I am reaching the conclusion, gradually, that I find it easier to connect with my emotions, indeed I find it far easier to access my strongest emotions when multiple people are involved. Consider that when I got involved with the Jellicle Cat our most intense topic of conversation was Princess Lex who she was also in love with, the same goes with M-i-L – we got together whilst talking about FJ and the fact that we both loved him.
You can extend this to the relationships that I’ve had that have had most significance within my life, good and bad. My Gentleman Friend got together with me after I’d been trying to act cupid between him and Rat. Weasel and I got together through their discussing the Blue Cat. It becomes a bit more obvious when you look at Giggles and FFG and I all being involved together, indeed the Jellicle, Princess Lex, FJ and I, or to an extent M-i-L, FJ and I. Obviously The Fae Ref and Beautiful Lute last year are very up front and centre when it comes to this one.
There’s a level that my heart works best when I can see it being seen to be working, I think this is a massive part of how I work, consider this bloody blog for one thing, or my constant why do I even write this thing posts?
Theres something that makes it something I can feel and be present for at the same time. There’s something about other peoples love languages that I find difficult to follow, I need to take the time to understand them in most instances, sometimes there are people that I just feel like I flow with but they are few and far between and I’m not usually in love with them. If I am, then it feels like everything is just flowing perfectly and that goes double when I can see the love all reflected out with other people. But I don’t think that this is very common and I don’t think that I can adequately explain it to other people as it leaves them feeling like I’m using them for the emotions.
Giggles said that she felt used by me because I expressed myself robotically, which has stuck with me a great deal. It does seem as if when I feel most and express most, it’s lost on the people it’s felt most towards. I think Beautiful Lute saying that she felt like I was using her in order to feel was one of the worst things because to me, a relationship between multiple people does make me feel most, the idea that this is using a person is pretty horrific and honestly hadn’t occured to me.
I hate to make people feel bad and over and over again in my life I come up against a mismatch of understanding; usually when I think that I’m on the same page with people to really feel my own emotions flow, but it’s that very thing that is so off-putting to others as to make them feel bad and used. I suspect if I were ever to judge a deep emotional situation correctly then the other person wouldn’t feel used for their emotions but would enjoy the fact that I’m feeling through them feeling. I don’t know that that’s ever happened when I’ve been able to just emote, there’s always that need to hang back and keep things sensible and restrained if I want other people to be happy. As I get older the lack of judgement of other people has gotten less often but more completely out of whack with the emotional reality of other people’s situations.
I think it comes down to the multiple people thing, there’s a reason that it’s culturally assumed that two people alone fall in love, I imagine that there are very few people who feel things most when there’s more than two. Life experience certainly seems to bear this out. We come back to the fact that I can do wide love out to a spiderlight web of friends but I have felt previously that I mustn’t do deep because that makes other people feel bad. I wish that weren’t the case, I feel like I only learnt how to get that in touch with my own feelings lately and then to work through that I can’t do them if I want other people to feel good just feels really bad. I don’t actually think that’s the case, I certainly reached that conclusion in my late teens, that my own feelings could cause those I loved to feel bad. I suspect that’s at base why I swore off relationships through uni.
I’m not swearing off poly, not even multiple person possibilities in the future, though I suspect that that becomes less likely the older I get. But I am desperately trying to concentrate on myself and despite reading all the internet articles declaring that I’m a toxic and narcissitic person trying not to do what I did back then – ie. swear off all people and never emerge from my relationship hole.