationship had dissolved due to a mixture of things. I think our relationship began on the heels of a very intense and hurtful relationship of Abby's, and there were a lot of things that Abby needed in zir life in order to heal and ze subconsciously expected these from me. That worked badly with my own issues; a combination of 1) when people have expectations that I fail to meet and they get hurt by it, I feel like renegotiating is not an option and I just MUST do the things, but I can't, and then I feel like shit about myself which means I have less to give, and 2) when someone expects me to give, I don't want to, because I feel like the gift is taken away and it has become a duty. Abby and I met up today and talked about a lot of things, including this aspect of our relationship. I think we've both learned a lot. I've learned that I have a problem with not confronting expectations if they are expectations of things that I would naturally do 95% of the time, but I need to be wary of that and make sure that I'm not falling into old patterns of guilt and taking-on-responsibility-for-someone-else's-happiness (which is not necessarily an action of theirs at all) and stress. Instead I need to be clear and honest with myself and my people; I need to make sure that I give gifts that are received as such, and that if I do not want to give a gift, I don't. And I need to check in with myself regularly and ask, "is there a pattern?" whether good or bad. Kylei is very generous with small favors -- getting me water, letting the cat out, bringing me things -- but I only noticed this as a pattern this past week. Now that I have noticed it as a pattern instead of individual moments, I am much more nourished by it. And obviously if there is a negative pattern I need to notice that in order to change it.
Also I realized that I really missed Abby. Near the end there was so much stress and guilt and hurt for me that I felt relief to be out of contact, but after that went away our connection is still there. When we hugged today I just wanted to stand and hug for like an hour. We're going to work on our friendship, which makes me happy.
It's strange to me how my relationships shift around in completely unpredictable ways. Currently I'm in romantic relationships with Kylei, Arizona, and Adi. Kylei I live with (and have lived with for the last year and a half) and see every day (on the days where one of us is out of town we tend to have at least one hour of phonetalking per day). Adi is extremely busy as ze's dating five other people, and ze also has ADD so we don't really talk unless we're in person. Arizona is also very busy and not much for distance communication. I have intense emotional/spiritual connections with both of them and ideally I'd like to have the kind of relationships with them where we talked at least via text at least every other day, but I know realistically that that is not going to happen, and I've come to acceptance about it. Lately I've been reflecting on it and while I'm okay with having relationships that are at this low level of communication, it's not very nourishing for me. It IS nourishing, just at a very low level and I'd like to be creating what I want.
But most people don't seem to want that level of communication, or if they do want it they are not able to do it. I was really, incredibly lucky to find Kylei, who wants to maintain our super-communicativeness as much as I do, but I want to develop at least one more bond like this. But it has to be a yearning PLUS ability on the part of the other person and that seems difficult. If Kylei and I didn't live together I don't think we'd have been able to maintain it while Kylei was dating others, because I think Kylei's lack of dating outside the house I was living in was what facilitated us staying connected like that while living apart. That sounds convoluted but I'm not sure how to untangle an explanation.
A month ago Abby and I decided to "officially" reclassify ourselves as friends because our romantic relationship had dissolved due to a mixture of things. I think our relationship began on the heels of a very intense and hurtful relationship of Abby's, and there were a lot of things that Abby needed in zir life in order to heal and ze subconsciously expected these from me. That worked badly with my own issues; a combination of 1) when people have expectations that I fail to meet and they get hurt by it, I feel like renegotiating is not an option and I just MUST do the things, but I can't, and then I feel like shit about myself which means I have less to give, and 2) when someone expects me to give, I don't want to, because I feel like the gift is taken away and it has become a duty. Abby and I met up today and talked about a lot of things, including this aspect of our relationship. I think we've both learned a lot. I've learned that I have a problem with not confronting expectations if they are expectations of things that I would naturally do 95% of the time, but I need to be wary of that and make sure that I'm not falling into old patterns of guilt and taking-on-responsibility-for-someone-else's-happiness (which is not necessarily an action of theirs at all) and stress. Instead I need to be clear and honest with myself and my people; I need to make sure that I give gifts that are received as such, and that if I do not want to give a gift, I don't. And I need to check in with myself regularly and ask, "is there a pattern?" whether good or bad. Kylei is very generous with small favors -- getting me water, letting the cat out, bringing me things -- but I only noticed this as a pattern this past week. Now that I have noticed it as a pattern instead of individual moments, I am much more nourished by it. And obviously if there is a negative pattern I need to notice that in order to change it.
Also I realized that I really missed Abby. Near the end there was so much stress and guilt and hurt for me that I felt relief to be out of contact, but after that went away our connection is still there. When we hugged today I just wanted to stand and hug for like an hour. We're going to work on our friendship, which makes me happy.