Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
Posts: 9344
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I agree, great post. Have you considered the possibility that your recent work in differentiation may have proven helpful? Truth can be catchy!

ertyu
Posts: 2885
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by ertyu »

Strength and peace to your daughter. May she come out of this process whole and happy. You being a flexible, supportive, and understanding parent helps more than you think; just ask those who aren't supported and accepted. All the best for you all.

User avatar
Mister Imperceptible
Posts: 1669
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 4:18 pm

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

The human brain develops until age 25. Major decisions, especially those which may be irreversible and cause regret, may be best put off until then, when the brain is less impressionable.

Married2aSwabian
Posts: 265
Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2021 7:45 pm

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Married2aSwabian »

Suo, I’m kind of new here and haven’t had a chance to read more than a few of your posts, but I want to celebrate this one from yesterday.

Our daughter, 22, is also trans and came out to DW and I nearly two years ago.

It has also been a rough road for all of us at times, but now she is happier than she’s been in years!

Through it all, we have shown our daughter that we love her unconditionally, and there has been no more important time than the past two years to do so.

The “J” in my INTJ is pretty strong. I got that from my old man. But we are all human beings as you write - and who are any of us to judge someone else’s very identity?

I’m glad that you are all adjusting well to this big change.

disk_poet
Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2020 3:33 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by disk_poet »

All the best and strength to your daugthers @Suo and @M2S. I have a trans friend and am trying to educate myself and be supportive since society doesn't make it easy.

Do you have some good/helpful resources that stood out to you? I got some books (ABC of LBGT+ and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans by Brynn Tannehill - I am not sure if they are objectively good... I found them helpful in illuminating how ignorant I am). I am especially interested in good resources for parents since they seem to have difficulties. No need to answer if you don't want to I just wanted to pose the question since we ERE folk often find similar resources helpful.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

Thanks everyone for the kind words.

@MI - that was my line of thinking at the start as well, but the science just doesn't back it up. So you end up with the choice: take action NOW to resolve the very real risks NOW (dysphoria, depression, self-harm, suicide) at the cost of potential regret in the future (1% risk or so) or bury your child (40% risk or so). The change in my daughter in the few months from agreeing to start hormone therapy through "preparing for it" through starting it has been absolutely remarkable. Before that ... I mean ... they just live in anguish, man. It's impossible to describe.
ertyu wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:44 am
You being a flexible, supportive, and understanding parent helps more than you think; just ask those who aren't supported and accepted.
You can't. Many are dead.

@dp - I read the Transgender chapter from Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon. A bit high-level, but it sets the stage for how transgenderism is about identity and how central identity is to humans. The second book I read / am reading is The Transgender Teen: A Handbook for Parents and Professionals Supporting Transgender and Non-Binary Teens by Stephanie Brill and Lisa Kenney. This book has been both frustrating and very helpful. Frustrating because it breaks it down extremely simplistically but very helpful ... because it breaks it down extremely simplistically. In effect, it doesn't allow you to jump forward via your assumptions. You have to confront each step of your bias. As a result, it also doesn't just focus on what a trans teen goes through; it blends it with a discussion of what all teens go through. A helpful reminder that trans people are people first and you can't ignore the typical teenage experience while focusing on the trans aspects. We've given this book to both sets of grandparents and some aunts/uncles to educate them on what they needed to know to be a support to our daughter.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Guilt and Shame

Post by suomalainen »

I've been thinking about shame and guilt for many years. The topic recently came up again in some conversations with friends and I've found myself thinking about it, so I thought I'd see if any thread has been made dedicated to the topic. On a cursory search, it seems that guilt comes up quite a bit, but:
frihet wrote:
Wed Dec 18, 2019 11:47 pm
For some reason I am rereading this thread and as I have been thinking about making a thread about shame/guilt as social control I post here instead.

What is the real problem? That people have opinions, no, that will always be the case.

That we need to give them a conversational out so they can live with themselves? Yes that can be a way to make social interactions run smoother.

But I would argue that the main problem is that most of us find it so difficult to feel strong “negative” emotions. That is the main problem here if op could just let shame arise feel it completely and let it pass through him then he would discover that beneath every strong emotion, “good or bad”, lies pure energy and a source of power.

That is the path of transmutation, a life long adventure and I would even argue that it is the next Wheaton level to deal with this “problem”.
So I thought I'd start a thread about it, but then I also want this in my journal as it's a distillation of a few years of my thoughts and a part of my journey. But I also don't want to double post. If this topic is of more general interest, then I'd suggest someone start a new thread (with or without this post included) and to have a more general discussion there rather than here in my journal. Anyway,

First: I want to draw a clear distinction between the verbs and the nouns. I frankly think it's beyond argument that a person that shames or guilt(trip)s another person is just a controlling asshole*, so I'm not going to talk about that specifically. What I want to talk about is the shame or guilt that we feel ourselves, even though the two are interrelated and often intertwined. And, to be clear, shame and guilt are similar and/or sometimes confused for the other, so for purposes of clarity, I will adopt this distinction**:
Shame and guilt are two closely related concepts. While each has been defined in different ways, guilt is typically linked to some specific harm, real or perceived, and shame involves negative feelings about one's self more generally.
The topic appears to come up quite frequently and ... it seems to generate massive inconsistency. Some examples:
  • Work: "I feel guilty for working too much." "I feel guilty for not working enough."
  • Government benefits: "I feel guilty for using government benefits even though I'm [young, healthy, etc.]." "If you don't take government benefits for which you are eligible, you're an idiot."
  • Relationships: "I feel guilty taking time to myself." "I feel guilty for how I feel about my partner who wants to do everything together; it's suffocating."
  • Kids: "I feel guilty for missing my kid's [recital, graduation, etc]." "I feel guilty that I'm glad I'm missing my kid's [recital, graduation, etc]."
  • ERE forum: "This forum is too [esoteric]. I feel too intimidated to post anything". "This forum is not [esoteric] enough. I feel too bored to post anything."
About 10 years ago, I decided that guilt was a worthless emotion and that I wouldn't pay any further attention to it. At the time, I had been struggling with immense guilt and/or shame for how I was discordant with my religion's teachings - how my being was discordant with how my religion taught me that I "should" be. To me, it has seemed that guilt is an emotion that is predicated on adopting another's values for the purpose of judging your behavior against those values. I remember reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged during this time, and this passage was a revelation for me:
Page 430 – 431: He turned to look at Lillian. He was seeing the full extent of her failure – in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. He had heard her studied reminders of his guilt on every evening he had spent at home in the past three months. But guilt had been the one emotion he had found himself unable to feel. The punishment she had wanted to inflict on him was the torture of shame; what she had inflicted was the torture of boredom.

He remembered his brief glimpse – on that morning in the Wayne-Falkland Hotel – of a flaw in her scheme of punishment, which he had not examined. Now he stated it to himself for the first time. She wanted to force upon him the suffering of dishonor – but his own sense of honor was her only weapon of enforcement. She wanted to wrest from him an acknowledgment of his moral depravity – but only his own moral rectitude could attach significance to such a verdict. She wanted to injure him by her contempt – but he could not be injured, unless he respected her judgment. She wanted to punish him for the pain he had caused her and she held her pain as a gun aimed at him, as if she wished to extort his agony at the point of his pity. But her only tool was his own benevolence, his concern for her, his compassion. Her only power was the power of his own virtues. What if he chose to withdraw it?

An issue of guilt, he thought, had to rest on his own acceptance of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty. He did not accept it; he never had. His virtues, all the virtues she needed to achieve his punishment, came from another code and lived by another standard. He felt no guilt, no shame, no regret, no dishonor. He felt no concern for any verdict she chose to pass upon him: he had lost respect for her judgment long ago. And the sole chain still holding him was only a last remnant of pity.

But what was the code on which she acted? What sort of code permitted the concept of a punishment that required the victim’s own virtue as the fuel to make it work? A code – he thought – which would destroy only those who tried to observe it; a punishment, from which only the honest would suffer, while the dishonest would escape unhurt. Could one conceive of an infamy lower than to equate virtue with pain, to make virtue, not vice, the source and motive power of suffering? If he were the kind of rotter she was struggling to make him believe he was, then no issue of his honor and his moral worth would matter to him. If he wasn’t then what was the nature of her attempt?

To count upon his virtue and use it as an instrument of torture, to practice blackmail with the victim’s generosity as sole means of extortion, to accept the gift of a man’s good will and turn it into a tool for the giver’s destruction … he sat very still, contemplating the formula of so monstrous an evil that he was able to name it, but not to believe it possible.

….[page 435] Why didn’t they throw at him all those accusations of cruelty and selfishness, which he had come to accept as the eternal chorus to his life? What had permitted them to do it for years? He knew that the words he heard in his mind were the key to the answer: The sanction of the victim.
The sanction of the victim. Whether or not there is an active shamer or guilt-tripper, it seems like guilt and shame is always accompanied by another human. Indeed,
Guilt is self-focused but also highly socially relevant: It’s thought to serve important interpersonal functions by, for example, encouraging the repair of valuable relationships and discouraging acts that could damage them. But in excess, guilt may needlessly burden those who experience it.
Because another human is involved in an emotion that we feel, untangling what is whose can be challenging. But it is important to remember that all of these judgments rest on values, and values are created by humans, not found in nature, else physicists, rather than poets, priests and philosophers, would be testing and defining "natural values" like they do "natural laws". As a result, the question becomes: "Am I appropriately judging myself by my own values or am I judging myself inappropriately by my own or others' values?"

Where there is a well-defined set of values, where there exists "the sanction of the victim", such as in a small town or a religious community or where the "victim" does not have a well-defined sense of self and therefore absorbs the values (and judgments) of stronger-willed people around them, the answer is clear, and easy: conform. In religious terms, this often takes the form of the five steps to repentance: acknowledging the sin, confessing the sin, asking forgiveness, turning away from the sin, and restoring the wrong done. Notice that the first step is a synonym of "the sanction of the victim" and the fourth step is conforming one's self and/or behavior to the value system.

This concept is also captured in literature. From John Steinbeck's East of Eden:
It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just moral god they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units - because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails... [page 12]

After a while, you’ll think no thought the others do not think. You’ll know no word the others can’t say. And you’ll do things because the others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever – a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men … Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. [page 25]
But what about those situations where one feels guilty but also feels cognitive dissonance about that guilt? Where one does NOT grant one's sanction to the judgment of the value system in which one finds oneself? Where the society's or the community's standards are "wrong"?

Again from East of Eden

“I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word,” said Adam. “What was that word?”
“Now I see. The word was timshel.”
“Timshel – and you said – “
“I said that word carried a man’s greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it.”
“I remember Sam Hamilton felt good about it.”
“It set him free,” said Lee. “It gave him the right to be a man, separate from every other man.”
“That’s lonely.”
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
“What is the word again?”
“Timshel – thou mayest.”

Page 519 (or -20)
And here is the crux of my feeling that "guilt was a worthless emotion" 10 or so years ago: I knew, I KNEW, that I was feeling cognitive dissonance because my life did not line up with my value system, but I did not yet have the courage to live my own value system. I felt guilt about specific "sins" and generalized shame, not because I was "wrong" as a human, but because I kept judging myself by someone else's values. I was scared to do and live in accordance with my deepest sense of self. I was scared to be seen as different, as apart. Conformity is comforting in its camouflage. But "fitting in" isn't really living. It's merely surviving, Viktor Frankl style. But when your physical survival does not depend on your hiding your true self by conforming to a community's standards with which you don't agree - whether Nazi death camp, "retail therapy" culture, or conservative religious community, then real living requires courage and withdrawing one's sanction to those values with which one does not agree.
Why do I feel guilty about everything?

Though pervasive feelings of guilt are not necessarily a sign of an underlying mental health condition, they can be. Widely used criteria include regular feelings of “excessive or inappropriate guilt” among the symptoms of major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, and guilt plays a role in other disorders as well. The guilt may be related to repeatedly thinking about minor failures or stem from things that are not actually within a person’s control.
And so, I think my "guilt is a worthless emotion" is not necessarily a statement of general applicability, even if it was applicable to me in my situation at the time - a way to create a bright red line against an oppressive occupying force and to allow myself to break free from it. To be more general about it, I think guilt is a very tricky emotion because it is indeed tied to other humans or human organizations. In a word, it implicates differentiation. So it also requires careful consideration: What do I feel guilty about? What harm have I caused? Is said harm something that I "should" (according to my value system) try to undo, try to make amends for? Or is the "harm" incidental to my existence, a cost of being myself - a non-conformist "causing trouble" in an environment that prizes conformity? Or is the professed "harm" ephemeral - merely a way for another human or human organization to control me to beat "the dangerous difference" out of me?

I don't think there's an easy answer. At some point, guilt will either drive you to conform to values you have wholeheartedly adopted or will drive you to differentiate from adopted values that were never really resonant. (But you can spend a looooooong time trying to conform before you finally decide it's not working and not worth it any more). In either case, I think ownership is key. Owning your values; taking responsibility for living according to them regardless of the consequences; this is how you avoid spiraling to shame. Consider also the connection to self-justification, previously discussed herein.

*******

*
What are some ways to deal with a “guilt trip”?

When someone tries to instill guilt to get another to behave a certain way—an act often associated with mothers and their children—responding with empathy, while also setting limits when necessary, could help in getting out of the guilt trip. That may include acknowledging the importance of what the guilt-tripping person wants while also asking them to express their wants directly and to respect your decisions.
** Unless otherwise attributed, the quotes here are from this psychology today article.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

2021 year in review

Post by suomalainen »

Wow, it's been over six months since I last wrote here. Crazy. I finally found my journal on page 8 (!) of the ere journals forum. Perhaps it's time for a brief update, so here goes:

Money
I've been officially divorced for about 10 months. I've paid roughly the same amount of alimony/child support to my ex for a year+ longer than that. At the end of this year, I was surprised to find that I'd saved about $2,000 from my normal budget. I'ma focus on that since if I revealed any of my other numbers, I'd be beaten by the ERE police for my frivolity. In addition to that 2 grand, I've also maxed out my 401k from an IRS and company-match perspective, so I feel pretty good that I can just put my head down and get through the next 6 years until my kids are "grown" and I can then re-focus on myself and my personal financial goals a bit more, and when I do pick my head up and look at my accounts, I'll be able to think "Holy shit, they went up a LOT during that time".

Kids
My middle child had his birthday yesterday, and I went to play laser tag with the kids and the ex. Later, I went to the ex's for his birthday dinner and presents (it was her turn to have the kids for his birthday). I still occasionally struggle with the "loss" of the nuclear family. I felt like an outsider sitting at that old dining room table. That home is where the kids grew up - it holds all the comfort, all the memories. My place, by comparison, is just a shell from the elements. The walls are bare (because I just don't notice them); there's no life there - I just sleep there; my life takes place elsewhere. In any event, I end up having these tugs on my heartstrings when I feel like I'm missing out on some sort of picturesque nuclear family life. But then, at the end of the dinner / opening presents, the ex asked the birthday boy what he wanted to do. "Play video games ... alone" was his answer. So home I went, accepting that kids grow up and want their independence and the picture of the "perfect nuclear family" is just a temporary blip in a human lifespan - enjoy the mirage while it lasts! It's like a Jim Gaffigan (I think) joke about how when you're an adult and your mom calls you, you're like "GAWWWWWDDDDD. IT'S MY MOM! UGH!" I love you, you love me, we are a happy family.

My trans-child seems to be progressing, so that's a little lull in the storm aside from normal teenagery stresses. I still occasionally find the whole concept bizarre or foreign, but then I remember that my struggles seem bizarre or foreign to those for whom they are. We're all a little different in the details, but awfully similar in the generalities. I can understand and empathize with depression or challenges finding one's identity, even if I have no experience with the idea of questioning one's gender identity. Needless to say, it's been an expansive experience for everyone whose lives she has touched.

The youngest is in that "I'm an asshole middle-schooler" stage, so that's fun.

Personal
Work's been stressful, so that hasn't been great, but at the same time, it's a manageable stress, and I really should be able to manage it better all things considered. So that's what I'll do this coming year.

I'm still dating @gravy, and frankly ... things are wonderful with her. I don't want to cause too many eye-rolls to you, dear readers, so I won't get into the details, but let's just summarize to say that we are very fond of each other, and our relationship continues to deepen and broaden. I am very excited to continue seeing her into the new year. It is also wonderful that she's on the same wavelength as I am about personal growth and differentiation, so while we are growing closer together, we are also very mindful about growing apart (i.e., individually) as well.

Speaking of growth, I've been ... sort of amazed at how much growth I've accomplished in the last X years. When I was in the midst of it, I felt like I was learning all of these secrets to the universe, and I felt like I had them at my fingertips and could expound on them at any given opportunity. As those learnings have sulanut [digested / marinated], I feel like I'm losing that connection to the "before" picture, and it's getting harder for me to be able to explain to someone who might be in that "before" phase how to get to the "after" phase. Part of it, of course, is that some of that learning is intensely personal to my particular path and even though parts of those learnings would be generalizable to anyone, I may not possess the perspective to properly generalize in a way that would make it useful to others. I've been thinking about this in particular with my kids and how I can best help them individualize and mature and be prepared for an adult world and life and relationships in a way that I was not. Every so often, we have talks about how to do things (life, relationships, school, whatever) in a mature manner, but I just don't know if it sinks in or if it even can. It may be the kind of thing that you can know plenty about but you can't know it until you go through it, mistakes and all. I just hope for their sakes that they go about the rough-and-tumble of learning who you are and what you want in a low-stakes-manner so that they're not "trapped" with lifelong consequences of their detours (like kids, STIs, rap sheet or similar).

To bring this all back to an earlier theme in this journal, I feel like the money aspects of my life are a "solved problem", and now that I've been focusing on the "right" problems, I'm finally making progress in my life in a way that aligns my external life with my internal personality and desires. Or as @gravy read* to me the other night, I no longer feel the need to "uproot" my life, casting about for a solution to an ill-defined problem. Once I had the courage to actually see my problem, and to see that there was no "nice" way to address that problem, I destroyed my life because it was the fair thing to do, for all involved, notwithstanding the pain that it would cause. And at the end of it all, now I'm working on the problems I want and need to solve, and everyone else involved is also freed to focus on their real problems, instead of the problems caused by all my "uprooting", which served only to obfuscate and frustrate.

Anyway, happy new year to you all. I hope you are closer to finding yourself, to what you want from this life, and to finding it.

* From a book called The Mountain Is You

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Dancing

Post by suomalainen »

My life has been full of big changes and not only recently. Some of these were standard changes as you move from one life stage to another, such as moving, starting a new job, marrying, bearing children, raising children, divorcing, finding new love, etc. It has always fascinated me that humanity seems a giant recursive ball of idiocy. Every generation has to learn basically the exact same lessons as the generation before it. It seems some knowledge is transferable, and some is not.

One of the lessons I've been grappling with lately is the slow, quiet death of my former relationship, represented at its peak by a marriage, juxtaposed against the resurrection of that relationship in the form of something different. It's very strange to live with someone for 20 years and then to suddenly excise them from your life... except that you don't. You still have to work with this person for the sake of your joint kids; so even though you might no longer see or speak to them daily, you still see them fairly often. And sometimes when you're with them, you have the thought "Why did we get divorced? She's nice and interesting.", and then other times you have the thought "Holy shit am I glad I don't have to deal with that anymore." Long way of saying that the presumed excision caused by divorce isn't really that. It's more of an extrication. And that's what makes it a "slow, quiet death". I've been separated for over two years, formally divorced for one, and unhappy for far longer.

Now that I've had more time and space from my ex, I can see that we have some areas of connection, some areas where we overlap, and there was plenty of "goodness" in those connections. And so it was with some surprise to finally see that our areas of overlap, while "good" for a relationship of some description, was not "enough" for a marital relationship. But when we were married, we were too young and un-self-aware to see that, and so we tried really hard to make something work that just wasn't going to be satisfactory to us. So, for me, the work of the last few years has been to try to see the relationship for what it is and to accept it for what it is. It has been interesting to also be able to reflect on how the feelings of goodness in a few areas spilled over into thinking "we can make this work" in the areas that were lacking. It has taken a long time to begin to differentiate the two - to allow the goodness to be what it is and to allow the lack to be what it is, to be with a person without wanting anything more from them than what they are. Or, as as I saw on a buzzfeed thing about "hard-to-swallow pill" life-lessons they've learned (pulled from reddit, apparently):
You can love someone deeply, and still recognize that they are not a good fit for you. Ending a relationship is sometimes the greatest act of love.
Part of what has helped in this area is my new girlfriend, @gravy. We have many areas of overlapping goodness in areas ranging from emotional to mental to philosophical to sexual to social. I am very hopeful that we are both coming at this new relationship with eyes wide open, having learned from the mistakes and pains of our prior relationships. And that makes me wonder - would I have been able to see and appreciate what I share with @gravy if I hadn't been able to experience non-@gravy? In particular, does having experienced "spillover goodness", or a goodness-halo effect, I guess, give me the education to be able to really see a person and a relationship without projections and narratives and assumptions and self-justifications?

Anyway, so this idea of hard-learned life-lessons put me in a meditative mood about life generally, and recently, I listened to Gregory Alan Isakov's "Liars"
Do you remember when we were young
The swing sets, the costumes
The dirt in the sun
I sold all my baseball cards to buy me some clothes
That's how it goes
That's how it goes, and that's how it goes
And i keep on thinking
It's time to move on
...
I sold all these clothes to buy me this land
...
I sold all this land
To buy me some dreams
Just like those movies we played when we were kids
It's like seeing into someone's mental process as they reflect on life's journey, as one's desires and dreams morphed and changed throughout their maturation. Growth and change is inevitable, it's ... good. And it reminded me of this from Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity:
[Life] all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere.
Perhaps the human experience really is all about a consciousness grappling with change, both our own as well as external. Our own internal change often is accompanied or preceded or succeeded by learning those hard-won lessons that somehow just can't be learned without living through them. Think of the idea of "the rock" in christianity - wanting solidity and strength in a brutally topsy-turvy world. Or the buddhist approach of resisting change as a cause of suffering. Different approaches, but same central problem - change. Whether it's stage-of-life changes or marriage-divorce-coparents/friends changes or whatever, change just seems to discombobulate.

Life changes. The music changes. Partners change. Perhaps the trick is to enjoy the dance and to be willing to embrace the changes in tempo, to accept the differing partner styles in the people whose lives intersect yours, and when you find a song and a partner who makes your heart sing ... to hold on tightly while also being willing to let go when the next change comes.

And here is one reason I love @gravy: we were recently texting about something similar to this idea and she sent me a passage from Passionate Marriage that reads:
Are you among those who might dare to want your partner? Then you have additional reason to remember what we discussed about intimacy, because it applies to desire, too: if you want to keep desire (and intimacy) alive in your marriage, your continued differentiation must keep pace with your partner's increasing importance. When your partner becomes more important to you than your relationship with yourself, you have four choices: withdraw emotionally, engulf your partner, allow your partner to engulf you, raise your level of differentiation.
I love how that idea overlays on the idea of the dance. Regardless of who your partner is, you can't dance without your own two legs, so while you can hold tight and enjoy the dance while it lasts, you have to be ready and able to stand on your own two legs should change come. Because it will.

User avatar
Chris
Posts: 773
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:44 pm

Re: 2021 year in review

Post by Chris »

suomalainen wrote:
Sun Jan 02, 2022 4:11 pm
I still occasionally struggle with the "loss" of the nuclear family. I felt like an outsider sitting at that old dining room table. That home is where the kids grew up - it holds all the comfort, all the memories. ... So home I went, accepting that kids grow up and want their independence and the picture of the "perfect nuclear family" is just a temporary blip in a human lifespan
You're right to put "loss" in quotes, and to identify that piece of life as a blip. Divorced or not, those kids are gonna become their own people and fly the coop, and won't feel that same loss you do. Speaking for myself, I didn't consider at all that I was causing any kind of breakage when I grew up and then moved out.

Maybe the loss parents feel is repayment for how they made their parents feel when they "age out" of the picture-perfect family. You just repaid a bit earlier than expected.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

A Random Walk

Post by suomalainen »

I don't know exactly for what purpose I write tonight. Partly, it's because I'm exhausted, and perhaps puhe-ripuli-ing onto this page will provide some benefit. Some of it certainly is that @gravy told me she misses reading my posts, even though I just talk at her or text her when something comes to mind. In any event, in stream-of-consciousness-order:

1) We had a 504 meeting today for my oldest, who has now been openly transgender for about a year and a half and has now undergone a formal neuropsych evaluation and has been diagnosed with ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. She has now started an anti-depressant as well as an anti-anxiety medication. She is finally letting herself be fully herself, maskless, and ... well, it's taking some getting used to. She's been wearing headphones for quite some time as all teenagers seem wont to do, listening to music, but now she's wearing noise-cancelling headphones due to her high sensitivity to sound and stimulation in general. And she has purposefully and voluntarily chosen to go mute - as in, she doesn't speak. She communicates with us via typing out on her phone and showing us what she's typed. On the one hand, fine whatever; on the other hand, I just want to scream: "I don't want to do this anymore. This is too much. How much more are you going to ask of me?!"

Juxtapose that exhausted orientation with the words spoken by her english teacher at today's 504 meeting: "She's an absolute delight to have in class. The way she is able to express herself and what she has experienced is breathtaking. I have learned so much from her. When she read her poem in class last week, she had the class in tears." It was a moment to see my child's problems through the eyes of a third party. Yes, there was a modicum of pride of the "carrying the family name well" type, but greater than that was the pride borne of being reminded just how much shit she's had to deal with in her own head, let alone with a world that is so disinviting to people like her. And she's handling it well. THAT is what I need to keep my focus on, rather than on the indirect cost to me of supporting her in her challenges.

2) But then, I think I also need to be gracious to myself in the ways that @gravy has recently expressed in her journal - there is a need to fill my cup; it is okay for me to take space and to have my own needs. Perhaps it's not fair to impose the costs of my needs onto my kid - in my case, the niggling desire to do so doesn't come in the form of demanding she change to make it easier for me, but rather ... to stop having her need so much from me - to just leave me alone. So, step 1 in this differentiation analysis is: she is a child; she needs me; I love her, so I will persist in giving all I can to the best of my abilities. Step 2 in this differentiation analysis is: holy fuck am I tired and drained. Saying "This is too much" is neither an indictment of my teenage child being "too needy" nor an indictment of me for being "too selfish". It just is. It is indicative that there is something off in my life, that the balance of "when life is fairly carefree and yet not altogether carefree" (Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg 114) is temporarily out of whack. And that's an important point - this is an emotion, and emotions are temporary. Emotions need to be given their space; they need to be heard; lessons can be learned; and then plans to address the problem can be hatched; but they're nothing more than that. In my case, I think it's just been a very stress-filled month or two. Work has been busy; family life has been busy with that stuff ^^; my schedule has been thrown totally out of whack - I've done A LOT of traveling since Thanksgiving between work, kids, @gravy, and some out of state friends I hadn't seen in a long time. I don't think this is a Wizard-of-Oz-moment, where I'm so burned out from something that I've seen behind the curtain of how shitty this or that part of my life is and there's no recovery from it*, but I could certainly use a re-balancing. I dunno. Maybe it's just been a rough few months and I need to take more purposeful time to "fill my cup" while also hoping that my external pressures lessen so that I don't have to put so much purposeful energy into this. The former is in my control and the latter is not.

* There was a discussion here somewhere about that, I think in particular related to jobs. I forget the details or the location, but it was something like when @jacob realized that his burnout from physics was unrecoverable, and I think @cL was also burned out from his job similarly. I need to spend some time pondering that topic myself.

3) I had some recent interactions and conversations with my ex that I guess were more interesting to me at the time than they seem to me now. I guess the one thing that she said that still amuses me now was something like, "Now, don't take this the wrong way, but when we were together, I just felt like I was giving and giving and getting nothing in return, so I want to find someone that gives back." I wasn't offended by the comment at all. That's how I felt about her too! This juxtaposition of narratives is just the perfect example of how narratives, and not "facts", rule in how a human orients themself towards their life and guides their actions and even beliefs. In response, I just said, "No, it's important to find someone who resonates." It was interesting to me to be able to use that moment to differentiate "this stuff over here was good ... and that stuff over there was not". As I wrote above a post or two ago, when I was younger, I was not able to differentiate, or to put it another way that I learned from @gravy, I wasn't able to RULER my emotions individually. I was scared of letting the negative emotions have their stage, as if they were a threat to the positive emotions. Had I given each their space, I could have a long time ago realized that my ex was a better fit for me as a sometime friend rather than an all-the-time spouse.

Ok, that last paragraph is tending towards incoherency, which means it's bedtime. I do feel a bit better having written down some of these thoughts that have been swirling lately.

User avatar
Lemur
Posts: 1604
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 1:40 am
Location: USA

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Lemur »

Coincidentally I am picking this book up from the library this week mentioned above: Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg 114. If you've the time - please post your takeaways when you complete. I would be interested to read your thoughts.

ertyu
Posts: 2885
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by ertyu »

Read your post and wanted to say I admire the kind of parent you're being to your daughter - you are managing to stay open-minded and focused on her happiness and growth, on the one hand, and on the other hand, you're managing to be introspective and accepting of what you discover, rather than reactive. This is admirable. Far too few people manage to be parents like that even when their children aren't dealing with as much as your daughter is.

The screen thing reads like an acceptance thing to me, though I doubt it is deliberate or conscious - do you really accept me as I am, with what I'm going through? If I needed to turn inward, will you still be here? I am also glad you got to see her through the eyes of someone who admires her expression and creativity, her teacher. When kids are going through Big Things, it's far too easy to only see the problem.

Your conversation with your ex is interesting - it seems like you were both giving but neither of you stopped to ask and listen to what the other needed to receive. seems like you have learned a lot from that also.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

On Communication

Post by suomalainen »

Thanks Chris and lemur and ertyu. I had a recent text conversation / fight with my daughter that was so very strangely similar to fights I'd had with my ex, that I thought it was worth analyzing. In the fight, she accused me of not being supportive of her taking hormone replacement therapy and of "not listening" to her (in the fight and also at the time when she said she wanted / needed HRT). I got defensive, it went 'round and 'round a bit until I proved I was right about supporting her HRT (by showing her my emails with her doctor) and acknowledged that I could be a better listener.

At the end of it, I realized how powerful narratives are. Once there's a narrative in place, all evidence goes through the self-justification and confirmation bias filter. It's very challenging to change narratives. And that's when I realized the similarities between that conversation and many arguments with my ex-wife. She had a narrative about me that she was unwilling to change, so all of our fights became about me becoming defensive because I hated the ("incorrect") narrative she had about me, and it resulted in me "not being able to listen".

And then I realized a second thing about my argument with my daughter and my arguments with my ex - they used the words "listen" and "validate", when they really meant "accept" and "approve". To me, listening means you listen and understand, but it does not preclude addressing or engaging with the words spoken or even pushing back. However, if you are saying the words and wanting them to be "accepted" and "approved" rather than merely "listened to", then addressing and engaging and pushing back are not only frowned upon, they are completely taboo.

A third similarity is that neither my daughter nor my ex differentiate between feelings and thoughts and conclusions. To them, when they present a feeling or a thought or a conclusion, they must all be listened to and validated. To me, a feeling / emotion must be listened to and validated without much, if any, question, but thoughts and conclusions can be listened to and also discussed and challenged if need be. I can't tell you that your emotion is wrong, but if I think your thoughts or conclusions are wrong or not fully formed, why can't I address it? As an example in this text fight with my daughter, she suggested that telling me she wanted/needed HRT and me not immediately saying "yes, let's get it tomorrow" was me "not listening to her". Me saying "Yes, well, we have to talk to the doctor and I have to check with insurance and we need to make sure you're taking care of your mental health at the same time" is me "not listening to her". Why couldn't I just accept her conclusion that HRT was right for her? Why did I only "approve" her conclusion once I had spoken with the doctor? From my perspective, I had validated her feelings of gender dysphoria, but we had a disagreement about the thoughts / conclusions drawn from those emotions. She assumed her emotions and her thoughts and conclusions about what to do about those emotions should all be listened to, no other input needed. I assumed that her emotions were valid and real, but that none of us were qualified to determine on our own whether, what and how a medical treatment would be appropriate.

In any event, a very long way of saying that I learned that I need to be much much much much much much much much more careful and precise in my words whenever I address difficult or sensitive feelings in my children*. They will hang onto every negative (or even neutral) word for the rest of their lives. I need to be very very precise when addressing a course of action they are taking so that I am able to be emotionally supportive while also providing direction (in the gentlest, most suggestive, non-directional manner possible) when needed. And then I have to learn to just let it go when people have the "wrong" narrative about me. As @gravy asked me when I told her this story: "why do you need their reality to match your reality?" I dunno. I guess it's because I don't feel like it's a real relationship when someone else is relating to a simulacrum of me, rather than me. But if that's the case, I guess I have to accept that it's not a real relationship, as was the case in my first marriage, rather than have the "whose reality is right" fight. I guess it came down to "let go of needing to be seen" or "let go of the relationship" and it was too hard to let go of the relationship for a long time, until suddenly I saw that I needed to hold onto me and let the chips fall where they may.

And I guess this will be the case with my adult children. I guess I'd always hoped that I'd have real relationships with them, and maybe at some point I'll be able to, but I perhaps I expect too much from my children. Perhaps it's too much to ask for them to care about anyone else's perspective other than their own. It seems entirely developmentally appropriate for them to be self-absorbed, and entirely idiotic for me to expect otherwise and/or to fight against it. But I do find it difficult to know how I can BE a father to them if they have totally incorrect narratives about me. If they think I'm not listening to them, are they going to come to me with their problems? How can I help when I don't know a problem exists? But is it help if all I'm allowed to do anyway is just listen to their problems and their proposed solutions and nod along even when their proposed solution is fucking batshit insane? I dunno. I find this stage extraordinarily challenging, like my father before me. Perhaps this too shall pass.

* The real fucking kicker here is that you can't know a priori which things the kids will find difficult or sensitive. In this case, she told me about me making her cry about HRT over a year after the fact when in my mind I'd been the best fucking father a transgender kid could have. Competing narratives indeed.

ertyu
Posts: 2885
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: On Communication

Post by ertyu »

suomalainen wrote:
Sat Jul 02, 2022 8:32 am

And then I realized a second thing about my argument with my daughter and my arguments with my ex - they used the words "listen" and "validate", when they really meant "accept" and "approve". To me, listening means you listen and understand, but it does not preclude addressing or engaging with the words spoken or even pushing back. However, if you are saying the words and wanting them to be "accepted" and "approved" rather than merely "listened to", then addressing and engaging and pushing back are not only frowned upon, they are completely taboo.
It's not a narrative. It's not that you don't listen, it's that they do not feel heard. Feeling heard matters. Validate isn't the same as approve, validate is, "ah, so those are the experiences you're having, i see." It's letting the other person know that you care to know what's going on for them and that you react to it with an, "ah i see, that's what's going on" rather than with a desire to argue it away or challenge it or change it because you think what's going on shouldn't be going on; there's another thing that *should* be going on instead and you know what that thing is. Your idea of what should be going on is superior to theirs, and that's why you're *invalidating* theirs and pushing yours.

If this is how you feel, id mention it with a therapist. other people do have their own experiences which are, indeed, valid, just like you do. if this is not how you feel, well, something in the way you are communicating is conveying the idea that you do not, in fact, listen to understand and with the mindset that other people's interiority is equally valid (here's that word again) to yours.

in general, if multiple people are telling you the same thing, before saying, "they have a narrative," actually hear what they're ssaying: they're saying the relationship isn't working for them. they're telling you what about it isn't working. this is them caring for the relationship - they're bringing things up and informing you and giving you a chance to connect. this isn't something that's happening against you, it's something that's happening for the relationship. In the end, what -is- so hard about telling your daughter, "i realize i haven't communicated to you that i do, in fact, care and advocate for you; must suck to go through all of these things you're going through and feel like i don't support you (the first part of this sentence shows that you listened, the second is the validating). let me show you my emails with your doctor - i do care and have supported you even if i haven't expressed it. in the future, what are some ways in which i can respond to you that reassure you that i do, indeed, care and root for you?"

the ex is the ex, that's water under the bridge, but with your daughter, she's still a teen. it's on you to be the actual adult here and do the above. you do have feelings of your own and those are also valid, and it would have been reasonable to expect your ex to hear and validate them as another adult. but because your daughter is your daughter, the onus is not on her to do the adult thing, the onus is on you to do it and to model it for her.

im speaking out of my ass on an internet forum and haven't interacted in real life either with you or with your daughter, but i urge you to run this feedback by your therapist before dismissing it. stay strong

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

No, I hear that, thanks for the feedback. It's not multiple people giving me this feedback - it's just the ex and then my daughter. I don't have this communication problem with any other people in my life - I have several close friends of different ages and different genders and different experiences, and the only person I ever had this type of trouble with was my ex. I never really understood what the issue was until that argument with my daughter - just different brains working differently.

But the idea of "you be the adult, let the teen be the teen" does resonate. And I actually did do this with my daughter after I got past my own defensiveness:
in the future, what are some ways in which i can respond to you that reassure you that i do, indeed, care and root for you?"
It wasn't that I wasn't expressing my support for her; it's that she wanted me to do it a certain way and didn't "feel heard" when I expressed my support by doing the thing she wanted in my typical adult/lawyer manner. That's what I was trying to get at in the final paragraphs of my post - I have to be super careful to parse out what she's saying and to be validating of her feelings, and then to be suggestive rather than directive when it comes to thoughts or conclusions or decisions. In other words, "Ok, so you think you'd like to do HRT - what do you think should be the first step?" Instead of, "Ok, so you think you'd like to do HRT - let me talk to the insurance and the doctor and get back to you. In the meantime, you need to keep going to therapy and taking care of yourself like we've been discussing for the past so-and-so many months." I just ... my brain just goes into "we have a destination, so how do we get there"-problem-solving mode. Rather than seeing that as supportive, my ex and my daughter saw it as ... not listening and not validating*. Granted, I can be direct and pushy and whatnot, and that's the part that I said I could get better at, but at the same time, it drives me nuts that they see me as getting in the way when literally what I am doing is bulldozing all of the roadblocks out of the way ... when they don't want a bulldozer, they want a supportive spectator rather than a coach or director. I don't know if that makes any sense. It barely makes any sense to me, but I'm working on teaching this old dog to put down his "get shit done"-problem-solver side to ... I dunno ... make them "feel heard". I know I'm being a dick about it here, because it seems so stupid to me, but I've heard the feedback and am trying to just accept that this is just how some people work. "It's not stupid; it's just different." should me my new mantra. But it's really foreign to me.

* and then they both seem to be incapable of saying, in the moment, "No, I appreciate you want to jump in and help, but what I need you to do is just help talk me through it. Ask and listen; don't direct."

ertyu
Posts: 2885
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by ertyu »

suomalainen wrote:
Sat Jul 02, 2022 8:14 pm
"Ok, so you think you'd like to do HRT - what do you think should be the first step?" Instead of, "Ok, so you think you'd like to do HRT - let me talk to the insurance and the doctor and get back to you. In the meantime, you need to keep going to therapy and taking care of yourself like we've been discussing for the past so-and-so many months."
You're kick-ass. Doing it this way is also empowering -- those are the guard rails or training wheels that allow your daughter to practice making decisions. If you went into problem-solving mode, you handled the whole thing and your daughter learned nothing.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9344
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Humans who highly value their freedom sometimes aren’t fully aware that by being directive in relationship to others, they are just clearing space that will have to be filled by something like video games. There’s an inherent limit to clutter control in human relationships.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Re: On Communication

Post by suomalainen »

ertyu wrote:
Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:34 pm
It's not a narrative ... in general, if multiple people are telling you the same thing, before saying, "they have a narrative," actually hear what they're saying:
I wanted to address this, in part because of the discussion over on Axel Heyst's journal about mental models being used to help in interactions with other people. In that journal, there's discussion about using these conscious analytical mental models to relate to other people, especially for heavy-Ts (MBTI Ts), but "normal" people do this quite unconsciously and naturally. fMRI scans have been used to show that the brains of people in the act of empathizing are no different than the brains of people who are in the act of having a primary emotion. In other words, if you are "feeling someone else's pain", you are quite literally causing yourself to feel the pain (that you imagine) they are feeling - your brain unconsciously knows how to model the brain of another human. Another descriptor for "mental model" is "narrative". So when I suggested that my ex-wife and/or daughter "had a(n incorrect) narrative" about me, I wasn't being pejorative, I was being descriptive. They have a model/narrative of me that they think is descriptive of me and that informs how they expect me to act/interact, and this guides their interactions with me. Same goes for every other human interaction they have.

The reason I think this is important to call out is because it is a short-handed way of discussing many cognitive biases that arise in relationships. From my post discussing the book Mistakes Were Made:
suomalainen wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 3:29 pm
The summary of the book is this: people have cognitive dissonance, and they typically react to cognitive dissonance with selective memory, confirmation bias and self-justification. As applied to marriages, you basically have cognitive dissonance and you develop a theory (narrative) that appears to resolve it; you remember what you need to to support your narrative; you focus on new facts to support your narrative; you disregard new facts that challenge your narrative; and you make yourself the good guy and your partner the bad guy. This pattern is what causes many break-ups - you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes and make changes while blaming your partner for their mistakes and refusal to make changes.
In addition to confirmation bias, anchoring bias appears to be extremely important and perhaps the reason why I reacted so strongly to my daughter having an "initial" narrative of me that would harm her and our relationship:
suomalainen wrote:
Sat Jul 02, 2022 8:32 am
But I do find it difficult to know how I can BE a father to them if they have totally incorrect narratives about me. If they think I'm not listening to them, are they going to come to me with their problems? How can I help when I don't know a problem exists? But is it help if all I'm allowed to do anyway is just listen to their problems and their proposed solutions and nod along even when their proposed solution is fucking batshit insane?
THAT is the thing that I find so challenging here. My daughter is too inexperienced to be left on her own. Whether she knows or accepts that is unknown, but it's a reality. So, I have to find a way to correct her narrative of me so that she doesn't cut me off from being a resource to her when she needs me. Aside from that concern, I would be completely fine trying to do better to learn this lesson (again from Mistakes Were Made):
suomalainen wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 3:29 pm
“All of us have hard decisions to make at times in our lives; not all of them will be right, and not all of them will be wise. Some are complicated, with consequences we could never have foreseen. If we can resist the temptation to justify our actions in a rigid, overconfident way, we can leave the door open to empathy and an appreciation of life’s complexity, including the possibility that what was right for us might not have been right for others… [tells a story about a woman named Betty who divorced after 20 years and 1 child was supportive and the other devastated. After so-and-so many years, she reconciled with the devastated child and said] ‘Nowadays, when I feel passionate that I am 100% right about a decision that others question, I look at it again; that’s all.’ Betty did not have to admit that she made a mistake; she didn’t make a mistake. But she did have to let go of her need to be right.” Pgs 228-229.
I need to learn to let go of my need to be right, and to be seen to be right. At the same time, I need to change my child[ren]'s narrative of me as someone who can't be approached because she'll be bulldozed by me. It is forcing me to look at my self again, and to realize that I can "be myself" (pushy, direct, "overconfident") with those that can handle it - equals, without worrying about how I'm seen. But when I'm with those who aren't my equals, whether by position (parent-child) or otherwise, AND/OR whose narrative of me matters to me (kids, boss, clients, etc), I need to be more careful, less pushy, less direct, less arrogant. Over time, this should mitigate the prior impression they have of me, but as I mentioned before, due to anchoring and confirmation biases, it is very, very difficult to change narratives, and the only way to do it is to call it out explicitly, to try to re-frame it and to re-anchor expectations. We'll see how it goes.

suomalainen
Posts: 976
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Restoration

Post by suomalainen »

I just got back from a summer vacation trip to a fairly remote lake. The house I rented had three cabins, spotty wifi, no cell service, no tv, and a sunfish, among the basics. A couple of major takeaways.

Romantic Relationships - I invited my ex to join me and the kids. To my surprise, she accepted. The place had an extra cabin, so I thought there would be enough space. It was interesting spending the better part of a week with my ex. I noticed a couple of things more prominently than I had in our prior much less extended exposures to each other post-divorce. The first is the reminder of how it was in our marriage - how we interacted. There wasn't the same tension as in the marriage, because while she was her usual distant self, I did not spend any time pursuing her, so there was none of the issues arising from that come-here/go-away tension. The reminder was nice for me after these years of introspection and space, such that I was able to see the dynamic and also remember the narratives that we each had about the dynamic - hers was perhaps that I was needy, disrespectful of her space, aggressive, selfish, etc.; mine was perhaps that she was selfish, withdrawn and frigid. Part of both our narratives were right, but the part that was wrong for both of us was the part where we assumed that the other "shouldn't" be that way. Now I can just accept that she's that way and I'm this way, and it's not a good fit for a romantic relationship. In contrast, my relationship with @gravy is mutually tender, mutually close, and mutually lustful and respectful in their turns (like the oxford comma, babe?). In short, I found the lid to my pot. Other lids aren't "wrong", they're just "wrong for me".

Boredom - I specifically did not schedule any activities at all for this vacation. In fact, I parked in the driveway and didn't touch the car keys until it was time to go. The kids spent a good bit of time on their phones and laptops I'm sure (two had an upstairs loft and a third had her own tiny cabin right on the lake to where they withdrew for hours at a time). At one point, I remember feeling guilty or insecure or something about this vacation - that it wasn't "teenager appropriate". It felt like I wasn't meeting some standard that I should be meeting. Maybe it was that I wasn't creating the types of memories I should be creating. Maybe it's that my fucked up little family is just too fucked up. I wasn't sure. But then I had the thought remembering an article I had read about "over-scheduling", and about how kids need unscheduled time, etc., etc., and I thought, what if I'm judging myself against what I suspect is a societal standard? I've always hated being a cruise director for my kids, but then when I deliberately wasn't a cruise director by not scheduling a single thing, I felt insecure. It was an odd feeling for a day or so. And I was also bored myself. It was great for a day or two, but then on hump day, I was feeling antsy for something. To clear my head, I went for a sail in the sunfish; I went for a kayak down the lake; and then I went for a swim with a couple of the kids. Then we did something we've done a few times before that they seemed to enjoy - we get two people on a paddleboard and we have a match to see who can throw whom off balance first, winner is who falls in the water last. So we ended up making a memory anyway. We also played a good bit of cornhole, and watched a couple of movies on a projector at night. As I was leaving, I felt a familiar tug of ... loss? that I sometimes feel. The first time I distinctly remember feeling that was after a trip my parents took to see me during law school. It had been a good trip and I felt sadness or loss when they left. I've interpreted that feeling as an indicator that I was leaving an experience that had been good for me, that had provided me with something I had been lacking. That first time, it seemed to be connection with my parents. This time, it seemed to be peace or boredom or the absence of anxiety.

As I drove home, I felt like this trip was very restorative for me. I had had one good conversation with my trans child who has been quite withdrawn for months. I had downtime where I did nothing. I read for the first time in months. I didn't look at my work email even once. I sailed; I paddled; I swam; I cornholed; I played with the ex's dog; I didn't fight with the ex; I went for a walk; I sat in the shade, feeling the breeze and listening to the lapping of the lake and the rustling of the leaves. It was a good trip. So as I was contemplating the trip on the way back, I realized that I perhaps need to be stricter with having a schedule to make sure I do the things that I find restorative on a daily basis, particularly with my current crazy life- I have two homes; two sets of kids; three offices; time alone to myself, time with my kids, time with gravy and her kids, and time alone with gravy. All of those require a different "schedule", so I need to find some common thread that would tie it all together to make it feel more stable and less fractured, and I think just spending an hour early in the morning to be outside alone might be the thing I need to try first. I also need to turn off the screens more and just be bored more often.

Post Reply