46.5 – For Last Week’s MM:

The most underrated trait for a happy life: decisiveness.

Our intuition is that it’s best to keep our options open. But as long as you try to keep every door open, you’ll never be able to walk through the one that matters.

Optimizing your life for optionality creates a false sense of growth.

You feel like you’re adding more potential to your life, but all you’re doing is guaranteeing your inability to commit to anything.

What doors are you keeping open that you’ll never walk through? What’s stopping you from closing them?

Choose a door to walk through this week. Let me know what happens.

Ugh. Decisiveness. That one has been a struggle for years… maybe decades? I recall times when I tried so hard to make something happen the way I wanted it to, and railed aggressively against the decision I really needed to make – for whatever convoluted reason my brain had at the time – and… when I finally changed my mind and walked through the door I needed to?! My, my… how everything fell frustratingly into place. Things turned out satisfactorily, though it pains me to admit.

On the other side of that, I don’t have options available to me now, so it isn’t like I’m stagnating with indecision. I don’t have any doors I need to walk through, because currently… I’m in a place where I am committed to seeing things through with The Boyfriend and our lives together, despite the massive amounts of pain and betrayal I’ve gone through thus far. There is not much else that I really need to decide on, honestly. I guess working on my own mental/physical health, but that’s different, unfortunately. I kinda have to do whatever is available to me, trying new things (like Ketamine therapy) and seeing what works.

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47.0 – Comfort kills relationships

Two things for you to think about

A healthy relationship should periodically make you a little uncomfortable. The conversations that matter are uncomfortable. The vulnerability required for intimacy is uncomfortable. Finding compromise and forgiveness is uncomfortable.

A comfortable relationship is likely an empty one.

Resentment is the compound interest on conversations you were too afraid to have.

Reflect: Then consider sharing this thought with others.

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Two things for you to ask yourself

Are you too comfortable in your relationship? If so, what conversations are you avoiding?

Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week.

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One thing for you to try this week

Have the uncomfortable conversation this week. Let me know what happens.

Remember: Small changes lead to lasting breakthroughs.

https://markmanson.net

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As for how I’m doing… I have successfully completed the 2nd round of EMDR with regards to the specific incident involving The Dementor/Anhedonia. It feels weird, because we did work on that for quite a bit longer than the 1st incident (my 5 year old self witnessing The Plague‘s explosive abuse against Ch’Komi). I say weird, because I’ve lived with the panic and anxiety surrounding that incident for several years now and not feeling those things when I think about it is… well, weird. 😅 I’m not really sure how else to describe it. If you’ve never done the work to reprocess a traumatic incident from your past, it isn’t even fathomable that you could feasibly not be bothered by it. I mean, that was me before doing the work in EMDR, so… I get it.

The Boyfriend and I have officially started the Recovery Program over and gotten through the introductory stuff – Module 0. We started on the next, which is Module 1 (so weird), this past week, too. I think the hardest part – for me – is believing that he’s actually doing the work and doing it properly this time. He says he is committed to doing it right and doing ALL of it, but… it is going to take time and proof of effort for me to truly believe it. And it hasn’t exactly gotten off to a good start, either. I mean… Sunday we both had some things to do separately and while I was listening to a couple women-focused videos, he was playing with Coddy (like DuoLingo but for learning coding). Can’t say that made me happy or confident that his promise was being kept. He told me that he’d done the current task weeks ago, but like… ok, and? Pick something else from the list of tasks, then? Don’t just say “I did this part already, so… meh” because then you’re not actually doing work every day (like you should), which then tells me that you don’t value the relationship or overcoming the addiction.

So yeah… giving grace, it is. Again.

Have I mentioned that I’m tired?!