The privileges of love
30 July 2010 00:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulLacuna Diving Bunny is talking to me on IM about her next work shift bid, or whatever she calls it. Such a foreign thing to me, who has never had a boss, never sub-contracted with a company that had more employees than could fit in my parent's living room. It's some poorly devised, constantly adjusted-by-committee process to honor seniority and service and skill in some impartial method, a way to figure out when to get her and the thousands of employees just like her to work in ways and durations specified by stringent legal code and common custom.
As long as I've known LDB, she's worked nights. For most of our relationship, she's worked weekends. Darth Ambivalence managed to re-arrange his work schedule a few years back, and they now usually have the same days off, and are awake about 70% of the same time. Meanwhile, I, with my lack of a boss and supposed freedom to choose what hours I work, have been feeling a stronger and stronger need to maintain a daylight based, Monday To Friday schedule.
It's been an issue. When she spends the night at my place, it throws my entire schedule off balance and I have to struggle to readjust back to daylight every other week, because there is no reason other than my own desire to do so. LDB keeps telling me that I should keep my daylight schedule, that she doesn't mind if we don't sleep next to each other, but it's not a good compromise for me. I spend so much of my time alone, feeling so disconnected and isolated, submerged in my work and my thoughts and my nagging self-doubts, that the rare occassions when I have a lover to drift off to sleep next to are not to be so casually dismissed. I hunger for the chance to unplug my pride from my lips and let myself speak, as much as I can, and those hours are the most fruitful for them.
Then, too, her job stopped giving her weekends off the same week that I commited to a dungeon for us to play at together. We spent weeks debating it endlessly, struggling to decide if this was a step we wanted, if we could take it together. When the details and fears were all put to rest, I laid down my money and signed the forms, and she stopped getting weekends off. She's only been to the dungeon a handfull of times, and sometimes I worry that my kink explorations are going to be the thing that breaks us.
We had a fight, once, about how I didn't feel like she was really commited to me because she didn't even consult me before her shift bid. I wouldn't have asked her to do anything but what she did. Less really, for she and DA had made concessions to my life that I would never have asked for. It was more than what I was hoping for, but I was angry because I wasn't in the room when the discussion was had. I still struggle with that moment, years later, because the assumption underlying my anger was that I can't trust anyone to speak up for me, not even my beloved.
Since then, LDB has dutifully told me whenever she has a shift bid coming up, and I weigh the options she thinks she might have this time, still perplexed by the arcane math behind it all. Every quarter, I put my stamp on the choice that everybody already knows is the best choice, and feel like I'm Part Of A Relationship, even though my input hasn't seemed to change one whit of anything but my insecurity.
This time, though, it is different. The choices are stacked up in such a way that she could either stay as close to what she's been doing as she might, or she could shift to a schedule more in keeping with mainstream society. She could, if the thousand dominos fall in such a way, have her evenings free again. I'd be able to see her on weekends. She'd still have to keep her evenings early, since she needs to work the next day, but I could invite her to the parties I've been going to. Introduce her to my friends, the rest of my life.....
....leaving her husband alone and working the graveyard shift. Their lives, slowly peeling away from each other because they're on opposite ends of the clocks, grumbling and sleepy-eyed disorientation accompanying the few hours their lives would intersect.
It'd only be for a quarter, she says. If it is causing harm, she could shift back. But could I shift back? I've grown so used to having this such limited time with this love of mine, trained myself thoroughly to be content, to accept what can be and not ask for more....I really can't imagine what that choice might do to our relationship. Doubly so if it were to happen, and then disappear again from my life.
So much of what I cherish about LDB is tied into the way I accept the limitations of our relationship. My love for her has flourished in this tiny root-bound pot, in ways that all my attempts at "primary" relationships have not, precisely because she has never been burdened with the Expectations and Plans that I lay on the shoulders of women I might try to marry.
LDB is the icing-laden confectioner's delight that I consume and possess. With her, I have the ranks and priveleges of love, without any of the gnawing self-doubt or insecurity that usually comes with such lofty positions. I have a say in her life that is valued and weighed carefully, and can get input from her about my own. She is someone with whom I can make plans about the future. When I am with her, I do not feel I need to hide my tears nor my joy, no matter how trivial seeming the source of either. I trust that she will view my mistakes with compassion, honesty and integrity. In the final determination, these are the reasons why I seek love at all.
How can I advise her, in good faith? How can I trust that my own desires and fears are not pushing me to one decision or the other, especially when the choice could be painted as Him Or Me? I want to believe that I am capable of focusing on what would be the best shift choice for her, that I can be ethical in my advice. Yet, even in struggling to prove to myself that such is true, I scrutinize and second-guess in a way that is not normal for me.
I have done the best that I could. I told her my preference, and told her my concerns about my bias. I told her to make whatever choice she wanted, but here is how I think it will affect me. That should be good enough. That should've been the right thing to do.
So why am I still agonizing over every nuance of our conversation, four hours later?
As long as I've known LDB, she's worked nights. For most of our relationship, she's worked weekends. Darth Ambivalence managed to re-arrange his work schedule a few years back, and they now usually have the same days off, and are awake about 70% of the same time. Meanwhile, I, with my lack of a boss and supposed freedom to choose what hours I work, have been feeling a stronger and stronger need to maintain a daylight based, Monday To Friday schedule.
It's been an issue. When she spends the night at my place, it throws my entire schedule off balance and I have to struggle to readjust back to daylight every other week, because there is no reason other than my own desire to do so. LDB keeps telling me that I should keep my daylight schedule, that she doesn't mind if we don't sleep next to each other, but it's not a good compromise for me. I spend so much of my time alone, feeling so disconnected and isolated, submerged in my work and my thoughts and my nagging self-doubts, that the rare occassions when I have a lover to drift off to sleep next to are not to be so casually dismissed. I hunger for the chance to unplug my pride from my lips and let myself speak, as much as I can, and those hours are the most fruitful for them.
Then, too, her job stopped giving her weekends off the same week that I commited to a dungeon for us to play at together. We spent weeks debating it endlessly, struggling to decide if this was a step we wanted, if we could take it together. When the details and fears were all put to rest, I laid down my money and signed the forms, and she stopped getting weekends off. She's only been to the dungeon a handfull of times, and sometimes I worry that my kink explorations are going to be the thing that breaks us.
We had a fight, once, about how I didn't feel like she was really commited to me because she didn't even consult me before her shift bid. I wouldn't have asked her to do anything but what she did. Less really, for she and DA had made concessions to my life that I would never have asked for. It was more than what I was hoping for, but I was angry because I wasn't in the room when the discussion was had. I still struggle with that moment, years later, because the assumption underlying my anger was that I can't trust anyone to speak up for me, not even my beloved.
Since then, LDB has dutifully told me whenever she has a shift bid coming up, and I weigh the options she thinks she might have this time, still perplexed by the arcane math behind it all. Every quarter, I put my stamp on the choice that everybody already knows is the best choice, and feel like I'm Part Of A Relationship, even though my input hasn't seemed to change one whit of anything but my insecurity.
This time, though, it is different. The choices are stacked up in such a way that she could either stay as close to what she's been doing as she might, or she could shift to a schedule more in keeping with mainstream society. She could, if the thousand dominos fall in such a way, have her evenings free again. I'd be able to see her on weekends. She'd still have to keep her evenings early, since she needs to work the next day, but I could invite her to the parties I've been going to. Introduce her to my friends, the rest of my life.....
....leaving her husband alone and working the graveyard shift. Their lives, slowly peeling away from each other because they're on opposite ends of the clocks, grumbling and sleepy-eyed disorientation accompanying the few hours their lives would intersect.
It'd only be for a quarter, she says. If it is causing harm, she could shift back. But could I shift back? I've grown so used to having this such limited time with this love of mine, trained myself thoroughly to be content, to accept what can be and not ask for more....I really can't imagine what that choice might do to our relationship. Doubly so if it were to happen, and then disappear again from my life.
So much of what I cherish about LDB is tied into the way I accept the limitations of our relationship. My love for her has flourished in this tiny root-bound pot, in ways that all my attempts at "primary" relationships have not, precisely because she has never been burdened with the Expectations and Plans that I lay on the shoulders of women I might try to marry.
LDB is the icing-laden confectioner's delight that I consume and possess. With her, I have the ranks and priveleges of love, without any of the gnawing self-doubt or insecurity that usually comes with such lofty positions. I have a say in her life that is valued and weighed carefully, and can get input from her about my own. She is someone with whom I can make plans about the future. When I am with her, I do not feel I need to hide my tears nor my joy, no matter how trivial seeming the source of either. I trust that she will view my mistakes with compassion, honesty and integrity. In the final determination, these are the reasons why I seek love at all.
How can I advise her, in good faith? How can I trust that my own desires and fears are not pushing me to one decision or the other, especially when the choice could be painted as Him Or Me? I want to believe that I am capable of focusing on what would be the best shift choice for her, that I can be ethical in my advice. Yet, even in struggling to prove to myself that such is true, I scrutinize and second-guess in a way that is not normal for me.
I have done the best that I could. I told her my preference, and told her my concerns about my bias. I told her to make whatever choice she wanted, but here is how I think it will affect me. That should be good enough. That should've been the right thing to do.
So why am I still agonizing over every nuance of our conversation, four hours later?
