State of the Union 2015 / Seven Things for 2016

Once again I find myself dusting off the blog. It's probably time for a bit of an update regarding what's rattling around in this chick's head - a "State of the Union" for 2015 if you will - before moving on to 2016. Is this a "resolutions" post? Er... yes. Clichéd, but it's as good a time as any to take stock in what's going on in my life and to plan for the future.

State of the Union 2015

Lots of good things happened (or continued to happen) last year - I probably can't remember them all, and some are probably small-potatoes enough that you don't want to read through it all (it's nice that I love my cats and all, but gushing over how awesome they are takes me into "Crazy Cat Blogger" territory, and I still think I'm a few years away from that level), but there were plenty of nice things both in my relationship and in my life in general:

• The bathroom project is done! Mostly. Just some caulking and painting to go, but it works! And it's cute! Yay!
• I took a bit of time for me and joined a gaming group that I've really enjoyed. On a related note, my game library at home has grown, and the kids are enjoying them as well. Win-win!
• My relationship with my partner is still strong, after around five years. I still struggle with things (see below), but overall, we have weathered every storm that has come and gone, and I think we've become stronger because of it.
• My metamour is a good-hearted person who has not just put up with my struggles, but supported my working through them.
• My relationship with my kids is changing as they get older, and I think this is probably the best relationship I've had with each of them so far. I like that they're growing into young adults, and I like the people they're becoming.
• My relationships with my partner's family are growing, and I'm feeling more and more like they are my own family as time goes on.
• My cats! One likes to be "shoulder cat" and knead my partner's beard (don't ask), and one is a total lap cat (to the point of competing with the laptop at times). There, I said it. They're great little buds.
• My partner arranged a surprise birthday party that was such a surprise, I cried because my brain couldn't process what was happening. I can't even describe how incredible that felt, and I will carry that one with me forever.

After all that positivity, it seems like a drag to discuss the negatives, but I think they're important to acknowledge and work through:

• Armchair diagnosis (although I have plans to get a professional opinion - see below): some level of depression. Some of the negative thinking patterns and self-talk have worsened over the last couple years, and I've begun to notice that it seems tied to certain things like lack of sleep or over-consumption of alcohol. Overall, I know I have a list of things to do (hello, blog!), even things I really enjoy doing, but I have no oomph left to do them at the end of the day. I end up sitting in front of the laptop or TV with a glass of wine, perpetuating the problem. 
• I still find myself holding on to old resentments toward my metamour, despite the fact that she's a good person who really doesn't deserve it (see above). Knowing I have them and saying that I need to work on them doesn't mean that I know how to work on them, however. I still find myself in a place where different circumstances set off the resentment, and I continue to struggle with it on and off.
• Still some smaller residual relationship / poly issues that get set off from time to time depending on the circumstances. On a related note, Facebook can sometimes be that nasty bitch of a friend who likes to toss things in your face and stir up trouble. Except, it's much harder to cut out of my life than the nasty bitch.
• Exercise has taken a back seat to just about everything else. I've put on quite a few pounds, my clothes don't fit, and I'm starting over from step one, which is discouraging.

But look at this! We have a brand-new year that's just built for making new plans! 

I took my inspiration from Wil Wheaton's "Seven Things I Did to Reboot My Life" blog post, and wanted to do something similar for myself. The small number of goals seems manageable, and if I can make them SMART, I should be good to go. In theory. In practice, I can edit as I go, as long as I'm measuring from the start.

So, with no further adieu, it's time to stop looking at the past (except for reference). 

My Seven Things for 2016

1: Prioritize Myself

Okay, as it stands, it's not really SMART at all. I have two points with this goal, though: think of myself and my needs before falling automatically into "people-pleasing" or "yes" mode, and to make sure that I spend the time (and occasionally the money!) on things that enrich me.

Let me break this up a bit better:

1a: Spend money/time on myself

Spend some stinking money on new clothes, new books, a new game, whatever. Something that I will enjoy and not just serve as a distraction (TV / booze is out!). Do this once a month at a minimum. Put it in my budgeting software as a monthly category with a real dollar value. I'm worth it too, dammit.

1b: Say "no"

Not all the time, obviously, but enough to know that I'm considering my own time and desires as well as other peoples'. One "no" per month will be the starting measurement, although it seems a little strange to quantify it this way. Revisit this if needed.

2. Write / Create More

I could get lazy about this and say that more than zero is an improvement, but I won't.

Blog Posts: One post per month. Additional quarterly check-ins regarding this list (so I remain accountable).

Creative Stuff: Start with 2 days/week for 20 min./day. This must be spent on something creative (not a house project!). Acceptable projects: crochet, piano, writing stories or poetry, other crafty types of things. Goal is to work up to more days/week, but for the first quarter, 2 days/week will be fine to establish the habit.

3. Read More

One book per month. Facebook, Reddit, Magazines, online articles, or online ANYTHING (other than Kindle books) DOES NOT count. Books only.

4. "Healthy Stuff In"

For the first quarter:

• Vegetables with 2 out of 3 meals per day
• Vegetables for one snack per day
• No solo drinking (booze of any kind - beer, wine, or liquor)

The goal is to start slow and add more healthy habits as time goes on. I will probably slack the first week of January, only because my birthday food is in the fridge and I'm not wasting it. Nom nom nom...

5. Exercise More

The quintessential New Year's resolution, am I right? Still, the measurable goal:

Sign up for a half-marathon in May and pull together a training plan. I've done this before and know it's doable, but I have to get off my ass.

• Sign up in January
• Pull training plan together by the end of the first week of January
• Cross-training twice/week.

6. More Social Connections

Again, Facebook does NOT count.

• Reach out and text a friend / family member once per week. This has to be a friend / family member I don't normally text (i.e., not my partner, my kids, my aunt, or my ex).
• Once per month, get together with a friend / family member I don't normally see.

7. Go Back to Counseling

It's one thing to understand that you need to make changes. It's another thing to know how to make those changes. I can say that I need to let go of my resentment until I'm hoarse, but if I don't have any tools to do so, then it's going to be extremely difficult.

Goal: meet with my counselor once/month.

So, here you go. A mostly non-mono/poly post, but a decent "Let's Tackle 2016" one, with some more specific goals than the norm. We'll get to see together how well they work out. In the meantime, have a great 2016, and I'll see you again later this month!

On Owning Our Emotions

A while back, someone asked me if I could discuss the topic of "owning your emotions". I apologize for forgetting who you were, or where/how you asked (email, maybe?), but it's something I've been giving a lot of thought to, and it's definitely deserving of a conversation.

It's a loaded phrase, "Owning Your Emotions." Some folks toss the phrase around when they don't want to be bothered to be compassionate. It's used as an excuse to say something hurtful, and then to toss it back on the other person when they have the audacity to get hurt: "You're the only one who can make yourself feel that way. You need to own your emotions."

Been there. Done that. And sorry, folks... "I didn't make you feel this way, you did," is just shaming the other person for HAVING emotions while attempting to absolve yourself from being a jerk. The irony here, of course, is that in some cases, if the other person does "own their emotions" and decides that they don't want to be around this type of behavior anymore, the jerkface is surprised and offended. Go figure.

When meant honestly and compassionately, however, it means much, much more. It means digging deep into yourself to find the reasons behind why certain things trigger negative emotions. It means trying to understand them enough to figure out if it's something that can be fixed, or managed, or if it's a deal-breaker. And it means being able to communicate that without blame or accusation focused on the other person. Sometimes, it may mean accepting that you may not be compatible with someone else who doesn't see things the same way you do.

A common example involves a long-term marriage that is in the process of opening up because one spouse has identified as Poly. The other spouse may be going through all sorts of negative emotions: fear of being dumped for the new love interest, anger and resentment over losing time with them (or, if money is tight, resentful of their spouse spending money on dates), envy of the way the new person is being treated ("why don't we go out and date anymore?"), fear of losing what makes them feel special.

Often, the upset spouse will ask for their newly poly spouse (or even their metamour) to change their behavior in order to quell these emotions. They want the pain to stop; the pain is generated by a certain behavior, therefore, stopping said behavior will stop the pain.

Theoretically.

The genie can't be put back in the bottle, though, and the upset spouse may still have those emotions nagging at the back of their mind. Any slip-up on the part of the spouse or metamour will unravel the tenuous balance, and the emotions will flare up again, possibly worse.

Here's the thing to remember if you're the upset one: what you think is common sense may not be, and your spouse and/or metamour aren't mind-readers. Asking them to change their behavior in order to fix an issue you're having is almost bound to fail, because they don't know the reasons behind it. Say you get upset when your husband dates his girlfriend, and you ask them to stop seeing each other. What's the reason behind it? If you wanted them to stop dating because you don't get enough time with your husband, but after they stop dating, they still spend every minute of the day texting, then the problem isn't solved. You're still upset, so you ask them to stop texting. You can't understand why they couldn't just cool it, and they don't understand why they're being asked to restrict themselves even more when they did what you asked. Fuel for resentment and anger on both sides!

Asking someone to change their behavior in order to take the pain away just dooms them to fail (and dooms you to more upset and misery). They don't really know what you need fixed because YOU may not know what you need fixed. And now there's little motivation to figure out what needs to be fixed, because you've asked them to fix it for you. Done. Except... not done when they don't do it right. Because they can't do it right. Because they're not in your head, thinking your thoughts and feeling your feelings.

That right there is the beginning of owning your emotions.

I'm not saying you can't ask things of your partner and/or metamour. Asking someone to slow down while you figure things out is perfectly reasonable, as long as both ends of the bargain are held up and you do try to figure things out.

It certainly doesn't come quickly, nor easily, and I know I've gone around the mulberry bush a few hundred times regarding issues I thought I'd boiled down, only to be triggered by something else and find that I wasn't quite there yet. It happens, and it's okay... communicating that you think you're making progress but maybe you're not there yet is fine. Communicate with your partner - have those "state of the union" talks to see how you're feeling, and see if anyone needs a change or renegotiation.

From my own experience, I recently had an "aha" moment after YEARS of struggling with what seemed to be various, unrelated events that tossed me for a loop when they'd pop up. A discussion topic here, a conversation there, and "Eureka!" - I was finally able to make sense of all those seemingly random, disconnected events, and tie them together with a neat little bow. It doesn't always take years to figure out what the root cause of a problem is, but it's not a failure if it does.

So... part two of owning your emotions: figuring out "what now".

Is there something you can do, now that you understand the cause, to mitigate the negative emotions or eliminate them entirely? Or is it something you have no control over? Or is it something that your partner or metamour would have control over, if you asked them?

My best-case scenario is the first: finding out that I can do something about the issue myself, and then doing it. If you've read some of my older posts, you'll know I've been going back and forth on the whole time issue with my partner - I've never lived alone, don't know what to do with myself when I am alone, and would prefer to have my partner here with me 7 days a week. Except, that's not reality, so... what can I do about it?

Sometimes the "what can I do about it" and the "what's the problem REALLY" can cycle back and forth. I went the "bury myself in distractions" route, but it didn't really help much. Okay, why? What's the real problem if it's not being idle and bored? More digging. I came to the realization that while it's a good thing to have solitary pursuits, some of us extroverted types just need people sometimes. I signed up for a weekly game night in response to that realization... that just because I need to be around people, my partner can't be "my people" 24/7. We'll see how it goes, though. I may find out that I'm not quite there yet, and go around the bush again.

You may find, though, that after boiling something down to its root cause, you find that someone else's behavior really *is* the trigger, and that's a tricky one (and one I also struggle with). There's really nothing wrong with asking them if they can help, but again, "owning" those emotions and being able to state where you're coming from is huge. It may be something they can easily change, or it may be something they can't, but at least they'll have more information to go on.

So, part three... what if you've boiled down the problem to something external that you can't control, and it's not something that's going to change? Either it's someone's behavior that you have no control over (or want no control over), or maybe it's fallout from a long-distance relationship, maybe finances or who knows, maybe the person just smells funny.

This is really the endpoint of owning your emotions. What do you do here?

Sometimes, it may be something that you can manage. Knowing the cause, it may be easier to recognize when it pops up from time to time, and it may be easier to feel it, deal with it, and then let it go without having to resolve it. The half-time long-distance nature of my relationship made this past winter (and the winter before it) extremely hard. Once I quit conflating the distance with the poly nature of the relationship (since he'd still be living where he is, even if he weren't poly), it didn't make it easier, but it made it obvious that it was my choice to get into a long-distance (ish) relationship to begin with. My choice. And my choice to stay. It made it a little harder to toss resentment around when I looked at it through that lens, and I was able to start thinking about the future - how we could maybe plan for an eventual future where we weren't dealing with the distance on a regular basis. For me, planning for a potential future can make the present a bit easier to handle. I found a way to manage.

Sometimes, though, you may find you can't manage it, and you can't solve it. Can you deal with it as it is? Is this something you need to ask help with? Or is this a deal-breaker?

Owning your emotions sometimes means taking something that sounds like an ultimatum and reestablishing that focus where it belongs - on you.

Say, for example, you absolutely cannot stand your metamour. Your wife wants you to be besties and even live together, but it's just not going to happen. You think he's a slob. You hate how he's parked in front of YOUR X-Box all night while you're doing the dishes. You hate that he eats all your Sriracha and doesn't buy another one. You. Can't. STAND this guy.

Now, you can tell your wife that it's him or you, and list all the awful things you hate about him, but she loves him, and she has every right to go on the defensive. Putting the focus on him (or on her choice to date someone like him) can open her up to resentment and anger... directed toward you.

You've done the work. You know the issue. You just DON'T LIKE this guy. So it's time to own it.

"I'm sorry, but I can't have the kind of relationship with your BF that you'd like me to have. I need to spend time with you alone, and without him around. I cannot be friends with him, and will not tolerate him using (or misusing) my property."

There. Done.
It may lead to discussion (maybe you trade less time with your wife for not having to hang out with the three of you all the time). It may lead to action on your part (you remove the X-Box from any shared areas). It may lead to hurt feelings and pushback. It may lead to less desirable outcomes (you move out to a place of your own). However, it's your need, and it's you standing up for that need.

It's the problem people have with the distinction between rules and boundaries: asking someone to do something to fix the problem for you, versus establishing what you are (and aren't) okay with. Functionally, they may be the same, but a boundary, given the work that it's taken you to get there in order to establish it, the self-awareness it takes to determine it, and the self-worth it takes to express it...? A boundary seems so much stronger (and healthier) when seen in that regard. You are understanding - and expressing - what will make for a healthier you.

Which is not what that jerkface at the top of the post EVER intended when they told you to "own your emotions."

It doesn't mean being happy about whatever gets thrown in your direction.
It means strength - internal strength - and the knowledge that even though things may not work out, if they don't, it'll be because you stood up for your own needs and took action when they weren't (or couldn't be) met.

So when experienced folks say that you need to own your emotions and not ask others to change for you, this is what they mean. It's a tough thing to do, and it doesn't come quickly, but the self-awareness and resultant self-worth that are gained from it are an extremely valuable and powerful gift. Own that gift.