big successes
eventually, all hard work and effort really does pay off.
so much of the work matthew and i have put into examining and refining our relationship processes paid off yesterday when, in response to a simple question benjamin asked in the afternoon, we unrolled all of the processes, checked our expectations and assumptions - and *caught* the dangerous discrepancy BEFORE i would have acted on it this weekend (as i absolutely would have, and been perfectly confident in my convictions, again, that i had made a good decision, only to find out later there was a problem in differing root assumptions).
the corollary-but-equally-notable second success of the evening was that we did NOT, as matthew pointed out later, succumb to a previous pattern of behaviour in similar situations (noted in a previous post**). we kept most of the knee-jerk responses out of the process and actually stayed engaged with each other *in the process*.
it's not that i don't still have homework to do (there's information on how matthew arrived at his expectations initially and a discussion on definitions to wrap up with benjamin), but last night proved that we've done all this work for a reason: it makes things a whole lot easier. easier to have the "hey, this may be a problem down the road, can we talk about this in advance?" conversations, easier to trust that i'm paying attention and buying into matthew's concerns, easier to trust that i am being congruent with my own intentions, easier to show good faith in advance even when you fear it will result in loss or constriction or [insert fearful thing here], easier to measure the effects of "doing the investigative work in advance" against the known effects of "doing damage control in the aftermath".
for me, this is all some amazingly heady stuff. a year's worth (more actually, but much of the acute work has been since this time last year) of process work, paid off by an evening's near-flawless execution of some of those processes. from such deceptively-simple milestones are greater achievements wrought.
given the struggles of the year, and the spectacular failures i've wreaked, i'm taking matthew's advice from a while ago, and celebrating the successes as fully as i berate myself for the failures.
[exeunt Numfar, doing the Dance of Joy...]
** - the post in question is filtered to matthew, so here's the gist of the previous, less-then-efficient conversation pattern that we avoided last night:
not-so-good:
K proposes an option for dealing with a situation (presumably one that meets her needs).
M pushes for details, generally reacts negatively to the suggestion.
K requests alternate options of M.
M provides a more cautious alternative, designed to meet his own needs.
K reacts badly to seeing her options curtailed. conversation becomes tense and occasionally unmanageable at this point as two divergent sets of personal needs lock horns; confrontation prevents willing collaboration for fear of capitulation instead.
reiterate: this may be the old pattern, but we avoided it last night. yay us! :)
so much of the work matthew and i have put into examining and refining our relationship processes paid off yesterday when, in response to a simple question benjamin asked in the afternoon, we unrolled all of the processes, checked our expectations and assumptions - and *caught* the dangerous discrepancy BEFORE i would have acted on it this weekend (as i absolutely would have, and been perfectly confident in my convictions, again, that i had made a good decision, only to find out later there was a problem in differing root assumptions).
- a simple question unearthed something i didn't know about matthew's expectations.
- after mangling a number of weasels into a sack and drowning them in the closest river, i swallowed my fears and took the question directly to matthew.
- we examined the question.
- he provided his expectations and assumptions.
- i acknowledged they were (as i had suspected) different from the ones i had and would have operated from over the weekend.
- we revisited previous conversations that had lead him to those respective expectations and assumptions.
- we had an academic discussion about the issues involved, discussed how we looked at things differently.
- we discussed the different contexts of our relationship in which various degrees of request for change might be made.
- i asked for what i wanted.
- we evaluated the risks of that request.
- we tried to evaluate whether the request was something that would have a good/bad effect on our relationship (and there were some difficulties there, but nothing critical; mostly we discovered that i know how to evaluate "risk", but making a pure judgement call, like whether a pending action is beneficial/harmful is far more difficult, because i don't know what criteria to evaluate against)
- we jointly determined a plan of action in response to my request.
- we explicitly discussed how these changes in understanding and new plan affect us both (since it also means certain significant changes for matthew as well, in a couple of different contexts).
the corollary-but-equally-notable second success of the evening was that we did NOT, as matthew pointed out later, succumb to a previous pattern of behaviour in similar situations (noted in a previous post**). we kept most of the knee-jerk responses out of the process and actually stayed engaged with each other *in the process*.
it's not that i don't still have homework to do (there's information on how matthew arrived at his expectations initially and a discussion on definitions to wrap up with benjamin), but last night proved that we've done all this work for a reason: it makes things a whole lot easier. easier to have the "hey, this may be a problem down the road, can we talk about this in advance?" conversations, easier to trust that i'm paying attention and buying into matthew's concerns, easier to trust that i am being congruent with my own intentions, easier to show good faith in advance even when you fear it will result in loss or constriction or [insert fearful thing here], easier to measure the effects of "doing the investigative work in advance" against the known effects of "doing damage control in the aftermath".
for me, this is all some amazingly heady stuff. a year's worth (more actually, but much of the acute work has been since this time last year) of process work, paid off by an evening's near-flawless execution of some of those processes. from such deceptively-simple milestones are greater achievements wrought.
given the struggles of the year, and the spectacular failures i've wreaked, i'm taking matthew's advice from a while ago, and celebrating the successes as fully as i berate myself for the failures.
[exeunt Numfar, doing the Dance of Joy...]
** - the post in question is filtered to matthew, so here's the gist of the previous, less-then-efficient conversation pattern that we avoided last night:
not-so-good:
K proposes an option for dealing with a situation (presumably one that meets her needs).
M pushes for details, generally reacts negatively to the suggestion.
K requests alternate options of M.
M provides a more cautious alternative, designed to meet his own needs.
K reacts badly to seeing her options curtailed. conversation becomes tense and occasionally unmanageable at this point as two divergent sets of personal needs lock horns; confrontation prevents willing collaboration for fear of capitulation instead.
reiterate: this may be the old pattern, but we avoided it last night. yay us! :)