(no subject)

[hungryghosts]

(Crossposted from Tumblr.)

In another post I made, I spoke about a relationship I had that felt more like a Secret Third Thing than a "typical" romantic relationship.

[…]make what basically amounts to the opposite of a suicide pact with someone ("despite everything we are going to live the best that we can, and we're taking each other with us") without any particular feelings involved, only for particular feelings to get involved (to this day, despite the feelings, it still feels more like a Secret Third Thing than dating per se. probably because we don't consider the feelings the origin or foundation of our relationship)

Because I feel like rambling about in-system relationships, Secret Third Things, and their overlap today, I'll disclose that that particular relationship is with another person in my system. (The other in that post being my outerworld partners - those relationships are also unconventional in their own ways, but that's a story for another post.)

There's a bit of important context to know about us first. (It involves past trauma, particularly child abuse - I've put it under the cut.)

Our family was deeply, deeply fucked up. Our mother had her own childhood trauma history, both from growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China and from her own abusive parents and untreated mental illnesses. She then married a man, our father, who was prone to fits of rage; and then they moved across continents, away from everything they'd ever known, to scrape together a living as immigrants in the US. To say the least, she was a deeply unhappy, deeply lonely, and deeply unwell person. She and our father had no business being parents, at least not without sorting their own baggage first.

But they had us anyway. And our mother, especially, wanted a daughter so very badly. In her mind, a daughter would be the perfect friend. A daughter would be someone she could confide everything in without judgement. A daughter would comfort her. A daughter would understand her. A daughter would fix her. (All of this, she told us herself - many times.) To say that she was disappointed that her "daughter" didn't work out the way she wanted is an understatement for the ages. And naturally, she took all of that disappointment out on us. To say nothing of what we endured from our father.

Now, we've been plural from a very young age. (Whether because of the trauma, because of neurodivergence, or just because, we don't know - and frankly, we don't care.) As in, like since first grade young. But back then, we understood it as "having an imaginary friend," because that's what kids do. It was just two of them back then: her, our first primary aka the "original," and him, the "imaginary friend." And because she had no one to turn to, he became her constant companion and confidante. It fell to him to keep her going through everything our family did - all while he had no space or support of his own, and no power to actually address the cause of all that suffering. And by "keep her going," I mean things like holding her back from self-harm and suicide, on a regular basis.

To say that it fucked him up is also a hell of an understatement. Like turtles, it was codependency all the way down in that house. Years passed. More shit happened. Long story short, we made it out, but not unscathed. She vanished, the guard changed, he remained.

When he and I first began really talking to each other, bonding over stories and art that we both found cool, all of that was still relatively fresh in our history. And thankfully, by then, we'd developed some measure of awareness. He was like, "I've spent so long making someone else the center of my existence that now I feel adrift and empty, and I'm worried I'll make you into my new Someone Else." I was like, "as someone who is riddled with insecurity and mental illness and loneliness, I'm worried I'll take you up on that." And both of us were like, "that would suck a lot, actually, and maybe we shouldn't do that." And then I was like, "hey, maybe this is a crazy idea, but what if we made an Explicit Agreement to Not Do That? What if we tried hanging out with the Understanding that if we start Doing That, we will Stop?" And he was like, "that… sounds nice, actually. If we can get it to work. Let's at least give it a try."

That was the start of our Secret Third Thing, and the foundation of it - that explicit Agreement, that deliberate Understanding, which has evolved more and move over the years. It started as "for both our sakes we will not do that thing," and has become "to make both our lives better we will do these things, and also not do that thing." There are things that he struggles with that I can help with; there are things that I struggle with that he can help with; there is mutual permission to meddle in each other's affairs, and meddle we do. But more importantly, there's the mutual understanding that we'll both seek consent and have the right to revoke it at any time; that we'll cultivate other connections alongside this one; that we'll help each other but also each do our own work on ourselves. Whatever feelings exist, in whatever shape they take, are secondary to this Agreement, and the actions we take to honor it.

It all sounds neat on paper. It's complicated in practice. Many singlets haven't even figured this out (and US culture has so many bullshit ideas about relationships) so of course we weren't going to nail it in one, with the relative scarcity of role models for any kind of plural thing. We've drifted into Doing That Thing territory a few times, and had to take space from each other. Had to figure out what taking space from each other even looks like when you share a body and a life. Had to work out which things that work for singlets don't work for people stuck in a head together, and which core principles still carried over. Had to do all of this in a world that stigmatizes plurality, and especially stigmatizes relationships between headmates. Had to do this while coming to terms with being disabled and unlearning unrealistic ideas about being completely independent. I could keep going. It's worthwhile, not effortless.

Singlet, able-bodied, neurotypical, normative ideas about relationships don't work for us. But what does? That's a question we're still learning the answers to, one day at a time. It's work - but it's not a burden, not when we've made that work into the foundation of what we have.

Comments

[lb_lee]

Mori: that’s fucking awesome, bros.

I feel like me and Biff are kinda that weird third thing too, though in a different way. He’s gay, I’m a dyke, our sexualities exclude each other and we have no romantic thing, but calling us friends doesn’t quite work either. It’s why wcall him my best bro instead, because “bro” is the closest singlet category for what he is to me.

And we totally have a mutual pact to stay sober and off smoking and cutting together.