More drama than conflict - making reference to the Geek Social Fallacies (and ditto Of Sex).
[Original Five Geek Social Fallacies]
Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil
Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am
Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All
Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive
Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together
And a #6: Anyone Who Doesn't Like Me Is Jealous
[Geek social fallacies of Sex] - which I'm not going to just post the summary of, because everyone should read it, OMG.
...okay, I will, because I know some people are link-phobic.
GSFS 1: People can voluntarily control their emotions about sex.
(Important side-point: But that you can control how you express your emotions is not a fallacy.)
GSFS 2: The weirder your sex, the more enlightened you are.
GSFS 3: Cool chicks don't worry about sexism.
GSFS 4: Drama is always worse than the thing the drama is about.
GSFS 5: Sex should be no big deal.
Additional bit of wisdom: Expecting things to stay the same is stagnating. Relationships are always at least a little bit dynamic, even in just a slow back-and-forth sort of way.
I am upset by the whole recent-love-triangle-fallout thing. I've been trying to be supportive and friendly and not blame him for falling out of love with me, or blame her for my boyfriend (now ex) wanting her and her wanting him back, but come on. He cheated on me, she helped him. She found out it was hurting me and just kept going, and at points has been angry with me for expressing upset. Even without the other stuff going on, I'm well within my rights to take a bit of space to work out how I feel, and apparently part of how I feel is 'Dude, you stole my boyfriend. Stop trying to pretend we're best-best-friends and nothing has changed!'
Yes, he wanted to be 'stolen', and yes, people aren't possessions, and yes, I want to be friends once I've worked out how big the part described above actually is. But there's a reason I haven't been able to say 'I accept your apology and forgive you' yet. Probably more than one. But I'm not going to be able to work out what I need if I'm constantly getting sucked back into the conflict and having a discordant tune played on my heartstrings. And getting attacked for saying that I needed that space makes me want to actually run away and not look back. (I got a text when I got back from social on Thursday. It wasn't pretty.)
I naturally tend towards being introspective and analysing (sometimes over-analysing) my actions and feelings and plans, and what I can percieve of other people's (though, I have been working on catching myself doing that with other people and just asking them what's going through their heads - doesn't help when they haven't worked that out, though). Having frequent intense interactions with people who don't think that much and just do what feels good at the time is kinda exhausting, and is leaving me with a huge backlog of things to process.
(Currently, the browser window of my mind is giving her a 'This program is not responding. Wait for it to respond, or close program?' message, and she's clicking things madly trying to get it to do something, and it's trying really hard not to crash the friendship but there's only so much it can take. I've asked her to stop clicking and let it catch up, and she responded by hitting the 'end program' button.)
I tried at numerous points to talk about stuff, and then to work out what they were trying to communicate with their vague shruggy gestures and maybes. This stuff is hard. I went to the Awkward Army Meetup in York yesterday, and had a chat with Tess from Aspie-soc in which we both went into 'let us use words and be absolutely clear about what we are trying to say to each other, and clarify when ambiguity is percieved' mode - and that was just to arrange to meet up again at some point. So refreshing and easy compared to the abortive communication recently! I've decided to keep myself in that mode when talking to Stephen from now on: 'I feel [a] and want [b]. To make this easier, I would like you to treat me like [c]. One way this could happen is if [d] happens at some point. You are under no obligation to participate in [d], but it would help me with [b] if you are okay with that.'
(Most recently: a = overwhelmed, b = 'things not being so weird and awkward', c = 'a normal person who is a tangential part of your social circle, rather than the strange unknowable creature known as 'the ex girlfriend' ', d = 'small talk about the weather or something'.)
Apparently attempting to communicate like that with the other person involved results in even-more drama-plosions, though, and I'm far too tired to work out another way right now. Maybe in a while, if she tries to reboot the program once the lag has been dealt with. I can't really engage with this in a meaningful way right now, and I've got to hold my own house up. Time is generally a great healer, and I think I have to appeal to that for the meantime.
Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil
Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am
Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All
Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive
Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together
And a #6: Anyone Who Doesn't Like Me Is Jealous
[Geek social fallacies of Sex] - which I'm not going to just post the summary of, because everyone should read it, OMG.
...okay, I will, because I know some people are link-phobic.
GSFS 1: People can voluntarily control their emotions about sex.
(Important side-point: But that you can control how you express your emotions is not a fallacy.)
GSFS 2: The weirder your sex, the more enlightened you are.
GSFS 3: Cool chicks don't worry about sexism.
GSFS 4: Drama is always worse than the thing the drama is about.
GSFS 5: Sex should be no big deal.
Additional bit of wisdom: Expecting things to stay the same is stagnating. Relationships are always at least a little bit dynamic, even in just a slow back-and-forth sort of way.
I am upset by the whole recent-love-triangle-fallout thing. I've been trying to be supportive and friendly and not blame him for falling out of love with me, or blame her for my boyfriend (now ex) wanting her and her wanting him back, but come on. He cheated on me, she helped him. She found out it was hurting me and just kept going, and at points has been angry with me for expressing upset. Even without the other stuff going on, I'm well within my rights to take a bit of space to work out how I feel, and apparently part of how I feel is 'Dude, you stole my boyfriend. Stop trying to pretend we're best-best-friends and nothing has changed!'
Yes, he wanted to be 'stolen', and yes, people aren't possessions, and yes, I want to be friends once I've worked out how big the part described above actually is. But there's a reason I haven't been able to say 'I accept your apology and forgive you' yet. Probably more than one. But I'm not going to be able to work out what I need if I'm constantly getting sucked back into the conflict and having a discordant tune played on my heartstrings. And getting attacked for saying that I needed that space makes me want to actually run away and not look back. (I got a text when I got back from social on Thursday. It wasn't pretty.)
I naturally tend towards being introspective and analysing (sometimes over-analysing) my actions and feelings and plans, and what I can percieve of other people's (though, I have been working on catching myself doing that with other people and just asking them what's going through their heads - doesn't help when they haven't worked that out, though). Having frequent intense interactions with people who don't think that much and just do what feels good at the time is kinda exhausting, and is leaving me with a huge backlog of things to process.
(Currently, the browser window of my mind is giving her a 'This program is not responding. Wait for it to respond, or close program?' message, and she's clicking things madly trying to get it to do something, and it's trying really hard not to crash the friendship but there's only so much it can take. I've asked her to stop clicking and let it catch up, and she responded by hitting the 'end program' button.)
I tried at numerous points to talk about stuff, and then to work out what they were trying to communicate with their vague shruggy gestures and maybes. This stuff is hard. I went to the Awkward Army Meetup in York yesterday, and had a chat with Tess from Aspie-soc in which we both went into 'let us use words and be absolutely clear about what we are trying to say to each other, and clarify when ambiguity is percieved' mode - and that was just to arrange to meet up again at some point. So refreshing and easy compared to the abortive communication recently! I've decided to keep myself in that mode when talking to Stephen from now on: 'I feel [a] and want [b]. To make this easier, I would like you to treat me like [c]. One way this could happen is if [d] happens at some point. You are under no obligation to participate in [d], but it would help me with [b] if you are okay with that.'
(Most recently: a = overwhelmed, b = 'things not being so weird and awkward', c = 'a normal person who is a tangential part of your social circle, rather than the strange unknowable creature known as 'the ex girlfriend' ', d = 'small talk about the weather or something'.)
Apparently attempting to communicate like that with the other person involved results in even-more drama-plosions, though, and I'm far too tired to work out another way right now. Maybe in a while, if she tries to reboot the program once the lag has been dealt with. I can't really engage with this in a meaningful way right now, and I've got to hold my own house up. Time is generally a great healer, and I think I have to appeal to that for the meantime.