Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: nonmonogamy

Compersion, not competition, part three

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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.


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Compersion, not competition, part two

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At the end of the last post, I was talking about how the reach of family dysfunction is long and tortured. One of the problems with abuse is that it gets passed along, generation by generation. It’s the same with societal norms, actually. What we consider normal is usually what has been codified into society over the centuries. It’s usually smart to look at who benefits and take it from there. In the case of monogamy, well, society would fall apart if people didn’t settle down and procreate right?

I’m being sarcastic, but that is what many people believe. Look at the current crop of Republicans. JD Vance is obsessed with ‘childless cat ladies’ and how they run the Democratic Party. My hdude. Brah.

*Insert heavy eyerolling here*

I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again. I fucking WISH we had that kind of power. Do you honestly think if minorities had the powers they have invested in us, we would let them be in any kind of power/ability to gain power? It’s so enraging that they have managed to convince their base that the ‘libtards’ as they like to call us are in total control.

Again, if this was the case, do you think we would have let Roe v. Wade be overturned? Do you think we would let them anywhere near the White House? Or us in general? Do you think we would let all these anti-trans laws pass without slapping them down?

For decades, I was confident that they wouldn’t actually overturn Roe v. Wade beacuse it’s their bread-and-butter. They used it to stump about how terrible liberals were and how they needed more money to defeat us and our dastardly plans. I still think that’s true, but what I didn’t account for was batshit bananapants Trump becoming president. And putting really radical rightwing justices on the Supreme Court. Two of them who truly believe the bullshit and didn’t just mouth it for political reasons.

I was right, though. The Republicans didn’t really want Roe v. Wade overturned, but they had no choice. They were feckless in going along with Trump, and they are reaping what they sowed. I think there was a time when they could have put down their foot and drawn a line in the sand. They could have said, no. This is too much. I know many of them don’t agree with Trump, but they are too much of cowards/too power-hungry to say so.

Now, they have to ride-or-die with him because the Republican Party is his party now. And if they want to stay in power, they have to put up with him. At least, that’s their thinking. I think if they made a stand, they could take back the party. They might lose a few election cycles (in other words, it could take a decade or more), but that’s their only chance at reclaiming their party.

Damn. I went all over the place, didn’t I?


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Compersion, not competition

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I’ve been thinking recently about life. I know that sounds boring and pretentious, but hear me out. It has to do with family dysfunction, but maybe not in a direct way. I’ve been talking about my parents and their beliefs in very rigid (and outdated) gender roles. Because of this, I grew up thinking that I had to get married and have children. That was the macro for my life. The micro was neverending ‘thou shalt nots’ that grew increasingly restrictive.

Thou shalt not climb trees.
Thou shall not sit with your legs spread.
Thou shall not laugh too loudly.
Thou shall not show any negative emotion.
Thou SHALL tend to everyone’s needs around you.
Thou SHALL take less than your share so that the boys/men around you can have more.
Thou shall not have any wants or needs, come to think of it.
Thou shall just smile prettily and do what you’ve been told.

In general, I was not supposed to be a human being with wants and needs.

In addition, my mother made it clear that I was to go to college, meet a nice boy, settle down, and have children. All by the time I was 26. The timeline wasn’t something she expressly said, but the rest of it? Well, maybe not Explicitly said, but very clearly underscored in everything she said and did. The college thing was very clear. It seems strange that she would be so insistent that a female child go to college because that is emphatically not a thing in Taiwanese society, but her mother was very forward thinking on education. She was the first woman to graduate from a certain college in Japan, which is surprising that she went at all.

People contain multitudes! Even rampant internalized sexism misogynists can be progressive in some ways. At any rate, my mother made me take all sorts of–you know what? Tiger mother is a thing, and it probably has something to do with the East Asian belief that you’re a piece of shit no matter what. That’s East Asian parenting for you. Never tell your kids that they are doing anything well. It’ll make their heads swell.

My motehr also believed that you should be doing something every minute of the day. I was a dreamer and preferred to read than to do an activity. I started dance classes at two when my mother noticed that I could do a somersault by one. I was too young for classes, but she somehow convinced the teachers to take me (probably with her unparalell ability to nag someone into submission). I started playing t-ball around four or five and taking piano lessons around seven (didn’t care for it). I’ve been playing ping-pong and tennis for most of my life. Don’t remember when I started playing either. Softball at seven, and then the cello at nine. I had quit the piano by that time, and my mother insisted I had to play an instrument. I liked the string instruments better than the brass ones, so this is how my brain went.


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Dating and sex in my fifties

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I’ve been writing about dating a lot lately because it’s on my mind. Before the pandemic hit (two years ago!), I had decided that I wanted to start dating again. Or at least tapping that ass on the regular. What can I say? I have terrible timing. When the pandemic hit, I obviously set aside thoughts of dating. The idea of mashing bits with someone I didn’t know was unthinkable.

Fast-forward a year-and-a-half. Vaxes were a thing, and I got both of my jabs as soon as I could. The first one was on my birthday, which made me inordinately happy. Once I got my second jab, I was jubilant that there was a ray of sunshine in a previously grim outlook. I started to cautiously open my world, just the slightest bit, when disaster hit. I had my medical crisis and ended up unconscious in the hospital.

Once I got out, I wasn’t thinking about dating, understandably. I was just grateful to be alive. I concentrated on getting my strength back so I could resume my life. Now, nearly seven months later, I’m there. I have a few lingering issues from my medical trauma–slight problems with my short-term memory, for example. In general, however, I’m back to where I was, if not better.

What has changed is my outlook on many things. I have had body issues my entire life–ever since my mom put me on a diet when I was seven. She said I would be so pretty if I lost weight, and that started a decades-long antipathy towards my body. The summer before I went to college, I decided to lose weight because I had come to believe that I was just too disgusting for words. I exercised seven hours a day and restricted my eating severely. I lost forty pounds in two months and developed anorexia at the same time. Because I couldn’t keep up my exercise schedule in college, I added bulimia to the mix.

My mom was no help. When my junior counselors notified her about my eating disorders, she did not handle it well at all. She clearly didn’t see it as a problem and privately, she only expressed jealousy that my waist was smaller than hers.  (I’m taller than she is by 4 inches.) What I’m trying to say is that she has her own body issues.

I gained a bunch of weight after that. I swung the other way and started overeating. You can bet my mother had something to say about THAT. It got so bad, I had to tell her that any mention of my weight was verboten. She tried to say that she was only worried about my health, which was bullshit. As I said,  the only comment she had when I was suffering from anorexia/bulimia was that my waist was smaller than hers in a very unhappy tone.


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