ask, and you shall receive
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Reading the comments to my previous post helped me clarify my thoughts about this femme fantasy. So I thought I’d do it “out loud” here, too.
I don’t think the fantasy I described of being perfectly domestic, perfectly sexy, perfectly exactly for my lover is the only way I conceive of myself as a femme. I certainly have my own goals and ambitions and social life and tastes and enjoyments, and I certainly want to keep nurturing those and developing myself as a person. (As greg said in the comments, I absolutely need those days of knotting the hair back, donning the cracked boots and jumping in the jeep. Well, I don’t have long hair or a jeep, but that’s the general idea!) Writing here is one of the ways I do that; doing the rape counseling work is another; keeping in touch with my friends, applying for graduate school, playing piano, doing yoga… all of that is stuff I do to continually round myself out and build myself up. And it’s absolutely necessary for me to keep doing that, always. Always.
But the fantasy is there, and I want to explore it. Until now, I’ve been angrily pushing it away, thinking “no! that’s co-dependency! get out!” For example: I feel like baking. What do I bake? Into my head pops the thought: “mi’lady’s favorite is strawberry rhubarb pie…” and I get all warm and tingly and excited at the thought of surprising her with a warm homemade pie when I see her in the evening. But before I get too excited, I cut myself off. “Why do you always want to do what she likes? You don’t even like pie! Bake something you like!” And so I’ll probably end up compromising, I’ll bake something I know she’ll like but that I like too, and I make sure to bake it not with her specifically in mind. So when I see her, it’s “look! I baked cookies today! Have one, they’re yummy!” rather than “look! I baked your favorite pie today, just for you!”
It sounds so selfish. But I guess I’ve thought it to be necessary, as a way of coaching myself to pay attention to my own wants and needs, rather than always catering to other people’s. I think it has a lot to do with vulnerability for me, too. I get angry with myself for giving too much of myself away to someone else. I get afraid that the more I give away, the more I’m allowing her to hurt me. I’m giving her power. And maybe I’ve thought of it too as a zero-sum game — that if I give her the power to hurt me, I’m somehow lessening my own power to heal from hurt.
So, to continue with the previous example, when I bake mi’lady’s favorite pie, just because I know she likes it, I’m making myself vulnerable to her by doing something for her. It’s saying, “you matter so much to me that I’m going to bake you your favorite pie, just because.” And what if it’s not reciprocated? What if she doesn’t like it? Or doesn’t really notice? Or just says, “oh thanks baby, that’s so sweet” absent-mindedly. Clearly if I spend my afternoon baking her favorite kind of pie, then my afternoon was about her. But what if her afternoon wasn’t even remotely about me? What if I think about her more often than she thinks about me? What if what if what if. So stopping myself from baking that pie is a way of holding back, keeping things level.
And that’s what it is, it’s holding back. Because really? I want to bake that pie. I guess I have to throw those what-ifs to the wind. Because she does matter to me that much. And I want her to know it. I want her to feel it. That’s not co-dependent. That’s so far from c0-dependent. What it is is trust.
Love is not a zero-sum game. I need to practice believing that in how I go about loving. There’s plenty to go around. There’s enough for us both. And the main thing I am now slowly coming to realize is, if I do something for her, I’m not necessarily losing myself, or giving myself away. I could be, for sure, depending on the context. But I could also actually just be reaffirming myself. So the next step I guess? Working all of this into my relationship with mi’lady in a way that feels right. Stay tuned, this could be a wild ride.
(Updated to remove weird duping of the post? It doesn’t appear in my editor but I tried to just delete all and re-paste so we’ll see if that works…)
I’ve been learning, lately, how to pay more attention to the little voices in my head. The ones that say “yay!” or “boo!” to all the little things I do. The ones that have the answer to questions like, “do I really love playing piano, or do I just think I love it because I was supposed to love it growing up? because my dad wants me to love it?” or “do I feel like myself when I wear this [insert item of clothing here]?” These voices have been buried in me for a long, long time. Digging them out has been quite an interesting process, and I think they’re still mostly buried, but at least now I know they’re there. And whenever I feel up to it, I can keep digging a bit more, and eventually I’ll have unearthed them all.
There’s something that’s been peeking out of the ground for a while now, and I’ve finally dug it up. It’s a fantasy, and it goes like this:
I am a nurturer. More than anything, I want to take care of you. I want to support you and give you what you want and be your pillar. I want to stand next to you proudly, “I’m hers.” I want to cook for you, and bake your favorite sweets for you, and clean. I want to notice the little things that make you feel better, and do them for you. I want you to dress me, in whatever you want me to wear. I want to be manicured, and pedicured, and wax my arms and legs, and spend a half an hour every morning and evening on my skincare regimen. I want to wear four-inch heels with peeping toes. I want to iron your shirts and make your bed and stroke your head until you fall asleep. I want to plan little surprises and encourage your passions and turn you on. Making you tick is what makes me tick. So.
As I said, that’s been peeking out of the ground for a while. I kept ignoring it, thinking it’s just another indicator of my co-dependency. My tendency is to want to exist for someone else rather than for myself. And I’ve always thought that that’s because it’s easier to take care of someone else’s wants and needs than it is to take care of my own. (The responsibility of making myself happy? Huge.) So it’s been really easy to write off that fantasy as something unhealthy and something I need to dismiss, something I need to work out. I’ve thought of it as the problem.
But maybe the problem itself is the very solution. Maybe it’s not co-dependency, but in fact a valid form of self-identity. Can this be? I have a lot of feelings about this. Frustration – have I really been working so hard to discover what I really want, only to realize that what I want is, again, just to do what someone else wants? Fear — what does this mean? Will I lose myself even further? Confusion — but I thought I was ambitious and driven and independent! Worry — how on earth will my friends and family take it if I come out to them this way? Excitement — wow! So much to work (and play) with here! Weeee! Intrigue – what would this feel like, to actualize this? what worlds might this open up for me?
So, I think I’m going to try this on for a while. See if it fits as well as it does in my fantasy. I need to keep reminding myself, though, that I’m doing this for me. In the end, I’m not really doing this to sacrifice myself for her. Rather, I’m allowing myself to indulge a fantasy. I’m going for a dream.
Maybe I don’t need to find co-dependency support. Maybe I need to find femme support. How about a Femme for Dummies: How to Make Sure You’re Taking Care of Yourself While Caring for Your Lover (and Others).
Anyone out there? Femme bloggers who’ve written about this sort of journey? Any femmes who read here who want to pop out and say hi? Maybe there is a Femme for Dummies that I just don’t know about? Oh my gosh, I feel so thirsty. Is this what it feels like to know what I want?
(Disclaimer: For me, the word that works best to encompass all this is “femme.” I fully realize that many, if not most, femmes probably don’t share this same fantasy and wouldn’t necessarily identify this fantasy as being femme in nature. For now, just realize that yes, I acknowledge that, and I apologize if anyone feels that their identity is stepped on. As this is all coming to light I’m sure I will write more about this in the near future, because boy do I have thoughts…)
…and I’m back! It was brilliantly glorious to be without internet and cellphone service for three days. The first day I was going through an anxious withdrawal, feeling very cut off and absolutely sure that something horrible was going to happen that I wouldn’t know about because I was so cruelly cut off from the world. The second day, I was basking in the serenity of knowing no one could reach me. I didn’t have to be available! For anyone! I could shower without worrying that my phone would ring. I could go to sleep without the wary alertness that I might receive a text message from mi’lady. It was positively LIBERATING. And then going back to the fully wired reality… it was welcome, but not needed. I think I need to take technology vacations every once in a while. And perhaps relax a bit on the idea of needing to be constantly available.
***
Since I’ve been back, I’ve been working through some weirdness. It sprang up seemingly out of the blue. Mi’lady and I were tangled up in her bed, post-sex, marvelling about how we’ve been together almost nine months and it seems both much shorter than that (we haven’t settled into taking each other for granted! joy!) and much longer (how could we possibly have learned each other so well in such a short amount of time?). “You’re quickly moving into the rank of Second Longest Relationship!” she said, “as long as we stay together another month and a half, you’ll beat B.” I laughed, and said “my goal is to be your longest relationship, and then some!” “Well you’re… let’s see… 3/8ths of the way there…” she said. (Funnily enough, she’s 3/8ths of the way towards becoming my longest relationship too. We’ve both been in significant 2-year relationships previously.)
And then she got quiet and pensive. The problem is, I feel like there’s this standard that her ex-girlfriend has set (the Longest Relationship girlfriend, that is). She still feels all kinds of pain about this break-up, which is now over two years ago. She feels bitter that her ex says she learned through their relationship that she could be loved, while mi’lady learned only that she could be broken. She says it was like all that work, all that energy, all that love, all that time, all for nothing. And she still gets hurt when her ex does things like untag herself from pictures on Facebook that they’re both in. Mi’lady says it feels like her ex is trying to erase her from her life. “What was the point?” she says.
Sometimes I’m afraid that forever and ever, despite anyone else who comes after, no matter how much she loves them, she will never quite love the same. She loves me, for sure, but somehow she’s endowed her ex with all this power, this ability to cause her pain like no one else ever had and ever will have. Obviously I don’t want to cause her that much pain. I don’t even want her to give me the capacity to cause her that much pain.
But what I do want is for her to realize that it’s not her ex that hurt her that much, it’s she who let herself be hurt. My belief is that she needs to let go of her, take away the power she’s given her to hurt her. She put all of herself into that relationship, every last little bit. So when she lost it, she lost herself too. The reason I know this is because I understand it all too well. I did the exact same thing with my Longest Relationship, and I lost myself when she broke up with me, too. But then I took myself back. I’m still struggling with keeping myself, and not give myself away entirely to mi’lady, as I tend to do. But I want to find that balance, of how much of myself to give in order to have a strong, sustaining, loving relationship. And I want her to find that balance too.
I don’t want her ex to have this mythic status. The one who broke her heart. Is that crazy? Is that unreasonable? Do I need to just let it go?
I have a hard time with love.
I think it’s another trait of co-dependency that I use up so much of my self trying to figure out what other people want me to be. And then the rest of my self that’s leftover is too small and too depleted to figure out what I actually want to be myself. With love, that’s definitely been a common thread for me. I want so much to be the perfect person for every person that I love. I want so desperately to be, for someone, ideal. The one who meets all their needs. The one essential person. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling so irrelevant. I have a hard time trusting, when I have friends, that they really like me. I always think maybe, somehow, they like the person I am on the surface — confident, smart, warm, compassionate, a little bit goofy, a little bit shy — but would scorn me if they knew what I sometimes feel like inside — needy, hypersensitive, anxious, depressed, fucking damaged.
When I tell people I’ve been raped, I have this whole narrative I feel obliged to give. The “I was hurt but now I’m stronger for it” narrative. The “I’m not a victim” narrative. The “I will never let anyone ever hurt me that way again” narrative. Stoic, strong, whole. That narrative is a lie. I was raped when I was 15, and it fucking broke me. It shattered me into a hundred thousand pieces and I’m still trying to pick them up and glue them back together but when there are so many pieces it’s hard to put them back together right, like a massive jigsaw puzzle where you don’t even know what the full picture is supposed to look like. But I have to pretend that I do, I pretend that I was able to put myself back together long ago, and that while I’m scarred, the way one is after surgery, the wound itself is healed and the scar is just a proof of my strength and a proud symbol of my suffering. That’s the way I’m supposed to be. I’m not supposed to be here, eight years later, still fumbling around in the dark trying to find all the pieces of myself I’m still discovering I lost.
Put those two things together — the need to be the perfect one, and the scary truth that I’m not even a “one” at all, I’m a hundred thousand — and you get my deepest flaw. I can’t be vulnerable for people. I can’t tell people, here I am, I’m broken, but you can have all the pieces and maybe, just maybe, letting you have them will help me put them back together. It’s because I’m scared. What if they take one look at the pieces and run? What if they valiantly say, “it doesn’t matter, broken or not, I love you anyway,” but then it does matter? What if the brokenness becomes too much? Something broken can’t be perfect. If I can’t even figure out who I am, how am I supposed to be the right one for someone else?
I’m just now starting to be able to be flawed. I’m starting to figure out that I won’t ever really be able to love someone, or give her the chance to love me, if I don’t take the risk of handing her the pieces. If I try so hard to be perfect, eventually the illusion will come crashing down around both of us and it will hurt all the more. I used to think I could (and should) keep it up for my whole life. “It doesn’t matter who I am, because as long as I can convince people that I know, and as long as people love me, that’s all that matters. ” But that’s not true. People can’t really love me unless they know me. And how are they supposed to love me if I don’t respect myself, or them, enough to give them my real self?
I’m not sure really how to be really vulnerable, even for mi’lady. What I do know is I love her too much not to at least try. Because if I can’t tell her my deepest fears, my biggest flaws, my most profound insecurities, then I’ll never know whether she loves me despite them.
Love? Is fucking hard.
The first time I ever strapped on a cock, I had a panic attack and had to take it right off again.
The second time, I was able to keep it on, but had to ask my girlfriend to ride me, so that I was on the bottom.
The third time, I wore it with confidence and fucked her with authority.
The problem for me has always been the assumption of power. Strapping on made me feel way too big, somehow. I’ve always felt small, always taken up little space, and have always tended to step aside to make way for others. I tend to dismiss my own emotions and needs as insignificant, and put those of others on a pedestal. (These are definitely symptoms of co-dependency, I’ve grown to realize.) Complicating all of this is the fact of my own rape, and the resulting power I give cocks, this sort of scary, threatening power.
So when I first strapped on, I felt dangerous. And I had a panic attack. I felt awful, because mi’lady really wanted me to fuck her; it’s one of her favorite things, and I felt bad that I reacted to it so badly. And the second time she asked me, weeks later, she asked me more meekly… “baby? do you think maybe you wanna try the cock again?” and I said yes, sure, but I was anxious, and would she maybe ride me from the top? She did, but it wasn’t very good, it just wasn’t quite right. My anxiety was in the way.
So she didn’t bring it up again. I continued to feel awful about it because I knew it was something she really wanted, that she craved, something that filled her and fulfilled her. But I was scared. I was scared of what having that power would mean, and what I could do with it. What if I hurt her?
Finally I just decided to get over it. I made it about her and her pleasure, rather than about me and my anxiety. It was her birthday, and I decided to take her by surprise, cock ready, lube at hand. And I just did it, and it worked. I put my anxiety aside, and focussed on the fact that what I was about to do was going to turn her on and make her mine.
She was completely taken aback, so much so that it almost looked like she sank in her arousal. I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it was like her whole body became this vessel of sexual heat, and she just… sank in it. Her eyes were liquid and she was so, so wet, so open, right away, for me, for my cock. She gave me power. It was like a gift. “Here baby, have me. I’m yours.” And having that power gave me confidence and made me just know that this was right. I could do this. I was doing this. I could watch her and know what felt good to her and what didn’t, I could intuit when it was too much and when it wasn’t enough, and more than that, she would tell me. I trusted her to. I trusted myself not to take advantage of the power.
To me, there’s a lot to learn about how to occupy power. The first step for me was not being afraid of it. Owning it, I guess, as mine and as something I could do good with. It’s an amazing feeling, really, to have someone’s pleasure in my control. I love that feeling. It’s that feeling that makes me want to explore more D/s play, and bondage, because I think I can get better at it. I can get better at encouraging and drawing out her submission, and I think she can get better at releasing control and drawing dominance out of me.
I recently asked Sinclair at Sugarbutch Chronicles about any ideas for how to delve into BDSM play. SS was really awesome and posted my question today. Thank you!!! And thanks everyone for clicking over, welcome, and if you have thoughts or ideas (on anything I’ve written about, really, not just the topic at hand), please share! I hope you stick around.
Mi’lady is out of town this week. She left on Saturday, but the last time I saw her was Friday morning when we rode to work together after having spent the night spooning. She had band practice Friday night, and I had friends visiting from out of town, so we figured it wasn’t really necessary to see each other the last night. Especially since she’s gone less than a week — she’ll be back on Thursday, and you can bet I’ll be seeing her that night.
I realized after my friends left Saturday evening that I was anxious. I was anxious that mi’lady’s absence would make me have a breakdown, make me realize that I was completely dependent on her, that I rely on her completely for my social life, for my sense of self-worth, for my feelings of usefulness. I was afraid I would find out that without her around, I have absolutely nothing to do. See, when she’s actually around, it’s hard for me to know whether I rely on her completely, because she’s just there. It’s like you don’t realize you rely on water to survive until you’re thirsty, and there’s no water available. Since I see her almost every day, it’s hard to know whether seeing her is just a pleasant habit, or whether she’s like water to me. I was afraid of it being the latter. Afraid because I don’t want any person to ever be my water. I want to be my own water.
So Saturday evening, returning home to an empty apartment (subletters are out of town) with no girlfriend to keep me company, friends departed, I was worried that I would crash.
But I didn’t. I didn’t crash. Instead I looked at my list of ways to self-care, and then I made a weekend-specific list of things I could do (both personally fulfilling and errand-like) to keep busy and be a whole person without mi’lady. And it worked — not only did I not feel the panic of being thirsty when no water’s at hand, I didn’t even get thirsty. I was completely able to occupy myself, and was fully happy to do so. I watched a movie I’ve had from Netflix for the past few weeks (Monster with Charlize Theron — mi’lady didn’t really care to watch it with me so I’ve been waiting to watch it alone). I talked for an hour to my friend in Portland who’s going to come visit for a week sometime in the next month. I cleaned a bit. I took care of my dad’s birthday present (totally late… His birthday was June 4th, oops). I slept. I woke up Sunday morning and cooked breakfast, talked to one of my best friends from college on the phone for about 2 hours (she’s also going to come visit in a few months!), talked to my parents back in New York (haven’t had time to really talk to them much lately), had my new roommate over for a visit to talk about moving plans (I’m moving in with her next Sunday! Finally!), played piano, cooked dinner with my subletters who came back over the course of the afternoon, applied for some volunteer positions at various non-profits I’m interested in here, picked up a few groceries, wrote a to-do list for my upcoming move… I did a lot of stuff! And felt completely occupied and fulfilled and happy.
Got a text message from mi’lady around 6:30, saying she missed me, and can’t wait to cuddle. A call from her late last night as she was going to bed east-coast-time, in which she re-affirmed that she missed me, sounded almost wistful that I was going about business on my own without her. She has co-dependent tendencies too, she’s said as much and I recognize them in her. Can relate to them too, so I’m particularly aware of them when I see them. Just got another text message from her now, actually: “i miss you wish i was home with you.”
A little bit of distance. It’s good for me. It’s good to know that I can be okay without her. I don’t have many friends in this city yet, but I have a lot of people who love me in my life, and I have things that make me happy and complete without mi’lady. And so that makes me extra happy to have her in my life, and to welcome her home on Thursday. Funny how that works — the less I need someone, the freer I am to just … love her.
Feeling much, much better today. Yesterday was a day full of bloating, debilitating cramps, and IBS, which worsens 100% when I’m on my period. So, so not fun.
Also not fun is the emotional turmoil, which has also significantly abated since yesterday. The night before (so, for those who are trying to keep track, that would be Tuesday) was the night mi’lady was going to come over to my place and then decided last minute not to because she had shit to do at home. And I was in such an emotional state that evening that her last-minute decision not to come put me on the brink of breakdown. That was when I came home and wrote the post about self-care, with a list of things I can do to take care of myself when I’m feeling particularly like my self-worth relies on validation from others (especially my girlfriend). I wrote that post because I was feeling so utterly hopeless, lost, worthless. I calmed myself down a bit by writing, by reading a bit, by taking a bath, and by chatting with my roommate subletters. I still had a lingering sick feeling in my gut, though, this awful feeling that my relationship with mi’lady was going to fail. I couldn’t shake it. So…. I did the worst thing to do, and instead of sleeping it off, I called her to say good night.
“Hi! It’s me, just called to say good night!”
“Hi sweetie, omg I just watched this really weird movie… everything at the end was unresolved, I hate that…”
“Oh, that’s no good, maybe it should’ve had a Finale like at the end of Middlemarch!” [joke: we've just finished reading Middlemarch together, and though we both loved the book, it had a weird Finale ending, a la Harry Potter book 7, that just wrapped everything up too neatly.]
“Lol!” [she didn't really say lol, but she laughed, and at this point I'm feeling pretty good, I'm like "ok good, I can carry on a normal conversation with her and not get weepy and needy"... but THEN I say...]
“So are you going to bed now?”
“No, I’m going to do some music first, and then I’ll probably go to bed.” [and THIS is where I mess up...]
“But it’s so late! You always stay up late when you’re by yourself and then when you’re with me, you’re too tired to do anything and insist on going to bed so early!”
Silence.
“Baby I don’t like it when you say things like that, I get so little time alone I just like to take advantage of it.” [she's annoyed now]
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know, that was a stupid thing to say.”
But by then I was already miserable, and we just said a pitiful good night and got off the phone. WHY INTERNET?!?!?!?! Why do I have to be that way? I mean, it is true that she does that — stays up until the wee hours of the morning when she’s by herself, and then peters out by 11 when we’re together and claims she’s too tired to have sex (though that’s not actually all that common, only felt more frequent last week)… But the same thing happens to ME, I stay up late when I’m by myself too, I just lose track of time, and I like to do things when I’m by myself that I don’t get to do when I’m around other people, including her, like write emails to my friends far away, talk to my parents and siblings on the phone, watch movies by myself that she doesn’t want to watch, read, take baths, play piano, all kinds of things. Alone time is precious, and I KNOW THAT. So why do I get so controlling of her? Why does it hurt me so much when I realize that she gets enjoyment out of other things besides me? It’s so stupid!
And it’s not like that all the time, it ebbs and flows — and I’m pretty sure now that it ebbs and flows with my menstrual cycle. Like all last week was getting worse and worse, and then the peak was on Monday and Tuesday, and then I got my period in the middle of the night on Tuesday, and yesterday was much better (MUCH better) and today is pretty much fine. Today I can see things clearly, and not feel like the world is crashing down around me.
I wish there were a simple solution. I’m seeing a psychiatrist on the 24th to figure out whether medication might potentially help me. But I don’t like the side effects of medication. Maybe birth control? I don’t know, we’ll see. But I just can’t keep on going like this. I worry that I’ll hurt myself when I’m buried so deep in despair that I can’t see my way out. Hopefully when it comes around again I’ll at least have better knowledge that it’s my hormones.
I woke up in the middle of the night because of cramping — oh joy, my period. Took me a few minutes to rouse myself out of my midnight drowsiness to get up, find a tampon, and take some tylenol. (Sometimes I’m GLAD I have really awful cramping… otherwise I might’ve woken up this morning in a puddle of menses! Delightful image, no?)
So when I woke up this morning, I started wondering whether it’s possible I have actual PMS or even PMDD. I know everyone talks about having PMS, but I know there’s a difference between the cultural and social phenomenon that is PMS (I think something like 90% of women claim to have PMS symptoms) and the actual medical condition (which I think something like 20% of women have at times in their lives). So I’m beginning to wonder whether that’s part of what’s going on with me.
I always struggle with co-dependency. But the intensity of my emotional neediness and feelings of depression and anxiety are not constant. And this morning I remembered that the *last* time I felt really depressed recently – despair to the point of wishing I would die — I woke up the next day with my period too. Coincidence? Perhaps. But perhaps not. I just went back and looked through my back-and-forth-at-work emails between me and mi’lady from my last two menstrual cycles, and boy was I a mess! Yikes. Like total meltdown mess.
So, that makes me hopeful that either anti-depressants or birth control can help me. The problem with both is a decreased sex drive, and that won’t be very happy for me or for mi’lady. But I think it will be much happier than continuing in this totally overwhelming and despairing situation of wanting to die when my period comes and being way too needy of mi’lady. It’s just not ok.
Hey Internet, does anybody have experience with PMS or PMDD? I don’t think anyone reads this thing but I could sure use some words of support if anyone happens to find it…
Mi’lady was supposed to come over this evening after she had dinner with a friend and after I had a therapy appointment to talk about various kinds of anti-depressants. But right before my appointment she texted me saying she needed to go home tonight and take care of things at home. So she’s not coming over. This is on the heels of a week in which I’ve been feeling like she doesn’t desire me anymore, for whatever reason. Last night I finally brought it up, since for the fourth night in a week, she wasn’t really into having sex. She wanted to cuddle and hold me, but not have sex. (This is really unusual for her.) And I just said, “Mi’lady, I need to tell you that I’m starting to have the feeling that you don’t desire me anymore.” It was good for her to know that I felt that way, but I also get afraid that saying those kinds of things just drives her away more, because being weepy and needy isn’t very desirable or sexy. So, even though she was really sweet to me last night, I spent all day today feeling some leftover weirdness. And so her text message that she wasn’t going to come over after all was sort of a blow. And it’s so easy for me to slip into these really destructive patterns of self-loathing (“my behavior is only going to drive her away! I’m such a bad girlfriend! I’m not lovable at all, of course she’s pulling away from me!”) and clinginess/passive-aggressiveness (so that I take out my negative feelings on her). These patterns need to stop. Basically, I need to stop relying on her for my sense of self-worth, and need to start providing it myself. Because then, I’ll be much more able to know when she’s actually pulling away, and when she just needs a little bit of her-time. Which I need too. (Though another issue in my co-dependency is that I have a very hard time asserting my own need for self-time, which means that when others assert their needs, I get resentful that they’re not being as selfless as I am. Which is also bad. But that’s tangential.) Good grief, there are so many issues and complexities here, it’s so hard to dissect them all and lay them out coherently.
It’s so hard to coax myself out of the destructive patterns once they’ve started rolling. So, so hard. So I need to have interventions for myself. In fact, this post right now is an intervention, because I’ve been lying on my bed since I got home from my appointment, utterly depressed in the thought that she doesn’t love me, and battling the urge to text her or call her snarkily or whining. So one thing my therapist has told me is rather than focus on huge complicated sweeping issues that will overwhelm me (such as statements like “I’m so awful for being so co-dependent”), I should focus on small behaviors that are easier to reverse (such as saying, “no, I’m not going to text her until and unless I am free of feeling resentful towards her”). That is a specific action. But I think it will also help me to have as a goal that every day, I need to do at least one positive thing for me. Things that will get me in the habit of caring for myself, rather than just caring for her or seeing myself as a part of just our relationship, and will help make me more independent. So that I can rely on myself for my happiness, and not her.
So I’m going to make a small list of positive things I can do for myself:
- write a blog post
- take a bath
- go to the gym during my work day
- go to a yoga class
- take a walk
- play piano
- write emails to or call my friends and family
- read a book of my own (and not a book that we’re reading together)
- watch a movie or tv show
- cook a real meal just for myself
- take steps towards having my own activities (e.g., go to grad school info sessions, sign up for a university class, go to a meeting of an org I’m interested in, apply for a volunteer job, apply for a new real job, do an alum activity from my college)
- spend time with a friend other than Mi’lady
- get a massage, haircut, or other salon service
- go to the library
- go to a Co-Dependents Anonymous meeting
- read literature on co-dependency
- work on a new skill, like drawing or sewing
- clean, do laundry, or take care of household tasks
- masturbate
Obviously, since we spend a lot of evenings together, this might take some work. I’ll need to figure out how to do positive self-care things on days we’re together. It will probably mean going to the gym during the work day, or writing a blog post during work (shhhh!), or reading during my lunch hour. And I don’t think it needs to be a serious activity every day. Just 20 minutes. And I want to try to wake up in the morning and say something positive about myself, and say something positive and affirming before I go to sleep. A mental review of the things I did for myself that day.
Maybe this will help. And now I’m going to go take a bath.
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