Thread by @chriseppstein

After coming out as poly, I realized that it was the people who loved me the most who were the most resistant to learning about who I really was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until about 6 months ago that I began to realize all the ways I was doing it to the people I loved the most.

^ My biggest personal journey right now is about learning to let go of my expectations and to give the people most important to me the gift of my love in the form of unconditional love, support, and acceptance.

^ Not just over big announcements like “I’m poly”, but in myriad smaller ways like how they handle bad news or a challenging situation.

^ I would have empathy for their negative feelings and I want to give my support but also I wanted to free myself of feeling their negative feelings too. When my motivation became selfish in that way, I stopped being empathetic.

^ If my offer of support was rejected or didn’t work I would try to force a resolution through increasingly coercive means because I didn’t know how to stop empathizing.

^ at best this would irritate the person and they’d let me know at which point I’d take the moral high ground with “I’m just trying to help!”

^ at worst it became a toxic dynamic where, over time, my “support” eroded our relationship until all that was left was a stubborn commitment to support each other that ultimately would breed resentment in both directions.

^ this appears to be the primary way my side of a codependent relationship manifests for me because it’s happened a few times now. I’ve been a “fixer”.

^ I am learning to have compassion instead of feel empathy. My goal is to hear what they ask for and never supplant that with my judgement of what they need. To let people have negative feelings as part of their process. To offer support and be ready to hear a no thanks.

^ The fact that I have ADD makes this hard because the medications that help me focus also cause me to become myopic about strong feelings either from empathy or from relationship distress.

^ In the last couple months my psychiatrist recommended a new drug to help me manage the strong feelings and intrusive thoughts they’d provoke.

I cannot overstate just how much this new med has changed my life for the better.

^ I am finally able exhibit the behavior that I want to exhibit towards my loved ones. I still fail. But not nearly as often, and when I do, I can realize it and get back on track much sooner.

^ Therapy + Psychiatry working together to help me learn to be a better person. I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to go off the meds eventually when I’ve internalized the new behaviors. ✌️🤙🤟