On Kristen and Me

[hkellick]

Alright, I haven't been posting alot lately, but if you've been keeping up with one of the two of us, you know something's been terribly wrong. So now that the two of us have talked it through, I'd like to discuss things, for those who are concerned about me/us and for my own records.
As a note.. if any of you think I got this wrong, tell me and I'll correct. Especially you, ecwoodburn. Most of your side comes from our discussion last night and I may have gotten this wrong.

This last week had been a bad one for us.
Things started the night before Dawn's wedding when I, who had been stuck in a car for over 7 hours was a little too hyper and bouncy for Kristen who was, I think, feeling really out of it (due to sleep dep.) The two of us ended up getting into an argument in front of everyone, which was really embarassing for the both of us. That night (well, really the next morning), the two of us ended up talking about alot of things, including Kristen's confession that this whole month has been hard for her and she was dealing with some serious past issues.
Monday night, we started talking about her depression (which she admitted she was suffering from) and I kept trying to analyze it, figuring that if you understand the roots, you can eventually make it go away. Unfortunately, this was exactly what not to do and that agitated Kristen greatly.
On Thursday, my mom announced to me that she didn't want Kristen to be sleeping over. I didn't understand her reasoning then, but I understand it much better now. She was feeling sick and run down and did not want to be entertaining guests when she was not at her best.
Things went downhill from there into a nightmare of miscommunication, not listening to each other and simply being too wrapped up in ourselves to realize what the other person was thinking and doing.
To summarize the situation briefly.. Friday we ended up fighting because she felt that I was putting some of my real life stresses (wshe hadn't realized how bad they'd gotten) over my relationship with her. She basically felt like my priorities were Thesis/Job Hunting first and then her. These feelings were "confirmed" (to her) by an LJ comment Saturday morning, after our fight (and after a Panic Attack by me) about how I had to concentrate on these things. What I was saying that these were VERY VERY IMPORTANT, but I did not mean to the exclusion of her, which is how she read it.
She demanded I find time for her sometime during the weekend and I told her that I did not know how long it would take for me to get done the numerous jobs I had to get done (which WERE very time-heavy jobs). Miscommunication played a big part here because she felt I was talking about how I needed to be job hunting and thesising instead of spending time with her but then I had gone out and seen a movie or spent a few hours online talking to people.
Saturday (all weekend), Kristen spent her waking hours completely pissed off at me. Meanwhile, after a panic attack, I felt just totally completely stressed out over the status of my life and instead of recieving any support from Kristen, I got a great deal more stress instead which hurt and confused me.
Along the way Saturday, a few people got personally involved. You know who you are. To all of you who stuck your necks out for both of us, talked to both of us or just listened as we ranted, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Especially to kareila who may make it possible (if I can find a job in Rochester.. or even Buffalo) to move the hell out of the house already. You are such an awesome friend. Thank you! :)
Someday Saturday, I learned from.. someone involved.. that Kristen had been looking for me to confront my mother and tell her that I was going to see Kristen no matter what. When I first heard that, I couldn't believe that. I love my mother dearly and her good will is important to me. She's not always fair (and I didn't think she was fair for that), and I was angry at her.. but I know when to fight with my mom and when not to and this was not a fight that I could have won. I could have confronted my mom for an hour and I still would have needed to get the jobs done and I still would not know when everything would be done. The difference is that she would have been pissed at me and made my life miserable until she calmed down.
Saturday night, after a long and stressful day dealing with jobs, being pissed off at mom for what I felt was her part in the argument and, of course, upset and confused about the argument, I went to destress and see a movie I desperately wanted to see: School of Rock.
Before I went to the movie, I tried to call her and.. it was a five minute conversation and then, nothing. She told me she didn't want to talk to me on the phone or over LJ. Not until I make time to meet her in real life. She had essentially completely shut down all forms of communication until I played by her terms.
So.. I went to go see School of Rock, alone.
This was an.. insensitive choice. It was a movie that, at one point, Kristen and I were both going to see (though, I must admit, I still have no idea if she really wanted to see that movie or just was angry because I had free time when she felt I was saying I didn't because of job hunting and thesising) and I went and saw it without her, which pissed her off even more.
Sunday, I woke up to see that she was angry at me but not talking to me. She felt that she was sure I had rejected her and was not interested in her because I had made time for all these things, including free time, but not for her at all. As I stated before, she had misunderstood what I was saying when I said I couldn't promise time for her Sunday. She was sure I had rejected her and had been further hurt and angry.
Sunday, I spoke to dustkitten for a while and I realized that Kristen was talking to people I was talking to (Again, you know who you are), but not me and that the only way I knew what was going on, why she was angry, was through these other people, which upset me greatly. It reminded me too much of how things ended up near the end of my relationship with Bryony where the two of us were apparently not talking to each other, but she was talking to dustkitten who, a while later, told me what she had said. I thought that was really uncool and I was angry about it.
Then I went to work again with mom and Josh and we finished up around 4:30, so I rushed upstairs and called Kristen, leaving messages on both phones to say "Hi. You wanted time to meet me and talk. I'm free now. Call me and we'll find out where and when?" and then I waited. And waited. And then I saw that she was awake (she had commented to a common friend's LJ, but had not called me.) And, I was just so royally angry it wasn't funny. I had worked my tailfeather off to get time that I thought she wanted to talk to me and.. she had rejected it. I don't fully understand her reasoning and, Kristen does confirm that her choice not to come over after all was a mistake.
Got back online and cried to and bitched to anyone who would talk to me, including blackfelicula who I had a LONG conversation with about how badly we had both acted and what she thought I needed to be working and what she thought I should do if I really wanted to get Kristen back. She promised that she wasn't just going after me, that Kristen was coming over that night too and she was going to say many of the same things to her. Which, apparently, happened, if a bit late, and Kristen felt more calm and able to see my side after having that conversation.
On Monday morning, she commented back to a post I'd made and promised she would get in touch with me sometime yesterday. I assumed she meant a phone conversation since.. whatever we did, it was important enough to warrant a Real Life face to face conversation, but as it would be difficult between our scheduled to do that, I assumed a phone conversation would happen.
And as I sat there, thinking about the weekend, thinking about what I had felt, what I had heard from others, I stopped feeling confused and just started feeling angry. I was hurt and angry and scared and while I did want to see if Kristen and I could get over this hump and still have some sort of relationship, I wasn't sure that was the least bit probably. She, apparently, felt exactly the same way.
As time went on, I kept stewing over how angry I was, how hurt I was, how unfair I thought she'd been. Meanwhile, Kristen was writing a 14 page (in her paper journal) letter to me about how she felt, why she was upset etc.
On Tuesday, she posted that she was going to write this letter up on LJ so that she would have a chance to see everything she feels without her being rushed through it in a phone call. As I understand it, she posted to chickchat with the same notice and everyone (again, I'm not there, so I don't know for certain) told her this should be done in some other forum.
When I read that she wasn't even going to call, I got really pissed. I was stewing in my own anger and I knew that I had to vent it out before I could be openminded to accept anything. Also, I really needed an actual conversation. Not.. post, comment, comment, comment... that's not a conversation. It's a shitty third place alternative.
So I called her up and begged her to call. I explained how I needed to vent at her, how this was really important and she should not relegate it to livejournal. She argued with me and I hung up, completely pissed off because, for me, the whole experience this weekend was a big wakeup call. IF you want to maintain a relationship, you need to change. You need to talk, you need to compromise and you need to listen. (alot more than that too, but..) and listening to Kristen, it sounded like she was still so caught up in her own needs, she wasn't willing to change or to compromise or anything. She needed to do things her way.
And.. I saw RED. I hopped online, to talk to people and I talked to Alana for a little bit and it didn't help. So I did the one simple thing I needed to do, go to Walmart and pick up "Finding Nemo" and nearly got myself killed because I was so angry and kept hitting the gas and I jumped into busy traffic in front of a speeding car and LUCKILY his breaks worked.
Came back and no one was around, so I stomped around a bit more, wrote Kristen a reply telling her, again, how I felt and adding that this was important and she needed to be fair. She couldn't expect me to be open minded and listen to her when I told her I couldn't be open minded until I did this.
In the end.. whether it was chickchat or me, she did end up calling.
For about half an hour or 45 minutes, we talked, sometimes very heatedly about why we were angry, why we were hurt.. then slowly both our voices lowered until we started having constructive talk.

So.. where are we now, ask you? Well... we don't know. We have talked. We both know we miss each other and we want to give each other a second chance. We're going to somehow meet this weekend, whether it'll be a weekend in Rochester or a one day day-date to do dinner and a movie or whatever.. but we're going to see if we both feel comfortable giving this a second chance and trying again.
I do know one thing.. if we do try again, I think I need to be more accepting of help. A few times, i thought I knew what I was doing when I was screwing up badly. Some of that will still happen, but it would not hurt to use some of the resources around me.
I had an idea and I'm wondering if any of you gentlemen are interested. I propose a livejournal communittee like chickchat, a place where any guy can talk privately.. the topic will be.. our relationships with our significant others (Though, single men would be accepted too, if they want to be a part of this). I just think it might be an untapped resource to talk to some of you guys who have dealt with some of the issues that some of us guys are dealing with now. Are any of you gentlemen interested in this?

EDIT: I have created guychat for just these purposes. If you want in, just comment to this and I will send you an invite.

Comments

[kolys.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have issues that need airing on such a community, but I'm more than happy to join one and help out whatever way I can. Having trouble thinking of a snappy name like ChickChat, though.

Re: the rest of the post... I'm glad there's at least been some progress. It sounds like you've both been dealing with a million things at once, and perhaps not in the best possible way. Personally, I think there are huge tracts of middle ground in there, as long as you can figure out a meeting spot.

'Course, these things never come with a map.

[lite.livejournal.com]

GuyChat?
That was Alana's idea and it works as much as anything else I can think of.

[dustkitten.livejournal.com]

ChickChat's existed in one form or another since like...gosh, 1998? I dunno for sure if I named it, or if it came out of a conversation. Maybe a little from column A or B. Its original nature is a com channel on Chaotic.

That has been your history lesson for the day. :)

-A-

[coderlemming.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's one heck of a post there, and one heck of a set of events. I hope things work out this time around. I hope you guys can be more open and patient with eachother... it hurts to be angry with someone you love.

Count me in on guychat. Could you send me an invite?

[janinedog]

Howard, you're probably going to want to set the minimum security on your community, so all posts are friends-only (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=120).

And John, you'll probably want to go back and edit your entry there to make it friends only. :)

[lite.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Janine :) I THINK I did it, except that it seems to be proactive and not retroactive. (It will turn all new posts friends_only but not old posts?)

So.. yeah. Thanks :)

[janinedog]

Correct, it's not retroactive. :)

[janinedog]

I just read this, and Kristen's entry in chickchat as well.

I just wanted to say that I'm glad that things are looking hopeful. I know what it's like to be upset with someone you love, and it's not easy to get through it.

*hugs*

My $0.02

[phoenixsong]

Friday, lite and I talked on the phone for maybe an hour, and it was extremely non-constructive. I was stressing over the idea that lite might end up moving away, which was especially worrying to me because I felt like we'd pretty much identified the lack of much quality couple-time as a big issue. Not to mention, I KNOW I am horrible at distance relationships. I've put a lot of effort into this, but I know that if I don't actually spend time with someone on at least a semi-regular basis, it's very easy for more immediate, local stuff to distract me from paying attention to everyone else. Knowing that I struggle with just long-distance friendships, my reaction after this phone call was basically "How the hell am I supposed to maintain a relationship when I've never even really successfully maintained a long-distance friendship?" Somewhere in here was also when I started realizing that I felt like lite had spent all week analyzing me. I know he meant well, but well, he's my boyfriend, not my shrink.

Once I got to work, and admittedly influenced by dawnstar, I posted suggesting trying to get together Sunday afternoon or evening. I was thinking something along the lines of an actual date -- movie, maybe dinner, and probably talking things over too, but mostly just trying to find some time for us to actually enjoy each other's company. Neither of us can really do much about my past, but I felt like this was something right now that we could work on. I also got the impression somewhere along the line that the chores he had to do were only going to be on Saturday, which is why I was thinking primarily of time away from his house on Sunday. This suggestion was met by "I can't promise you anything in terms of time together, I've got a lot of stuff that needs doing," which was actually well-intentioned (trying to not make a promise he couldn't keep). Not knowing that's what he meant, though, this would be the bit I interpreted as "Working on fixing things is going to take a backseat to everything else and I can't promise much in the way of time together, you'll just have to make do with phone calls until everything else is taken care of."

I don't think of myself as a physically violent person, but reading this at work and interpreting it as I did, I got so upset I tried to beat up the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom because the only other thing I could think of was screaming and crying and well, that wasn't really possible just then.

This was bad on both our sides.

So, because lite had mentioned talking to kareila, I decided it was time I talked to her myself. E-mailed her from work, went home, slept, woke up to all of it coming right back, and within 15 minutes was on the phone with her for the next two hours. Until lite called to explain what he'd posted that morning, except that since he used pretty much the same exact words (rather than telling me he was actually trying to make the time to get together tomorrow, but it would depend on how fast things got done), I heard them the exact same way ("I don't have time for us, suck up & deal") and hung up on him.

Side-note: I did not, realistically, expect big dramatic FU-type gestures from lite towards his mom. I just needed some sort of indication that either myself and/or the relationship wasn't taking a backseat, because I do tend to believe that accepting such things sets a bad precident. Although from what I was saying at the time, I can see how it seemed that way. My only excuse is that I was angry and feeling ignored.

[continued in a second comment so as not to exceed LJ comment length limits]

Re: My $0.02

[phoenixsong]

Showered and came back to an LJ post that lite was going to try to move to Rochester with kareila's help, and would I help him job & apartment hunt? Oh and by the way, going to see School of Rock, g'night!

Several ways this did not go over well. The movie was really the least of it, but easier to focus on since it had sort of figured into my admittedly vague plans for Sunday evening. After feeling like I'd been blown off twice in 24 hours -- like if he was saying the same exact things at 4am and 8pm, what the hell had he been doing all day?! -- asking me for help with this hit me in all sorts of wrong ways. I felt like "we" were being ignored, but I was still expected to jump at the chance to help him. And to be honest, even though a lot of this got cleared up when I talked to her, I still sort of resented that lite seemed to keep going to kareila for emotional support instead of me. I'd been borderline since the whole paper towel dispenser incident that morning, but this just about broke any willingness I might have had left to try to fix things. So I told lite I didn't want to talk to him for a few days. (I did specify that, BTW -- go check that comment again.) I needed to get my head back together, and talking to him was feeling more like beating it into a brick wall.

Sometime in the middle of all this -- when it really felt like there was very little else I could do -- was when I first posted to chickchat.

So, I did some apartment chores of my own overnight into Sunday morning (to at least keep my sleep schedule from getting whacked), went to sleep, and yes, lite did call me to get togehter once he was done. At that point, though, it felt like 1) he was showing very little respect for my request to be left alone for a few days, and 2) he expected me to jump because mommy had "ungrounded" him.

I realize this wasn't fair. At this point, I was too angry to care, or try anymore. So instead, I went to talk to blackfelicula, who did give me the gentle tongue-lashing she'd earlier dispensed to lite. She also let me vent, too, which was something I still needed to do. Six hours later, around 3am Monday, I went home.

Everything else from that point is fairly accurate, but that's the summary of what was going on at my end of things.