hartmans | Entries tagged with relationships

This has sort of been obvious for a while, but it really crystalised in the last couple of months. My happiness function is different than Margaret's and a lot of peoples'. She describes some sort of composite happiness: if things are generally going well, she's happy; if they are not, she is not.

I sort of have that. however, for me, it's much more like I'm happy when there's no reason to be unhappy. If anything is going badly then it puts a significant cap on my maximum happiness. If I can fix it, then I become happy. If I can convince myself I don't care, then I can become happy, although that takes a bit longer than if I can just fix things.

Obviously this is a rough sketch of what's going on. I actually spend most of my time generally happy, so it's not like my world must be perfect for me to enjoy it. Also, obviously some problems effect me more than others.

Margaret has suggested that I change to a more normal outlook on happiness. I'm not entirely sure that's possible although I've had success with similar scale self-reprogramming in the past, so it's believable that it might be. However, at the moment I'm not at all sure I'd want to change. The goal isn't just to be happy: I'm sure with the right drugs I'd be happy all or most of the time. For me at least the goal is to have the prospect and actuality of happiness as a forcing function. It gives me a reason to fix stuff, deal with things and not let them pile up. I really like that I have fairly strong incentives to fix my problems. It does sometimes create stress, for example when it's important for me to try and work on something so I can be happy, but when the same issue is good enough for someone else who would need to work with me.

I suspect I will continue to ponder and refine over the coming months.

The past Wednesday was

mrw42 and my four year anniversary! Our relationship has gone through a lot of changes over these four years. There have been so many changes in that time: living together, our wonderful little Zoe, the other kids continuing to grow up. There have been changes in our relationship too: more security, deeper knowledge of each other, and more shared experience. While the sense of wonder has changed too, it's still present and as strong as ever.

We also have made it past our first spot of trouble. Not surprisingly, Zoe's birth and moving in together created a lot of changes. I think both of us were feeling a lot of insecurity, and I was feeling that we were not spending enough time together. In the past few months, we have built the communications skills to move past that and at least for me to overcome the resulting insecurity. I still wish we were able to spend more time together, but I think that may be true for most people who are as busy as Margaret and I.

I couldn't imagine my life without Margaret; I'm so happy we found each other!

I've been quiet in 2008. It was a year of change, internal focus and adjustment. Interestingly, it did not appear to be as much of a year of reflection as I would expect. I was too busy to reflect much.

The changes have been good. I've settled into my family. Being a parent is an amazing joy, far more than I had expected. Margaret continues to be the most wonderful partner anyone could hope for and our life together brings me great happiness. I left MIT and have established my consulting practice. It feels good to be moving on professionally.

I look forward to the opportunities of 2009. I hope to focus more outside myself than I did in 2008; I also hope to be more actively introspective in my personal growth in 2009.

A lot of my outward energy in 2009 will be spent on meeting people and being more social. I continue to have an important goal of finding someone to share my life with besides Margaret. Our relationship is wonderful, but I'm also lonely because there is a lot of time we cannot be together; I'd like to find someone to share that part of myself with. I continue to believe the right way to approach this is to find and meet people, grow closer to them as friends and see if something more develops. Having new friends is always wonderful, and if there is more to be found, that is excellent as well. However over the past year, I have not had as much energy for socializing and meeting people as I'd like. I'm also not sure that the energy I have spent has been as effectively spent as it could be; I'll have to ponder that later. I am going to explicitly work to find and use the energy to be social this year.

In the past couple of weeks, I've picked up a quest for self introspection and improvement. I've been noticing a particularly bad tendency to burst other people's bubbles. Someone will be describing some hope of theirs, and I'll find myself pointing out why it won't work, or some problem. It feels like at least part of the motivation on my part is to make sure they understand what obstacles they are facing and to encourage them to have a realistic starting point for trying to build a plan. However, I don't manage to be constructive, I make them feel bad and I feel bad myself. I want to work on this in 2009. It's been a long-standing tendency, although I've just recently begun to understand it well enough to really want to work on it.

I also want to blog more. I've been very quiet here, on my my professional blog, and on Zoe's blog. I want to improve that. My LJ is important so people can learn about me and share what's going on in my life and in my head. The professional blog is helpful for establishing credibility and continuing to maintain my reputation. Zoe's blog is important for my parents and others who want to follow her life but also for me as I look back years later. Right now, I'm writing this on the train into Boston. I wonder if it will work to dedicate time on the train to writing a post for one of these three blogs instead of relaxing or working on other work. I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens.

It's been an amazing two years since Margaret and I made our commitment to each other. I don't think we could have fully predicted all the changes that have happened then, but they have been wonderful. I've successfully moved in with Margaret and Kevin. I'm beginning to truly feel part of our family. I feel like I fit in when we do things together as a family, when we spend time with the kids and when we just do things around the house. Zoe continues to develop and grow. We're getting ready for her arrival and that's going well.

It's wonderful to feel like I belong to a family of my choosing and to be in a place of love and support. I look forward to the years to come.

Tomorrow,

mrw42 and I will have been dating for two years. Two years ago, I had no idea that we would grow as close as we have become. I certainly had no idea that I would be eagerly awaiting the birth of our child.

However, that is exactly what is going on. Margaret and I are having a baby. She is due in early February. I plan to move in with Margaret, Kevin and their kids towards the end of this year. We hope to form a family with three adults and to raise our child together. I'm so incredibly excited to be having a child with Margaret.

I'm also very excited that I've finally told all the people who need to hear first and that I can make a public announcement. The last couple of months have been stressful for Margaret and I. It's frustrating when someone asks how things are going and you realize that the most important things in your life are things you are not ready to discuss. We're both glad that is behind us and we can look forward to planning to live together and to welcoming our child into our lives.

Of course there is a lot of planning to go through in the upcoming months. Like every new parent, I'm nervous about whether I'll be any good, what it will be like, etc. This is also a big life change and while I'm very happy about it, I'm also a bit afraid of the change and the impacts it will have.

A year ago today, I made a commitment to share my life with Margaret. I would have expected such an event to be heavily planned. It wasn't. We'd both been thinking about how important our relationship was. Margaret had wanted to explore some form of long-term commitment for a while, but I was still trying to figure out what I wanted. Late in November I realized that I was ready for a long term commitment. We didn't get a chance to discuss in detail what we wanted until our December Austin trip. The night of the second we discussed where we were headed. Then, shortly before leaving the third, we asked ourselves whether there was any thing we still needed to consider or think through before making the commitment. There wasn't so we agreed to share our lives. We were ready and so we took the step. The following year has been the happiest of my life.

Over the following month, we learned how to express the meaning of our commitment to ourselves. That month was difficult as we tried to explain our relationship to others. Our travel schedule and busy lives kept us apart for much of December which was difficult. But as December flowed into January, we continued to realize that we had made the right decision and that we had found joy and happiness together.

For me, this has been one of the best things that ever could happen.

I went to

bouncingleaf's company picnic on August 13. This was the second year I've done that. This year, she let me carry the butter. As a result, we had fewer amusing stories to tell, but still had a wonderful and wonderfully silly time. I think of this as marking the one year point for knowing Leaf. It's not true: we had known each other for a while before the picnic, and a good chunk of a month has past since then. But that is a good cusp date to anchor things on and to serve as a reminder for introspection. Getting to know Leaf has been wonderful. We seem to pull out the kid in each other: we emphasize our excited, joyfully experiencing the world side. Whether we're just walking along the river, muddling through trying to buy jewelry for the first time, or exploring each others' taste in music, we can have fun. Leaf continues to amaze me with her ability to go pick up a book on anything and learn about it. She's also a really wonderful person. I don't think we really know where we're headed, but there is no urgency to knowing. So, we are free to just enjoy each other.

As an update, Shava broke up with me in the middle of March. For related reasons she ended up moving out at the end of March. There was a lot of stress surrounding my desire to keep the landlord/tenant relationship reasonably separate from our romantic relationship. I knew that keeping those separate would be hard, but it was an absolute requirement for me. So, we worked with the requirement until it became impossible. Trying things that might not work out is often worth the risk; I definitely think it was worth it in this instance.

I think that by the end of March, both of us believed that getting distance was a good idea. The challenge now is to figure out to what extent rebuilding friendship makes sense.

So, I've been positively swamped for about the last month. Much of it has been work. My department is culminating a reorganization. In an attempt to make sure something reasonable happens for my team, I've been trying to be involved. Things are a real mess and it has been generally depressing but really not all that bad. Just very pointless. IETF has been taking up another huge chuck of time .

The net result is that I've made no real progress on personal issues. As Shava mentions, our relationship is changing. While I think we will remain friends and have a strong bond of love between us, eventually we will both have other partners. I've been meaning to focus on finding new people, to find out what I want, and to continue growing. However, finding new people is one of those activities that actually requires work. I'm hoping that now, I can actually spend some time on it. I should make it out of the house more and also focus on building friendships. That's all stuff I'm reasonably good at if I can only find the time. Perhaps that's something I will manage to do in the next couple of months.

I do think Shava and I have made good progress trying to find what's right for us now. For a while it seemed like we were focusing all our energy into resolving problems. We're past that and back to enjoying what we have. Well, we were for a bit. Now we're being sick, but that will soon pass.

I started the year with four main goals. I wanted to move into a place of my own and find what I wanted in my space. I wanted to make progress on the Kerberos Consortium at work. I wanted to start at least one relationship and make progress learning who I want to share my life with, what works and what does not. Finally I wanted to get in better shape. I've made progress on all these goals.

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Current Mood: happy
Current Music: The Fair Lady/Songs from the Gypsy

I turned 30 this Sunday: it was an excellent opportunity to get friends together. The weekend started out Thursday with a trip to Austin . I was staying with Rehmi and Kit, friends of

mrw42. I met Rehmi just before he moved to Austin; it was great to see him again. The really neat part of the Austin trip was that Rehmi, Kit and

mrw42 (who was also in town) came to Odd Friday. They really enjoyed themselves: after we all got home, they stayed up for several hours discussing the party, the people there and a variety of related topics. It makes me unspeakably happy to introduce one group of friends to another and for there to be mutual interest. I realize that some friends of mine will just not get along with other friends. However I really want to bring people together and build common interest. "Hey. These are great people; see if you can get anything out of meeting each other," is a lot of the motivation behind introducing one set of friends to another. It is great when connections actually do form. There is wonderful energy in the exchange of ideas and viewpoints.

The Austin trip was brief. I flew back to Boston Saturday and spent the evening with bouncingleaf. Then on Sunday, I had my birthday party. Again, it was a wonderful experience. There were a lot of people who don't normally get to see each other who seemed to be enjoying themselves. I also saw several people who I haven't kept in as good of touch with as I would like.

After all too little sleep, Shava, Joseph, bouncingleaf and I were all off to Margaret's Labor Day party. I had invited Leaf to the party a few weeks ago, but she didn't meet Margaret until my birthday. We all had a wonderful time. As usual, Margaret attracts a extensive collection of friends with excellent stories to share.

This has been one of the best weekends of my life. Thanks so much to those who made it all possible.

Current Mood: happy

Relationship continues to go well. I think I'm getting to the point where I need to carefully consider time management. I'm behind on everything because we've been spending a lot of time together. I'm not critically behind on anything but I'm at the point where things need to transition into something more sustainable. That seems doable. High levels of happiness and contentment. Actually I think I understand how to make the transition to something more sustainable; I'm just in the middle of actually pulling it off.

There are amusing downsides to being involved with someone very similar to yourself. We keep getting into feedback loops. For example i'll be worried about something; she will notice and be concerned and then I'll be even more concerned because she is concerned. This is amusing not tragic because we do reasonably quickly determine the problem and once we notice what is going on it is trivial to fix. But we both run significant danger of death by irony.

Current Mood: happy

I broke up with Susan somewhat under a year ago. It seems longer. In reflecting on what I wanted to do next, I realized that I wanted to try and work on taking advantage of opportunities as they became available. I felt that I had been missing out on potential friendships and relationships because I was moving somewhat too slow: I took too long pondering whether someone was actually interested or how to best respond and life intervened. It turns out that this has been a real problem. Over the past year I learned about several opportunities ranging back as far as 14 years ago that I missed because of timing or lack of perception. Some of these were opportunities for deeper friendships, some potentially for fulfilling relationships. I wasn't going out of my way to look for missed opportunities in the past—doing so seems unhealthy or creepy—but I was thinking about the problem and when you do that, you seem to just happen to run into data that interests you.

Over some time between a week ago and two weeks ago, I've fallen into a new relationship. I think I'm nearing the end of the initial exploration part of the relationship where you end up spending insane quantities of time with your new lover; things may be calming down a bit. We were realizing how much had changed in the last week and were discussing when we had first met. I went back through email logs and realized that we met April 15. Before that time we'd never interacted at all.

Two months! Sure, I am working on taking advantage of opportunities, avoiding unnecessary doubt and improving situational timing. But two months from not knowing each other at all to being important in each others' lives. I'm not sure whether to be delighted, shocked, scandalized or amused. I think I'll be all of the above and enjoy the situation as it unfolds. I can afford to just live for the most part. Sure, there are things to consider, problems that will develop, but I can worry about that in the fullness of time.

Current Mood: surprised

The last year or so has taught me a lot about relationships. Earlier this week I learned about something new: I'll call it a Schroedinger's breakup. Susan will get back to me at some point on what amounts to letting me know whether she broke up with me a few weeks ago.

Monday, we discovered that Susan had felt a need to choose between Chuck and I, and apparently without knowing she was doing so, Susan chose Chuck. It's not clear to me (or I think Susan) what this choice actually means. I asked Susan to explore this and try and figure out what was going on.

Clearly we have a lot to work through; and I could discuss some of that here. But actually, I'm sort of surprised by my own reactions to the situation. it seems clear to me that anger would be a fairly typical reaction to something like this. I realize Susan and I are in a poly relationship, but choosing one partner over their best friend without warning seems like something a reasonable person could feel angry/betrayed by even in a poly relationship. But I don't feel angry.

I think a lot of the reason I don't feel angry is that I understand Susan enough to believe I'm not being used or toyed with. This situation came about because feelings change quickly and you don't always know what your feelings are. It wasn't something either Susan or Chuck was trying to do. I also believe that if Susan and I end up not dating, it will be because she believes that the right direction for her growth doesn't include our relationship. I suspect I'll even understand why Susan thinks this is true. Since I understand why things happened it is relatively easy not to have negative reactions directed at others. I still expect that no matter how things turn out it will hurt, but some degree of pain is the price inherent in caring about people.

Current Mood: stressed

Previously I discussed some of my fears if my life in Austin began to mix with my life here in boston. I never would have even dreamed to be afraid of this though; the world just doesn't work that way. Not even in really bad books. But as always, reality is stranger than we can imagine.