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thought soup
Saturday. 9.6.14 5:27 pm

I see this complaint a lot, lately, about how someone is "always there for people" but people are "never there for them."

I'm gonna need that mindset to take a knee. If you're always there for people because it's the right thing to do and because you care about them, that's one thing. But if you are an over-the-top martyr and don't understand the difference between affectionate support and self-sacrificing obsession over others' happiness before your own, that's another beast entirely.

I've noticed that only the martyrs keep quiet and don't just ask for what they need. It's never, "Hey, I'm having a hard time, can you help me/support me?" It's typically, "No one ever cares when I'm hurting, even though I'm always there for everyone."

Being self-serving is a very normal behavior, and it's healthy, to an extent. We know ourselves best and have to look out for that, when other people just don't know to. It can't be on me, if someone decides to expect me to anticipate their feelings and needs rather than communicate those clearly. That isn't fair, and it's something I see a lot in people who think they're making the right move by sacrificing their own needs and interests to please others.

It's totally a bad habit I used to have, and I think that's part of why I wanted to write about this and clear my head of it. I used to think that the best love was to give others my time, my energy, my attention, even when it wasn't in my best interest. In short, love was totally about sacrifice without knowing whether that sacrifice was worth anything or not. It was all about the sacrifices that I thought were best for people.

And that totally wasn't fair to them. To make that decision--the decision of what will be best for someone--without their say or consent is just entirely outside of normal, healthy relationship behavior.

I'm sure this is common sense stuff, but it took me a long time to learn it. People never took me aside and explained consent so thoroughly. This isn't just about sex--consent transcends so many aspects of any given relationship to such a level that it's completely necessary to learn early and refresh often.

Man, I wish this had been common sense to me. In a society so lacking in consent, though, I was never called on it until I was in college...although, at that point, I was knocked right onto my ass by someone on the subject, and I'm grateful for that, even though it wasn't his duty to teach me a lesson about what non-sexual consent meant.


In short, entitlement is uncool. Assuming you're doing good by others just because you're "there for them" is very uncool. Establishing and understanding normal limits in any relationship is super cool and also very important.

Filed under "Things I Learned Unnaturally Late in Life."

Hmm how to follow that up.

My house has a rat infestation. Tomorrow, if it's still too rainy to visit the beach, I think I'll strap on a bunch of sanitary protective gear and take care of all the poop and holes. Such is life.

Oh, and I've gotten into the show Orphan Black. It's a BBC original, and I can't stop watching it. There are only two seasons, and I have rather determinedly watched the entire first season (ten episodes of ~45 minutes a piece) in just over two days.

Great things about it: So far, I haven't seen any sexism without a point to it. I did see a small tidbit of same-gender couple fetishization, but the way they went about it almost made fun of the man for being so weird about things, so that was refreshing. They also include a trans character and manage to educate some of the ignorance out of their viewership on the way by approaching hormone therapy, pronouns, and other highly relevant but highly under-discussed aspects of a pretty typical FTM trans lifestyle (from what I can tell) without over-emphasizing his status as a trans man. Now, it's pretty widely argued, so I don't have an opinion (and don't have a place to form an opinion) on whether this is OK or not, considering exact circumstances, but they do use the same female, cisgendered actress to play him as they do everyone else.

The show is about clones, and that's been some of the argument I've seen in favor of still using her, as long as the topic is treated well. But then, how hard is it to find a man who looks like her?

Like I said, something people have discussed, for sure. Not my place to say, one way or another.

Still. Despite the fact that I'm not usually into shows with violence, this one has me hooked. Fast-paced, mysterious in a way that isn't too repetitive or annoying, reasonably smart and playful.

I'd recommend. If you're into stuff like that.
1 Comments.


RE
Then I must know nothing.

Also, I'M ALWAYS HERE FOR YOU PALLLL
» middaymoon on 2014-09-07 12:02:50

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