Working Through Relationship Problems

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Astrophe's Journal

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February 21, 2000 -- 8:11 PM EST

I feel good today. Tired, but good.

I suppose part of my crankiness in the last few days was this growing unsaid thing between us. After six years together, I am still trying to figure out the best ways to deal with him in different situations.

Probably the hardest thing for him is to deal with me is when I am having a fit and I am an emotional mess. The hardest thing for me is to deal with him is when he gets sullen and withdrawn.

"But I don't get withdrawn," he said.

"Not to you. You are still with you inside your head so you don't think anything is different but it doesn't look that way to me!" I exclaimed.

"This is true..." he mused.

How could I tell he was getting wiggy on me? He had a conniption fit over breaking a Mary Tyler Moore glass on Saturday. He'd been getting wiggier and wiggier and he just wigged out totally when he broke a glass, like it was the final straw or something. He gets really jittery and more and more inward bound and more and more self-conscious and flustered.

I just don't think Paul has ever felt like he could just go ahead and actually enjoy being slightly demented and have his fits. My problem is that I enjoy it, but sometimes I get carried away and take it too far. A problem of excess. I wear me out.

His problem is that he is too self-conscious to just run with it. A problem of famine, drought, whatever word that fits in there that means less -- the opposite of my excess.

[Mental note: Buy a thesaurus]

By Sunday, he was just turning into a freak. When he gets moody he apologizes all the time for being cranky, but then two seconds later he's lashing out at me again.

I try really hard to look at the bigger picture and see he is not trying to hurt me but he is trying to cope with some other issue. But damn, when someone lashes out at you it stings. So it is really easy for me to ignore the big picture and get sucked into my own dish of mixed up feelings. My first insticnt is not to be rational. My first instinct is to be emotional. I think this is something we probably need to learn from the other -- that whole appropriateness thing.

I just wish he'd blow up and get it over with. I'd much rather take one huge blowup than these prolonged smaller bursts.

I was trying to give him space most of the weekend but by Sunday afternoon I was getting really irritated and we ended up facing off in the bedroom. I'd gone back to my off-line journal to find the last time we had a thing, what it was about, and what we decided to do about it. This helped, because I think I managed to stay more aware of the bigger picture, rather than wanting to haul off and deck him.

Actually, I am pretty impressed. We are getting better at this. Not that I ever want to get good at actual fighting, but getting better at getting to the root of the problem is always a good thing. Adding more vocabulary to our Common Language, learnign how to deal with things.

We talked about social conditioning. How part of it is personality and the other part is social conditioning. How people react and how the communicate. Like maybe his reaction of trying to keep things inside comes from not having been able to express it in other relationships.

We talked about why he feels unhappy that he can't box things up and compartmentalize his feelings when he wants to in order to try to understand them.

"Look, I like to box things up too. But where I am contend to sort of wave this pink misty stuff into that box, and sort of wave this blue misty stuff over to this box and call one mostly happy feelings and call the other mostly unhappy feelings, you don't want boxed mist. You wear yourself out looking for the catalyst that will cause it all to precipitate and have a nice hard pink ROCK and a nice hard blue ROCK and there! That's the thing! Concrete, tangible! But honey, feelings are not concrete, tangible things by their very nature of being feelings."

"Yes, but it makes me frustrated!"

"Take a look at yourself. You need to stop trying to make it be like 1 + 2=3. That works a lot of the time but it isn't going to work with your feelings. They are not linear."

"You knwo I am getting really bad..."

"... when you have to stop to check in your head if 1 + 2 really come out to three. I can see it in your face... you going in there to figure it out. I know you."

"That frightens me."

"It isn't any different or any more frightening than you knowing me. Stop trying to live your whole live on one track, one line. Stop trying to squish all your feelings into molds they won't be squished into. You are fragmenting."

We talked about his feelings of jealousy, of feeling underappreciated, of feeling like there is this list of the things I do and then there is this list of the things he does and his list doesn't seem to count for much. This old question of division of labor that seems to hit in a marriage sooner or later.

"Tell me what to do," he pleaded.

"No, you tell me. What do you do?" I replied. "Because how I solve things for me, may or may not work for you. I can feel sympathy, I can empathize. But no matter how much I want to do this for you, I can't. You have to address it and cope with it. You have to be the one to tell you what to do. I can listen, I can help. But I can't do it for you. It is impossible, even if I wanted to."

"I must try your patience."

"Yes. But patience untried never improves. You can never grow more without testing it's limits. It's the same problem you are having.

You can't get to a point where this stuff gets any easier for you until you go ahead and confront whatever it is that bothers you instead of hoping it goes away by itself.

Like this thing with us. Remember how a few years ago we'd have these things and they'd last for days or weeks? I'm not really thrilled to be having a thing with you now, but at least we've gone through all those other phases of it pretty quickly -- we've only been at it an hour. Maybe someday we'll be able to cover it in 10 minutes. Maybe one day we'll be one of those old married people where I can raise my eyebrow and you'll scratch your nose and that it. Been there, done that. Covered the whole gamut in two gestures!"

We went off on a silly face making tanget here.

"I don't hink you have enough outlets."

"I do have outlets."

"But not enough. I write. That is my outlet. And I had a serious problem when I lost that outlet. I didn't have back up outlets."

"I tried to write but I couldn't doo it. I was too self-concious about it."

"That's a common problem for peopel who start to write. Seeing the wrods on paper makes them too real, and that makes them nervous. I am not tellgin you to write if that's not your thing. I am telling you that you need to find more outlets. I jstu liek writing because then I go back and can read it. I wnet back in my jouranl to read abotu the last time we had a thing and I think re-reading it has made me be more patient with this thing. So I am glad. It's served it purpose."

"That's why I don't finish music."

"You get bored of it or you never finish because you are too self-concious to sing."

"And because soemtiesm I don't feel the need to --- it has served it's purpose."

"I have journal entries like that -- they just...break off. What else do you do?"

"I play with my computer stuff, I read."

"Those are not outlets. Those are diversions, distractions. Just like TV can be. Things to zone out too. Which is ok, we need those things. But I am talking about outlets. The problem with you is that you avoid. And the things you think are outlets are sometimes simply diversions. Then later you can't figure out why you still feel yucky. You think you were doing something about it. But really you were doing something about not doing something about it. The underlying issue remains unaddressed."

"I think you are right about it being social conditioning too. You are the first relationship where I can talk about this stuff. I just couldn't with Debbie."

"Well, you are the first with me too. I couldn't with Shawn. You know that."

"I know. It's just that I forget you know. It's like when I play now. I can play. I used to not be able to play because I'd worry about other people lsitening to me. It makes me very self-concious. I can play now because I know you don't care. Well, not that you don't care, but that you don't..."

"I know what you mean. I won't get all wiggy over it, it's not a big deal. You know I love to hear you play but you can forget I am there."

"Yes. It's weird but I feel better. Everything... because if I think about it, we haven't done anything..."

"Stop trying to add 1+2!" I hit him. "I feel better too. Don't overanalyze."

"This is mostly about practice. Like patience. We aren't going to get better without it -- delagin with each other. You arne't going to get any better without it -- delaginwith yourself. But there is hope. I hope. Adding vocabulary to Common Langauge. That's all. It's just more time, more braid, more rope. It's not the end of the planet."

He has a bad habit of forgoing making decisions because they require things he doesn't like -- confrontation, risk taking, etc.

We talked about how he never takes risks, and how this plays into ambition.

We talked about appropriateness. I envy his ability to postpone dealing with feelings until later, in private. I can't. When I feel them, they just go. I can't put it off and I always regret that sometimes they happen in the most inopportune moments. He can put them off, then deal with them, which would be great if he also didn't also have a habit of not dealing with them and then they accumulate.

We talked about his resentment that he isn't just about his thoughts. How he feels a person is not defined by how they think, or how they look, but what the thoughts they have are. This relates back to why he can't eat like a sane person. He's fragmented. He lives in his head. He ignores his body. We talked about why this makes me stark raving mad.

We talked about his perceptions of me -- that I am dynamic and he's still trying to get used to that. About my own perceptions of me. That yes, I am dynamic but the downside is that I can't turn the voices in my head off. They just go all the time and I think all the time and there is never any quiet inside my head. I envy him for being able to turn those voices down or not have them on at all.

We talked about our perceptions of him. He says he's too intellectual and he is too rational. He tries to superimpose a logical framework over feelings that won't follow these "rules." I think his problem is not with emotions. I know he has them. He deals with happy feelings just fine. He can be happy and he can express those happy type feelings quite well. His problem comes with dealing with vague, yucky feelings because he's an avoider -- he prefers to avoid dealing with unpleasant things.

"I'm going to end up in a watchtower with a gun. One of those people that other people always say 'I didn't know what happened! He just snapped! He was always such a nice, quiet man!' abou," he joked.

We talked about a whole mess of other things.

On my end of things, I think I did better than I usually do with this kind of stuff. I tried really hard not to get emotional, not to have my fit. I was really glad that I had a journal entry to turn back to for guidance on this one. I'm moving past the empty gap in my writing.

[Mental note: gaps]

I think sometimes that when he gets like this, I get frustrated and cranky myself, and then I end up having this big fit and then *I * feel better, but then he doesn't get to completely purge the yucky feeling and then it becomes a thing about me, rather than a thing about him.

It simply pushes him back further into himself, if he feels like he can't come out to me and tell me things. Sometimes I feel like I live with a turtle, where I am one of those yippy, hyper dogs!

So maybe it isn't just division of labor but division of space, and him needing to be more demonstrative about his needs, and me being not necessarily less loud about my own needs, but more concious of his. I can't hear him whisper if I am busy yelling.

We talked about a public face and a private face. I suddenly remembered Notes to Myself at this point and I told him a thought from it then.

"Paul, you can either have consistency or you can have a self. Not both.

The actually quote is "I can have a self, or I can have consistent behavior. I cannot have both." But he seemed to absorb that and understand what I was trying to tell him. Sometimes it's best to reach Paul through things we both have read. Or using analogies we both feel fit. It's that whole Common Language thing you have to develop with the people you have relationships with. Verbal shorthand for thoughts.

We get better at dealing with things because we spend a lot less time explaining, but move right on to sorting. Too much semantics fussing, background building.

We talked about how to deal with this the next time this crops up. He needs to try and remember he's not the only one in his head. I am there now too.

I need to learn to pick up on this with him faster and then try to figure out just how long to let him fret before saying anything. I want him to wrestle with it so he has to try to deal with it on his own but I don't want to let him do it too long otherwise he gets cranky and angry, and then this leaks out over on to me. I don't need that. Realizing when this stuff is happening in him, and then knowing when to step in.

But because he's so quiet, because he's so reserved, it takes me a while to notice that he is having something going on with him . By the time I do get to noticing, it sometimes is too late, he's already gone past the point of trying to deal with it on his own and getting into that frustrated with himself place where he no longer even wants to try to solve the problem, he's just sitting there all pissed off and these bad feelings rub off on me.

[...]

Given the little I know about relationships, and the little I know about marriage...

How the HELL do people get married without having lived together for awhile first?!

I just couldn't have done it. Gone from dating and living in two separate worlds and spaces to jumping right in into this blended life. Sometimes I think we should have lived together longer before getting married. Spent more time in that easing into it phase. Gotten used to sharing closet space and eased slower into sharing head space.

I used to freak out worrying about losing my sense of self to the unit -- the coupleness. Losing my identity in his when we first got to thinking about getting married. It's one of the reasons I kept my name.

But to have those kinds of worries atop of these issues -- the ones with trying to learn to accept and deal with someone else's stuff -- deeper intimacy issues. Couldn't deal with it!

I think that is why when we start to have a thing it starts out with concrete stuff. Not because that stuff is necessarily where the real deal is, but because it's so much easier to fuss about trash and fuss about toilets and fuss about bills because those things are concrete, tangible things.

We can easily transfer a discontent about something less tangible into smaller, petty grievances not because those things are really so bad, but because at least they are real things we can see, touch, get a better grip on.

[...]

Want to know what this thing was about in a nutshell?

Him feeling jealous I get to work from home, then feeling guilty for feeling jealous because he knows that I don't sit around at home all day doing nothing. He knows workgin from home and then runnigi a house atop it is not a fun and groovy thing for me. I'm not even good at it yet! Yet his illogical side still gets jealous over it, and then logical side steps in and says "Look, why are you feeling these feelings? It makes no sense."

So his rational and intellectual side can see where one thing cancels the other out. But then he doesn't understand why he's running around still feeling yucky. He tries too hard to validate his feelings instead of just having them.

He said for him it's liek one thing supplanting them next thing. He feels X. Then x's boss comes in, slaps him around for wasitng time and enrgy on feelgin this thing that makes no sense. then X's boss's boss come in, slaps him around for wasting energy and time on the same thing, ad infinitum.

"I think you forget you are not a computer."

"I knwo I am not a computer. I don't want to be a computer."

"Then why do you get all buggy getting all caught up in some recursive function until all systmes crash? How is that logical? If that's what you are trying to do -- be more logical about your feelings?"

"Stop making me laugh!"

"It's true!"

[Mental note: Show Paul Joe's turtle, cup, hands. I'm pleased this is at this point with Paul.]

[...]

People are definitely better off marrying friends. I don't put up with this crap from Paul because I am his lover. I put up with it because I am his friend. A penis is not reason enough to be dealing with this kind of baggage. Not to me anyway.

Friendship I'd put up with a lot more for.

[...]

I told him a long time ago if I ended up killing him it wasn't going to be over anything dramatic. It would be about something inane like squishing the toothpaste in the middle.

I think he is starting to understand what I mean about toothpaste!

[...]

He paid me a very nice compliment though, near the end of this discussion.

"I think you are a very old soul."

[...]

I love looking at him when he's got bloodshot eyes and he's been leaking (he doesn't cry, he leaks water from his eyes) and his nose is all snotty.

I don't think he realizes one of the reasons he is so into Victoriana is for the Victorian sensibility, when so little can mean so much. It just fits his personality -- reserved romantic.

[..]

I think Paul and I are getting to be connoisseurs of those those nether regions of ourselves-- The Borders. This was just another one.

~Astrophe