What Not to Do
The next several months of my journey with my primary partner are kind of a blur. I don’t even know where to begin. It was not a pleasant time, in my memory, and I’d be willing to bet he feels the same way. Of course, I’m not saying it was all bad. We still had moments of great connection and joy; however, those were more interspersed with the dominant feelings of angst of one type or another. Prior to that, in our relationship, the balance was the opposite: it was mostly fun, joy, and closeness interspersed with a sprinkling of angst.
So, here’s a good description of what not to do when moving in together:
Do not, under any circumstances, decide to start a major construction project in your house. If any of you have ever lived in a house where there is construction going on, you already know how stressful it is. Add that to a new cohabitation situation (hey, that rhymed) and the stress levels are now dangerously high. What happened? He got overwhelmed and at times was immobilized by feelings that were coming up for him. I, then, nagged him to get going and tried to micromanage his activity. Super bad move with someone who so hugely values his autonomy! Any time one of you starts playing the role of “cop” in the relationship, that spells trouble. I was the productivity cop….I’m happy to say, I’ve retired from that job…
Do not project onto your partner all your worst fears and then create them. I, for example, was scared that he would not find me attractive after I became so boring because he was seeing my naked body every day, and that the frequency of our S.E.X. would then decrease. He, in turn, was mostly uninterested in sex, although not because of the reasons I thought. There was a palpable huge chasm between us at times, that wasn’t being faced or discussed.
He, on the other hand, was afraid that I would find out about all his bad habits and then see him in a more negative light. And, he created that reality for himself, just as I did mine.
To be clear, I’m not saying we can control our partners’ behavior and “make” them act a certain way. I am saying that we do know how to effortlessly pick the exact right person with whom to do this dance, so that all the buttons that need to get pushed (ultimately, for our highest good) will get pushed. So that the issues can be brought up for healing.
Do not allow yourselves to go on for months in a daze of unhappiness that you have no idea how you created or how to transform. Just talk about the elephant in the room, for cripes sakes!
Conversely, do not (and I have been guilty of this) immediately blurt out every thought or feeling that you have about your relationship, before giving yourself time to process them. These conversations tend not to end well.
I say all this half seriously, as there is also a part of me that knows sometimes it is necessary to really stir up our issues and get to a crucial point of pain before we can then have the clarity to admit that something needs to change. Do I think that all of this had to happen in some form in order for us to work through some things? Yes, I do. Do I also think that perhaps we could have gotten to where we are now with a little bit less drama and pain? Yup.
As painful as it is for me even to write about this stuff, I also know that there is value in my going back through it in my mind, so that I can solidify the learning for myself. And so that perhaps some of it can be of service to others as well.
There’s more that went on- it got worse, believe it or not. And then it got better. But that will have to be a topic for another blog…