A very full day of nothing much

[debka_notion]

Today I don't think I did much at all. Really and honestly. I read a lot, decided a book I'd liked before (ok, an umber of years ago) was pretty pointless (The Heldan, by someone whose name I don't remember), but that Robin McKinley is a lot better than I'd given her credit for. I talked with Mom, who was feeling a bit down over her doctor's visit- the doctor thinks she has arthritis and wants to MRI her back. I'm not sure if that should be used as a verb- probably not. I also got to talk with Dad about work and career paths and things. It wasn't somethign we'd talked about before- it just sort of happened. It was nice- I've barely gotten to see him this break, he's had tons of work. Hopefully at some point we'll get to spend some actual time together.
Tomorrow we're off to the annual Christmas Eve dance marathon in Boston, this year at KI rather than MIT. I'm looking forward to it, I'll get to see some folks that I haven't seen in a while. On the other hand- I'm kind of nervous about seeing Nathan. It isn't that we're on bad terms, just that how we relate seems to shift over every email, and he never seems to quite have made up his mind about things: he recently has insisted that he really wants to stay in touch, but that if he emails me, I shouldn't write back for a bit afterwards. This irks me- I Hate having unresponded emails lurking in my inbox for longer than a day or two at the most. So I complied this time, but explained my feelings about responding to emails, and that since we aren't dating, I would be by no means upset if he took significantly longer to reply. In any case- it was an odd email, and seeing him will be, a somewhat less sure experience than I originally expected. After we broke up, we'd been planning on getting together for an afternoon and everything, and now- he seems on the edge of angry with me, mostly for not sharing my irritations as they came up. I tried to explain that this wasn't something I was good at, even if I'd noticed/let myself notice them right away. So- I don't know what that will be like. Hopefully ok. Worst comes to worst- my family will be there and several friends. But, I'm nervous anyways, a bit.
I've picked up from this all just how impossible it is for me to get to know someone quickly, or for them to get to know me, for real, quickly. That's what Nathan and I did, and I think we never built a really solid foundation of who the other one was. That was- not wise, to say the least. Being home and seeing old friends as well as some folks I used to be friends with/friendly with made me pretty aware of that- how much my friends really know about me, and how different that is from the sort of surface level knowledge of me that most folks at school have. It takes time to know a person that well, usually, with a very few exceptions. That's an important thing for me to remember: that I am a fairly private person much of the time especially in person and that getting to know someone should take time, are the correlaries, I think. Ok, off to yield up the computer and have some tea, I think.

Comments

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

I definitely know what you mean about relating being weird after breaking up, and it changing. That definitely happened between me and Qian, although it went through various stages slowly, with sudden shifts between them. Hope you and Nathan work out better than that did.

I'm like that, too, about people getting to know me, mainly because I'm paranoid, and I don't let them. Except for me, Qian is the person who I let get to know me the best, I think -- certainly the person who I've deliberately opened up to the most. Though I wonder, now, if she really knew me that well at all, on the full scale. My best friend from middle through high school, on the other hand, I've never discussed private feelings with, but it sometimes surprises me how well he knows me in spite of this, just from the amount of time we've spent together, though there hasn't been much of that in the last four years, and I'm sure we don't know each other as well as we once did. But that's what you were talking about with regards to old friends, anyway, I think. Still, I don't really know how well he knows me, on the full scale, either. So, I think there are two components to getting to know someone, the time, and the will, and they're probably both important.

Thinking about it, I think I'm of the opinion that while getting to know one another is crucial, what it's crucial for is telling you whether you're compatible or not. Ideally, it would be nice to know this before starting a relationship, but it's hard to spend enough time with someone to get to know them that well without being in something like a relationship with them. Sort of a catch-22.

Mrrph. That was long and rambling, and probably not very insightful; my excuse is the late hour. Hope things go all right with Nathan, and at any rate, have fun dancing!

What's needed in a relationship

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure at all how things will end up between Nathan and I. They've shifted around a lot, over the last month, from "we shouldn't be dating, but we're still very close" to on his part "I'm glad we're not dating, and I don't know what I think about you, but I keep getting resentful". He doesn't seem to Want to be resentful- so I don't know.
It's hard to know how well Qian knows anyone. She and I have known eachother since 8th or 9th grade, and sometimes I'm convinces that she doesn't know me at all. She tends to get to know people quite well, except for where that would interfere with what she wants to think of them, so... Hm: the person I've been friends with the longest is also the person I've shared a great deal of talk about emotions and internal stuff with. So there- both the will and the time are pretty obviously there. There are people one can learn about just from being around them. Then there are folks for whom that doesn't work so well- I know a few of those too.
In any case, yes, the goal in getting to know someone before a relationship is basically to see if you're compatible, but a general knowledge of who the other person is Can't be a bad thing. I know that in this case, we each turned a bit of a blind eye to things we didn't like about the other person, and sometimes a bit of a blind aeye to what the other person didn't like about ourselves. I think knowing that stuff ahead of time might have made it a more realistic relationship. And well- I know folks who are now engaged who spent a good while just as friends before going out. It seems like it can be done... Being friends for any length of time is one of those things that Nathan and I skipped- I think we were talking for all of about 3 weeks before he asked me out.
And now it's midmorning, I've gotten a full night of sleep, and I still rambled. Feel better. But your response was actually pretty darn interesting.