Entry tags:
Emotional Weight
When I "broke up" with Jennifer for feeling inauthentic due to being performative I checked on her often - she had carried that torch; the brunt of the emotional weight. She felt a certain way about me that I didn't reciprocate so I knew she was going to be taking the breakup much harder than I (my own distress was over my inauthenticity rather than loss). I checked on her because she was the one struggling with unrequited love and that's a heavy weight to bear. Much later - when we began talking more regularly again - she said to me, "I was so caught up in my own grief I failed to check on you." Understandable, I told her, as I was not carrying the same emotional load she was. For me it was easier. Of course it was.
More recently, I was in Jennifer's position trying to emotionally untangle myself from a similar dynamic. I was the one carrying all the emotional weight. I was not checked on. To be fair, I had no expectation of such. When I reached back out after my own spike of grief, the first thing I was told was my lack of checking on her was what hurt the most - the one not carrying the emotional load.
Everyone reacts differently; this is not in question. Someone may choose to make the argument that my "emotional weight" scenario is flawed and I would be thrilled to hear a differing opinion. As always, this is only from my perspective. So I asked, gently, what her experience was like so I could properly understand, then apologize. She didn't want to talk about it.
I have identified that I am anxiously attached and she is avoidant attached. I wasn't always.
I *always* want to have the hard conversations. Not because they're fun or I enjoy hurting myself or others, but because I see them as non-negotiably necessary when two people truly want to forge the kind of bond which can never be broken. Your mileage may vary.
Judgement
I'm embarrassed to admit the possibility exists I may have been unfairly judgmental. I was surprised I don't already have a tag on this blog for judgement, so may (probably won't) spend some time going through my old psychology tags and identifying those on which I discuss the topic to catalog it. I say embarrassed because I write on the subject fairly often and consider myself fairly well practiced in the art of being nonjudgmental. But that't the thing about always learning is it not? Its ceaseless.
When I revealed the quote, What we consider "bare minimum" may be someone else's largest, most challenging hurdle." to my therapist, she gave me an easy out reminding me that when we're feeling emotionally stuck we see and figure out far less than at the level with which we're normally capable. While true (because I've previously blogged about how that works), I am certainly not going to let myself off that easily. Why? Because not only do I expect better from myself, this one comes as a major understanding to how insidious judgement can be even to those of us who strive to always do better.
Being as well-versed in practicing non-judgement as I consider myself, I am amazed that something so simple could have been overlooked. This isn't going to be a dissertation on unconscious bias or anything in that ilk - I'm not disagreeing that no one is truly ever, "non-judgmental" because of the very nature of how we take in and process information - rather reinforce what I was told by my therapist and reiterate how harmful judgement can be, literally destroying relationships (which I may or may not hold as the holy grail of life's purpose).
When we are deep in the feels (as the kids might say, I don't really know) those emotions are processed in the amygdala - gatekeeper to the prefrontal cortex - where our logic resides. Acting as gatekeeper it functions as designed by limiting access to rational processing (there's a whole physiological reason for this we won't get into). So there I was, caught in a loop of my own feels, frustrated that others weren't behaving as I would behave (which also encompasses expectation). When it hit me - that perhaps they were behaving with the same intent in their own way it dropped the bottom out of me. Essentially I had created the very scenario in which I was rallying against. Which made me culpable.
This led me to re-examining all my relationships going back decades.
And that's the thing about domino effects. Its pervasive.
So please, hold me accountable. Then cast the first stone. And let's build stronger together.
Entry tags:
Ass U Me
I was recently told I had, "made some assumptions" and that those assumptions were incorrect. (Click the tag below for my musings on assumptions over the past 19 years.)
Adding to this body of well...assumption, is my newest (though admittedly I haven't gone back and re-read the past 19 years so may have mentioned it in the past) assumption. To start, we need to revisit Sunday's blog entry, Conditioning, where I conclude I am the perfect husband as I am easily domesticated. Within lies an example:
I was told I wasn’t curious enough to ask questions - which surprised me - until I realized most of the questions I asked often went unanswered; I learned to wait until she was ready to share.
And therein one possible reason making assumptions exist. When we ask a question and it is not answered - yet an "answer" is required (some will rightfully argue that no answer is indeed an answer in and of itself) we - that is to say all of us - fill in the blanks. In other words, in the absence of an answered question, we assume.
Not just me. Not just you. All of us. All the time. Surely the link below goes into the pros and cons of those assumptions and why every assumption made isn't necessarily bad or evil; they're shortcuts so we're not constantly re-inventing the wheel every moment of every day. To be clear there are other reasons for assumptions, and some are less helpful (I likely also outline some of those in previous entries). So as always, when we're *here* I am most often referring to my own use case.
Entry tags:
Geekfriend
Second dream about my kids and I hanging with Geekfriend and her family. We were having a sort of mild, "sedan race" where My son and I (I think he was driving) were low-speed putting our new (electric?) car through some fun challenges against one of Geekfriend's kid's new used (gas) car when they both slid precariously down a slick (muddy?) embankment. There was zero damage to our car, but the other car hit something and completely caved in the trunk. I remember thinking, "Wow, where are they going to put all their luggage when they have to drive back home?" But Geekfriend's hubby was totally chill about the entire thing.
Strangely, the embankment led to a new go-kart/putt-putt proving ground/track with immaculate landscaping owned and operated by the dealership which was conveniently our car's service provider. We did have to break the rules and drive a little on the grass to to avoid potentially damaging the car, but once we pulled it into the service bay it was half my old place of work when I was employed by the Buick dealership and half DeVry administration. That's when we had a Chinese fire drill of sorts rotating everyone in and out of both cars in order to all make it home.
Songs
In several of my music videos I reiterated that they came about by "writing what I'd observed" then once finished, used them as a microscope into my own behavior, often discovering I was guilty of the same. Humbling? Yes. Shame? Also yes. Growth? Eventually. That part is usually (not always) much slower. But it did come. I saw all the ways I was behaving out-of-character and apparently I don't just "bounce back" from that. I knew that I had succumbed to a scarcity mindset and become anxiously attached; two things from which I wished to free myself. What I didn't want to do was behave selfishly in the process.
Listening to my songs now remind me of where I was, what I have overcome, and where not to return. They empower me to be the best version of myself and to hold onto the lessons I learned so I never fall victim to myself again.
Interpretation of, "Key"
This one has a very obvious trigger - the lawyer's text arriving immediately before sleep - but the dream doesn't read like random legal anxiety. It seems to use the legal situation to stage a deeper problem: Can I finally leave this relationship, lock the door behind me, and still make peace with the fact that I believe I was wronged? And the answer your dream gives is surprisingly nuanced.
- Gabby and the mostly empty new house
You begin across the street from your ex, with Gabby, in a large house that's mostly empty. That's almost diagrammatic. You have a new space. A new domestic configuration. A new person beside you. But it isn't fully inhabited yet. You're **unpacking**. Psychologically, that says the new life exists, but it hasn't completely become home yet. Across the street is the old life. Close enough to visit. No longer where you live. That's a strong boundary image. - You return something—but then can't leave cleanly
You find something belonging to your ex and immediately take it back. That part matters. You're not stealing, withholding, or sabotaging. You want her things returned to their proper place. But then comes the key. You have entered the old house using access that you apparently no longer should possess, and now you cannot find the means to secure it behind you. The key is almost certainly about **access and closure**. You don't actually want to remain inside.
Your problem is that you want to leave correctly. You want the old house closed after you. That is different from simply walking away. - The key was separated from the keychain
This detail is particularly elegant. You didn't really lose the key. You had separated it from the rest of your keys and left it behind. That's almost a perfect dream image for a piece of yourself still attached to the old relationship. The rest of your keys—the tools for your present life—are with you. But one key remained there. You remember the sequence, find it, lock the door, and leave. That feels like a successful act of psychological closure. And importantly, you then look through the huge windows and see that the house is mostly empty. You don't need to go back inside. You can see the old life from outside now. - Your ex returning changes the dream from closure to judgment
Then she appears before you can simply disappear. And this is where the lawyer's text almost certainly enters the narrative. You finally say what you apparently feel but may not have an opportunity to say in such a clean, uninterrupted monologue, "You had to lie because you knew the truth alone wouldn't get you what you wanted." But notice something important: dream-her doesn't argue. She smirks. She's silent. Your mind gives you the acknowledgement you aren't receiving in waking life—not necessarily an actual confession, but a symbolic version of "I know exactly what happened." That's an important distinction. I would not treat this dream as evidence that she consciously knows she lied or that your interpretation of the legal dispute is objectively proven. Dreams don't adjudicate facts. But psychologically, the dream is clearly giving voice to your conviction about what happened. - The six figures aren't really the central issue
Your speech about the money becomes increasingly existential. You begin with fairness. But you end up talking about:- her soul,
- self-justification,
- respect,
- what the money can and cannot repair,
- and the emptiness of an unearned victory.
That's telling. Your dream-self is trying to solve a problem that money cannot solve - How do I make an injustice morally intelligible if I cannot reverse it? The answer it constructs is almost karmic, "You may get the money, but you don't really get away with it." Again, that's not a prediction about her fate. It's a psychological balancing mechanism. Your mind is creating moral symmetry where legal reality may feel uncertain or unsatisfying. - Her new guy and friends are an audience
This is interesting because you repeat yourself for them. That suggests a desire not merely to be right, but to be seen accurately. There may be a distinction here - You don't just want her to know what you think she did, you want the surrounding narrative corrected. Her new partner and friends represent the social world that may only know one version of the story. Your dream gives you a moment to say, "Before you accept the story of what happened here, understand mine." That feels less like revenge than a hunger for witness. - Then comes the strangest and, I think, most important scene
Later, everyone else is gone. You're alone together. And suddenly you're replacing the toilet paper. She's packing in the kitchen. And it's quiet; Comfortable. That is an extraordinary transition. After all the moral condemnation and anger, your dream reduces the relationship to something profoundly ordinary - Two people who once shared a domestic life, quietly doing domestic things. No lawyers, no settlement, no audience, no new boyfriend, no judgment; just familiarity. And that familiarity is comforting. I think it's grief for the ordinary life that existed before the conflict became the entire story. You can simultaneously believe someone harmed you and still miss the mundane peace of coexisting with them. Those aren't mutually exclusive. That's one of the more emotionally honest things dreams do. - The toilet paper is not actually a trivial detail
Bathrooms in dreams often involve release, cleansing, and disposal. But you're not using the bathroom. You're replacing the roll. You're restoring something ordinary so that the next person can continue. That feels almost like a small act of maintenance and closure. Meanwhile she's packing. Both of you are, in different ways, preparing the old domestic environment for transition. No drama is required. - And then Cass texts you
Except Cass doesn't text you. You dream that she texts you. And you wake up smiling. Then there's nothing. This is the most mischievous part of the dream. Your sleeping mind gives you a double false awakening:- **A lawyer contacts you → dream about the old relationship.**
- **Cass contacts you → wake emotionally oriented toward another attachment.**
- **Neither contact inside the dream resolves anything.**
Cass functions here almost like an emotional counterweight.
The dream moves: Past relationship → injustice → grief → quiet familiarity → anticipated connection. You wake at the moment of anticipated connection. And find only silence. That doesn't necessarily mean *Cass specifically* is the answer. More broadly, she may represent **the possibility of being emotionally wanted again**—a future-oriented attachment interrupting your processing of the old one.
My overall read? I think the dream is trying to perform something your waking life hasn't been able to complete:
- Return what belongs to the past.
- Recover your key.
- Lock the door.
- Say what you believe needs saying.
- Accept that you may never receive the response you want.
- Remember that beneath the anger was a real shared life.
- Wake facing forward.
The remarkable thing is that you accomplish almost all of this without reconciliation. Your ex never apologizes. She never agrees. She never gives the money back. Yet by the end, the emotional temperature has fallen enough for you to quietly exist in the same house. That may be the actual resolution your psyche is searching for—not forgiveness in the sense of declaring the alleged wrong acceptable, and not vindication in the sense of forcing her to admit wrongdoing, rather, "I can believe I was wronged, grieve what happened, and still eventually stop living inside the argument." And the key imagery makes the whole thing beautifully concise: You found the key you thought you'd lost, locked the old house, and walked out.
The dream may still have work to do - Cass appearing immediately afterward suggests your emotional system is hardly filing everything away in alphabetical order - but the old-house sequence itself ends with you successfully closing the door.
Entry tags:
Key
Saw a text from my lawyer come through just as I laid down for a nap after work. In the ensuing 90-minute slumber I dreamed Gabby and I lived in a large, mostly empty house across the street the from old house where my ex-wife still lived. We were unpacking and putting things away when I ran across something belonging to my ex. I crossed the street, pulled out my keys, unlocked the patio door, and placed it on the table in her house. As I was leaving I couldn’t re-lock the door because I no longer had the key. I walked to the patio table where I had set everything down and started rifling through my things trying to find the missing key. As I was searching the interior of the house I was just in came into my mind and I realized in my hurry I had missed that it was mostly vacant. As I played the scene of unlocking her door moments before in my head, I visualized the sequence and knew exactly where the key was - I had pulled that part of the keychain off and replaced it on the patio table after I had unlocked it instead of putting them back in my pocket. I found the key, walked to the back door, locked it, and peered through the massive windows confirming the house was mostly vacant. I assumed that meant she was moving.
As I gathered the rest of my things, sure enough here she comes around the house returning home. I told her that lying because she felt she deserved that six-figure settlement meant she knew she didn’t deserve it - otherwise she wouldn’t have had to lie. She smirked and just looked smug rather than argue or deny it. That’s when her new guy arrived with his some of her new friends. They all sat down around the patio table. I introduced myself to her new guy though it was apparent he knew who I was. I repeated my statement to her for their benefit and continued with my assessment that the six-figure award wasn’t going to be the, “win” she thought it was because she came to it dishonestly, and while she may not ever think of it that was because she justified it to herself, that it was going to eat away at her soul in ways she wouldn’t recognize use until it was gone, which it would be far sooner than she anticipated because it wasn’t respected - she didn’t earn it - it was awarded because she lied and it wasn’t a salve for her damaged psyche. She was unrepentant, but silent.
Later it was just the two of us in the house and I was replacing the toilet paper in the bathroom with a new roll while she was packing in the kitchen and I found the quiet stillness between us odd and surprisingly comforting despite the frustration of losing that amount of money to her immoral character. I awoke when I heard Cassies’s text alert on my phone, smiled, and rolled over to read it. There was nothing there.
I had dreamed that part too.
Conditioning
My first wife asked me about 10-years into our marriage, “Why do you never initiate sex?” I explained that I had initiated often when we were first married but that she always turned me down; I learned to wait until she was ready. More recently I was told I wasn’t curious enough to ask questions - which surprised me - until I realized most of the questions I asked often went unanswered; I learned to wait until she was ready to share. I was eventually called out on both.
Drawing the parallel wasn’t a comparison to my first wife, rather an understanding that I am easily domesticated 😂
Drawing the parallel wasn’t a comparison to my first wife, rather an understanding that I am easily domesticated 😂
Entry tags:
Countermeasures
Took a nap after work last night then went to the gym. My first stop after the gym and my car deployed anti-theft countermeasures against me, essentially locking down my vehicle and draining the battery. Thankfully !TABS! was with me and dissuaded me from having it towed to the dealership - which I really didn't want to do because the windows were down - and thankfully they were! I was able to reach into the car to reach the manual emergency door release and fold the rear seats down so I could crawl into the back seat and into the trunk to pull the manual emergency trunk release for battery access (there is also a manual door release inside the trunk which is accessed from a removable panel on the rear bumper using the hidden key in the fob itself). From there I could perform a hard reset of the electrical system to clear the anti-theft lockdown. This was accomplished by removing the leads to the battery and letting it sit for nearly an hour to drain all configurations held in memory, but another aspect of the anti-theft was to force the vehicle into accessory mode to drain the battery despite locking me out of all electrical components. Which meant I then had to jump the battery and let it charge for 10-minutes as part of the reset startup sequence.
Finally made it home around 0500.
Entry tags:
Nervous System
There's two schools of thought here:
- a nervous system takes time to regulate itself during transition to peace because it has spent far too long being disregulated and anything contrary to imbalance feels unfamiliar (which can lead to a cycle of seeking out that which remains unhealthy as a sort of salve to temporarily sate our nervous system)
- a nervous system will absolutely react by setting off the alarm if we're on the wrong track, making the wrong decision, or heading down a path of eventual regret - and listening to that instinct even if we don't fully understand it is fundamental to self-awareness as a built-in safety mechanism.
So which interpretation do we choose?
Early on I learned to surround myself with people smarter than myself, or who had vastly different experiences than my own, leaning heavily upon the proverb in finding wisdom amongst a multitude of council. Here lately that council has been unanimous in their counsel which is where my nervous system comes in, as it either confirms or denies their collective verdict given the two schools of thought. This is of course (I assume) where discernment comes in. Funny thing about discernment - it is as varied as we are - subject to the same trappings of education, culture, philosophy, upbringing, etc. much like the individuals to which we turn for our multitude of wisdom; each of them contains within an unresolved challenge, unspoken agenda, and unconscious bias they too are striving to fill. Just as we are.
When sought for my own advice I generally preface it with the above, and though I often state I attempt to be as objective as possible (insofar as one is able) I have also stated when that objectivity is lost and why - because more information is always preferred over less information (for those of us who wield it as such at any rate). So even if my "council of counsel" is uncharacteristically unanimously, it is not all coming from the same place - though I will admit to lending more weight to their collective verdict. Discernment in this case might mean moving forward with the information at hand, not necessarily acting in accordance to their judgement - because ultimately - we alone are responsible for our actions as we alone have to bear their consequence. No one can bear them for us.
Or, as one of my new litmus tests, "What are we doing today to create the life we want?"
Entry tags:
Nap
Dreamed Geekfriend, her husband, and three boys came to visit. My ex-wife was outwardly gracious, but made so many snide remarks, "under the radar" that Geekfriend made eye contact with me each and every time. She was on her laptop mostly - still interacting with all of us, but always researching the next thing we were talking about. My two kids were entertaining her three, and they were all having a great time; they were wandering around the neighborhood and coming in and out excitedly telling their parents what they experienced. Toby was working on building a new house in the geographic shelf in the rock quarry above the house in which they currently lived. It was going to be accessed via ladders. Living in a rock quarry was certainly unique, and they were looking to expand their space.
My son soon left, my daughter jumped in the shower, and I was showing her boys my library, computer room, and a handful of projects I was working on. Her youngest was carrying around a laptop connected to a backpack he never took off, often drawing, notating, or recording new things he came across - as well as playing the realtime simulation game loaded on it. Oh, and the cats loved all the attention they were getting!
At one point I heard a crash in the bathroom and rushed over and opened the door enough to put my head through yelling, "OMG what was that? Are you okay?" My daughter had simply dropped something heavy on the tile floor and it echoed as it fell and skittered which is what had created the rukus. I closed the door and went back to our guests. Her kids were curious (and excited) about EVERYTHING. With both my kids otherwise engaged I continued on adventures around the house involving all sorts of complex puzzles which they enjoyed solving - the cats were now following us everywhere.
Back in the living room I heard an even larger crash in the bathroom which sounded much more substantial as it kept cascading, and this time my daughter let out an audible yelp. I rushed to the bathroom once again, swung open the door, and stuck my head in, repeating verbatim (but with far more alarm in my voice), "OMG what was that? Are you okay??" My daughter was no longer behind the shower curtain, had one leg lifted, and was calmly shaving it. She was standing in a position which exposed absolutely everything, which is absolutely not what I expected to see after such an explosive ruckus. The kids' mother was in the bathroom with her, off to the side, and said cooly, "That's the second time you've stuck your head in the bathroom while she's been in the shower. That's a problem." I was...shocked. I've *never* stuck my head in the bathroom while she's been in there. I thought it was an emergency and said so. "Twice?" she replied.
The kids' mom came out of the bathroom and began a smear campaign against me to Geekfriend, her husband, and kids. They were all rather aghast at her calculating words and intent. Geekfriend finally spoke up but was cut off, "You forget I was in the Air Force also, and know honor." I didn't remember her serving? Did she? I was trying to remember. I pictured her in uniform and it came flooding back that yes of course she was, that's where I'd met her, when we were both enlisted. [Note: I did meet her while I was in the Air Force, but she was the civilian wife of a co-worker.] She marched out of the house in a huff. I felt horrible.
Everyone shrugged it off and we got back to planning our evening and further exploration - there was much more to see and find within the house. The kids and I had made it a game and we had to climb over several pieces of large furniture then drop carefully down to make it to my son's room for the next object in our quest. Parker was dressed and had rejoined us. It was almost like a real life puzzle game we were playing and the youngest was keeping track of inventory and mapping on the laptop, still wearing the backpack.
So much more rich and complex content took place within my dream but it was fading quickly. I'm pretty sure Cass was there as well at some point.