Safety Briefing

When someone goes dark it can sometimes be hard to pick up with them again.  

There are the cases where I've cringed at having some sort of reunion.  I actively WANTED to reach out to the person but a fear of rejection and feelings of guilt prevented me...

What a weird mental block.

To be honest, it's probably because I've been projecting all these assumptions about how you feel about me.

Here are some things I've noticed:

I might feel guilty that I didn't do "my part" to prevent us from drifting in the first place.  Now that guilt is preventing me from reaching out again.  It's a petty cycle.

Our relationship might have gone cold on an off note or what I thought was "something I did" to personally offend you. The reality of the situation probably has more to do with the timing of our lives than anything else.

I'm holding on to some sort of resentment of you.  The funny thing is, it can sometimes help to see the other person if you want to forgive them.  Of course, you don't want to see them because you're resentful.  This one is truly a vicious cycle.

Since we've grown apart I've started hanging out with a new set of friends.  I'm afraid you're not going to be compatible with this new group (Though I should at least give everyone a chance!).  The newer friends are also a higher priority right now so I don't have a lot of time to spare for other socializing.  This makes it harder for me to find time to meet up separately with you in the event not everyone gets along.

I worry you might find me "disappointing".  I don't measure myself by other people's standards; I'm talking about the times where I feel I've failed to meet my own expectations.  And while I try not to judge others by their social standing, I know the converse isn't true.

I've genuinely forgotten how much fun we have when we hang out. The good news is, sometimes all it takes is one crazy night to remind me.

I'm afraid of how much we've changed. These pronounced differences are obviously worth exploring.  Even if we don't have much in common anymore, "starting over" always seems like more work than it really is.  This is sheer laziness.

Boredom + wikipedia = winning.

So according to this one popular psych model, adults have four attachment styles:

secure

anxious–preoccupied

dismissive–avoidant

fearful–avoidant"

Let's see how this plays out...

"Several studies have linked attachment styles to relationship satisfaction. People who have secure attachment styles usually express greater satisfaction with their relationships than people who have other attachment styles.[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]"

--"No shit?"

Secure attachment

Securely attached people tend to agree with the following statements: "It is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don't worry about being alone or having others not accept me." This style of attachment usually results from a history of warm and responsive interactions with relationship partners. Securely attached people tend to have positive views of themselves and their partners. They also tend to have positive views of their relationships. Often they report greater satisfaction and adjustment in their relationships than people with other attachment styles. Securely attached people feel comfortable both with intimacy and with independence. Many seek to balance intimacy and independence in their relationship.

Secure attachment and adaptive functioning are promoted by a caregiver who is emotionally available and appropriately responsive to her child’s attachment behavior, as well as capable of regulating both his or her positive and negative emotions. [10]

Insecure attachment

Anxious–preoccupied attachment

People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to agree with the following statements: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them." People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners—a condition colloquially termed clinginess. Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.

Dismissive–avoidant attachment

People with a dismissive style of avoidant attachment tend to agree with these statements: "I am comfortable without close emotional relationships.", "It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient", and "I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me." People with this attachment style desire a high level of independence. The desire for independence often appears as an attempt to avoid attachment altogether. They view themselves as self-sufficient and invulnerable to feelings associated with being closely attached to others. They often deny needing close relationships. Some may even view close relationships as relatively unimportant. Not surprisingly, they seek less intimacy with relationship partners, whom they often view less positively than they view themselves. Investigators commonly note the defensive character of this attachment style. People with a dismissive–avoidant attachment style tend to suppress and hide their feelings, and they tend to deal with rejection by distancing themselves from the sources of rejection (i.e., their relationship partners).

Fearful–avoidant attachment

People with losses or sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence often develop this type of attachment[11] and tend to agree with the following statements: "I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others." People with this attachment style have mixed feelings about close relationships. On the one hand, they desire to have emotionally close relationships. On the other hand, they tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness. These mixed feelings are combined with, sometimes unconscious, negative views about themselves and their partners. They commonly view themselves as unworthy of responsiveness from their partners, and they don't trust the intentions of their partners. Similarly to the dismissive–avoidant attachment style, people with a fearful–avoidant attachment style seek less intimacy from partners and frequently suppress and deny their feelings. Instead, they are much less comfortable initially expressing affection.

It's obviously not as simple as which style you are.  

Around 70–80% of people experience no significant changes in attachment styles over time.[16][28][29][30][31] 

The fact that attachment styles do not change for a majority of people indicates working models are relatively stable. Yet, around 20–30% of people do experience changes in attachment styles. These changes can occur over periods of weeks or months. The number of people who experience changes in attachment styles, and the short periods over which the changes occur, suggest working models are not rigid personality traits...

Though most of us will remain fairly consistent.

To find out exactly how they effect your relationships and why they matter, you should read the full entry.  I chose to focus on the types because it's an easy first step and a digestible way to get started on understanding a person's role in a relationship.

My guess is that once you understood secure attachments were indicators of relationship health and longevity you did your best to try and justify yourself and/or partner as having a "secure" relationship or being someone of the secure attachment type.  

Being real about this shit can be hard, but it's just you and the internet right now.  You should give it some serious consideration.  The worst that can happen is you learn nothing new.

 Ideally though, one can gain pattern insight into their personality and past relationship mistakes, allowing them to work on potential issues before they come up.

When I honestly compare myself to the different descriptions I feel closer to dismissive-avoidant than secure.  

I think most people my age are pretty thrilled to go to weddings.  

Aside from generally being happy for the couple, I wonder at the mixed emotions that might surface:

"Oh Em Gee.  My friends are getting married, we're all like...adults now."  This same thought occurs when the first of your friends have kids or buy houses.

"These two beautiful people have found a blindingly perfect and eternal love.  What have I been doing with my life that I'm still a single piece of shit?"

*Click*.  Somewhere a woman in her mid-late twenties has a lifelong dream of getting married and raising kids.  That was the sound of the hour hand on her biological clock slamming into place like the hammer of a loaded gun.  Woe betide her current boyfriend or future man.

"Fuck, plane tickets are gonna be expensive.  Can I even afford a nice gift?"  $_$

"Argh.  I need to find a date for this." OR "Ugh.  I can't ask [____] to come with me because going to a wedding together will uncomfortably escalate our relationship and send the wrong signals."

"There had better be other single people at my table or I'm gonna fucking lose it."

"I need to buy a new dress, suit, shoes, etc."  $_$

The problem is, it's almost impossible not to benchmark your "progress" in life against your friends so major events like weddings become a time of reflection and reassessment.  When you're back in town with all your old friends at a bachelor/bachelorrette party you're doing as much looking back as looking forwards, getting wasted and tossing around old stories to reaffirm your bonds with the hometown crew.

"I love catching up with old friends but the wedding itself doesn't really do anything for me."

-- Me

Given the above, I doubt the reader would be surprised to learn that a celebratory announcement landed in my inbox this morning.  Turns out, one of my childhood friends is getting married later this year.  Hazaa!

And while I'm good and happy for the couple, I had to ask myself whether or not I really feel like it's appropriate of me to attend.  

On one hand, we spent a lot of our formative childhood and high school years together as friends.  On the other hand, we naturally stopped keeping in touch early into college and really haven't spoken much since.  He never offended me and we never really fought, yet there's basically a ten year gap where we wouldn't be friends if we didn't have so many close mutuals in common.

If he wanted to catch up and rekindle a long dormant friendship, I wouldn't be opposed.  Hell, I still like the guy but a wedding really isn't the best time or place work on it.  Besides, I don't want to have to pay a tax just to come hang out with him and the rest of the gang (the cost of the flight + wedding gift).

After much deliberation (which I won't bore you with), I've decided I'm not going to attend.  I'll do my best to come up with a polite refusal without making a big deal out of it.  I'm sure a few of our friends will think it's a totally dick move.  This irks me, but...

"I decided two years ago that I was only going to invest energy in close relationships that were real and mutually beneficial.  Old friends and family don't get special treatment just for having been there first."

-- Whoever said the last thing

I want to make it clear.  I'm not 'writing this guy off' or 'giving up on him'.  I honestly don't believe good friendships ever end, they instead become dormant or go through other parts of the natural cycle.

All I'm saying is that if this guy wants to pick up where our relationship left off, he's going to have to do it on more reasonable terms than:

Note:  The real meat of this post is going to be towards the bottom.  What follows is a bit of a long winded explanation of how I got here. I watched a slightly "older" Google presentation the other day wherein author Kelly Mcgonigal gives an interesting overview of a few willpower and procrastination studies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BXuZL1HAg

At 52:56, she sums it all up with five great "tips" that won't really make much sense unless you watch the video.

Train your willpower physiology (sleep, exercise, meditation, low GI diet)

Forgive yourself

Make friends with your future self

Predict your failure

Surf the urge

Not bad.  I'm going to go ahead and cross of the stuff I've already been doing:

Train your willpower physiology (sleep, exercise, meditation, low GI diet)

Forgive yourself

Make friends with your future self

Predict your failure

Surf the urge

I already work out, recently started sleeping and exercising more.  I've also been into meditation for a few years now and am on one of the lowest GI diets possible, so that's all taken care of.  

As far as predicting my failures is concerned, that's just good planning practices so I don't need to worry as much about that.  Finally, "surfing the urge" is actually a common meditative technique so I'm going to go ahead and write it off for now.  This leaves me with two new items of interest to try out.

2.  Forgive Yourself

I recently noticed this happening in supportive communities such as reddit's /keto diet forum which I've been frequenting of late (longer post on that to come).  The most common example being something to the tune of, "Don't worry if you fall off the wagon one day, everyone cheats.  Just remember we're all human.  So keep calm and get right back on the next day."

I've been pretty hard on myself in the past when trying to establish new habits.  I'd punish myself mentally for every missed day or for "slacking off" thinking it would turn me into a hardass but it never really worked. All it seemed to do was mentally exhaust me instead.  Every cheat moment would send me into a spiral of guilt or bout of self-criticism which in retrospect seems a huge waste of emotional energy.

3.  Make friends with your future self

This is the most important immediate change I feel I can affect and I've re-interpreted it slightly to see if I can't make it even more powerful.

After some contemplation I've decided to kill my future self.  Dead.  Finished.  Forever.

No longer will there be heroic and epic fantasies of me expertly piloting helicopters, reading hieroglyphics and traveling off cushy retirement savings.  From now on I will only imagine my current self in future situations.

Now, when I think about how I want to learn to fly a helicopter "someday", I don't picture myself perfectly piloting a helicopter.  I picture myself in a helicopter, equipped with all the skills I have TODAY, wondering what the fuck I'm supposed to do.

Now, when I think about how I want to live off banked retirement savings, I don't picture the money I "will" put away "someday".  Instead I think about the number in my savings account TODAY and imagine trying to live off that in the future.  As my balance changes, my mental image of what my future lifestyle will be like also gets updated.

I am making this change because I feel that "fantasy freebies" will only distort and confuse my relationship with my future self, making it hard to properly motivate for things in the present as well as being able to gauge realistic progress towards goals.

So I'm keeping it real.  Keeping it honest.  Keeping it real honest.

....................................................................................................................

Q:  "But Ben, what if you actually need a good progress estimate for work or something?"

A:  "Work is a different story, but you should try avoiding giving estimates regarding skills you don't yet have since they're bound to be wildly inaccurate.  

I sat down tonight thinking "What are some words or phrases I think to myself which I should probably change?"

And here is the basic list I came up with.  In the interest of keeping it simple and doable, I'd like to focus on replacing the thought of a single word at a time for now.  The idea is that by making certain words 'forbidden' it will be easier for me to notice when I'm thinking them.  Naturally, creating this table had me diving into the habits and complexes stemming from these basic terms. I will have to explore them more at a later time.

Note:  I'm sure there are a lot of self-talk guides out there with smarter replacements for more effective behavioral change.  Regardless, it was a good exercise.  Even if the table itself is "no duh" obvious, I was able to prioritize some of my personal values and get them down on 'paper'.  More the journey than destination this time around.  Ya dig?

Click the thumbnail for full table.

Step 1) Hit Play

   Step 2)  Read on: Be always on the look out for people who are constantly surprising and delighting you.  Defying your expectations, reason and yeah, even good judgement.  Preferably in a pleasant way.  Someone you can have challenging discussions with which lead to constantly changing each others minds.  Especially about little meaningless things.  It's the best gift.   Guess what happens after 100 of those conversations?  You've changed each other's minds maybe 50 times each.  Now you're that much a part of one another.  You carry the results of countless conversational collisions.  Insight.  Growth.  New perspective.  An appreciation for the finer workings of their mind. You say you grow bored with people but I disagree.  You didn't run out of interest or curiosity, you just ran out of silence.  Silence is the conversational intermission where your subconscious mind regroups itself to absorb what you know about the other person.  Sometimes it takes a week.  Sometimes it takes a month of hanging out with them and not really saying anything or actively investigating them as a person.  Just hanging out and doing your thing, whether that thing is traveling or camping, whatever. If you can get past the things that annoy you about that person, if you can come to accept and appreciate them then all of a sudden one day...something crazy happens. You start to notice the details you missed.  You start to zoom in and pay attention to the little things they do, all the minutia you couldn't possibly have taken in from the first while you hung out.  It all comes to the surface.  And that's where your expectations about them begin to fail.

Because you couldn't possibly predict the complexity of their more subtle behaviors...they become surprising and beautiful all over again in their slightest motions. And one day you're so close.. close enough to watch them change.  Or so close that maybe you think you can't see the change because it's happening too slowly.  But if you pay attention and look for it, if you go back to that pot and actually push the dirt around a bit, you'll see the seeds are growing.  Every action they take that you didn't expect is a way they're growing.  Every action you take because of them is a way you're growing.

  You're thinking "we're settled in and we're comfortable, but it's not exciting."  But that's because you're not excit-ed.  You're still waiting for big moves, still looking for big things and that's wrong.  You're past all that now.  You're never going to be surprised by the garden again, but you can always get excited by what's growing in it.