[poly] discussion outcomes and inevitable evolutions

[much_ado]

after this afternoon's post, matthew and i continued the discussion from last night about perceived relational shifts versus misidentified bucket errors. the end result is the understanding that things *will* change, short of the two of us dropping all our current relationships and never developing others ever again. we're going to meet new people

Comments

[redhotlips]

ah, cherie, I wish I WAS giggling. (ok, so a wee bit of tittering). Instead I'm just profoundly humbled and grateful that I can learn from you two

[musicman]

Thanks for sharing your evolutions, they are inspiring to me, too. Now that I have a shiny new empty bucket to compare them to, your choice of tossing the buckets seems to be utterly revolutionary!

And no, she wasn't really giggling too much, were you Red?

[much_ado]

Red hit the nail on the head with her comment: the buckets have a purpose, absolutely; they serve as the right tool for the job at this time in the relationship. when you're teaching a child how to build things, you don't start her out with the pro-grade DeWalt pneumatic nailer :)

you may find that sticking with the bucket system is the way to go for you, with refinements over time; it may not work for you at all; it may work for a while until you get comfortable enough to get rid of it (or find it isn't the right tool for the job after all). like you posted this morning, there is no "right way" or "wrong way", there is simply what will work most effectively for moving you as individuals and as a relationship closer to getting the needs met.

and if anyone tells you differently, you can throw a bucket at them ;-)

[bridgeoutahead]

"when you're teaching a child how to build things, you don't start her out with the pro-grade DeWalt pneumatic nailer :)"

you don't?

well hell! Mine did. Explains a lot.

[matthew_g]

A bucket post for you to peruse http://much-ado.livejournal.com/717631.html

Wherein the authors cling to their buckets, despite trying to get rid of them. You will note the date :)

[dabunz]

the shift is also scary because of the loss of perceived control over the unpredictable potential changes in matthew's relationships, as i can't form assumptive expectations based on those self-same convenient buckets. i have to do more work to understand what he's doing, in order to achieve the same degree of comfort i have traditionally drawn from assuming he's delivered accurate relationship categorizations.

This is exactly the struggle I've been experiencing in the last 6 months with Myth. Her LDR started off as 'casual'. We both thought the other person meant the same thing when using the term 'casual'. I meant friend with benefits and absolutely no more, and she meant something vaguer that I still can't quite grasp, which includes being in love with him.

I can't control what she does with this relationship, where it goes and how her feelings grow. It is scary. All I can do is trust her judgement and make my needs within our relationship understood and respected.

[much_ado]

*nods*

really, that's the best anyone CAN do, even when the shared lexicon is more accurate.

the reason for the lexicon development we've done is exactly what you've described: unpredictable shifts equated with surprises, and not always good ones (and not always well-managed beyond that). that's precisely *why* "casual* came to very specifically mean "low to no emotional investment", because we were finding that as soon as there was any change in emotional investment, the prioritization also started to slide around unpredictably. suddenly nothing in the primary relationship was a guarantee any more, including faith in getting the needs of the primary relationship met AT ALL.

we finally had to get to the point of saying, "this obviously isn't casual. i don't care what you call it, but find another label other than casual for it, because your constant misappropriation of our agreed-upon lexicon is confusing the hell out of me

[thesslea]

Labels, can't live with them, can't talk about things succintly without them. I was talking to a friend this morning about her primary, who I have been "involved" with for awhile and who she just started out with last month. I realized, as we were talking, that I had no idea how to talk about my relationship with him to her, because T and I have been without labels for the people in our life for awhile. I feel like this guy and I are on the same page. But I couldn't tell you what page that is

[lightcastle]

It also seems to me that the whole process of building a poly relationship is discovering new and different ways to say I will be here for you.

That's interesting. I need to roll that around in my brain a bit more.

[horsetraveller]

I'm all in favour of simpler systems.

I'm glad to see the buckets are going to be used for something else now, maybe watering the flowers and washing the car, and not for stuffing relationships into.
Relationships that didn't want to stay stuffed got incongruent with the bucket, and I don't think that's the same thing as you being incongruent.

I never understood how you thought you could make your feelings behave the way you decided they ought to. I never can. My feelings do what they want, I can't increase or decrease them at will depending on outside influences. If I could make myself feel for any of my lovers the way I do for the people who don't want to be with me, my life would be working out a lot better.

It seems to me that you will have all the real useful talks about what to expect from your(/his) behaviour regarding the new partner and the primary partnership, and skip all the steps about how the bucket is containing or not containing the relationship.

[much_ado]

I never understood how you thought you could make your feelings behave the way you decided they ought to.

that was never the point of the exercise. feelings are feelings; they just... are. the behavioural issues were all about what i chose to do *with* those feelings. poorly-managed NRE, for example, was a huge problem because i chose to respond to the new relationship in ways that were incongruent with stated priorities and expectations around the primary relationship. the bucket system had nothing to do with feelings, and everything to do with measuring congruency between intentions and actions, so that a certain amount of comfort and trust could be drawn from supposedly-predictable responses based on predetermined expectations. it was never the *feelings* we were trying to control, only what we did in response to them. and that is something one CAN choose to make behave as one decides they ought to... or choose to let run rampant at the risk of rocking all the boats.

[horsetraveller]

I appreciate that you took the time to answer my comment.

I do admit that I know very little about how your relationships work, just from what I read here. And not to say that reading is the same as full comprehension of your words. And your words aren't all the information possible.

But then, I don't understand my own relationships, and I have as much information about them as is available to anyone. I mean, more is available to me than to anyone else.
It's too bad. It would be nice if someone else understood what was going on and could tell me.

it was never the *feelings* we were trying to control, only what we did in response to them. and that is something one CAN choose to make behave as one decides they ought to
Yes I completely agree with you there.
I got confused somewhere along the line. Thanks for clarifying.

[much_ado]

It would be nice if someone else understood what was going on and could tell me.

i'd be lying if i said we didn't spend a lot of time flying by the seats of our pants in an effort to prevent Certain Disaster :)

as for getting someone else to tell you what's going on, i can probably recommend a couple of really awesome relationship counsellors ;-)