I am a Martian and she worships Venus.

[kleenexwoman]

In the past forty-eight hours, I have learned an important lesson--namely, that I am very bad at dealing with emotional drama.

Longtime readers (and people who I've ranted about my relationships to) will be aware of the existence of a certain young woman named Tammy, who I've known on and off ever since middle school. To make a long story short, she and I had been friends for a long time, had an inexplicable fight, and then began dating. I broke up with her a few months ago, on what I thought was fairly amicable terms. I was wrong.
Mara, Tammy's best friend four-evar (and kind-of girlfriend, I think), IMed me out of the blue on Friday asking how I "could pull something like that" on Tammy. I was confused and was not aware that she was referring to something that had happened a month ago. She accused me of playing dumb, signed off, and then IMed me back telling me that if I really wanted to get back together with Tammy, there was a SLIM chance.
I assumed that Tammy and Mara had had some kind of girly heart-to-heart at a sleepover or something, discussing and rehashing the break-up (as I've been told women will do), came to the conclusion that I was in fact pulling something on Tammy, Tammy had thought about getting back together with me, and asked Mara to talk to me about it. Otherwise, why the hell would Mara tell me this?
I IMed Tammy and asked her about it. This was not a simple task.
Part of the problem I tend to have when communicating with Tammy is the difference in how she and I communicate. Tammy will use very vague and metaphorical language, probably assuming that I will read between the lines, gather subtext, and understand exactly what the hell she's talking about. I try to be as to-the-point as possible and probably more blunt than I should be, and I think I expect other people to communicate in the same fashion. It often seems like Tammy's trying to dance around questions I ask, so I ask her to clarify, probably sounding insensitive in the process. An example:

kleenexwoman42: How is it going with Mara?
bookbat_98: mara and I are enjoying the deep level of our friendship
kleenexwoman42: So the girlfriend/girlfriend didn't quite work out, or what?

This sounds like a very stereotypical guy/girl exchange, doesn't it? Like something out the mouths of characters in a sitcom about attractive people in the big city.
I've been considering this a lot lately, and I think that I'm emotionally male. I hate talking about my relationship with the people I'm supposed to be having them with--when a relationship consists entirely of talking about the relationship, as it boiled down to with Tammy at the end, it's barely a relationship. I need there to be an intellectual connection--generally having common interests to talk about works, and then going from there. (This might be an Asperger's thing, now that I think about it.)
ETA: Now that I think about it, this explains a lot. I liked talking about books and theories with Tammy--things and ideas instead of feelings. This is a very stereotypically guy-like thing--how many times has a woman complained that her man will talk for hours on end with his friends about the Dodgers or about cars, but can't express his feelings to her? It's because while she is thinking about her feelings, he is thinking about his car. Or about the Dodgers. I didn't like talking about my feelings with her because I did not think very much about my feelings (and maybe didn't feel them as deeply as she did hers?)--I thought more about books and theories.
Fuck, I am a gay man trapped in a lesbian's body. Just like Boyd. If I liked sports you could slap a dick on me and call me Ray.

I don't like the idea of commitment, of planning your lives out together at the very beginning. Tammy wanted to do this. She wanted to get married right away. (I might add here that she backed this up by claiming that the Goddess appeared to her in a vision and told her that she wanted us to get married. This probably should have tipped me off to something.) I don't like this idea: What if it doesn't work out? Most relationships don't. You're stuck with each other then, and if you do break it off, it's going to be very painful.

What I do like is the idea of falling in love slowly, of waking up someday and realizing "I've been with this person for ten years and I haven't ever wanted to be with anyone else." This is what common-law marriages are for. It is also, now that I think about it, the way that Jay and Silent Bob, and for that matter Crowley and Aziraphale, are portrayed as being together in most of the slash stories written about them.
In fact, what I like most is the idea of friends that just happen to have sex with each other. And are maybe in love. (To anyone that I am friends with and might have had or want to have sex with: This doesn't mean I am in love, specifically, with you. I might be. Or want to be. Ask. Preferably privately.)
I like this, now that I think about it. Best friends. Good sex. Just happening to be in love with each other (as long as you both are aware of this, because then you've got mutual unrequited love and people writing angsty stories about you) and not making a big deal about it. You can be in love without having a Relationship, can't you? Just having a relationship.
If that makes sense. And I'm aware it might not. My view of relationships in general is probably skewed a bit from reading slash and being in love with people at the wrong times.

Right, what happened next.
Tammy and I shared our mutual views on relationships, summed up neatly in the above paragraphs. We discussed children (Tammy wants kids, I don't--see this post in childfree for details), marriage, and whether my view of the ideal relationship could be construed as "just screwing around".
I think we have decided to just be friends first (again) and see if the relationship really does develop to the point where I'd be willing to have a Wiccan commitment ceremony and adopt multicultural babies (not unless I am lobotomized). This is a great relief for me--when we broke up, I wanted to still be friends. I did not think this was unreasonable, but Tammy was of the opinion that, having been soulmates for a few months, we could never ever go back to merely being friends.
Tammy is very stubborn, and I think she's the type of person who would refuse to leave a relationship that just wasn't working out. I was not looking forward to having to quietly convince her to leave me once she'd glommed onto me again...

Actually, that would make a fantastic movie. Person A and Person B are in a relationship. Person A doesn't think the relationship is working out, wants to break it off, but doesn't want to be the "bad guy" and dump Person B flat-out or have an affair. So A must find as many (wacky and zany, alright) ways possible to get B to be as disenchanted with the relationship as they are and dump A. The twist at the end: While doing all these wacky and zany things, A has fallen back in love with B and actually doesn't want to break up when B dumps them. How's that for a freaking feel-good comedy?


And I'm way behind on my NaNo as well. I've only written 2,670 words and I should be up to at least 10,000 by now. I need to figure out motivations and I hate doing that.
I've noticed that it's very difficult for me to write a story with a specific theme (emotional or otherwise) in mind. "Reeling Off The Years" only worked because I was thinking about how to get from Darth Vader to chaos theory in a conversationally logical manner. The themes of distance and missed opportunities emerged while I wasn't watching--I didn't even mean to make Junie into an emotionally frustrated oh-man-I-hope-that's-not-my-future who gradually got slightly meaner and less tactful throughout the meal (possibly because of the beer; I can't handle alcohol too well either).
I say this because I'm currently trying to formulate a couple of stories that really have very broad themes. "From the Gods", a kind-of fic based off the story that George wrote about Marty in "Reeling Off The Years", is about a man who comes to believe that his son, and eventually all teenagers, are actually aliens. It's going to be a very chilling and psychological story and will be a fantastic metaphor for the generation gap if I ever figure out how to write it. And the untitled Marty/Marty (which I am considering naming after a Guns 'N' Roses song or possibly a Motley Crue song or maybe using a lyric from either of these bands for the title, since all the fics I've done for BTTF so far have had similar title origins) now has all sorts of emotional subtext (thank you Nightspore) that I don't know how to write. I want to make it subtle, but when I actually set out to write a fic with psychological subtext, the motivations tend to come shooting straight to the surface (see "Divine Rehabilitation of Jason Mewes" for an example).
So I need to keep "Ramble On" as plot-based as possible in order to let all this quietly shine through, while keeping everyone's motivations and personalities in mind. This is going to be very difficult. I just have to remember that it's my first time and if I don't get it finished by the end of November it isn't that big of a deal.

Comments

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, this isn't very nice I'm sure, but *she backed this up by claiming that the Goddess appeared to her in a vision and told her that she wanted us to get married. This probably should have tipped me off to something* made me laugh my ass off, but because it's funny and because I've been there, I've been there. I have the same problems with trying to write subtly of emotion, mainly because I don't actually possess subtly of emotion. (my sister once asked why every love scene I write involves someone throwing a rock at the person they like) Or complex motivations. I usually have to keep a scoresheet and graph the possibilites of what a character might be thinking. I agree - it's hard work. But you're obviously capable of it. Maybe the relationship shit is just making a mental caster wheel wobble at the moment.
"From the Gods" sounds really intriguing. Kind of like if the kids from "Village of the Damned" had become teenagers, huh? I also like the metatextural origin (kind of like what I tried to do with "A Boy's Life").


*sings* EEEEEEEvery rose has its thorn . . . .