There is a school of thought that good relationships require effort, but should not need work. You mostly see it quoted at people who want help with their love lives, but it sometimes pops up in the context of family issues, and rarely for friendships. I'm not sure I agree. It depends, I think, on what kind of work you're talking about. Is it work you want to do for your own sake? Does the other person give you room to do it? Do you feel like the relationship is worth the work involved?
I have had to think quite a lot about relationships in the past couple of months, on top of the actual practical work I've been doing. When you work in the arts, your business relationships are also your friendships. It's got pros and cons. I stay adamantly freelance mainly so that I can be prickly about the cons, because they are way up there on the list of things that will tank my mental state. The pros are a helluva thing, though.
Ye Ballroom Instructor and I each have our own demons to wrestle with. Similar, but not the same, and mostly anxiety-based. I recognize a lot of his tells from myself. We've set each other off a couple of times. It's not pleasant. I don't enjoy anxiety attacks for obvious reasons, and on top of that is the fear that every time I fuck something up will be the last, that I have broken... whatever it is we're building. Whoever spooked first always comes back, after a bit of calm down, but the time in between is upsetting.
I have asked myself why this specific relationship is so goddamned important to me. Because plainly it is. I've gotten to the point of Googling for insight on handling an anxious-avoidant dynamic, because that's how I handle all my problems when I have an open browser window in front of me. The only advice I could ever find was 'run away'. I just sat there and thought, "That's not helpful, we don't like not being friends."
When it works, it is comfortable in a way I'm not sure I can articulate. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for knowing things I haven't technically been told. My life is a fight to remind myself that, while gestures and expressions are probably accurate reflections of what someone was thinking at the moment, asking them what any of it means is useless and often inappropriate.
He uses it. It's mostly on purpose, and when it's not, he still knows it's going on. I am allowed to know whatever I read on his face. It took me a while to work out how he wanted me to react to some of it. I tried interacting with him like we were normal people a few times, and it was confusing and upsetting for both of us. He seems much happier when I just glance over and answer things he hasn't said.
I can get very jumpy when significant parts of the conversation come in on the subtitles. I'm used to people saying one thing and signalling another, expecting me to ignore one of them (except when they don't), and when I pick the wrong one (or they change their mind) I get shouted at. "Open your ears!" and "I never said that!" are among the favorites. Feels like a trap. I have a policy for dealing with crazy people of responding only to what they literally told me, and letting them tantrum for the rest.
Ye Ballroom Instructor is more subtext than text at the best of times. His signalling isn't contradictory, but it's more congruent and continuation than an actual echo of what he's saying. A few restrained words, and a hundred significant footnotes. It scares me that I can't always know exactly what and how far to read into any of it. I am sure that I'm supposed to be reading into it. You don't get "Thank you, for everything," three times inside of an hour, verbatim with italics, if 'everything' just means 'the pretty flowers you brought for my opening night'.
He might also do that because I tend to respond by hugging him. Dunno. He's bad at asking for things directly. He's working on it, I'm working on it. They're all things you have to fix for yourself, but can't fix without having another person to give you feedback. You can figure this shit out with someone or on someone, and figuring it out on someone who hasn't volunteered as Tribute is kind of a dick move.
I think what's going on with him is that he accidentally made a much better friend than he intended, and now he's got a bunch of feelings about that. Not bad feelings, just big ones and a lot of them. He is a very nice, very gay ex-Catholic boy from a blue collar background, so this will take a while to sift through. He also is, or was, really afraid I would bail on him before he got his shit sorted out.
You should never go into your relationships -- platonic, romantic, familial, professional, whatever -- expecting that other people will change to make you happy. You can change yourself if you want, but it's best to take others the way you find them.
Sometimes they do, though. Not always the way you'd expect. I had to sit down and really think about it when I realized Ye Ballroom Instructor was doing the answering-me-with-his-eyebrows thing on purpose. Talking about feelings scares him absolutely shitless, but I needed some kind of feedback or I ended up confused and upset, so he just figured out how to do it without talking. Not normal, and shows an understanding of how emotional hypervigilance works that you can unfortunately only get from living it, but brilliant.
Can't imagine what kind of utter fucking mess I'd be without the Eccentric in the other corner, adamant that connection is a real thing, a good thing, and a thing you are absolutely allowed to chase in your life. But that's another essay.
I have had to think quite a lot about relationships in the past couple of months, on top of the actual practical work I've been doing. When you work in the arts, your business relationships are also your friendships. It's got pros and cons. I stay adamantly freelance mainly so that I can be prickly about the cons, because they are way up there on the list of things that will tank my mental state. The pros are a helluva thing, though.
Ye Ballroom Instructor and I each have our own demons to wrestle with. Similar, but not the same, and mostly anxiety-based. I recognize a lot of his tells from myself. We've set each other off a couple of times. It's not pleasant. I don't enjoy anxiety attacks for obvious reasons, and on top of that is the fear that every time I fuck something up will be the last, that I have broken... whatever it is we're building. Whoever spooked first always comes back, after a bit of calm down, but the time in between is upsetting.
I have asked myself why this specific relationship is so goddamned important to me. Because plainly it is. I've gotten to the point of Googling for insight on handling an anxious-avoidant dynamic, because that's how I handle all my problems when I have an open browser window in front of me. The only advice I could ever find was 'run away'. I just sat there and thought, "That's not helpful, we don't like not being friends."
When it works, it is comfortable in a way I'm not sure I can articulate. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for knowing things I haven't technically been told. My life is a fight to remind myself that, while gestures and expressions are probably accurate reflections of what someone was thinking at the moment, asking them what any of it means is useless and often inappropriate.
He uses it. It's mostly on purpose, and when it's not, he still knows it's going on. I am allowed to know whatever I read on his face. It took me a while to work out how he wanted me to react to some of it. I tried interacting with him like we were normal people a few times, and it was confusing and upsetting for both of us. He seems much happier when I just glance over and answer things he hasn't said.
I can get very jumpy when significant parts of the conversation come in on the subtitles. I'm used to people saying one thing and signalling another, expecting me to ignore one of them (except when they don't), and when I pick the wrong one (or they change their mind) I get shouted at. "Open your ears!" and "I never said that!" are among the favorites. Feels like a trap. I have a policy for dealing with crazy people of responding only to what they literally told me, and letting them tantrum for the rest.
Ye Ballroom Instructor is more subtext than text at the best of times. His signalling isn't contradictory, but it's more congruent and continuation than an actual echo of what he's saying. A few restrained words, and a hundred significant footnotes. It scares me that I can't always know exactly what and how far to read into any of it. I am sure that I'm supposed to be reading into it. You don't get "Thank you, for everything," three times inside of an hour, verbatim with italics, if 'everything' just means 'the pretty flowers you brought for my opening night'.
He might also do that because I tend to respond by hugging him. Dunno. He's bad at asking for things directly. He's working on it, I'm working on it. They're all things you have to fix for yourself, but can't fix without having another person to give you feedback. You can figure this shit out with someone or on someone, and figuring it out on someone who hasn't volunteered as Tribute is kind of a dick move.
I think what's going on with him is that he accidentally made a much better friend than he intended, and now he's got a bunch of feelings about that. Not bad feelings, just big ones and a lot of them. He is a very nice, very gay ex-Catholic boy from a blue collar background, so this will take a while to sift through. He also is, or was, really afraid I would bail on him before he got his shit sorted out.
You should never go into your relationships -- platonic, romantic, familial, professional, whatever -- expecting that other people will change to make you happy. You can change yourself if you want, but it's best to take others the way you find them.
Sometimes they do, though. Not always the way you'd expect. I had to sit down and really think about it when I realized Ye Ballroom Instructor was doing the answering-me-with-his-eyebrows thing on purpose. Talking about feelings scares him absolutely shitless, but I needed some kind of feedback or I ended up confused and upset, so he just figured out how to do it without talking. Not normal, and shows an understanding of how emotional hypervigilance works that you can unfortunately only get from living it, but brilliant.
Can't imagine what kind of utter fucking mess I'd be without the Eccentric in the other corner, adamant that connection is a real thing, a good thing, and a thing you are absolutely allowed to chase in your life. But that's another essay.
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