#relationship posting

[the-lincyclopedia]

My partner loves the Spiders Georg meme and references it a lot, and honestly it's super helpful for me as a person who struggles with perfectionism. I often feel like I'm doing the bare minimum, but my partner helps me see that actually I'm generally trying to live up to an unachievable Platonic ideal I invented in my head of the perfect activist or intellectual or friend or writer or whatever. When he makes up a Spiders Georg reference that's relevant to me, he tends to use me as the Georg to indicate that actually I'm far exceeding the average (like, "The 'Average American goes to one protest per month' factoid is a statistical error. Protests Georg, who has been to three protests this week, is an outlier and should not have been counted" on a week when I'd been to three protests and was feeling guilty for not going to a fourth). It's a really helpful way to recontextualize what I'm doing and how I compare to the average person--not that I should try to be average, but just to recognize that I'm not failing at times when I'm not living up to the Platonic ideal in my head. Long live Spiders Georg.

[sneakygirlgamer166]

My type:

Nice

Trans

What more do you need?

[notsamwisegamgee]

relationships should be 50/50, they tell me which of my behaviors are symptoms of autism, and i giggle at how smart they are

[vulpinesaint]

"how do you handle conflict with people you love" well that's very simple. i just very specifically pick people that i know i will never have any conflicts with ever and then if i do i either avoid it as if it didn't exist or end the relationship in my head entirely. no conflict to handle. very simple

[hell0andg00dbye]

i love you like i met you last month and like i've known you for a lifetime

. 💗

[cosmicabsurdism]

me and my gf are old man yuri btw. if you even care.

[r0semultiverse]

Like music to my ears

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[the-lincyclopedia]

(One of the many possible expressions of) true love is writing a parody of "Footloose" (the song, not the whole musical) with your partner and making it about Tycho Brahe and his drunken pet moose.

[emptiness-statue]

[what-iz-life]

Having an emotionally mature partner is TOP TIER. You're able to express yourself freely and openly. They don’t insult you. They don't give you the silent treatment. They don't become aggressive or manipulative. They listen, they respond—they patiently hold a safe space for you.

[vulpinesaint]

when you casually told me that you could drop me from your life anytime you wanted and it fucked me up for years afterward. and now i'm the one cutting off the relationship slowly but surely. how do you fucking like that

[cyberiapinksosa333]

“wtf is wrong with you”

you mean like today or like in general?

[krasnyel]

love like yours will surely come my way

[performing-personhood]

Starting to dramatically lower my scheduling preference standards

What's the point of trying to match my partner's business hours schedule if all he does when we're together is hyperfixate for hours on whatever Switch game he's grinding? Like, he can do that whether or not I'm there and his evening won't change in the slightest.

Working evenings and weekends (and holidays, and birthdays) is not what I want to be doing, necessarily, but at least I won't feel so damned invisible.

Thirteen years, and the only thing I love that he is willing to do with me is watch Star Trek. Sometimes. If there's a new season of a new show.

The other day he said to me, in vino Veritas style, "I know I'm not as interested in your stuff as I want you to be in my stuff." I said that was true and thanked him for his honesty and vulnerability. Despite myself, it gave me hope that maybe things would be different, that now that he's self-aware he'll do something about it. That hasn't happened, of course, but that's on me.

After my bestie left after her visit, I finally looked him in the eyes and said how badly it hurts my feelings when nobody is curious about me and nobody asks me any questions, because curiosity is a big love language thing for me. Hearing me say that about someone else seems to have gotten through because every day since he's remembered to ask about my day.

I'm grateful for that, but now that I know that's how to get through to him, I'm plotting how I can use this same strategy to wake him up about how invisible I am to him. When the opportunity presents itself, I'll be ready.

[free-my-mindd]

Please, don’t settle for a surface level of connection when you know you’re craving depth.