I’m so tired this morning. And I woke up feeling kind of resentful and pissed off. Which seems odd at first, because everything wrapped up beautifully and in a sweet place last night. And we didn’t even have a fight, really. But, I know exactly where this feeling is coming from.
I need more balance. I am expressing my needs, but I don’t know if they are being received or understood, or if I need to be more forceful, or more clear. The ways that I express my needs might be too subtle. Or, the way that Greg’s default is not to take care of himself might make it difficult for him to recognize someone else expressing their needs. I don’t want to lay any blame on him or on myself, but it is clear that I need to learn to be more skillful with this, and I need his help, simply based on the amount of time we spend together.
On the phone while I was grocery shopping yesterday, Greg and I had a whole conversation about how wonderful it was that I had an unexpected night off because band practice got cancelled. I talked about how I need to stop relying on things getting cancelled to meet my needs, but that tonight would be a godsend anyway. I was going to cook for my coming week the first time in probably months, then do some work for my sister which is beyond overdue, and then do some work for the band’s promotion that I promised to Rachel for the night. I felt it was realistic for me to do all of these things and get to bed before 10pm–have a much needed full-night’s sleep. I had thought about asking Greg if he wanted to come over, but decided not to because I knew I needed to really get things done, and we haven’t figured out how to do that well yet. We both really love the idea of sharing space and working, and hope to live together eventually, so it’s absolutely something we need to figure out how to do. But we have only done this successfully a few times. That’s ok. It takes time, and I’m patient.
During this conversation, I talked about how I KNOW I function better, I’m happier, I’m more productive and positive in my day to day life, and the demons stay away more consistently when I have:
- 8 hours of sleep,
- A healthy, balanced diet (this means cooking each week),
- Daily meditation,
- Consistent exercise.
I talked about how I need to prioritize these things, and I need his help in prioritizing them because when we are together, we both get carried away with the way we are so into each other, and pretty soon it’s way past my bedtime and I haven’t done the things I need to be healthy and balanced.
He was able to talk about how hard it is for him to do this for himself, based on his past, nothing being important, and therefore, his own needs not being important. How can you do good self-care, if you don’t care about yourself, if you don’t care about anything? Because no one cared about you? It hurts that this was his reality, but I’m so proud of the way he is working on it. That is one damn hard undertaking and takes a lot of work and patience. It makes so much sense and was really helpful for me to hear him talk about, though it wasn’t the first time. It helped clarify, as talking with him about his challenges always does. By the end of the conversation, I was feeling really hopeful that we can help each other with these things, without becoming responsible for each other. Just talking about needs and how important it is to meet them helps me with resetting and refocusing.
We decided that he would come over right when I got home, we would cook together, and then he would leave so that I could do the other things on my list for the night. It sounded like a really good plan. That is not what happened.
On my way home, I had to stop to get gas. I was so ravenous that I was starting to feel light headed and dizzy, but I thought “I’ll be eating within an hour or so, I don’t want to spoil my dinner.” So I grabbed a bag of Cheetos (excellent, healthy choice, I know) at the gas station to tide me over and subdue the lightheadedness.
Right before Greg came over, I got a poke from my mother in my anxiety/not enough place, and when he arrived I was still wound up in it. I was being dismissive of it, but also wanting him to know the energetic space I was in, because he was amped and playful and I was not. He calmed when I told him about it, and beautifully held space for my feeling, looked right into me, and helped me remember that my feelings and triggers aren’t silly, deserve to be seen, and that sending them loving kindness rather than judgement and dismissal, will help them heal. It was loving and kind. But even as I felt good about it, I was having nagging in the back of my mind about my to do list for the night, which I knew was about nurturing some big, base line needs of mine, that have taken the back burner. But we actually started to wrap that up and I was feeling like there was space for all of it. I think at this point I said something about being hungry.
But then, the conversation led somewhere that I could see he was deep in thought, and he asked me if he could bring something up. I hesitated but said yes. He picked up on my hesitation and asked if I was nervous. I said I was a little. This is the point, in hindsight, which I knew on some level my need was to do self care tonight, but I didn’t have the strength to say “I can tell this is important to you, but I need tonight for me.” I felt like he had been so loving and supportive of the “not enough” poke I just had, I didn’t feel right telling him “not now.” And of course, I just default want to listen and learn about him.
He then asked me about blues dancing and wanted to understand somethings around why that is valuable to me and some questions around the sexual/sensual nature of it. We got into a long conversation that was wonderful, beautiful, connective, revealing, getting at roots of big challenges and some important blocks for him, and how our individual journeys through coming into our own sexual identities are different and why. It was such a valuable conversation and I loved having it with him. It was about some really big things for him, and I know it will lead to more conversation and bigger growth for him, and for us as a couple. It felt like opening an important, big, new door.
There was a point at which we both needed a pee break, and when we both came back into the bedroom, I said something like “this is a really important conversation, and I want to continue it, but I really need to eat. I am really hungry. I want to answer the question you just asked me, and then continue the conversation downstairs while we prepare food. Is that okay with you?” It was really hard for me to ask this because I knew the importance of the conversation. But I also knew I needed to meet my basic needs. He said that would be fine. And then we continued to talk in the bedroom for another hour or maybe more.
We ended up getting to a hard place around my being queer, which led to a bigger realization about a communication challenge we’ve been having. Sometimes when he is puzzling with something and trying to figure it out, I read his intensity and tone as anger or accusation, but that’s not what he is expressing. I react to what I see as anger or accusation with defensiveness, sometime self-righteousness, and even frustration. This escalates him further into his own frustration and we get in a spiral and loose our connection. And all along, there wasn’t really any anger or accusation going on in the first place–it’s just been a communication gap! This was a huge, important realization for me, and I think it will really help when we get into challenging conversations.
When we got to a good stopping place in this conversation, it was almost 10pm, and none of the things I had planned to do that night had been started. I felt like it was okay because this was important, or at least I know I was telling myself that in my mind at the time. I had left all of my groceries on the counter downstairs (including things that should be refrigerated) around 5:30pm when I originally got home. I mention this to indicate how much I truly thought and believed we would be sticking to the plan we made, based on that great conversation about basic needs and self care that we had on the phone when I was still grocery shopping. I asked Greg if he wanted to help me or head home, as I still needed to cook. He said he’d stay and help. We felt connected and healed and like we had come back to our togetherness palace. We really enjoyed cooking together and preparing for the week–it felt great, despite being very tired. Everything got finished and ready by a little after midnight, and we fell asleep in my bed.
As I was drifting off to sleep, I felt good about us, but in the background, concerned about how tired I was going to be at work, and concerned about falling back into my stagnant stuck place without the rest I need. I felt concerned about not making good on the promise I made to Rachel earlier that day, to do the work for the band that night, and to check in with her about it before bed, and that I hadn’t had any communication with her about it at all. I felt concerned about how my sister asked me to start working for her almost 2 months ago, and that I have only done 3 hours of work for her since that time. That she sent me an urgent project to address last week, and I still haven’t done a thing for it. I felt concerned that all I had for dinner was Cheetos. By the time we had started cooking, my body had pushed through the hunger and it felt too late to eat.
All of that being said, I feel pissed off this morning. I know this is simplified and a result of not enough sleep, and all of those concerns festering. On my drive to work, I started to cry. I felt so confused and torn. I felt like I had tried really hard to express some of my basic needs, but the needs of the relationship and Greg’s needs to express some of the challenges he has been feeling took precedence over my needs. I felt concerned about how to find balance in this amazing relationship that I love and care for, and concerned that even when I say my needs out loud, we don’t know how we can listen together and balance them out.
I know this is not his fault, and I know not to blame myself either, because that doesn’t help. But I also know, if this relationship is going to be sustainable for the long term, and if we ever want to live together, we need to find a way towards balance. I need to find the courage and strength to lovingly say “I care about this conversation and this topic, but I really need to take care of myself right now. Can we please table this and come back to it soon?”
Greg said something on the grocery store phone call that he has said a few times that has really poked me and my internal reaction has been anger and upset. He said how he has tried to help me get to bed at a decent time but that I haven’t gone along with it. When he said that, first of all, I can’t think of a real example. Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t said that before, but I don’t remember it. It poked me hard, because I feel like the scenario of last night has happened a number of times, but without me expressing my needs as verbally. And that is an assumption on my part, that he would just understand that and see it, and be grateful for the way I’m prioritizing us.
I’m sure he is grateful, but I don’t know how much I’m doing something passive aggressive by just making that compromise without talking about it. That’s a problem, I see.
There have been many times I have let go of my original plan to go to bed by a certain time, to do work for my sister, to catch up on my emails, to prep something for the 14th moon, etc, etc, because he and I have been in a conversation that has felt important and necessary and vital to our relationship. Or, it’s been a conversation that was helping one of us to heal and hold our pain in loving presence. Or it has been a time when we were in the midst of a challenge and I couldn’t in good conscience walk away. Or we had recovered from the problem, and were feeling so connected and alive that it felt like we needed to reconnect physically and we both really wanted to love on each other that way. In those moments, I haven’t even thought twice about it. It was the right thing to do to let go of the other things and just be with it. But it’s true that a balance needs to be reached. When he says this thing about him “trying” to help me follow my own curfew, it tweaked me and it hurt. I felt unseen for all of those things I have chosen to do for the health of our relationship and for the support of him and myself too.
I really feel this is a tricky place to speak about, because I don’t want to come off like “you owe me” or something like that. I want to be responsible for my own choices, but I also want to be seen for the sacrifices I make, without becoming a martyr. How do I do that? This is part of why it’s so hard for me to say my needs out loud sometimes, so hard for me to stop us when we are in the middle of something, so hard for me to be clear in my voice, even though it’s often very clear in my mind and heart what I need in a given moment. I don’t want this to slide into a place of resentment over time, where I feel I just have to sacrifice my needs in order to maintain our relationship. I know Greg certainly doesn’t want me to do that.
This weekend, Tai helped me to remember that one of my strengths, which also becomes problematic if taken too far, is how accommodating of others I am. This is absolutely true. It’s partly why I get so poked and reactive when my mom sends a text asking me for a number of things without acknowledging my needs or time challenges. Even if she is not out of line, it pokes that place of me wanting to make everyone happy, but knowing that I also need to take care of myself, which means not everyone can have everything they are asking of me.
I am at work now, and I need to get back to it. But all of this is circling around in my mind and I just can’t move forward. Hopefully this writing will be enough to get me back on track for today, and hopefully Greg and I can work on this together. It’s such a tricky thing for me, and I’m not sure what I can do differently. I need some help and outside perspective. Perhaps this is a good one to lean on some friends about and ask some questions. <3
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