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That is to say I found variable living situations appealing, and that just because there are norms around relationships doesn’t mean you must conform.
Next things are things I learned from/with gail, and were brought up today when talking w parents
1st was my broad use of love. She would tell friends all the time she loved them, including me, and it always felt really nice and warm. Removing that word from a pedastal was super important to me, and continues to be super powerful conception for me to make sense of things
Especially considering the weird shit w Sydney and “I don’t L O V E you I just L O V you” LOL dank memes
Next thing was learning about jealousy. I don’t know what my disposition was like about jealousy prior to Gail, but she had lots of guy friends and I think that was really cool for me (working on heteronormative assumptions) to fix a lot of biases most ppl deal with
I still remember having certain issues with her guy friends but often I think that had to deal with their behavior, which was often coming onto her when she was not interested. There’s always a risk of me understating jealous motivations, but it honestly feels like a lot of it
Was discomfort for her discomfort and not wanting her to have to deal with stuff. Either way I think I quickly got over any jealousy type memes towards men, and subsequently towards relationships in general
There was a case when she went to Europe, but it was similarly a case of a guy coming onto her that she was uncomfy w, and I think I was more frustrated that she wasn’t transparent (but tbf she said she was struggling with making sense of his advances and how to handle and we
Were young and far away missing vibes).
And something I just thought of that was more the most recent era of like college stuff and end of relationship stuff:
Parties
Sex
Breakup itself and dealbreakers
First thing is like I was never really interested in partying/drinking stuff. I would chill w Meg and her while they drank sometimes, but that was mostly a proximity thing and it was very low key
In college, I was totally uninterested in going to parties and also seeing her friends at all. It was just p overwhelming and unnecessary for me. But it also meant that it created this pretty big divide between us and how our time was spent. I was totally cool with this, and just
Wanted to see her when I could focus on her, and she could focus on me. Other stuff was needlessly stressful, and my intense anxiety def didn’t help
Side note: pretty wild how much my anxiety has shifted relatively recently, I wonder how much is due to pandemic vs breakup. Intuition feels like post breakup was super important. Anyway back to it
So that separation of time def created a whole new vibe to the relationship, and I don’t think she really liked it that much. But it exposed me to new ways of having a relationship with someone, even if that ended up being dysfunctional for us 2 specifically.