Love's labours: Postpartum

[tasteetriceps]

I thought i stopped eating on Tuesday afternoon and started barfing that night because that was about the time it became defined in my mind that we were done, "broken up" if you will--except that he'd never confessed to being a boyfriend in the first place**. But then i realised that i only had food poisoning or a virus or something. I'm not 21

Comments

Re: tectonics?

[tasteetriceps]

I don't know that movie. What's it about?

It's true, we don't fit together as neatly as our genitals, our beautiful bodies. As noted in my post, that's one reason i was so disappointed to let go our war as much as our peace. I see relationship as a "path," in the spiritual sense--my most intense relationships of all sorts have been my very best teachers in life, means of learning hard lessons faster. I like the accelerated development. I've set a lot of fires and lost a lot of those relationships along the way, but even in hindsight i know i couldn't have done it any differently; i don't regret any of what it took to get me smart and happy.

I love what you write, with your chasms and explosions, it is like a romantico adventure flick with more colours than we'd known to exist every time i talk to you. I wish i were online more to read your life stories. Hey i wanna look at your birthchart, why don't you email me yr date, exact time, and place of birth, eh Canada?

Tell me more about this commitment contract. I mean, what? What. Tell me.
Lame-o mayyyybe? But dude, whatever works. You feel better, you say--sounds like good medicine to me.

I love you. More comments, now.

Ugh..

[admirabilia]

I woke up this morning to your happy comment and an unsent midnight email on my laptop.... full of personal turmoil and 'break up' phrasing.

I wish i would take my own advice.

I feel like i'm stuck on a loop right now, trying to break it off again and again, but instead making small detours arround the problem when it comes up... knowing that i want to be single, and get to the bottom of being me before i get into a relationship again, but meanwhile i'm stuck in this really great relationship that i can't handle with anything resembling grace.. ugh.

I feel like a hypocritical supporter of your broken heart because right now, this minute, this morning, i just want to go streaking naked into the 20cm of new snow that has built up over the blackness of my own self-resentment and scream... WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG.

OMG.
sorry.

I totally love you too.

[tasteetriceps]

I feel like this come-together/move-apart cycling is part of how i re-encounter my issues as they are developing and then deal with them by myself. Viney entanglement in another person's life & personality makes it hard to sort out what's mine, what's yours, what's compulsive, what's improving, what's the forest look like from out of the trees. I think that if our society offered the lot of us some more realistic view of love, these cycles would not be seen as relationship "problems" but rather as a necessary part of healthy development--and of personal health! I can't be 100% or 60% in a relationship with someone else because that just doesn't allow any room for relating to myself, to my projects, to other people, or to wherever spontaneity & inspiration may lead.

"WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG." As i was leaving, the last time i hung out with him, he said, "I just want us to be happy together!" I still think it would be possible. I've watched each of us make a lot of progress in overcoming our incompatible inadequate coping habits. Taking it from here would require a kind of commitment, though--NOT to get married and make babies, not to love only one another, not to behave the way boyfriends are "supposed" to or relax into some false & rigid "safety" of being somebody's partner--but rather to continually tweak the gears to find the balance between us, to be humble enough AND strong enough to both recognise our shortcomings and set healthy boundaries, and to really be together when we are together as to give ourselves space as necessary too.

You are not hypocritical, unless i'm hypocritical too! I'm missing him and blissed out, or i'm sad & angry and not even missing him. I don't see what's hypocritical. Looks like you're going through something similar. Tell me why it is that this really great relationship gets in the way of your self-discovery; i'm curious. Maybe something like what i was just talking about? Something different?

I'm still curious about that commitment contract you were talking about--i just can't imagine what it means!

contract..

[admirabilia]

i just posted a week old post from 43things about our contract if you want to check it out.

Its pretty simple... a way of defining the function and boundaries of a realtionship... it works for no matter what kind of relationship.

The theory is that there is a contract 'period'. If you're anxious about the idea its best to start off with a shorter period first. So you set a date to renew the contract... say two weeks.

You talk out what all the parties need and work out compromises for contentious issues... remembering that you can always re-visit these issues at the renewal period.

I think this might be the best tool i've found to stop worrying/overthinking relationships. It can take some convincing sometimes to get to the point of actually being able to write one up... but the point is basically that they aren't really scary or formal they're just a tool.

... i even had one of these with crucible when we split up our intimate relationship and were still living together in a 600sq.ft. loft for almost a year. The contract stood pretty much the whole time, faded almost into oblivion posted on the refrigerator.... and he conceded years later that he didn't think about the contract at all after we wrote it, but he lived by it anyway.

Anyway... I got it from a really dorky midlifecrisisselfhelp book called 'GROW' The modern woman's handbook.
:)

[tasteetriceps]

I love your contract. I think mine would have to be longer. That seems like an insanely sane thing to do--to define what it is that you want fundamentally, what you can give, what you expect, what you don't expect, what practices shall be established for the health of yourselves & your relationship (even though it may be sooo easy to spend two nights in a row).

I feel like we just went through a lot of confusion over these matters--and in some ways, maybe the limits of our individual capabilities at this time are actually unable to mutually satisfy. The discovery of what those were was definitely a matter of process more than of definition, but a little of that systematic approach couldn't have hurt, i'm sure. I see so much more clearly in hindsight, and it's good.

I had no idea you'd been crucible's baby.

I was doing so well--even happy and grateful, for extended periods, that it was completely over, not even negotiated into some more livable form of loverhood (though partly that was only my focus on his weaknesses, i know). Then last night i saw him & his whole crew at a hip-hop show, and i could not go over to talk to him or see if he'd seen me too, it would have felt awkward for me in that context, and the sight of his beauty only pained me and evoked longing and i cried on the way home. Ay. I'm okay again today, but having to climb. I know part of the reason we can't even see each other right now is that passion tends to overtake reason, and reason seems to make no sense. Shit it hurts! I'll be fine again, but perhaps without that cocksureness, believing things i don't believe anymore when the real man is right in front of me.