Let's Process Our Feelings II

Off Topic
981

[quote]spar4tee wrote:
Awesome. I’ve actually had a similar idea lol.[/quote]

This might be a bit too advanced for where you are, but section 6.2 and on in this chapter presents some really really useful algorithms.

In effect, I can automatically determine that two different email conversations are probably related to each other, because they’re both talking about the same thing. And then take it another level and determine that emails with this person usually involve these topics, so if that topic comes up in another email thread, you may want to include/forward them that email.

Stuff like that.

982

[quote]LoRez wrote:

For the first time in years, I finally feel like I’m doing something useful with my time again. Something changed, not quite sure what yet.[/quote]

What you’re doing sounds exciting, so good on you.

Why now? I wonder if it’s as simple as having noted and given attention to your withdrawal from projects of this sort.

I also wonder if this is you gearing up to defend this territory once you move, since your absorption in projects has been an issue in the past.

I would probably go with the latter, given the timing.

983

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:
In this case, it’s all the various pieces leading up to me moving, which affects just me. Stuff like contacting moving companies, getting things pulled together so they could make a decent estimate, talking to HR to see if we have any discounts I can take advantage of. Etc.

Every time I mentioned doing something or finishing something, I get a bunch of stuff in the vein of “I don’t know why you didn’t do that two months ago”, presented with the subtext of “why do you have to be so horrible at this stuff”. If I ever dig, it expands into “I don’t feel like I can rely on you”. And much more recently morphed into “I don’t know how we’re going to be able to live together.”[/quote]

That sounds like unnecessary blaming mixed with contempt with a subtle undercurrent of resentment. Probably should unpack that sooner rather than later. And you won’t be able to power your way through it with logic.
[/quote]

I agree with this and continue to fret over this relationship. Remind me, have the two of you done any couples counseling? It may be time.

Have you asked her recently, regarding the last statement (“I don’t know how we’re going to be able to live together”) whether she’s sure that’s what she wants?

984

Hockey and I talked about his workshop space last night. I asked if I would be allowed in there and initially his response was something like “as long as you’re working.” I pushed it a bit (no reading or surfing the 'net?) and he agreed that if I want a comfy chair that would be fine, but he thought I had projects I want to work on, too. Which I do, though I don’t know what they are yet. I do like messing around with stuff, though. Refinishing or painting old furniture, for example. He also pointed out that a lot of what he does is very noisy. High pitched drilling noises, for example.

Anyway, I was able to say that it’s important for me to be near, particularly given his travel schedule. Luckily, our work schedules give him a lot of the solitary time he needs while my job nicely siphons off some of my sociability. I’m pretty comfortable with quiet after having 7-10 intense conversations, plus coworker chats, over the course of an 11 hour work day.

He also mentioned this weekend that he’s difficult to live with. :-/ I don’t know, though, we’re together more than half the time now and I don’t find it so. He said that’s because we’re usually at my place and he doesn’t have any control investment here. He also pointed out as proof of “difficult” that no one wants to live with him. I do, though. Eventually.

I actually think we’re alike in being very easy-going generally or on the surface, but with strong undercurrents of efficiency and impatience.

/meandering

985

We seem to have gone looking at properties together yesterday. ~blink~

986

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
We seem to have gone looking at properties together yesterday. ~blink~[/quote]

Casing those joints?

987

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
We seem to have gone looking at properties together yesterday. ~blink~[/quote]

Casing those joints?[/quote]

I guess?

989

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
We seem to have gone looking at properties together yesterday. ~blink~[/quote]

Casing those joints?[/quote]

I guess? [/quote]

Well, well![/quote]

What do you think about that? Too soon?

991

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
We seem to have gone looking at properties together yesterday. ~blink~[/quote]

Casing those joints?[/quote]

I guess? [/quote]

Well, well![/quote]

What do you think about that? Too soon?
[/quote]

I don’t know.

Probably not, but after a failed serious relationship, I resolved to not marry until the euphoria of being “in love” passed. By the time we married, we had no doubt that we knew and liked each other.

We were together 4.5 years before marrying.

But that’s not for everyone.

Everything you’ve said so far makes me think you’re ok. I’m just someone who overcompensates to avoid making the same mistakes twice.[/quote]

I keep thinking that I made such a relative success of an objectively poor marriage, surely I can be happy in one (relationship, that is, doesn’t have to be marriage) that contains two people of integrity and pleasant disposition, as well as sharing common goals and views on things like money and leisure-time interests.

Though nothing is happening right this moment. We’ll have hit the one year mark before moving in together becomes a real possibility, and probably closer to a year and a half. One of the issues is that we’re both in temporary situations and have been for some time, and both of us are longing to settle in. I’m renting an amazing place for a song and could be happy here in the near long term (say 2 more years), but my landlord wants to unload it - hopefully to me. I’m not interested in buying it. My lease is up in December. I had assumed I would buy a house next.

He’s in a rented house that’s fine, too - nice enough, very brown with a lot of flashlights - but it’s an hour from work for me and too small to combine our things, as mine is. He has money waiting to be used to build a house, which was presumably going to be on his 150 acres, but that too is an hour from my work. So he’s in a place that’s too small and was meant to be temporary, so half his stuff’s in storage, including the equipment for his workshop and here comes another winter of not getting to do the stuff he loves.

So we’re both feeling very limbo-y. I think we’re also having a lot of conversations about what “home” might look like through browsing real estate. He wants land, which is fine, but he’s gone a lot and it’s snowy where I live. I work long days and drive a two wheel drive car - how will I get in if he’s out of town and our steep half-mile driveway hasn’t been plowed? It’s 7:30 and I’ve worked 11 hours and it’s full-on dark and I’m stuck in the driveway and he’s in Houston? There’s the issue of color, too. He likes (wait for it!) brown. He feels houses should blend into the surroundings unless right on the road. I like cozy old houses, which are of course buttery yellow or white or such, with contrasting shutters, whether on the road or set back.

So I think we’re pre-negotiating some of the stuff.

992

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

I don’t know.

Probably not, but after a failed serious relationship, I resolved to not marry until the euphoria of being “in love” passed. By the time we married, we had no doubt that we knew and liked each other.

We were together 4.5 years before marrying.

But that’s not for everyone.

Everything you’ve said so far makes me think you’re ok. I’m just someone who overcompensates to avoid making the same mistakes twice.

[/quote]

FWIW my wife and I moved in together after one year, dated for five before marrying and just celebrated our twentieth anniversary. From the sounds of things you will be fine.

993

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
nice enough, very brown with a lot of flashlights
[/quote]
lolwut

994

[quote]csulli wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
nice enough, very brown with a lot of flashlights
[/quote]
lolwut[/quote]

She meant, “fleshlights”

995

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
I agree with this and continue to fret over this relationship. Remind me, have the two of you done any couples counseling? It may be time.

Have you asked her recently, regarding the last statement (“I don’t know how we’re going to be able to live together”) whether she’s sure that’s what she wants?[/quote]

It’s interesting how my reaction to stress/emotion is to intellectualize things. I still think escaping off into that world is better than passive entertainment, but yeah.

She wants to live together. She wants to move forward with things.

This/these threads seem to be pretty good documentation of things. Sometimes I share the good things, but often it’s the “I’m really frustrated and confused because she’s acting completely unexpectedly from ‘normal’” times that I post. Aperiodic insanity, on her part. Where her ability to reason and make any sense at all just completely disappears for a day or three.

Because now things are normal again. We were planning logistics stuff the last couple days, which stuff I’m putting into storage, which stuff I’m not, where it will go in the apartment, how much of our kitchen are we going to integrate, etc.

And all that stuff is good, and we’re both looking forward to it. And I’m not looking forward to the heat and the fact that A/C is apparently not standard there.

–

And my email analysis stuff has gone really well after a few solid days working on it. Someone sends me an email, and in a split second, it comes up with a list of related email threads, that I can further filter or expand by keywords. By split second, most searches take less than 1/10th of a second at the moment.

Besides just being neat, it’s actually been helpful automatically answering questions like: “remember that email about this one thing that had to do with this other thing?”

EDIT: regarding couples counseling, we talked about it, found a counselor once, but the counselor was a little “off”, and neither of us felt comfortable with her. Never pursued it after that.

996

[quote]Testy1 wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

I don’t know.

Probably not, but after a failed serious relationship, I resolved to not marry until the euphoria of being “in love” passed. By the time we married, we had no doubt that we knew and liked each other.

We were together 4.5 years before marrying.

But that’s not for everyone.

Everything you’ve said so far makes me think you’re ok. I’m just someone who overcompensates to avoid making the same mistakes twice.

[/quote]

FWIW my wife and I moved in together after one year, dated for five before marrying and just celebrated our twentieth anniversary. From the sounds of things you will be fine.
[/quote]

Congratulations!

I sort of think we’ll be okay, too. It’s exciting.

997

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]csulli wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
nice enough, very brown with a lot of flashlights
[/quote]
lolwut[/quote]

She meant, “fleshlights”[/quote]

She did NOT.

998

[quote]LoRez wrote:

This/these threads seem to be pretty good documentation of things. Sometimes I share the good things, but often it’s the “I’m really frustrated and confused because she’s acting completely unexpectedly from ‘normal’” times that I post. Aperiodic insanity, on her part. Where her ability to reason and make any sense at all just completely disappears for a day or three.

Because now things are normal again. We were planning logistics stuff the last couple days, which stuff I’m putting into storage, which stuff I’m not, where it will go in the apartment, how much of our kitchen are we going to integrate, etc.[/quote]

I do realize that you (we all) post when things are odd or confusing. I’m glad it’s going well.

I love the sound of your project, though I could see it being potentially intrusive.

999

I often want to post in this thread, but right now I don’t have much to contribute. My girlfriend and I are doing well, hating the long distance but otherwise . . . everything’s moving along well.

1000

[quote]nkklllll wrote:
I often want to post in this thread, but right now I don’t have much to contribute. My girlfriend and I are doing well, hating the long distance but otherwise . . . everything’s moving along well.[/quote]

What stops you, may I ask?

Because I think you should jump right in and opine away on whatever it is that catches your momentary attention. Feel free to be critical, encouraging, or completely off whatever topic we’re on, if in fact it appears that we’re on one rather than posting random non-sequiters.