Sophisticated Relationships

“I don’t know what I’m going to do next but I am expecting something spectacular to fall into my lap.” – a friend of PeepJay’s

I’ve once again been thinking about what I want in a relationship. I started to wonder if I had a model of relationship that I was wishing for? At this point in my life, I’ve experimented with a variety of relationship styles, and I still don’t have a vision of what a relationship is supposed to look like for me. But then… do I have to know? Should I know? Is having that kind of vision (expectation?) useful? Am I feeling cultural pressure to be in a certain place (married, having kids, owning a house, etc)?

To find out if what I wanted looked like any particular model, I came up with a list of things that I wanted in a relationship.

I want someone who…

• is my “partner”. Meaning, someone with whom I have a symbiotic relationship.
• is honest and inspires me to be honest.
• is excited about being in a relationship with me.
• is a good communicator.
• lusts after me.
• is confident and inspires me to be confident.
• is romantic… someone who will feed me wine and read me poetry.
• has a passion.
• practices good self care.
• I feel could take care of me.
• needs me at times… or who is ok with being able to rely on me.
• makes me feel safe.
• likes to explore new places.
• is musically inclined.
• accepts me.

Of course, these are all things that I “want”… which is distinctly different from having expectations. I am asking for what I want without the expectation of anyone fulfilling those wants. But surely, the more of these qualities that someone has, the more attracted I will be to them.

Does that include marriage? I don’t know. I honestly don’t think about it that much, but I feel like I’m supposed to. Does it include polyamory? I think that what I really want is honesty. I don’t want to be in a relationship in which each person is actively looking for other people to be romantic with. But in the course of living, I know we’re going to meet people to whom we’re attracted… and I envision those situations being handled together. Does it include children? I don’t know (should I know?). I’m not inclined to have kids.

Are my list of wants a relationship model? Is uncertainty a relationship model?

“Being comfortable with uncertainty puts us in he position of not approaching relationships with desperation or an agenda.” says Lexi. “…which I think give the other person an opportunity to come to us as they are and be seen as they are . . . and when there is real mutual attraction maybe it helps us have better relationships.”

One thing I do know, is that not knowing where I or my relationship are going does not mean slacking on moving forward: working on my projects, setting goals, practicing good self care, and developing my sense of self and my relationships with others… yes, this is where I’m going.

“What makes people despair is that they try to find a universal meaning to the whole of life, and then end up by saying it is absurd, illogical, empty of meaning. There is not one big, cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” – Anais Nin

Tags: Lighthouse, authentic, cartoon, character, communication, expectations, gratitude, happiness, honesty, insight, intimacy, love, purpose, radical honesty, relationship with self, self care, self-esteem, well-being by Lighthouse
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If you really do put a small value upon yourself,

rest assured that the world will not raise your price.

~Anonymous

When I was seventeen, I baby sat for two girls 8 and 10. I’d say they were blond little angels, but that was hardly the case, and not really the problem. I’d say the problem was their mother, who would call me, with only a moment’s notice, and require my “emergency” babysitter abilities. I’d tell her I’d like advance notice for babysitting, and it would happen a few times and back to the emergency short notice babysitting gig. There went my plans.

It happened several times a week for several years. It wasn’t just their mother that was asking me to do things on short notice, or worse, other people would just not show up for our plans! I would blame it on them. Why! Why couldn’t she plan in advance? Why were they so unreliable? Why did this keep happening?

I was reminded of the past version of myself, when this weekend I got a call from a promoter friend in San Diego. He had girl problems.

His problem was this: There was a hot girl that he keeps getting into the VIP clubs for free. She has promised that she will help him promote and do other promoter related work for him. However, every time he asks her to help, she says yes and cancels at the last minute, she doesn’t show up, or she can’t. He kept asking why Flakey Girl was like that. Was she spoiled? Were her parents over indulgent? Maybe.

Maybe the first two times were legit. Regardless, if she were an independent contractor at a law firm, if she didn’t work, she didn’t get paid. If she worked, she got paid, in this case compesation was clubs perks.

I asked him how many people would love the perks Flakey Girl gets? Lots.

Why are you spending your time teaching her that she can flake out on you and still get these perks?

The issue my 17 year old self had was the same one that my promoter friend had. It wasn’t that other people were inconsiderate. What happened was:

We taught them to treat us this way by repeatedly allowing it.

For me, it felt like I was being mean to say to the woman who wanted me to babysit on short notice “I’m very sorry, I need three-days advance notice for any baby sitting I do for you. I cannot sit for you tonight.”

In order for this to work, I had to be consistent, including the times when she called, and I did not have plans. I had to be this consistent for a long time because I had consistently let her needs trump mine.

The problem was never her, it was me.

I had shown her that it was okay for her to rely on me on short notice to sit for her kids. The first few times may have been genuine emergencies. It started out as my choice to drop whatever I was doing to help her out, and later became something I didn’t want to do and kept doing it!

I started to rationalize not taking my needs into account with: it was because she was a single parent, and her kids really needed consistency. Other rationalizations: that by doing her these favors I was a ‘good’ person, and that especially because I would cancel my plans to babysit I had a good work ethic. Not to mention I was making money. It took a long time for me to realize how it was I want to be treated on that issue.

As it turns out, there were ways people treated me that I realized I didn’t like. Often times, they continued to treat me this way, because I continued to permit it. Sometimes, just a simple conversation about how I felt about what was happening changed things. Sometimes a conversation and a change in my behavior was what was needed to change things.

The hardest lesson for me was learning that I would rather be alone than miserable in a relationship.

This lesson was a gift from my second serious relationship, with DJ when I was 18. I use the term gift in all seriousness, because of the immense growth that came from walking down that path. Could I have learned the same lesson another way? Maybe, but that’s not how it happened.

The short version is, when he treated me in ways that were abusive, I stayed. It was a lot more complicated than that, but this is the short version.

There were a lot of irrational reasons for staying. I also allowed him to set the precedent that yelling at me when another man looked at me was okay. Or slapping me because he felt like it was okay. I didn’t leave. I thought it was a fluke, a mistake, it wouldn’t happen again. There were complicating factors, as with most abusive relationships.

What brought the end of our relationship was that I had to make a choice about how I would allow myself to be treated, regardless of the consequences. I last saw him the day I made that choice.

It took a lot of work to own my part in that relationship, both in how I stayed in it, and what it was about me that was attracted to that kind of man. I’m not responsible for his actions, I’m only responsible for mine. That is all material for another post.

With the woman I babysat for, because of a change in communication and because she was willing to learn how to interact with me differently, we continued to have a relationship. With DJ, despite his promises, he did not change how he treated me, so we ended the relationship. I don’t know yet how my promoter friend’s relationship will play out yet with Flakey girl, one can hope for the best.

At the end of the day, we cannot change how other people treat us, we can only communicate through our words and behavior what we are and are not willing to tolerate. In looking for similar articles on the internet, I came across Christine Kane’s blog who succinctly outlines the process for figuring out how we want to be treated. She says:

1. Start by knowing what you want (and what you don’t want)
2. Learn from your current situation
3. Honor it and practice it
4. Teach yourself how to treat yourself when that is the only choice

I am still learning what I will and will not tolerate. Every situation I am in that I find unpleasant is a gift. It helps me become more clear in what I want for myself. I’m curious to try Christine’s suggestion of writing a user’s manual for myself in order to refine and internalize my value of my self. This is a process.

Lexi*

Tags: Lexi, action, cartoon, friends, insight, relationship with self by Lexi
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 ”Avoidance is a terrible coping mechanism.  It instantly defines you as a victim by suggesting that you can’t cope with whatever is going on in life, as if you are a victim of life.” -Psychology Today

For me, avoiding things stresses me out.  Doing those things I’m avoiding also stresses me out.  These are my primary sources of stress.

There are, of course, other sources of stress.  For example  social upheavals, family illness, or chronic pain.  Stress isn’t always negative, and when it is from a source we consider positive, it is called eu-stress.  New jobs, holiday trips, and weddings are examples of ’positive’ stressors. 

Chronic stress can do disastrous things to the brain and body.   In 1983, stress was cited by Time as the number one health risk in America.  At one time, stresswas defined by Hans Selye in 1936:

as ‘the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.’ Selye had noted in numerous experiments that laboratory animals subjected to acute but different noxious physical and emotional stimuli (blaring light, deafening noise, extremes of heat or cold, perpetual frustration) all exhibited the same pathologic changes of stomach ulcerations, shrinkage of lymphoid tissue and enlargement of the adrenals. He later demonstrated that persistent stress could cause these animals to develop various diseases similar to those seen in humans, such as heart attacks, stroke, kidney disease and rheumatoid arthritis.  

More recent research has also linked stress to an increase in the level of hormones in the body that contribute to Alzheimers. 

Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can be a motivating factor, up to a point, in getting things done.  Deadlines, having a competitive work-out partner, or having to pay bills can be motivating.    

Additionally people react to the same event differently.  The classic example is the roller-coaster, where some people are nervous and scared, while others are excited and happy.   Same event, different reactions. 

There are many different ways to “manage” stress, so that it has less of an impact on one’s physiological and emotional states.  

•  
  •  Yoga, or moderate exercise in general.  Extreme exercise can be stressful in and of itself. 
  • Meditation
  • Self hypnosis
  • Eat well.  When stressed, often times we are tempted to eat junk, because temporarily it does make us feel better, and chronic and prolonged use of unhealthy food to cope with stress, creates more stress, because often it is not very nutritious. 
  • Get out in nature, or watch it on a big screen.
  • Drink plenty of water.
  • Breath
  • Hug someone you are emotionally close to.
  • Work on handling stress by mastering a fear before something stressful happens, on purpose.  As one person put it: “Any time you’re afraid to do something and you do it, it makes you stronger,” he says. “Even if you fail.”
  • Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff(in honor of not sweating the small stuff, I’m going to leave the “lone dots” at the beginning of each bulleted section alone!)

Most of these are good for “symptom management”. 

I’ve found that while symptom management can be helpful for almost every stressor other than my top two, symptom management does not help me actually do what I need to do.  Thus, the stressor remains.

What my primary stressors have in common isn’t what I have to do or haven’t done that stresses me out, it is how I think about it.  Often I minimize the importance of what needs to be done, which leads to more of not doing it. 

For me, the goal is not only to manage stress, but to eliminate my primary stressors.   Managing stress is not going to help this much.  Ideally, I would also like to change the way I think about these stressors so that I stop putting myself in the avoid/stress pattern, and I’m working on that.  In the mean-time, I’m staunching the flow of stress.

One way to change how I think about my stressors is to look at these things as things I want to do, rather than have to do, as Steve Pavlina suggested in one of his many blog posts.  Because the truth is, I don’t have to do any of the things that are causing me stress.  However, I want to do them, because the consequences of not doing them, while not life threatening, do not help me reach my life goals.    

The number one solution to my primary stressors is to just do it.  To be problem focused, or solution focused as I prefer to think about it.  For me that means:

•  
  • Make a list of what I need and want to do
  • Create a plan for each item on the list
  • A realistic time frame to complete each task (this may mean complete one task per day, or complete a subset of one task per day).
  • Reward myself when I get 5-10 things accomplished (this reward cannot have a negative impact on my health, finances, or social life).  While I would like to believe that finishing the task is its own reward, I would still like to acknowledge myself with extra incentive.

When I reduce my stress by doing my to-do list, I can focus more on my relationships, being with people I love and care about and I enjoy my life more.   I also find it is easier to connect with other people because my mind is not cluttered with things on my to-do list, so I am available to give others my undivided attention. 

Lexi*

Tags: Lexi, action, cartoon, competence, overwhelmed, relationship with self by Lexi
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