Walking the line
I'd been pretty successful at focusing on myself, but now I'm feeling the pressure to stop doing so. The thing is, I'm not sure what it is he wants instead.
For me the purpose of spending time with someone is to learn and know a little more about them; usually what I do is an excuse for conversation, but I can also enjoy problem-solving with someone because that's also a neat way to engage with their mind.
I tend to engage on-- not necessarily big subjects, but ones that are of real interest to my conversational partner, and generally about that interest. That is to say, I'm less interested in a list of activities that someone accomplished, or a recounting of a story of some kind, but more what someone thought about those things. This doesn't have to be explicit but it has to be present.
Tucker has tended to hide his important stuff from me when it comes up, that or important things don't happen to him. It means he doesn't have much to say to me, and increasingly it diminishes my ability to be open with him: years of mostly-unreturned vulnerability mean that getting together what I want to say and saying it to him is somewhere between not safe and just not worth the energy. I think he's trying to change that a little but he's just not-- he can get through maybe ten minutes of that kind of conversation and then if I'm not talking, he definitely doesn't continue. He doesn't show interest by asking follow-up questions, he doesn't tell similar stories in response (which, damn the internet for shaming that conversational mode, it's how I want my conversations to run!) and he is more likely to say "how are you" than give a minute's thought to ask something like "how are you coping with the deep snow" or "how is carrying the water from in the house?" or basically doing any part of making it seem like he knows and sees my life and is interested in it or doing any lifting on the conversation.
And of course there are plenty of big things to talk about, both together-ones (so how do we relate now? how do we conceptualize our relationship going forward, where touch was the primary driving factor and we will not see each other much anymore? is he interested in trying to recover my trust and what would that involve?) to things that formerly mattered about being together and were kind of on the table (what does financial stuff feel like for us? what emotional labour and divisions of emotional labour work in a relationship? do we want to go on vacations with each other?) to individual things (he's moving out on his own and he's bought a condo! he's going to be building/rebuilding a friend circle! he's making maybe some progress in therapy! we both have neurodivergent stuff! I'm either deciding to stay here or not! I've finished a farm course and I'm deciding which direction to move with the farm financially! I did the variety trial and I loved it! I need to shift my plant/animal focus! I need to come up with a social sphere for myself!).
Which is to say, we have plans to spend most of this week off over the holidays together and my feelings about spending time with him border on boredom or dread. I tend to carry our dates: to initiate and steer conversation and to suggest and then initiate and steer activities. I've been burnt out on this lately and increasingly resentful of it as a burden, as the requirement to perform normalcy.
You know, the first couple times we met we walked around the seawall for hours talking. That sort of connection continued for awhile, interwoven with the deeply communicative physical touch we shared. I don't know whether this is the numbness and self-protective annoyance of my grief, whether it's the anhedonia of his depression or masking suppression, whether he's just not that person anymore or maybe it was just his NRE and masking speaking and he never was, whether it's a sort of learned helplessness or conditioned response to rejection on my part, but I cannot reach him anymore. That kind of conversation doesn't seem possible or even desired. The fact that I wanted that kind of communication feels like it's been framed as surveillance, or abusive. Tucker has normalized small-talk and indifference in a way that four decades of interaction with society at large had never managed to do; he brings the social weight of a room of three hundred people all suddenly going silent and turning to look at you disapprovingly when an actual room of three hundred people suddenly going silent and turning to look at me disapprovingly cannot.
I loved him. I loved what was inside. But it's been long enough since he let me in that I don't know if I even remember what that was.
So, um, what do I do in the next week? Popping into and out of this space with him, doing our rituals (weekend brunch that he cooks, watching some shows) means I don't get to do the things I love. It means maybe we can talk about cooking, one of our last safe subjects, and maybe cook together, which I love. It means either we'll get into the big subjects and my week will be saturated with grief and loss or we won't and it'll be distanced, like a silent theatre performance.
I don't think he gets it. I mean, I know he did not have the same kind of connection to me that I had to him, obviously, and I'm not sure what parts of his connection to me were important to him. I don't know if he realizes there's an emotional and commitment step back that I've taken after he bought the condo without telling me; I don't know if that will feel like a loss to him or if it'll be a relief.
Can you tell he could not talk about the relationship? Can you see the big hole where understanding how each other engages should be?
But anyhow, I don't know what to do. I'd like to return to my practice of my whole life being full of days that have meaning to me, that are like individual crafted jewels strung out along the long line of my life. I want to return to that feeling of each day having heft and meaning. I want him to be part of that but I'm not sure if I'm willing to step part my resentment and protective grief and do the work-- and to be fair, he has not reached out to do the work so I don't know why me doing more work should feel like it would make a difference.
So what would him doing this kind of work look like?
It would look like trying to engage me. Like statements followed by questions that lead into conversation, rather than away: "I'd like to do Christmas brunch, is there anything you'd like to make together?"
It would look like leading into the big conversations, and owning the actual work of making them happen: "Some big stuff has happened lately, I'd like to have a conversation about what the relationship should look like going forward. I know I'd mentioned wanting to do things like this and haven't followed up previously; can we plan for 2pm on Saturday? Let's both make sure we've eaten before that and we can sit down with some tea and talk it out."
It would look like leading with vulnerability when asking for vulnerability, to signal a safe space: "I've been feeling both happy and scared about my upcoming move, it's really a lot; do you want to talk about your feelings about it?"
It would look like co-operative planning, taking some of the frontloaded scheduling burden and then being intentional and mutual about it: "Christmas brunch is really important to me, I'd like to have sex this week, and I'd enjoy reading to you and choosing some cookies to make together. Would you like to do any of these/how can I support them happening? What would you like to be sure of doing over the holidays?"
It would not look like: "what do you want to do?" "is there anything you want to do this week?" "so what are we doing this week?" *sitting in silence for half an hour at the outset of a visit* *no communication about which days we'll spend together* or even "do you want to do Friday night?" *no communication about any activities*
Ok, that's pretty good, actually. There's a sense of what I'll spend energy on, and what I won't.
Also any time together should probably be no-phones, at least most of it.