The Mandelbear's Musings

This post was inspired -- if that's the word; I have my doubts -- by a post by @ysabetwordsmith titled Self-Awareness Question: Boundaries. It's one of an ongoing series of questions taken from a list of 75 Questions for Cultivating Self-Awareness on the site positively present. (The subtitle is "positivity, awareness, self-love", if that helps.)

Specifically, the question in question is

30. Are you good at establishing boundaries?

Um...

I answered, No. To the point where I'm not even sure I understand the concept. It seems to be related to setting limits, which I sort of understand even though I'm very bad at it, but the way people talk about boundaries there seems to be something else involved too.

Ysabet responded, as she does, by editing her post to include some informative and potentially useful links (you'll find the complete set in the notes).

The link to "What Are Personal Boundaries? How Do I Get Some?" led to a couple of other interesting articles; probably the most (interesting? applicable?) was "Why Boundaries Don't Work". The bit that attracted my attention was

Setting boundaries is an advanced form of assertiveness. It involves risk and entails taking a position about who you are, what you’re willing to do or not do, and how you want to be treated and respected in your relationships. It first requires awareness of your values, feelings, and needs, plus some practice in making “I” statements about them.

Learning assertiveness takes self-awareness and practice. Often due to underlying shame and low self-esteem, codependents, especially, find this difficult, because:

• They don’t know what they need or feel.
• Even when they do, they don’t value their needs, feelings, and wants, and put others’ needs and feelings first. They feel anxious and guilty asking for what they want or need.^*
• They don’t believe that they have rights.
• They fear someone’s anger or judgment (e.g., being called selfish or self-centered).
• They’re ashamed of being vulnerable, showing feelings or asking for what they want and need.
• They fear losing someone’s love, friendship, or approval.
• They don’t want to be a burden.

Parts in bold are the ones I think apply in my case. Especially that first item: "They don’t know what they need or feel." I've mentioned alexithymia in a few times before. Parts in italics are prerequisites that I'm missing: assertiveness, self-awareness, and self-esteem.

Quite a lot of that list doesn't seem to apply to me. I'm not a codependent (as far as I can tell). I don't feel as though other people are judging me. Judging myself? Yeah, there's a lot of that, based on decades of bad decisions. I put others' needs above my own because I'm Colleen's main caregiver. Only caregiver, given the pandemic. Some of it, like the bit about rights, I'm not sure I understand in this context.

^*The second point needs to be deconstructed, because it's way too complicated to be summed up in a sentence. It may even need a whole other post, but I think I can at least make a start. My comments in parentheses; brackets are used for interpolation, and braces are used for grouping because English isn't associative.

Even when they do [know what they need or feel which of course I usually don't],
they don’t {value I'm no good at assigning values to variables I don't know how to measure}
their {needs, feelings these taken together seem to be referring specifically to emotional needs? See alexithymia.},
and {wants choice paralysis is a thing, but more of the time I have extreme problems trying to identify something I want. Asking me what I want for my birthday is going to get you half a minute of blank stare. Other times I know of things I want, but they're impossible. I never got a pony, either.},
and put {others’ needs and feelings first What happened to "wants"? This needs some unpacking. 1. If somebody tells me what they need, I know what to do; if I have to guess, it's a lot harder, though I'm getting better at it. 2. I'm a caregiver. If the person I'm caring for needs something, it's usually urgent. Or I have to assume it's urgent unless told otherwise. 3. People rarely tell me what they're feeling. I can sometimes tell something is wrong, but I can't always tell what. 4. Even if they do tell me, I'm not very good at figuring out what to do about it. 5. I appear to be some kind of empath -- don't ask me how that jibes with alexithymia. If somebody is hurting, it hurts me as well, and more when it's about something I can't fix. Sympathy only goes so far. And if my distress bleeds over into theirs, we have a classic positive feedback loop.}.
They {feel anxious and guilty asking for what they want or need I have a lot of trouble asking for help of any kind, but I have no idea what emotions are involved in that.}.

I suspect that this is going to be at least as confusing for anyone reading this as it is for me. Sorry about that. I'm probably making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Also, it sounds a lot like making excuses.

Maybe part of my problem with boundaries is that I can't tell whether I have a problem with boundaries. If that makes sense. For all I know I have (some) boundaries, but just don't notice them or know how to think about them.

Detecting other people's boundaries is a different problem altogether, and might not even be all that closely related. It's a different set of skills, in any case. I'm not claiming to be any good at that, either, and that is a problem. However, I can compensate most of the time by making conservative assumptions. It's similar to the way I try to handle left turns and other situations when I'm driving, compensating for what I know is unreliable judgement and a very limited ability to estimate speeds and distances. And similar in what happens when I fail to see a warning sign in a place I'm not expecting one, or get impatient. At least cars aren't usually invisible. (That doesn't always mean that I see them, though. That's how I totaled the Honda.)

( links )

I thought I'd have more to say on this topic, but it's all slipped away. Or got shoved down another rabbit hole. Maybe later.

Good grief! I shouldn't be surprised -- this happens every time I travel, since I pretty much only post from home. So... It was a good weekend. Lots of solid rehearsal time, and brunch with Chaos on Sunday. Didn't have time to meet up with either of my cousins, unfortunately, but that will probably work better on the next trip, given some time to plan ahead. If I do plan ahead, which I'm afraid is not a given.

It was a rough trip up; I had to get a cab to the airport, the plane was late, and I left my wireless mouse in the terminal somewhere. Put in a lost-and-found inquiry, but don't expect to see it again. Next time I take my wired travel mouse; I don't like it but I'm less likely to lose it.

This was also my first trip with the tennis bag for the travel guitar. It's more comfortable and somewhat lighter than the official gig bag, but doesn't really have enough room for my shoulder bag. A large songbook is pretty marginal. Still figuring out how best to use the space it does have. And it's still looking impossible for me to travel without a checked bag if I want to take a guitar on board. :(

The rehearsal, as I mentioned, went very well indeed. We decided that I should come up for another weekend -- it'll have to be a short one, Friday night to Sunday evening, because I'm running low on vacation time -- in early January. But we're in surprisingly good shape considering the amount of new material in the set. Reminder: you really want to hear our concert at Conflikt.

Another reminder: there's a household party coming up on Saturday!

I also got my netbook, barnard, more-or-less configured with Debian Squeeze; the biggest remaining problem is WiFi. The transition from dhcp3 to isc-dhcp has caused all kinds of havoc; I just realized last night that my router configuration is probably totally wrong at this point, too. No wonder WiFi's been flaky in the house!

Sadness: John McCarthy died on Monday. He was one of my favorite professors at Stanford, not so much because he was a good teacher -- he wasn't -- but because I loved watching the way his mind worked as he worked out programming problems on the board in his LISP class. chipuni posted the perfect epitaph: a single right parenthesis.

A very good day. From a little clutter reduction in the morning, to ordering a new netbook for Colleen, to the YD's impressively gorgeous "zed cards", to a st/roll twice around the Rose Garden with Colleen, to making a tasty dinner of chicken piccata and kasha. And ending with a last-minute shopping run, originally just for supplies at Walgreen's. But W. had closed half an hour before, so I ended up at Safeway and impulse-bought a bunch of flowers for Colleen. Go Me! She was surprised and delighted, which delighted me as well.

Sometimes, on the bad days, it's hard to remember that I can have good ones. This was a timely reminder.

A lunchtime shopping expedition got me a good walk. And there was a tasty reception at work for some visiting honchos from other parts of the company (combined with demos and talking about our stuff, of course). And lots and lots of tasty hot links up there above the cut.

On the other hand, Colleen was justifably angry at me for not telling her sooner about a couple of work-related schedule changes, and after she told me to go to bed around 11pm I discovered that there was still a lot to do, and had myself a bit of a meltdown. Again, who knows what? Back pain, frustration, discouragement, resentment, guilt, fear maybe. Not fun. Snuggle worked, and I was able to calm down pretty quickly and tell her so.

Good on the whole, I think, but just barely.

Have to work on my communication skills.

I just realized, while helping Colleen navigate around an unfamiliar part of LJ and teaching her about the "find" feature of her browser, that her attitude around computers was exactly like my attitude around people. ("Attitude" isn't the right word here; I don't know what is. I also tried "situation" and that didn't work either. Emotions? Maybe.)

Anyway: unfamiliar, scary, confusing, frustrating; easy to get into situations that one doesn't know how to get out of without rebooting and losing a lot of context. A lot of terminology that everyone else seems to have absorbed long ago. Inability to explain to someone else what the problem is, because you don't have the right words. The feeling that you're going to break something, or get something hopelessly messed up. The feeling that everything you've done has just made the situation more and more broken, messed up, and hopeless.

The difference is that computers are infinitely patient, totally consistent, mostly comprehsible, and don't go into a feedback loop when you panic or get stuck.

(23:18) pocketnaomi quite rightly points out that what she and Colleen feel about computers is exactly as valid as what I feel about people, and adds a list of differences that are almost a perfect mirror-image of mine:

To me, the difference is that people are able to catch imprecise statements and translate them in their own minds into precise ones. You don't HAVE to do absolutely everything right with people... doing them marginally close is usually good enough. With computers, there are only two options: 100% perfection and absolute failure. If you don't do EVERYTHING right, it will block you again and again and again. It has no pity or compassion, no willingness to meet you halfway or help out when you are exhausted from trying.

I think the problem on both sides is that I'm trying to think about people the way I think about computers, and "people people" like Naomi and Colleen think about computers the way they think about people. It's the natural, obvious thing to do, and it's equally wrong in both directions.

We're both learning.

Yesterday was a pretty good day; a nice way to put me back into the groove of "done" posts.

I got in a proper walk, and a fair amount of actual work.

"Date night" consisted of a huge salad and leftovers at home, followed by a pleasant drive, and ended up in bed with a particularly sensual cuddle. I slept very soundly, for once.

Today's link sausage includes the Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu, and Scott McCloud's comic about Google Chrome.

Some of my poly friends might be interested in theferrett's recent three-part series. The middle one, The Vital Skill Of Jealousy - is particularly interesting and a little more generally applicable than the others.

It was a long day spent mostly at work, with only a short walk (I got a call from Callie, and decided there was no point hanging around the office when I could get a better signal on top of the hill outside.) But I got my demo working, finally, a little after 7pm.

The fact that it took so long was entirely my fault for not remembering which saved version of the software was the working one. I could have sworn that the one in the main working directory had been hacked up and broken after the last demo. In fact, it was the reverted, working version and only needed a couple of last-minute fixups. :(

But it did work, finally, so I was able to come home relieved and happy. Marty was waitng at the door with a glass of gin, though I insisted on putting my laptop down and collecting hugs first, before sitting down to a drink and dinner. Yummy meatloaf made by the YD, and a kitchen-sink salad by Colleen.

We went to bed around 11ish, snuggled for a while... then I woke up around 2:30 to find a wakeful Colleen reading beside me. I brought my netbook in (and was delighted to find Pidgin working -- I win). Reading, snuggle, love, conversation... and the utter decadence of English muffins and marmalade in bed at 3-something in the morning. I finally did get back to sleep, and got up around 9am.

A productive day, a good evening, and a lovely bonus night. Happy Bear.

Hmm. After taking out the summaries of a couple of long but private conversations, there isn't a whole lot left. I spent almost all of the evening out in the living room, mostly geeking about Linux and programming languages with various people. A lot of the regulars weren't there, but andyheninger showed up, which is rare. We go way back; he was a coworker at both AMI and Zilog.

The other conversations were mostly about the problems that Colleen was having over the weekend around feeling excluded, and more generally the way she falls apart when things aren't going her way. It's taken me a long time and a lot of help to both understand a little about what her problem is, and to understand that it's her problem, not mine. That was the hardest part -- my natural tendency is to blame myself for anything that goes wrong.

Many thanks to pocketnaomi for finding the perfect word for "the way she falls apart". Once Colleen heard it she understood much more clearly what was going on and what she needs to do about it. I've seen that same look of determination quite recently, when she's been stretching her physical limits. She said something to the effect of: "I have 35 years of bad behavior to unlearn... You'll have to kick me in the ass when I need it. And I'll kick you in the ass about your problems."

So it's a deal. And I have to credit Colleen not only for her understanding and willingness to change, but for giving me the perfect straight line I needed to drive the point home: "You never have that kind of conversation with me." "I'd love to, but I can't -- you keep falling apart."

During the afternoon Colleen and Marty made huge progress re-arranging the sewing corner based on my realization in the morning that it would work better if the sewing machine got moved from the North wall (the window facing the driveway) to the East along the large window that faces the porch and the street. The front window is enough wider that it actually fits, and the rolling storage units that were crowded into the space in front of the built-in shelves are now neatly arranged along the corner wall. Impressive.

Along the way Marty also completely re-arranged the front closet, making it an actual walk-in, with all the contents accessible. And Colleen went through four boxes and sorted the contents. Wow!!

A somewhat tiring day and a little rough in places, but any day when you get a breakthrough on a major problem is a good one. Add the sewing corner and the closet, and it was a very good day indeed.

The weather was cool and a little rainy in the morning; I drove through a couple of patches of gentle but steady rain on the way to work. My coworker M was still working on his side of the demo (the client side) right up until the 10am dry run, and managed to get a 3x speedup by clever caching. My side (the server) worked just fine.

After the dry run I felt oddly down -- weather, worries, or reaction? It's hard to tell; probably a mixture. M and I talked and agreed that we were both nervous, and that epidurals are scary.

Spent a contented hour walking in the warm sunlight and being guardedly optimistic. The demo went off perfectly. M and I just sat there watching while the Boss and Grandboss ran through it with the visiting HeadHoncho-san.

Our scheduled date night took us to Menlo Park, and a nice little Italian restaurant next to Kepler's bookstore. Which roughly tripled the price of the evening's entertainment, but... Bookstore. I had eggplant parmesano; Colleen had a cucumber/tomato/celery salad and gnocci. We split a plate of breaded-and-broiled oysters. Very much to yum.

We snuggled and talked for over an hour after going to bed. Colleen was also thinking of Amy on Tuesday, and I learned that she had been up and down five stairs during her PT appointment.

We decided, with considerable regret, that we'd have to go to Loscon rather than Orycon this year (a major grump to those who moved Orycon into conflict). Colleen missed it last year, and with Kat in Seattle it will probably be our last Loscon; there are people there whose health is fragile enough that it may well be the last time we see them. *sigh*

A good day, ending on a slightly down but tender and loving note.

Link sausage:

From Linux Gazette, Cisco's WRT160NL, a Linux-based 802-11N router with a USB port. 100baseT ethernet, though, so you can't really use it as a NAS. I'll probably stick with my collection of assorted MiniITX boards.

Snuggled up in Colleen's arms is a great way to start the morning. Unfortunately it was mostly downhill from there. I woke up with a sore, stiff neck (basically unchanged from the day before), and took a cyclobenzaprine (muscle relaxant), which didn't help much. That probably had something to do with the fact that I felt slightly groggy all day, as well as sore.

My walk was, again, more scatterbrained than mindful, but at least I seem to be noticing that more. I was also walking more slowly than usual, the way I do when I'm depressed. I probably am. A lot of tension and stress right now. I'm hoping that, if I can make it past the demo next Thursday, I'll be ok.

I got a fair amount done at work; that's a good thing, because the weekend is going to be mostly a write-off. Yes, I'll be able to take a laptop along and work, but hopefully it'll just be cosmetics at that point. The Big Scary Feature (TM) has to be in this week.

Colleen has gone to bed early, after spending most of the day dozing in her chair and recovering from what appears to have been a stomach bug. I'm feeling calm, but a little lonely.

I need to get back to my River posts soon. (There are some other things I need to get back to, including website work and some long-delayed upgrades, but I'll talk about those in a separate post or three.) It's been a long time, and there have been developments (both in my life and others') that ought to be mentioned, and a big backlog of articles, some on topics that I hadn't even thought of half a year ago.

It's time.

Lots of good things about yesterday, though mainly good in the sense of worse things avoided. I guess the one I'm most pleased about that I actually did was calling the person in charge of the caregiver support group at Kaiser, and signing up. That's pretty big, considering my usual problems with phone calls. I also spent several hours at work writing real code. Hopefully I'll get it running today.

Colleen had a PT appointment at Kaiser; it ate up the entire morning and part of the afternoon, so I ended up walking up and down the four flights of stairs three times instead of taking my usual walk. From the way my knees were feeling by the end of it I'd guess I got my exercise.

Colleen appears to be in pretty good shape, considering. I hadn't realized how much progress she'd made in the past couple of weeks. She still needs to walk more, though, and has started taking steps in that direction.

Her digestive system still isn't back to normal, but she's making progress.

I'm not all that happy about having to go to bed at 10pm, but I'm happy about the time spent cuddling.

A pretty good day. Walked for nearly an hour (feeling a little stiff from the weekend after not having walked much for weeks). And I got in an hour and a half or so of just plain quiet snuggle in bed: the original plan had been for me to hold Colleen until she went to sleep, and then get up and work on something in the office. About midnight we just kissed and went to sleep.

The day was mostly busy, and there was a rough spot, but it began and ended well.

The high point, I think, was taking Colleen to the Baycon meeting; she proudly rolled in on Rosebud and had a blast. I spoke to various people about programming, and asked for a timeslot at the signing table for me and Callie. Must remember to take stock.

The day's shopping expedition took a long time, but I got the house needed in the way of supplies. Also a Behringer 1204FX mixer, mainly for live gigs like Thursday's at White Blossom. The guy at Guitar Showcase disparaged the sound, but it'll do fine for live gigs and practice sessions. It came with a (separate, 2-channel, 16-bit) USB interface. :P By using the second bus, you can actually get four straight outputs for recording; that may come in handy sometime.

While I was out shopping, Colleen's friend Marty re-arranged and cleaned Kat's room and the hallway. There's a substantial amount of room in Kat's room now: the desk and most of the closet are usable, with enough room for a double bed on the floor between them. Amazing.

I overloaded badly while making dinner. I was working on making leftovers into chili, but when Colleen started getting upset because she couldn't help, I made the mistake of asking what she wanted instead of starting with a hug. She asked for salad, which we really needed but represented a change in direction. Justin came downstairs just as we were sitting down with our salad to ask whether dinner was ready; I snapped at him. Not a good evening.

It ended well, though, with a couple of hours together in a quiet living room (on separate laptops). A loveseat would be tempting, but wouldn't be as comfortable for Colleen as the powered recliner, and would probably be too cramped for computing.

Colleen: "You're my purrrrrrrrfect Bear and I love you."

Me: "You're purrrrrrrrrplexing, but I love you anyway."

Not much to say about most of yesterday. The walk, though, was great. One of my neighbors down the street had just installed a ramp, and I saw him getting out of his car and asked about it. Turns out it was installed along with a scooter under workman's compensation. The price was probably out of my range unless insurance was paying for it, unfortunately.

Shortly after that, I got an unexpected call from pocketnaomi. Had a good conversation, and she helped me clarify my thinking on dissociation. Yes, it probably blocks out positive emotions as well as negative ones. More on that later, perhaps.

We went to bed early, and slept pretty well. I don't think either of us is really caught up.

It was a very good day.

At pocketnaomi's suggestion we took Plink and a copy of Rise Up Singing on our visit to Colleen, and Naomi wore the sundress that Colleen had told her to pick out. Colleen was delighted, and said that the dress looked "better on you than on me" -- which is quite true; the colors suit Naomi very well. We sang the songs that we felt best about from our song swap Friday night: "Get Up and Go", "The Fox", and "Golden Vanity".

The high point of the visit, though, was sticking around for the start of Colleen's session in physical therapy. We watched her use the sliding board to get into the wheelchair, and stand up three times (she apparently stood seven more times after we left). The first time, especially, she looked stunning, with her hair down, a triumphant grin, and what Naomi later called "victory in her eyes". She showed some strain the next two times, but still looked fiercely determined.

The PT asked whether Naomi was our daughter (she's the right age for it); I said "No, she's my sister" without a moment's hesitation. I think it was the first time I've said that in public outside my LJ; thinking about it makes me happy in a way that I find impossible to explain right now.

We went to the Rose Garden after that; Naomi had never seen it in bloom. A nice ramble at random around the flowerbeds. Not an exercise walk by any means, but pleasant.

Naomi and I spent most of the afternoon shopping; our exploration of the huge Whole Foods in Cupertino was a spur-of-the-moment thing after a discussion of pickled mushrooms.

We went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant, Spicy Leaves in Los Altos. It's located where Bombay Cafe (my original destination) used to be, across San Antonio from Chef Chu's. Delicious, and a pleasant way to end a busy but fun afternoon.

In the evening I went to see Colleen again, taking the YD who I met on the sidewalk coming back from a walk to the Rose Garden.

And I finished the tax data entry for store receipts; now all I have left is travel and a pass through the AMEX year-end summaries. Still far behind with too little time, but getting there.

A nice, low-key, but happy and contented day.

Today I was much less anxious than yesterday; Colleen seemed upbeat and rather determined in the morning, and I felt very clearly that she was supporting me emotionally rather than the other way around. I'm loved, and sometimes I lose sight of that fact.

I made a 45-minute follow-up call to Alice, the Kaiser case manager; I got answers to most of my questions, and she'll check into the few remaining ones. I realized rather late in the game that some of my items were simply venting rather than anything productive.

I caught up with Colleen in the afternoon in the surgery clinic at Kaiser, where she had her PICC line and staples removed. She's healing well. She also said that she'd gone from about 15% leg strength on Wednesday to 35% yesterday, and had actually gotten to a standing position out of the wheelchair. Determined indeed.

A delightful IM with and phone call to my sister-of-choice, pocketnaomi. The weirdest thing was saying something like "/me attempts to send you energy over IM" and having it work. Yay for friendship and the placebo effect, but it still felt weird.

Replaced a proposed but now basically impossible trip to Norwescon with flying cflute and pocketnaomi down here for music and hanging out; the timing's a lot better and it'll be far less expensive. And best of all I'll have more time with my friends, and Colleen will have time with them whether or not she's home by then.

I'm beginning to wonder whether my (now-crumbling) assumption that I lack social skills is simply due to the fact that for most of my life I haven't been social with more than a very limited number of people.

And I think Colleen, who's one of the few people I do interact with socially and is in a position to give me valuable feedback, simply gave up long ago trying to reach me. (added 3/4) In any case, I don't get feedback or calibration from real people in a real social situation: I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, or what cues I'm missing.

I've always been shy, and afraid to interact much with people I don't know. I seem to have lost a lot of that fear in the last year or so, but not all of it, and the habits are still there.

My biggest problem may still be getting an interaction started. Starting a conversation with a stranger; making a phone call to anyone, joining a conversation in progress.

On the other hand I may just be too tired to make sense -- my brain is pretty seriously fried tonight.

Nothing like starting Valentine's Day well-loved in bed at midnight, being greeted at one's desk in the morning by a box of one's favorite dark chocolates in the hands of a beautiful, naked woman, and breakfasting on left-over gluten-and-nightshade-free crab lasagna.

I hope you're having a good one, too.

Note: This is one of two River posts that have existed as completed, ready-to-post drafts since mid-September. They kept getting postponed for various reasons, and put on hold when things fell apart in November. I'd like to get them out there before the somewhat arbitrary date of February 13, which is when I posted "The River" and, in essence, started this whole wild ride.

Anyway...

While researching Friendship and Love I was particularly interested in relationships that were somewhere in the wide space between simple friendship and romantic love (or whatever you choose to call "love with all the emotional and erotic trimmings". Naturally this includes platonic love and romantic friendship. (It also includes familial love, which is what I feel not only for my actual kin but for the many people who are my chosen kin -- that sounds like a good subject for another post downstream, because chosen kin are important in my life. A hint: if I ever call you "sweetie", it means I'm probably thinking of you as one of my chosen children.)

I also ran across the intriguing concept of an emotional affair:

An "emotional affair" is an affair excluding sexual intimacy but including emotional intimacy. It may be a type of chaste nonmonogamy, one without consummation. When the affair breaches a monogamous agreement with one or another spouse the term infidelity may be more apt. Infidelity tends to exclude one or both spouses of the affair's partners. Citing the absence of any sexual activity can neutralize the sense of extramarital wrongdoing by one or both partners of an emotional affair.

Emotional affairs can be portrayed in fictional writing or drama as life changing experiences (good or bad), subjects of racy romance stories that teeter on the edge. However, they can also be catastrophic for all concerned when it is clandestine, unsanctioned and unintentionally exposed.

Sometimes an emotional affair injures a committed relationship more than if it were a one night stand or about casual sex.

Um... yes. What they said, there.

I know from direct experience that an emotional affair can be every bit as damaging as a sexual affair -- perhaps more so because (as in my case) it might not be recognized as an affair until the damage has been done. A little about this can be found in my earlier post, The Silicon Mistress. There's more to it, of course: there was a real person on the other end of the IM wire. Now that I have a name for it, I understand that, in any sense that really matters, I was having an affair.

The potential for damage isn't even confined to monogamous relationships, or to clandestine affairs -- this was an already-approved relationship that got far out of hand because I was too stupid to listen to the two women involved. (If they'd been able to talk to one another and gang up on me the whole thing probably would have ended very differently and much more happily; there were, unfortunately, problems that prevented it.) And it wasn't so much a matter of neutralizing "the sense of wrongdoing" as my not realizing that anything was wrong in the first place.

Going forward, I think the trick will be recognizing when a friendship has reached the emotional point at which it's necessary to talk about where it's going, and to recognize that at exactly that point, if not before, it's necessary to check in with Colleen and make sure that she is OK with where it's going. And the same on the other side, of course. In other words, to treat any friendship deep and close enough to qualify as a form of "love" -- deep enough to be worth taking seriously and talking about -- as a form of polyamorous relationship whether or not romance or sex has even been thought about.

It will also help to make sure that Colleen and the other woman are talking to one another -- that they're already friends, or well on the way to becoming friends before things go much further. (In most cases that's a given; Colleen makes friends more easily than I do.) A relationship, at least for me, is mostly an ongoing conversation; fortunately, Colleen and I seem to be mostly comfortable talking about our friendships these days.

The situation hasn't come up again, but given my new-found capacity for emotion and near-total lack of experience handling it, it wouldn't surprise me if it did. I don't want to be surprised by it again, because I want things to stay under control. It's good to have someone to talk to about it.

This one's about the languages of love. No, not the Romance languages, despite their suggestive name and the fact that both French and Italian lay claim to the appellation. I'm talking about The Five Love Languages -- Dr. Gary Chapman's hypothesis that

unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others. Dr. Chapman's divides love languages into five categories: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.

There's a good summary of the languages here on Chapman's website, but a much better way to assess yourself is to take this 20-question version, since it actually compares each language against the other and gives you numeric scores. I strongly suggest you and your spouse/partner/SO/sweetie both taking it, and discussing the results. I found mine (behind the cut) somewhat surprising -- I would have expected words to come out higher. For that matter, see if you can get your (older) kids to take it.

You see, love isn't about treating the other person the way you want to be treated, it's about treating them the way they need to be treated. Saying "I love you" in the language they understand best. I've written about this upstream, but this clarifies it a lot.

Mismatches in language can cause a lot of havoc. If your language is "gifts" but your partner's is "quality time", they may weep at an expensive present because you could have spent the money on an intimate dinner for two at their favorite restaurant. If "acts of service" is high on your list but low on theirs, they might not even notice all the little things you've done for them. They might be waiting for a good-night kiss or a simple "I love you".

So, query for the audience: Were your results surprising? Your partner's? Will knowing this make a difference?

"What can I do for you?" -- I used to ask Colleen that question rather often. She told me recently that it drove her crazy. She felt that she was being put on the spot; that I was fishing for some specific response. Really, all I wanted was to be helpful. But when I thought about it, I realized that I wouldn't like it either. Nobody wants to feel helpless or incompetent, even if they do have problems getting around. Maybe, especially if they have problems.

N. told me of a similar problem: she didn't want her lover wasting time and energy doing practical things for her, when what she really wanted wwas affectionate attention. Time together. Sometimes we loners have trouble remembering that our lovers would rather have us with them doing nothing, not off doing something for them somewhere else. It makes sense, when you phrase it that way.

I rarely ask Colleen what I can do for her anymore. I confine my practical questions to things like "Is there anything I can bring you as long as I'm up?", or "Would you like a cup of coffee?" as I'm pouring one for myself. Something that clearly would take little or no extra effort on my part, and would bring me close enough for a quick kiss or a hug after I've set down whatever she asked for. She shouldn't have to ask for those.

If I think the dishes need doing, I can do them while she's asleep.

Colleen and I went for a nice long drive yesterday; around the long loop up the coast and home through Half Moon Bay. It was mostly good, but some disturbing things came up toward the end and I'm afraid my mood crashed pretty badly. Yes, my baseline mood has improved recently (Colleen confirms it, and ordered me in no uncertain terms to stay away from gluten from now on). But the amplitude and frequency of the swings has also increased considerably.

This will be briefer than I would have liked; details have already started to fade. But some of it is very important, at least for me.

Somehow, probably in response to me asking her to clarify something, we got back on the subject of my attempts to get her to answer questions when I didn'tunderstand or didn't hear the original answer. She blew up at me. You may remember a post upstream titled Why I asked. Yeah, that again. Plus something that triggered memories of last March and April when she feared she was losing me (which I've touched on under the title of The Silicon Mistress). And didn't believe me when I said she wasn't, because she was paying more attention to my attitude than to my words.

The combination sent me into a tailspin, wondering whether our relationship had deteriorated to the point where she no longer wanted to talk with me about it. From further conversation, I don't think so. I hope not. She also came up with a fascinating bit of information. It raises more questions than it answers, unfortunately.

She was under psychoanalysis for years, from a very young age; it left her with a lifelong hatred for and distrust of the whole profession. It hasn't stopped us from getting the kids help when they needed it, but she reacted vehemently when I asked whether we would benefit from counseling. I wouldn't know -- I've never done it.

But apparently my way of asking questions, multiple times with different wordings to try to come to an understanding of what she said, sounds to her exactly like what a shrink does. No wonder she rejects it.

Question: what in Hell can I do about this? I can't stop asking her for clarification: if it was important enough for her to say something to me, it's important for me to understand it. Is there a way of asking for clarification that doesn't make me sound like I'm trying to psychoanalyze her?

Public service announcement #1: When I ask you a question I am not trying to psychoanalyze you. Nor am I trying to see whether you know something, the way I would with a kid drilling for a test. I'm just trying to get an answer. When I ask a question it's because you know the answer and I don't. If I ask again in different words, it's because I didn't understand the first answer, or because it sounded like the answer to a question I didn't ask. If I paraphrase your answer and ask you to confirm it, it's because I want to make damned sure I understood what you said, because it seemed to be important.

Public service announcement #2: Please listen. I will usually tell you why I am seemingly asking a question again. If I do, I mean exactly what I say. Please listen to the exact words of the question, too. Don't respond with the answer to the question you think I was going to ask: it will only confuse both of us.

I don't know how I can make this more clear. Suggestions welcome.

According to an article in the October 24th issue of Science Magazine (p. 606) titled "Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth", people holding a warm cup of coffee are more likely to judge the person they're interacting with as having a warm personality than people holding a cup of iced coffee. People touching a warm object are more likely than people touching a cold object to give a gift to a friend rather than treat themselves.

I'm not sure which I find more weird: that there is, somehow, a reason why we use the same word for these two seemingly disparate concepts, or that Colleen doesn't find it weird at all.

In any case, I think I'll make myself a cup of hot ginger tea.

(ETA: Colleen and the article both point out the association between physical warmth and comfort, and the care a mother gives her infant. That is, indeed, the likely connection. I still find the linguistic association surprising. The fact that Colleen picked up on it instantly while I can only make the connection intellectually is, of course, not surprising in the least, but I find it vaguely disturbing.)