(Because it's not all just cancer cancer cancer all the time. It's also relationships and breakups and life and love in and around the cancer
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comment part one:ceciliatanOctober 17 2015, 07:51:20 UTC
This dilemma sounds a lot like a very close friend of ours who is what I call a super-caretaker. She's always there with anything you need if you're in a crisis, is the one who is there for her partners whenever they have any kind of need, emotional, logistical, etc... but she would have these sudden sometimes inexplicable health breakdowns. Like her heart literally needing to be re-started in the ER. I eventually came to believe that many of these health crises were her body giving out in order to force her to take care of herself instead of others and over the course of years and therapy (and some changes of primary relationships) she's learned more how to get what she needs without just giving away every ounce of herself. It's a catch-22 because giving away every ounce of herself "makes her happy" and yet it's just not sustainable.
It's a tricky combination, as you point out, to be an extrovert and also a caretaker, an other-centered instead of self-centered person. There are plenty of extroverts who are self-centered, and their strategy at least is straightforward and obvious even if it may not work. corwin is one of those, hates to be alone, needs to be with someone practically every minute of the day or he feels useless and like the time alone is "wasted." Even when he's engaged on a project or cooking a massive dinner he'll often be on the phone to someone, a family member or one of his long-distance relationships. I'm always boggled by this because I'm the introvert who needs a lot of alone time. The closest we ever came to breaking up was (not coincidentally) when we both worked at home. But now I'm getting off topic slightly, when the topic is you.
Here's the thing: as an extrovert you are energized by the presence of others, by the involvement of others. So your way of recharging and readying yourself for life's challenges was by spending time with your partner. That makes total sense. But I feel like maybe there's a skip or gap in the logic somewhere that I'm missing. Maybe it's just that I literally can't wrap my head around the only solution being a romantic partner. Friends, community, family? Maybe a lot of it is we're abstracting too much, generalizing too much, and it's literally that you're just not over a specific breakup yet and that makes you focus on replacing that person (or persons) so much. I remember one relationship of mine breaking up and I didn't realize how much of the emotional work I really did for both of us, not just for myself, and how much of the general maintenance work for the relationship and the household--right down to logistics like groceries, and making sure I bought the things he liked. After we broke up even months later I would have these weird moments in the grocery store, sometimes crying, sometimes feeling almost haunted, because I'd still look at a food to buy and my first thought wasn't whether I would like the thing, but whether he would have liked the thing. It was against all logic and yet when that's been your reality for so long it took a very long time for my brain to reset. It was almost like I was brainwashed but I had brainwashed MYSELF with my own expectations and assumptions and how much of myself I poured into making it work. I was the one who initiated the breakup and it was amicable (we're still friends) and yet here I was in the grocery store shouting what the fuck!! because i couldn't figure out what kind of pasta sauce I liked. Like I couldn't even remember WHAT I LIKED before.
Amazingly, about ten years later, after much therapy and other relatioships, that guy contacted me to say, by the way, I never realized until now how much you really carried the relationship for both of us. I was floored. It had taken me years to figure out that was what had been going on and then to hear him say it... pretty amazing.
It's a tricky combination, as you point out, to be an extrovert and also a caretaker, an other-centered instead of self-centered person. There are plenty of extroverts who are self-centered, and their strategy at least is straightforward and obvious even if it may not work. corwin is one of those, hates to be alone, needs to be with someone practically every minute of the day or he feels useless and like the time alone is "wasted." Even when he's engaged on a project or cooking a massive dinner he'll often be on the phone to someone, a family member or one of his long-distance relationships. I'm always boggled by this because I'm the introvert who needs a lot of alone time. The closest we ever came to breaking up was (not coincidentally) when we both worked at home. But now I'm getting off topic slightly, when the topic is you.
Here's the thing: as an extrovert you are energized by the presence of others, by the involvement of others. So your way of recharging and readying yourself for life's challenges was by spending time with your partner. That makes total sense. But I feel like maybe there's a skip or gap in the logic somewhere that I'm missing. Maybe it's just that I literally can't wrap my head around the only solution being a romantic partner. Friends, community, family? Maybe a lot of it is we're abstracting too much, generalizing too much, and it's literally that you're just not over a specific breakup yet and that makes you focus on replacing that person (or persons) so much. I remember one relationship of mine breaking up and I didn't realize how much of the emotional work I really did for both of us, not just for myself, and how much of the general maintenance work for the relationship and the household--right down to logistics like groceries, and making sure I bought the things he liked. After we broke up even months later I would have these weird moments in the grocery store, sometimes crying, sometimes feeling almost haunted, because I'd still look at a food to buy and my first thought wasn't whether I would like the thing, but whether he would have liked the thing. It was against all logic and yet when that's been your reality for so long it took a very long time for my brain to reset. It was almost like I was brainwashed but I had brainwashed MYSELF with my own expectations and assumptions and how much of myself I poured into making it work. I was the one who initiated the breakup and it was amicable (we're still friends) and yet here I was in the grocery store shouting what the fuck!! because i couldn't figure out what kind of pasta sauce I liked. Like I couldn't even remember WHAT I LIKED before.
Amazingly, about ten years later, after much therapy and other relatioships, that guy contacted me to say, by the way, I never realized until now how much you really carried the relationship for both of us. I was floored. It had taken me years to figure out that was what had been going on and then to hear him say it... pretty amazing.
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