Permissions

Two of many possible approaches to communication:

1. Try to finesse it in order to predict and control the response of your audience

2. Say what you have to say to take yourself seriously and let your audience sort it out for themselves. 

Number 1 has been my go to for years and years and is one of the hallmarks of codependency. So many times I have felt and thought a particular set of feelings and thoughts that I predicted would make a person angry, sad, disappointed, make them hate me. It is especially in this arena of the difficult conversation that my codependency has tended to kick in and I have been incapable of uttering simple things like:

1. I enjoy spending time with you but I do not want to get married
2. I am not ready for more than what we are doing
3. I like you but I am not sexually attracted to you
4. I love living alone and I am not ready to give that up to live with you
5. I don't feel supported or understood by you, yet you keep saying you love me
6. I am not prepared to help fix you, manage your emotions or even be very reliable at this time
7. I want to get some space
8. Let's slow down
9. I disagree with you
10. I dislike these things that you like
11. I had a great time but I would like to sleep alone tonight
12. I would rather not be in constant contact throughout the day and feel I'd rather put a boundary around our interaction
13. I am (also) attracted to someone else
14. I have a problem with how things are going and I am unhappy and would like to talk about things
15. I do not want to make an exclusive monogamous commitment
16. I feel disconnected from you and I'm sad about it

Those are 16-- there are a lot more, The basic idea is that I have not felt that I have permission to say things that I expect will cause another person, usually a woman, to reject me, hate me, be disappointed in me, be angry with me, be sad or jealous or whatever. 

So I script these conversations in advance. I play them out in my head. "I'll put it this way to make it as palatable as possible. Then she'll say this. Then I'll respond with this to reassure her. Then she'll confront me about this. Then I'll respond by defending myself this way. Then she'll be angry anyway. Then I'll try to moderate what I said by saying this." 

I also try to "figure it all out" in my head before even broaching the subject. Problem: "it all" usually also has to do with *the other person* in intimate ways, and the way a lot of this shit gets "figured out" is via dialog. Not via super clever completely internalized thinking. 

One of the results of this process based in fear is that shit that is very simple gets incredibly, stupidly complicated.

A Powerpoint slide for a Pentagon briefing that has been called the all time worst Powerpoint slide ever, which is saying something

This internal attempt to finesse the conversation often goes on for a long time. For example, I was once in an exclusive, monogamous, domestic partnership where what I wanted was to move out, have my own place again, but still see the woman I was living with, but also have more freedom and maybe form attachments with other women as well. That was what I desperately and decidedly and honestly wanted, in reality. 

I finessed that conversation in my head for 3 years. 

And the partnership exploded and died anyway. 

My counselor yesterday (I want to call him Chiron, but that's kind of too cute) asked me two things about a new relationship that has been forming over the past couple of weeks:

1. Why do you feel you do not have permission to say flat out what you are feeling and what you want?
2. How much do you want to be on the hook for in this?

Boom. 

So I am grateful to be getting more awareness of this shit. And to be changing my behavior. I expressed some "difficult" things to a person I respect and love last night, and yeah it was disappointing (for me also), and it was hard for me to articulate exactly what I was feeling, and it was messy because I had to sort of work it out in collaboration with them, and there was some proportional anger aroused in the other person and the danger of rejection. But the sky didn't fall, the person and I remain close. 

More importantly, for now, by far---- myself and I remain close.