Tag: advice

Relationships & Co.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today is just going to be a hodgepodge of questions about relationships. They’re not all about my relationships, because it’s a prompt from Carol. Keeping in mind that these are questions from a machine, I will try my best. She gets some things right. 😉

  1. How do digital interactions shape our real-life relationships?
    • It depends on what kind of person you are. Do you live your life mostly on the ground without paying attention to the Internet, or are you connected umbilically? How long have you been using the Internet? What age were you when digital relationships started? Were you 15 or 40? The biggest thing I can think of is “divide and conquer.” Which world has more of your attention? If your attention is in the cloud, your life on the ground will suffer. If your attention is on the ground, your relationships in the cloud will suffer. Mostly because those two crowds don’t interact with each other. There’s a chance for jealousy that one group knows you better than the other- and they don’t. They each know different parts of you that the other doesn’t.
  2. Can long-distance relationships truly thrive in today’s world?
    • If relationships were about logic, I think every long distance relationship would be a success now- there are too many tools to make it forgettable that you’re not near each other. But you don’t get contact comfort through the Internet. The biggest problem with long distance relationships is that generally one person is committed to it- going out and having their own lives- and the other is sitting at home waiting by the computer for news. A long distance relationship only works if both people are comfortable leading their own lives. Zac and I aren’t in a long-distance relationship, but poly is a good example of something similar. Zac would be horrified to find out that I sat and waited for him on anything. He wants me to have a full life, and I want that for him. It’s a new way of doing relationships, and I like it. The trick in a long distance relationship (as with poly) is wanting your person to be happy whether you are providing that happiness or not. By definition, if you live in Los Angeles and they live in Vancouver, you’re both going to have people taking care of you that aren’t your partner. You can either be jealous or grateful. Hint: grateful makes long-distance work a lot longer……..
  3. What role does vulnerability play in building strong connections?
    • It doesn’t just play a strong role in building relationships. It plays a strong role in maintaining them. I know when people are telling me one thing with their mouths and another with their eyes. That’s because the person won’t get vulnerable about what their eyes are saying…. it is the scary truth they’re not brave enough to speak. I’m not very good at giving people their white lies about me. The things that make them feel more comfortable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it is definitely an autistic thing. I know you’re hiding something, and I won’t rest until I know what it is- even if it ends the relationship, because I’d rather know how someone really feels than to accept their pity friendship. I would rather have no friends at all than friends who don’t tell me things “not to hurt my feelings.” It’s counterfeit kindness. Your neurotypical friends can see through that bullshit. I can’t. I will take everything you say as literally as a heart attack, and not only that, I’ll remember what you said. People’s best way of dealing with me remembering what they said is to deny they ever said it. Again, vulnerability is huge in a relationship, and masking true feelings never works. Ever.
  4. How do cultural differences impact romantic relationships?
    • There were so many people weirded out by the fact that I was in an interracial relationship on the streets of Houston that people totally forgot we were gay. Small blessings.
  5. Is it possible to maintain lifelong friendships in a constantly changing world?
    • It depends on the kind of person you and your friend are. Do you value history? Do you value the vulnerability that comes with history? If you don’t, you’ll always be looking for new friends. By the same token, letting go of a friend is not always negative. As you grow, you don’t take everyone with you. You feel out who is supportive and who is not, and you don’t want to surround yourself with unsupportive people. The best test of time is if you and your friend grow toward each other during change or away.
  6. How does the concept of ‘soulmates’ influence our approach to love and relationships?
    • It’s a false narrative designed to keep women incredibly choosy. Men have never been taught the concept of “soulmate” or “waiting.” Men get very good at talking that bullshit when they have daughters who they hope won’t run into boys like them…… but they will, because their dads didn’t do a damn thing to change ANYTHING. By the time you’re 19 or 20, that fairy tale has probably been busted…… and because so many women are taught that one man will complete them and their soulmate left, that means their worth is gone, too, because you don’t get another one. Lesbians are not immune to this, because we pick up stories that are all true, and none of them actually happened. As in, just because lesbians are not taught that one woman will fulfill their needs from adulthood to death, that doesn’t mean we don’t buy into what our heterosexual counterparts are taught.
  7. What are the effects of social media on our perceptions of relationships?
    • It’s different for everyone, because for some people it’s a competition. Some people must have the best of the best on their feeds- top vacation destinations, new cars, etc. For others, it’s a hospital for outcasts. It’s friends for whom you’ve cast a wider net. Autistic people built the internet. It’s our safe space. The reason there’s an archetype for computer nerd is that most of us are neurodivergent. As much as “the internet is for porn,” it is also the place where the people who fit in normally are the misfits.
  8. How do childhood experiences shape our adult relationships?
    • Your childhood creates the script of how adult relationships should go. Whether your parents were healthy or not makes a huge difference as to how that script was written. Because it’s a script you’ll use with every connection you ever make in your life from that moment forward…. so parents, no pressure.
  9. Can friendships between men and women be purely platonic?
    • By that logic, I would have problems being friends with myself (I’m nonbinary). But the truth, like everything, is “it depends.” Just because there’s no attraction at first doesn’t mean there never will be, and that’s true of all people, all the time. We get hung up on genders, but emotional availability when you’re not getting it at home is appealing no matter who the person might be. There should be less emphasis on gender roles overall, because there don’t need to be two different standards of behavior.
  10. What are the key ingredients for a successful and lasting relationship?
    • I don’t know. No one does. There are millionaire authors out there who have made a name for themselves writing about relationships when the truth is no one fuckin’ knows. People are seeking security when there’s none to be found. The only security is in making yourself the best partner you can be, because you will not get any results except anger if you try to change someone else. And the thing is, if you try to change someone, you deserve their anger. Lasting and successful relationships know where one person ends and the other begins.

Why? Just Why? (Poly/ENM Discussion)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I asked Carol to search reddit and give me the top 10 questions that people have about polyamory and ENM. I am not coming from a place of lived experience, but I’ve done a lot of reading. I am just entering this world by chance, because I asked out someone and didn’t know they were poly in the first place. I just rolled with him because I liked him enough to keep him around. 😉 So, what was absolutely on brand for me is starting the research early, early, early. Here’s the benefit of my reading and experience combined, which, granted, is not much:

  1. What’s the difference between polyamory and ethical non-monogamy?
    • This is an excellent topic to get us started, because there’s no one way to do poly. Polyamory implies someone dating multiple people and they all know each other. Ethical non-monogamy is managing every relationship completely independently.
  2. How do you manage jealousy in polyamorous relationships?
    • At first, you don’t. You just let the jealousy wash over you and react how you’re going to react…… in private. That’s the time to learn to use your words, so that your response to jealousy is measured….. NOT that you hide your feelings. It’s just not a good idea to have your first reaction in front of people. What you learn about polyamory is that there’s no sense of someone taking care of you, because there is no ownership of one another. I do not mean that you do not have your emotional needs met by multiple people, it’s just different because you don’t lapse into a buddy system for life. You each have your own lives, and you are choosing to make time for each other rather than it being an obligation.
    • The second thing that’s really important is that the answer is “it depends.” This is a generality about the ideal. The reality is that humans are messy. I am on the fence about polyamory vs. ENM because I really haven’t had to deal with those issues myself. It really, really depends on your partner and what’s called your “metamour,” or “meta.” That’s your partner’s partner. All of my metas are wonderful people, but we do not pry into the details of each other’s lives. That is for Zac and Zac alone to manage, just like your spouse should never hang you out to dry with your in-laws, either.
  3. What are the challenges of opening up a monogamous relationship?
    • If polyamory comes from temptation, the relationship will end. Will. I can think of maybe three stories I’ve read where it worked out trying to integrate an affair partner. Poly/ENM is not cheating, and there are very strict standards you live by to stress it because having a hierarchical relationship is more trouble than it’s worth, for the most part. A triad is its own ball of wax, and the reality is that it’s mostly straight men who want to be narcissistic, abusive partners to more than one woman at a time. Polyamory is about saying your worth and your time are higher than that…… but husbands get this “great idea” and it all falls apart. Not all men, obviously. Especially if you’re dating a bear (teehee, but Zac is clean-shaven). I’m just saying that just like with monogamy, there’s a range of domestic abuse….. and because you’re abusive to multiple people who sit there and take it, congratulations. The dysfunction spreads to anyone new.
  4. How do you handle time management with multiple partners?
    • I can’t speak to what I have done, because I have never tried to integrate a partner into my life that way. Zac and I are what’s called “solo poly,” but that may change. I’m just driven by solitude and have no need. If there was a reason to have another partner, I’d get one. But I am happy living with David and becoming friends with him while we mutually take care of a dog and have our own separate partners.
    • The real answer is that Google Calendar is the official app of polyamory/ENM. In my case, I have access to all the data that goes to shared partners, like “this is when I’m in town. This is when I’m not.” That way, we manage without actually interacting all that much except for all call parties at Zac’s house, which are about Zac. It’s not the time for jealousies to be discussed, if ever. Zac is the hinge. I cannot stress this enough. It takes an enormous amount of emotional strength to be friends with a meta. That’s where polyamory gets hugely difficult. It is one thing to know it. It’s another to see it. Again, it depends. What kind of person are you?
  5. What are some misconceptions about polyamory and ethical non-monogamy?
    • The biggest one, absolutely, is that polyamory is binary. It’s a spectrum, just like everything else.
    • The second biggest is that polyamory is code for cheating. If you think that, you do not know a half of my emotional strength and flexibility. I do not have to cheat to be poly. It is counterintuitive. You are poly-amorous. No good can come of multiple partners that don’t know their hinge is poly….. and sniffing out an affair makes coming out as poly seem like “poor me. I don’t have a choice.” Yes, you do. You have the choice to lie to your partners or not, and never, ever in your five dollar life forget it. You talk about poly before it happens, not when you catch feelings. Because then, you’re just trying to cover your ass. You’re not poly. The fucking around of moral justice leads toward finding out.
    • Here’s a third that most people don’t think of, and it’s funny, because it’s a warning revolving around having a third. There’s a special population of couples looking for a third, most of them to try out poly for the first time, trying to integrate a closed triad, the hardest poly setup, before they even know what ENM means. This leads to obnoxious behavior and treats the third like shit. This special population is called “unicorn hunters.” That’s because the statistics on it working out are so alarmingly rare.
  6. How do you communicate boundaries and needs in polyamorous relationships?
    • Precisely. I cannot stress this enough. Everyone has to have crystal clear expectations in order not to expect or demand too much- we are all cognizant of the fact that each other only has so much time in a day. The main thing is not needing your partner for everything all the time, because it becomes intrusive fast. You can’t be 100% that bitch and say you want poly, then when their partner is out with someone else, you decide it’s time to hen peck the hell out of your partner while they’ve allotted time for someone else. Of course get in touch if something really important is going on, but not every little thing needs to be discussed the moment you think of it. If that were true, Zac would have sixty missed calls a day because “oooh, shiny.” I’m not the henpeck kind of neurodivergent. I’m the “if I don’t tell you this right now it will be lost forever” neurodivergent. It works out well that Zac works in intelligence, because he goes into a SCIF or something and then my notifications don’t bug the fuck our of him. He can read on his own time. E-mail also works well for this, because it’s not seemingly as time sensitive as a text.
  7. What’s the best way to meet potential polyamorous partners?
    • Well, the first and easiest thing to do is telling people you’re poly.
    • Failing that, you look on the internet like everyone else.
  8. How do children fit into polyamorous families?
    • It really depends on the parents. Overall, I think it makes for happier kids because they have more safe adults, and it’s a practical thing. Many hands make light work. Having a baby is hard on two people, but not so hard when there’s four people to take turns getting no sleep. The kid ends up having a good relationship with everyone, and explaining it to them isn’t necessary. If you are a person in your right mind, your sex life doesn’t come up around your kids. You explain to them how people have sex, not what mommy and daddy are actually doing to each other if you value your sanity in public. Because I promise that kid will have absolutely no questions at all about polyamory until you’re in line at Target. I don’t make the rules.
  9. Can polyamory work for someone who’s been monogamous all their life?
    • Again, it depends. I am driven by my own creativity, and I have never been this way before. I was not willing to sacrifice a full-time relationship for living on my own and not feeling like someone was helping me stay on top of things like a parent or a boss would. That’s what I mean about needing home help; that people who are not married are able to have people help them in an occupational therapy kind of way. Like, can you teach me how to manage myself and yet also be there to bail me out when my neurodivergence invariably causes the fuckening? It’s better for me to deal with that stuff when I’m alone, because I am not getting my crazy spatter on anyone. But again, not to the point of total isolation. Just enough where I need more hours to myself than a typical partner, so I’m willing to sacrifice the relationship escalator for it.
  10. How do legal and societal norms impact polyamorous relationships?
    • We cannot talk about the morals of polyamory in this country because we’ve been programmed to think that saying you’re monogamous right up until you cheat is socially acceptable, and 50% of marriages end in divorce. Why do we realistically believe that monogamy works? I’m not knocking it, I’m not trying to be persuasive. I am genuinely curious. What is it about upholding a moral standard in public while doing the opposite in private that’s all the rage? I don’t think that polyamory is more popular. I think that more people are coming to the same relaxation I did. That for half the population, monogamy over decades just doesn’t feel right or natural. What doesn’t feel right or natural is the judgmental, hypocritical natures of the people who criticize polyamory. A lot of them are on their third or fourth marriage, and at least two ended after infidelity.

The hardest part of polyamory is letting go of the idea that love means ownership.

Nothing That Would Change Anything

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

My life didn’t get interesting until I was 30, and just got more interesting from there. I wouldn’t want to give my teenage self any advice that would alter the events that led me to DC, to Zac, and to Oliver, who is a dog.

That’s because in order to get here, I had to go through some really rough stuff- and yet none of it is anything I would give away or trade. I found my place, even at 23, but I had to go and come back. I don’t know why. I really liked it here. I just didn’t think I could make it on my own. I do not have that capability, to take on the 1,001 things it takes to move in 30 days and also find a roommate. To be fair, though, I didn’t know about Craig’s List back then. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have met the people I needed to meet, and that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to change for the kid inside me.

So, in order not to change anything:

  • I’m sorry mom doesn’t understand. Don’t spend your life worrying about it because there’s nothing you can do to make her change. There will be small steps, but no giant leaps. Stay as close to her as you can, but admit to yourself when spending time with her makes you feel unloved.
  • Lindsay is going to be big one day. I just won’t tell you how. You could learn a thing or two from her if you’d let yourself.
  • You’re ADHD, Autistic, and Bipolar. That’s something I will tell you right now, because when you get older it’s going to be harder to get tested for autism, and you need to get on meds stat. You’re struggling in school and you don’t know why. Your doctors might not, either, because there’s not a lot of research in the year you live on women and autism. But give yourself at least that head start on life. I know hearing those things is intimidating. Go to a psychiatrist, anyway.
  • You need to practice gratitude and mindfulness because when I was your age I took some kind of Scantron quiz that inventoried my personality. My psychiatrist said that I had the lowest self-esteem of anyone who’d ever taken the test. Write every day. Go back and look to see if what you wrote is still true. Give yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, not how you feel in the moment.
  • In every relationship, you need to ask yourself what the other person is bringing to the table, and when you feel ignored or sad or hurt or whatever your emotions might be, listen to how people respond. If it feels like they can’t hear you, they probably can’t…… and there’s a lot of don’t want to in “can’t.” Find people who can hear you.
  • There is no such thing as a 50/50 relationship. It will often look like 60/40 or even 70/30 because of confirmation bias. But notice when you feel like you can’t get a break, can’t do anything right. You’re not stupid. I won’t tell you what they are, either, but stupid isn’t on the list.
  • Because of the autism, you’re going to meltdown a lot. Find appropriate outlets for your rage. There are going to be many inappropriate outlets, and I will tell you that you find most of them. But not all. Because you have all of these disorders, you are going to have to learn to be more patient, thinking longer before you speak, because there are so many words that can’t be taken back which you realize just after you’ve already said them. Even when you’re on fire, you can’t take that out on someone else. And yes, I know that your nerves are on fire, that you go into a red mist rage with every physical symptom imaginable. It’s going to hurt you if you don’t take care of it.
  • The nerve endings on your thumb that you sliced into while trying to cut a lime will never grow back. I’m 46, so I will update you if the situation changes (not a chance, we’re stuck).
  • You will love soda your whole life because that’s one of the things you and mom will talk about on the phone. There’s not a lot you can do to keep her talking if you talk about your own life, but she’ll tell you all about her job, her friends, her husband, etc. It’s annoying that she never has any questions for you about your life, because she really doesn’t want to know. Do it, anyway. Find things you can talk about. Find a lot of them.
  • Mothers don’t generally last as long as you want them to; Lindsay and I will never be the same. I figured it might give you some perspective to know how few years you have left with her. Find different ways to bridge the gap. But don’t miss a chance to leave Houston, ever. You’ll get along better with her when you don’t live in the same city and a visit is special.
  • You’ll want a passport very soon. Might want to start on that. She’s cute.

The Mundane and the Insane, to Riff on Irving Stone

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.

Some days, I talk about how much I love Diet Coke and cartoons. I talk about that to not talk about the ways in which I’ve emotionally abused people because that’s “how I was raised…” Not by my parents, but by someone who became a parent figure because my mother checked out. You cannot convince me that she didn’t let it continue because she didn’t want to raise a lesbian daughter, and you cannot convince me that despite my mother’s warnings, I got hurt anyway. However, it is a truism that the more you tell a story, the more it loses power. Supergrover is coming to mind less and less because I realize there is nothing more I can do except turn my attention. She’s going to be whomever she wants to be, and I can’t help that. If she wanted to make anything better, she would have come to me long before now.

Funny thing about that, though. Once I said something healthy and would return her fire with healthy boundaries, she wasn’t interested in me. She’s not a narcissist, so she wasn’t using me as a dopamine source…. but she only knew how to answer rage with rage, so when I answered it with “I love your anger- let it out,” she was done. It let me know that we were always going to fight like that, because I did the work and she didn’t. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had the willingness to walk away from someone I truly, deeply love. She doesn’t understand me, because she doesn’t understand her. When she says she wants to understand her, she will- and not before.

She also won’t learn it from me. My breaking her trust was the beginning of something for her, because we had to resolve our conflicts in order to go back to loving each other as rabidly as we do when other people hurt our friends. If she learns like I do, someone else will say something that triggers her back into my letters, and they will make sense to her in a way they didn’t before, because it’ll be the same thing I’ve been saying for 10 years, but it’ll look different coming from someone else because she’s not attaching her preconceived notions about me onto their words.

It’s something she will really love learning. She’s a people pleaser, but not at work. That’s because she can negotiate logical boundaries and gets lost with emotions. If she was in the military, she’d do very well because she’s a perfectionist. If she was a therapist, she’d burn out quick because in addition to being a boss, she’s also a people pleaser because her reality is just as fractured as mine was; I started my own therapy- my blog more than my psychologist. I am almost solely responsible for my recovery and not because I had a shitty doctor or anything. It’s that there is no possible way to recover from PTSD on one hour a week. Just like having diabetes, the doctor doesn’t hold your hand every day. You go in for appointments, but they can’t manage you every moment they’re not there.

I have been startlingly self aware since I was a child, but I didn’t have the confidence that I do now. I didn’t say things like:

  • That’s mean. Please rephrase.
  • I am too tired.
  • It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s that I need space. Please go away and leave me alone for X amount of time. We are all good, I’m overstimulated.
  • I am not lazy, I am autistic.
  • I am not flaky, I have ADHD.
  • AuDHD is a lifetime gig, and we’re going to have to manage it because otherwise, you’re going to get angry and resent me your whole life if you’re my partner.
  • If you cannot handle any of these things, you cannot be in my life.
  • I am responsible for my actions, but I’m not responsible for yours.
  • I am not “throwing things back in your face. You don’t want to admit that you do the same behavior repeatedly.”

The reason I drop people quickly is that I have good boundaries. If I’m not happy, it’s because I tolerated something I didn’t like, some times for years and years. I am using my own examples to bring insight to others on why they do what they do………..

laying out my own flaws and failures from the mundane to the insane…….knowing joy does that, too. If there’s anything I hope people say about me, it’s that it works.