l i l e p h y t e


October 9th, 20:53 | Also, I got a book signed by Neil Gaiman last night

I've learned a lot over the past few months, especially in the domain of communication. (For all my friends who think I've dropped off the face of the earth, I am shockingly not being facetious, but allow me to clarify.) I'm not talking about the kind of theoretical "man, if everyone just talked a little more, life would be so much simpler" kind of way. I'm talking about way tangible cause-and-effect examples. More importantly, I can see myself change the way I think based on above lessons. It's a good thing.

I've been "dating" (as much as I ever "date" anyone) the current boy for a couple months now. Anyway, so we've been dating for awhile, and somewhere in the middle there was an ugly period when we broke up. This calls for further explanation.

From the get-go, it would seem that we were a poorly-matched pair. He is a fairly cynical self-professed man-whore. I am a hopelessly cheerful serial monogamist with Peter Pan syndrome. He would bottle all his frustrations, and stew over them subconsciously, until the next time they were triggered he would just explode in frustration that nothing ever changed, and he couldn't deal with it any more. This left me bewildered and frustrated. Anyway, after a litle while of this lack of communication, he broke up with me (for reals, as I wasn't able to convince him he was overreacting) and that left me shell-shocked and wondering why, yet again, it seemed Words (those hated vessels of communication) had ruined yet another of my relationships.

A week passed and we met up for the "so, are we going to stay friends?" coffee, and decided that being broken up was not a good state for us. We each took a week off to figure out what we wanted to change, and how we would stop the relationship from unravelling in the same way the second time.

It seems to be working. Basically, the only thing we came up with was "when something's wrong, pipe up already". And I know that's the most obvious common sense thing ever, and that you'd think I'd have learned that from my previous relationships (and in a theoretical, "in the ideal world, this happens" kind of way, I did), but the practicalities of it are just hitting me now.

Small things, giving my feedback on both routine and new things, analyzing why I'm pissed off about something and deciding based on the analysis whether to take it out on him or not. Telling him that I'm upset, but haven't found the words for the explanation yet, instead of just helplessly stewing in my own rage. It feels like the ability to think more clearly, even though I know that's not really it.

So I'm here, stuffed to the gills with turkey, and pie, and marvelling over this revelation that I'm sure most people figured out after their first disastrous relationship. Well, I'm a slow learner. But I'm learning! Yay? It's just nice to see something that so obviously, so clearly, has been improving. (We haven't fought at all since The Great Divide.) Since setting a whole mess of goals, as inspired by my parents' gift book, I've been working on a whole mess of things, but I can say without a doubt that this communication, and its effects on the relationship are by far the most obviously progressing thing going on for me right now.

(In a way, that's a little frustrating, because I feel like I work so hard on the other things, but I don't want to analyze that too much. I also feel all weird and over-achiever-wannabe writing about this stuff. I'll probably go back to rambling about the meaningless drivel I think about in the shower and things at some point. It's just that Hallowe'en is almost here, and if you know me, that means the start of the Major Introspective part of the year (lasts vaguely till Chinese New Year). Don't expect that to mean that I won't still have tonnes of superficial crap to write about though. Assuming I ever get off my ass and update. Ahem.)

Umm, right. Happy Thanksgiving y'all.


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