I Think You're Clumsy

I have this nagging, nauseating feeling that I can't trust anyone that I'm dating to be careful with me. To be fair to all the people that I'm dating, I struggle with paranoia. It's a sort of negative side-effect from pattern recognition. However, I think my observations and hesitations are valid. 

 My worst even paranoid episode was caused by my addiction to playing chess. I would play all day, every day. I played on the subway, on my work computer, at home, at dinner, in the car, I played everywhere all the time. I was (am) addicted to observing, predicting, controlling, and preventing outcomes that I don't want to occur. A rapper might phrase this as “Ya’ll playin’ checkers, while I’m playin’ chess”. Doing this constantly made me apply that same thought process to all of my relationships in a particularly bad way and I lost my marbles. Real bad. I straight up stopped talking to people for months because I thought they were all out to get me. A rapper might phrase that as “I was dodging my opps”.  I do have opps. Some girl made an entire TikTok series to hate on me. What happened with Helen and her TikTok series about me though, was not what was happening during this paranoid episode.  What was really happening was that I didn't understand that people are not as in control of their actions as I believed them to be. They don't take the time to introspect, journal, share publicly their findings (😉), and apply a growth mindset (not in the Red Pill way). I was perceiving people’s stagnation as malicious. I couldn’t comprehend it. Having stagnant emotional intelligence is stupid. Why would anyone want to do it? Want. Oh. Reframe. Why would anyone want to do it? They don’t want to do it, they don’t know how to do anything else. It’s a bit “woo woo” of me to say this, but they’re not part of the spiritually awake. That’s why they’re stuck on these karmic merry-go-rounds. This realization has done a lot for my paranoia, but I still experience it, 

 I think it was important to offer the disclaimer about my paranoia. I think it’s important to be careful in that way. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “careful” as: giving a lot of attention to what you are doing so that you do not have an accident, make a mistake, or damage something. I think that in order to behave in that manner, one needs to be thoughtful, curious, investigative,  introspective, proactive, collaborative, and communicative. You need to think about what you’re doing, be curious about what the other person is doing, investigate each interaction, introspect on how you feel, be proactive about how your feelings inform you, collaborate with them on dissecting thoughts and feelings, and communicate with the other person regularly and clearly. I often do this by sending a post-date/ hang debrief to the people that create space for me to do so. I also tend to over communicate when beginning a new relationship. For example, for the first four months that we knew each other, I would ask Omar if it’s okay for me to hug him. He honestly thought it was odd of me, but I wanted to be sure that I understood him, what he wanted, his boundaries, and his comforts. What made me stop asking was this dinner date (? he insisted on paying, so I think date) that we went on in July at Cafe Zaffri. He does this thing where he kind of talks around what he wants to say because he doesn’t want to tell you what to think, but he’s hoping that you make an inference. That night, he talked a lot about not doing anything he doesn’t want to do ever in a tone and with eye contact that said “gather from this that I am only here because this is where I want to be. Stop interrogating me.” It gave me this clarity about how he likes to interact that felt like finding a clearing after stumbling through the woods. That felt dramatic to write down, but that’s really how it feels for me to understand how a person feels about interacting with me. Neurotypicals lie. They lie all the time about whether or not they like you, if they actually want to be spending time with you, if they’re just there because they feel obliged to be. When he broke down all the ways and reasons that and why he overall doesn't put himself in places that he doesn’t want to be, I was able to fully understand that I don’t have to double, triple check that he’s not lying to me in his words and his actions.  Equally comforting to me is that he is incredibly careful with his language. He knows himself in a place of needing to improve on the self before commitment, but open to new connections. I empathize in a way; I am struggling with a deep fear of getting into a relationship with a man and him taking away my perfect, awesome, amazing life. We both need a lot of convincing… We both use language in a very careful way that says “don’t get in your mind that it’s going to be me that you’ll spend your life with.” I find this to be kinder than those who spin verbal fantasies. 

The word “my” in a new relationship is particularly careless and clumsy when used unintentionally. Using it unintentionally is perhaps one of the most egregious acts of love bombing possible. Calling someone yours by saying to them “you are my____” is a big statement. It’s a declaration of intention that only the most thoughtless, manipulative, and unruly of people use flippantly. I am very careful with my language. I do not use pet names, possessive language, or make statements about doing things like traveling until a clear understanding of how we both feel has been solidified. I once upon a time thought this to be a negative side effect of being neurodivergent. I now see it as the angel at the top of my Christmas Tree of moral superiority. I have the self-control to not let my romantasy whims make me an elephant in the china shop of people’s feelings. What makes someone behave like an elephant in the china shop of people’s feelings? A menagerie of lackingness. Lacking introspection. Lacking an example of how to treat people. Lacking knowledge. Lacking self-control. If I were to say how I really feel in a way that my mother would cringe at, I would say that people who act like this are licentious leeches with low character.

Be kind, baby! Please. Remember! They know not what they do.

That’s what she would say. They’re not handicapped. Should I hold empathy for people who don’t use the free will that God has given them to not be a total piece of garbage by the time they hit 30? No! I’m not asking for permission to stone them, but I think some public shaming could go a long way. I am the owner of “Are We Dating the Same Muslim Guy” for a reason. I believe in airing out bad behavior. I believe in the Dunce Hat. I believe in discipline. I believe that being careless with someone else’s heart and body deserves punishment. I think that you should too. 

It may be arrogant of me to decide that I am the right person to write out a guide on how to be a more careful and thoughtful person. If it is, then I’m arrogant. Regardless of whether or not I am arrogant, I am better studied and practiced in the art of social carefulness than you are. :p. 

Thoughtful

Curious,

Investigative

Introspective

Proactive 

Collaborative

Communicative

How to manifest these behaviours in a relationship (platonic or romantic) setting? I’ve written them in the order that I believe they should happen in. The first step in any careful behavior process is thinking about what you’re doing and why you are doing it. Being thoughtful is not just thinking, it’s absorbing yourself in critical thought about carefulness and consideration for others. “How will my actions affect this person?”, “how will this person perceive my words?”, “is my behaviour reflective of my feelings?”. Those are the kinds of questions to ask yourself constantly, but with amplified scrutiny in the beginning of a new relationship. You’re learning to interact with new souls. In order to be thoughtful, you must expand your knowledge. Read about the power of language, how words can mean the same and different things. Thoughtfulness in its best practice requires knowledge. In my opinion, this knowledge is best absorbed from reading fiction. Fiction will teach you far more about how others think, feel, and perceive than a self-help book. 

Being curious is a more whimsical part of this process to me. I’m always very curious about people. This is the fun part of getting to know someone. I always want to know why, or how, or when, or what. Unfortunately, I’ve come to notice that many of my friends, romantic interests, and family members are not curious about others. I think this is because they prefer to fantasize about other people and being curious would be detrimental to their fantasies. If your fantasy is that your new boyfriend is making thousands of dollars a month being a youtuber, being curious about that could lead to finding out that he’s not, and force you to see him for who he is. The horror, the horror. I think lack of curiosity is inherently unkind. You aren’t actually getting to know that person, you’re developing an idea of them without doing the proper research which will inevitably lead to them not being what you imagine. Then you spend hours arguing about them being not what you expected despite you never investigating who they are. It’s not careful, it is clumsy. My favorite questions to ask people are: “do you like to play tennis?”, “what is your relationship with your mother like?”, “what extracurricular activities did you do growing up?”, and “are you a picky eater?”.  These answers will inform my initial interest in pursuing anything with a person. 

Being curious and being investigative are similar things. The difference is in the action. Asking the questions is curiosity, studying and examining the answers is the investigation. A simple example of this hearing from a man that he works at lets say… Meta, going to his LinkedIn, looking at his work history, and confirming that he works at Meta. I’ve seen one too many TikTok series to not check a man’s LinkedIn. A more complex example of this is challenging the answers to their questions. A lot of men I’ve dated self-identify as  “family men”. I respond by asking what it means to them to be a family man. They all have different answers. Some have said that it means providing financially, others have said that they want to be a stay-at-home dad, others have said that it means running a strict household, and others had nothing to back up that claim at all. The assumption that we all have the understanding of what it means to “be a family man” would have been tragically wrong had I not investigated. To me, my grandfather was a “family man”, and that meant that he’d do anything for his family. He would drive up the state of Florida to fix a flat on the car that he gave me. Another man that claimed to be a “family man” thought that was spoiling me. Imagine the trainwreck it would have been if I assumed he meant what I had in mind. Zoinks. Investigation is taking care. 

The next step in this process is to introspect. To ask yourself what you feel about the things you learned from being thoughtful, curious, and investigative. I actually think that most people need to do this by journaling because it helps the thought process to write things down.  It helps keep your thoughts aligned and accountable to have a record of them to refer to. Otherwise a strong emotion may sway the way you recall otherwise positive interactions or negative interactions with others and cloud your decisionmaking. When introspecting, it’s best to avoid asking yourself  “why” and instead ask yourself “what”. “What am I feeling?” “What do I want to happen?” “What did I do to contribute to this?” Asking “why” does something in the mind that destabilizes your sense of agency. You want to solidify your sense of agency when you introspect. 

Being proactive is the harder part of this process for me. I really like to observe and gather a lot of evidence. In the past, I’ve taken so long to decide how I feel that the people I’m interacting with felt toyed with. My solution to this has been to be proactive in small doses. I do this by sharing my reflections about each interaction with that person as soon as I introspect on it. Usually this happens within 48 hours. It’s nothing crazy, just a quick debrief on everything I felt about our interaction and if applicable, follow up questions. My favorite new people give me a thoughtful response in return! I think that sharing proactively allows both parties to feel like they are on the same page and never have to wonder about what the other is feeling while avoiding the emotional burden of having massive conversations after long periods of things going unsaid. It gives everyone the information they need to decision make and feel confident in their process. It’s super careful! 

Being collaborative is the sexiest part of this process for me. It’s where I get to see how well someone works on a team. I think looking for a romantic relationship is at base looking for a collaborator. I think careful collaborating in relationships looks like touching base about schedules, sharing information about anticipated weekly workloads, sharing what’s going on that could lead to negative feelings that the other should be aware of, and many more things. I love to collaborate on mutual success. I actually even structured my business around my love for collaboration. I phrase working at JCPC as  working with me instead of for me because I firmly believe that our overall success relies on collaborative effort. If we’re dating, we’re collaborating. Short-term, long-term, life-term; we’re collaborating on something. The process only works if we see each other as peers working together on a group project titled  “How to Not Treat Each Other Like Shit.” 

Last is being communicative. Being communicative is not talking at someone and dropping your words like a mandate. That’s being Kim Jong Un. Being communicative is sharing what you are thinking, not what you decided and opening up a conversation about your thoughts with collaboration and carefulness in mind. I’m not saying that you can’t make a decision, but that decision should be coming after communication. Otherwise you’re just mucking around with people’s feelings like a pig in mud. Making a decision about a relationship stops being an internal only thought and decision making process once you’ve been consistently seeing someone and especially if you are exchanging bodily fluids with them. Communication is two sided.

 “I am feeling this. What are you feeling?” 

“Oh I’ve been feeling this…I understand, but could you elaborate?”

That’s the beginning of a great communication. Not doing this is primitive. That’s my mandate.