Today I’m thinking about a few competing / complimentary ideas. I’m thinking about love as a creative act. I’m thinking about my writing habits and some of the interests I haven’t pursued. I’m thinking about my next relationship. I’m thinking about my social side. The common thread seems to be defining who I am as a person and identifying what my needs are.
I’m really proud of myself for having written nearly every day for the past two months. I studied writing in college. I’m told I’m good at it. I picked it back up (a little) when I was dating a woman in Philadelphia, and a bit more when I was engaged to a different woman in Philadelphia, and a lot more since my fiancee left and I moved to Memphis. I’m still not sure about the overall purpose of all of this writing. Processing loss is a part of the motivation. Practicing putting words next to each other in ways that sound nice is also part of the motivation. Developing a habit is part of the motivation. Building an interest that requires my own time and space (so that I’m more able to give it to someone else when they need it) is also part of the motivation. Developing a sense of fearlessness, a willingness to be exposed, a desire to be seen/heard are all motivations as well.
Building my own need for space is the motivation that poses the greatest challenge for me. I struggle with the question of why do this? On so many things, I’m a laid back go with the flow type of guy – it’s because I’ve tried to structure my life without a lot of personal needs (Buddhists believe desires lead to unhappiness). I have my hang-ups (I like to be early to places) and when it comes to emotional attachment in a relationship, I’m incredibly intense. I’ve been described as clingy and suffocating, or (more kindly) very attentive. The thing is, I treat love as though it’s a creative outlet. I recognized this with my ex-fiancee, B, more than with anyone else – I just always wanted to find ways to make her happy. Ironically, that much attention can make someone feel like they’re under a microscope and consequently make them unhappy AND it can make them feel like they’re not keeping up, that they can’t possibly meet me with the same intensity. That’s never the intent, and keeping up is never my expectation. I go over the top because I can’t not go over the top – it brings me extreme joy to do so. I love sharing experiences…. even with friends, I buy extra concert tickets just to share. I have an extra to Michael Kiwanuka on Valentine’s Day in Nashville – any takers? Omaha? You can meet my daughter Carolyn.
When I’m in a relationship, I don’t need a lot of me time. I can get pretty much all of my needs met through my partner. I can’t tell if this is a good or a bad thing. I can see how it would put pressure on my partner, but if I don’t need that type of time (alone time), should I be trying to manufacture it? To be clear, this is different than being afraid or uncomfortable with being alone, and this doesn’t mean that I don’t have my own interests. I just don’t have any one thing that would trump doing things with my partner – they will always come first. Do I need to get to a point where I actually need me time? Or is it good enough to be able to fill my time when my partner needs alone time?
Admittedly, I’m writing in reaction mode… I’m struggling with how this problem, if it is one, is framed. My thinking has gone circular. B needed time to herself to recharge. I always asked her what that looked like. Half an hour here, and hour there, a night out with girlfriends? None of those things bothered me, especially if I had some notice so that I could plan my time. When we started talking about living together and we were spending every night together, asking for a night off when we wouldn’t see each other posed more of a challenge to me – not because I couldn’t find something else to do, but because it felt like a step backward. I would ask how are we going to create that space under the same roof? One of us can’t just leave and go to a hotel (maybe one of us could). To me, it seemed better to practice the things that we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives. I think she put a lot of internal pressures on herself. I don’t think she was comfortable with me coming in to the city and her just doing her own thing. Hindsight tells me this was very workable.
I’m struggling to get my thoughts in the right order on this. Sometimes I think I was more ok with her needing time and space than she was with me never needing time and space. Yes, it created an imbalance. If she needed time or went out with friends, I probably would have done stuff around the house (it was how I lived during much of my marriage). That might have made her feel guilty – I don’t know. I would have done as many things together as was possible – did that make her feel like she never could have developed her own interests and hobbies and activities outside of us? B once told me that if she can’t get her alone time she will be very unhappy. I was never opposed to alone time – I can’t help it that it’s not something I needed, or that she felt guilty asking for it or taking it. There were a number of times, I would ask if she needed some of her alone time, she always said no….
I think if I could frame the problem as two opposing questions, I might ask her “why do you need to find an activity that excludes me?” and she might ask “why don’t you pursue more solo activities?” And maybe this gets to the heart of incompatibility? If she were to take a class, I’d probably ask if I could join (to me that seems like a fun thing to do together). If she needs to do it alone, maybe she just didn’t feel comfortable saying that? Maybe my disappointment at being left out (and sure I’d be bummed at not being included) was too much? Why couldn’t my being bummed be seen as a sign of love as opposed to a sign of control?
I’m trying to write without judgment. I’m starting to think developing a “need” such as alone time may be the wrong way to go for me. Will I stop writing in my next relationship? I’ve been trying to build to the point of “needing” to write everyday – to what end? How much of that building is in response to B needing alone time and me trying to build something that accommodates? Sometimes, I feel like I’m still trying to prove to her that I could have given her what she needed… after all, I’ve gone months now without her in my life – I can survive without her. I went years doing my own thing in my marriage. Surely, I could have created space for her to have her alone time….
As for trying to create my own need for alone time, shouldn’t I try to have fewer needs? Wouldn’t that allow for the most flexibility? It’s one of the things that helps me be easy going, I can usually go with the flow, because I try not to have a whole lot of personal needs. There’s a strange dichotomy at play. Here I am trying to develop a need for time and space (in the form of writing) so that I could understand better when someone else has this need… maybe what I should do is find a person who has fewer personal needs, who can understand my lack of needs.
Not being able to articulate this, is frustrating.
How this ties back to writing and the other topics. Generally speaking, I think I need a creative outlet. I’m attracted to artist types (one woman painted, another was a graphic designer, B is a writer, another writes and acts – it helps if they’re a redhead). I’m trying to develop those artistic sensibilities in myself – be the person I want to find. But, I know that in a relationship, doing things for my partner becomes my creative outlet – I love to put my energies in to it. Outside of that, I’ve taken up writing, want to take up painting and photography. My concern with writing is that it requires everyday practice. Will I want to put this imposition on my next relationship? Will I need to? Probably not – I don’t think I’ll get the same sense of satisfaction from it as I will spending time with my partner. Quality time and touch are my primary love languages. Last night talking with my friend in Omaha, she asked how would I feel writing at the same time in the same room or next to my partner who was also writing? Would I view that as doing something together…? It made me smile. I’d love that type of a lifestyle. B and I had that very briefly when we went to the shore together. We would be near each other doing our own thing (reading). We occasionally did this when we would take the day off together or work from home together. It was always part of the longer plan – develop interests and friends and lots of things to share.