San Francisco. F and I sit in our lovely room at the Hotel Adagio, formerly the Cortez, which had kitchens in each room. The culinary spaces are gone, now made into sleeping rooms.   We breakfasted at the Café de la Presse on Bush and Grant, a lovely, spacious French space, if un petit pricey.

Talking with Bret over coffee, I inquired what are his thoughts about doing honor’s thesis. He started explaining why he isn’t going to pursue it. I realized that I was not interested in his explication. “Bret, it seems to me, from where I sit, that you often have stories to explain why you CAN’T do something. It seems that I hear many fewer stories about how you’re going to struggle with the challenge of trying to DO something. These stories are not very interesting, about why you won’t and can’t do something. I see that often they are couched in Taking Care of Yourself, but they inevitably make your world smaller.”

I realize these words were for myself, that they, most likely, will have no impact upon Bret. There is a dynamic that I find myself trapped inside of with Bret and Rachel (and many other people, too), where I walk on eggshells in order to avoid challenging them and “hurting their feelings.” I get caught in their neurotic stories. Rather than challenging them, or, more accurately, stating what feels problematic about the stories to me, I wind up getting sucked into a silence that feels like Collusion.

I realize that part of this Pattern is based in my thinking that my input is / will be impactful, that it will Hurt the other. But I understood today that while in the moment Bret (or whoever) may not like what I say, it is no more impactful than the so-called Positive things I say. There is my belief that saying words another wants to not hear means that the words are Bad, that I am Bad. That I should know better.

It’s an odd sort of Blackmail, the other’s displeasure, my fear of it, shutting me up. My lifelong pattern of supporting the Other at all costs, of never being judgmental, so as to not lose their favor. But, time and again, I’ve experienced that, in the end, I loathe being so shut down, shut off, and I end the relationship. I just can’t buy me love!

It’s the same theme I talked about with Bret: which Patterns expand the Space of my life, and which contract it? I have such a history of shrinking myself in order to get a scrap or two of relationship.