I am working through

[mizarchivist]

Kat-the-therapist commented today, that for all I am a bit of an iconoclast, I have some very emphatic streaks of TRADITION.

Context.
Young-me looked at her parents and assumed they were pretty much perfect and that it was my job to embody the best traits in them. My mother: empathy, nurture, creativity, and enthusiasm. My father: problem-solving and practicality. Above all: financial independence. Someone who could plan for the future, use the stock market to enrich my nest-egg, and don't rack up debt. But also, share all resources in joint accounts. Failure on this part was akin to moral failing.  My adult life has included:

• Moving to the east coast, to a city notorious for being an expensive place to live.
  
  • Parents moved Back Home because this very town was too much in the 70s. The 90s and Aughts haven't been an improvement. Buying a house happened there by default, because that's What You Do. The only way I/we managed this was with shared resources and living familial inheritance
• My professional training and choice of long term employer => also not hugely profitable.
  
  • Dad at least: CFO, business-savvy person. He has multiple degrees, one of which was an MBA.He figured out this whole "stock market" thingy decades ago. Mom followed his lead and this seems to have worked for both of them.
• My spouse's profession: full of boom/bust uncertainty and several demons to stare down that made financial security pretty much an unattainable dream until the demons could be exorcised and new paths established.
  
  • While there certainly have been challenges, there's some super-power situation happening here for sure. Demons they both have, but their coping mechanisms are the opposite of spending money.
• The national landscape in the intervening years since my parents were at my spot of adult-ness gone on to make even the most resourceful of us stagger and struggle, with leadership and culture that gaslights the crap out of all of us for feeling less-than.
  • My parents are Baby-boomers and have ever experienced an actual living wage, mostly predictable employment. See also, super-powers.

All this means that the bit where I am terrified to spend money and actively avoid doing so whenever possible, and fear of accepting help, because DAMMIT, I should be able to do this by myself. That I've already used up all my good will decades ago and one more bit of help would likely break everything and set everything on fire. Also, moral failure. Remember that bit? Super much that. A failure to be an adult and human.

OK- I think you've managed to infer that I've realized that this basic assumption is not remotely healthy and that the goal entirely unattainable with the parameters set.  And so now I know. And see bit about excellent therapist helping me work through this stuff.

And if that's not enough for one go, here's the other half....

I'm a poly queer woman. The person I married in 1998 identified as a queer cis-male. And then she came out 4 years and 1 week and 1 day ago. (Sept 5, 2015). In some back part of my brain, the same one that equates personal financial turmoil with moral failing also figures that someone who is queer should be able to roll with this diametric change. I'm queer, right? I like people! Yeah. And I prefer masc-presenting. Always have. Ask lifecollage about that time we were in Uno's following the sad demise of Shadowfax, the cat. Ruby Rose, Jason Momoa: if we're shooting for the stars, those are the archetypes that stop me in my tracks and make me forget my name. But here I am, in this place where in order to be the best ally, spouse, and queer, I needed to embrace the ultimate in femme. Or at least that's what I had decided.

If my self-worth as a queer woman was wrapped up in successfully including this aspect of attraction, let me tell you how hard I've been failing. And it has been killing me. Slowly. Genuine proclamations of love and affection would make me feel uncomfortable and like a fake. I would feel like I had no right to ask for more things, for what I really wanted. It was too much and unreasonable and not going to happen.

Please note again: past tense. Not very long past but past.  About 2 weeks ago I was able to express my fear and anxiety on this point to Jaime directly and she promised me that it was OK. I was not required to reflect with the same flavor and intensity the feelz. Did I want to continue on domestically as we are? YES. For sure yes. OK, then. Do I love her? Oh yes. OK, then! Nesties. And so I'm working through.

Comments

[ckd]

♥
.
May your working through continue to be fruitful.

[mizarchivist]

Thanks <3

Wow

[drwex]

Picked apart a few layers of the cake, there, eh?

<3 always

Re: Wow

[mizarchivist]

Turns out being able to narrate my assumptions and expectations thusly shines a light on how impossible a task I set for myself.

What's interesting is that I know my previous therapist was trying to get to this spot with me, but for a number of reasons, I don't think she was ever going to get me there.

[drwex]

I love the phrase "narrate my assumptions". Very on point.

And yeah, it does take the right combination of people to get this kind of work done. My first real therapist was fond of saying that she was not a Freudian, but that when people go into a situation or face a challenge they often only have the "how my parents did it" model to draw on. Thus, they (we) attempt to recapitulate those behaviors because we don't know what else to do.

Remember our long-ago conversations about how "nobody taught us to be adults"?

[mizarchivist]

nobody taught us to be adults
::drinks coffee like it's whiskey::
Yup.

[ceo]

That's better than drinking whiskey like it's coffee. DAMHIKT. :-)

[mizarchivist]

I will not inquire. ::grin::

[ceelove]

I have a lot more to reply to this than “pebble”, but I don’t know that I could well encapsulate it in text or so soon after reading. Over tea or gardening or something, sometime in the next weeks?

[mizarchivist]

That sounds good.

[ceo]

Well yeah, that's a lot. *hugs*

[mizarchivist]

a bit, a bit.

[caulay]

That's a lot of stuff there.

Just remember that not all progress is forward, you may slip back from time to time. That's only human and not a moral failing.

*hugs*

[mizarchivist]

Thank you. I try to remind myself when I'm feeling particularly enlightened and it feels like I'll never slip out of that mental/emotional zone. Because we do and like you say: that's alright.