In the last post, I ended by musing about how I sort of fell into polyamorous relationships. It was never my idea, but I wasn’t against it, either. In fact, if I had not been indoctrinated into the belief that monogamy was the only way to be, I probably would have gotten into nonmonogamy/polyamory sooner.
Side note: My mother and I used to have arguments about tradition. She would mention a tratdition I happened to disagree with (which, to be fair, was most of them), and I would state my disagreement. I know I should have just kept my mouth shut and played along–or rather, I didn’t know at the time, but discovered it through years of painful failure. The best thing to do is just nod and smile. If I can’t make myself agree (which is really hard for me when I abjectly disagree with something), then at least I can keep silent.
Theoretically, anyway.
This is something I was told that neuroatypical people have difficult with–lying. The thing is, it’s complicated with me. I can lie with ease about things that don’t matter to me. And with the social lying like, “No, that dress doesn’t make your butt look big.” Anything I deem as inconsequential, I lie with impunity.
With my mother, I will lie (or avoid the truth as hard as I can) when it’s something I really don’t want to talk about because it’s painful to me. She makes everything about her (or my father), so ifd I’m already in pain, then I don’t want to have to caretake her along with dealing with my pain. In addition, she’s the type that if something happens to you, oh, it happened to her as well–but worse. I mentioned that I fell and hurt myself once, and she came back with how she fell and dislocated her shoulder!
I’m not doubting that it happened, but did she have to tell it at that very moment? To be charitable, my story of my fall might have spurred her own memory, but still. She did it all the time. If I had a cold, then she had to talk about the cold she recently had.
Related, tangentially, she mentioned that she thought she might have autism (after we talked about my brother having it). I thought it was yet another way she was trying to glom on to other people’s lifestories as her own, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. Tangentially to the tangential, my brother once asked if I thought my mother was a good psychologist. I automatically said yes, but then walked it back. I thought about it more, and I had to come to the conclusion that no, she was not. At least not overall.
My motcher once told me that she was glad to be practicing in Taiwan because she could bring up her religion with impunity in a way she could not in America (in her sessions with her clients). I was horrified and I let it be heard in my voice (we were talking on the phone). In addition, she is set in her ways about many things, and she is not shy about letting it be known that she things her way is the right way.
I highly doubted that she was able to be neutral in her sessions. It wasn’t even that she was sure about her way being the right way; oftentimes, she was simply not aware (or refused to acknowledge) that other ways of being existed. She’s been like that all my life, and It’s always been my duty to not upset her.
I was terrible at that, by the way. Yes, I was forced (and still am) to be her emotional support person, but I could not keep my opinions to myself. Things like being queer or not wanting children. Leaving the church, not wanting to get married, and being fat were several more things that were an affront to my mother. Yes, the last one was something she took VERY personally. She put me on my first diet when I was seven.
Had I not been indoctrinated from birth, here are the things I would have realized much sooner. I don’t particularly like children and never wanted them. I don’t dislike them, but I didn’t have that fawning instinct for them that women were supposed to have. I saw them as people, which meant there were some I liked and some I didn’t. This is not to say that I treated them like miniature adults. I didn’t because I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. I didn’t treat them like kids, either, exactly. Or at least not how most people seem to treat kids. I just…talked to them like they were human. And kids L-O-V-E-D me, probably in a large part because I didn’t talk down to them.
It’s hard to talk about being different without people taking offense. I learned this at a fairly young age, too. For people who have a vested interest in the status quo, someone like me is threatening. This is what I didn’t understand in my early twenties. I was a threat because not only did I not want children (and was open about it), I didn’t prostrate myself in front of others, groveling for their forgiveness that I could dare to be so dastardly and/or unwomanly.
I did not understand why some women were so angry at me about it. They accused me of thinking they were bad/stupid for wanting/having children. I didn’t! I didn’t care about their procreation. I mean, I didn’t think about it at all. It took me several years to realize that the issue was that they were dissatisfied with the choices they had made, and it was threatening to see someone like me who didn’t have children, didn’t want them, and was gleefully happy not to have them. Not in an obnoxious way–I just knew that it was the best decision I had ever made in my life. Still is.
But to the women who had children and resented it, thinknig they had to do it because that’s what women did, my unrepetant belief tha I had the right not to have children seemed like a slap in the face to them. And because I made the deliberate choice to not have children, it does seem like a rejection of their choices. I don’t agree, but I get how they could see it that way.
This is one of the issues when you’re in the minority, by the way. Anything you do/choose is policized in a way it isn’t when you’re in the majority. ‘Don’t drag politics into this!’ is always hurled at someone who is in the minority, whether it’s gender, sexual identity, race, or any of the myriad of other isms.
It’s the same with compersion–which is the joy at someone you love being happy, even if it’s not something that includes you. It’s often used in a romantic/sexual sense as to being happy that your partner found another partner. Many people talk about it being the opposite of jealousy. It’s something Icame across a decade or so ago, but didn’t really think about it until a few years later.
Before I get to that, I need to talk about queerplatonic (or as I call it, queertonic) relationships. I’ll get to that tomorrow.