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Notes -
Although I don’t know your exact situation, my mind immediately goes to the elements of harmony and the levels of relationship.
First, identify the level of relationship with the person you’re trying to have cooperate. Acquaintances share attributes, Friends share experiences, Ohana share purpose. (Ohana, Hawaiian for family, is the name I’ve chosen for the category of people who go in together on ventures, such as marriages or businesses, or who rely on each other for survival such as brothers in arms. Best friendships, our closest confidants, are here too, as are intimate lovers. They hold our hearts and hopes, and a betrayal from Ohana hurts more than anything else.)
Identifying the level of the relationship can help you to see what you’re asking from their perspective; do they consider you to be their acquaintance, friend, or Ohana?
An analogy is a house. Acquaintances get basic hospitality; they can come into the living room, the dining room, the den, the backyard, and the bathroom. Friends can come into the kitchen and get snacks from the refrigerator, get asked to help with the dishes, can hang out in personal spaces occasionally, and can borrow books from the shelves. Ohana have a free bed whenever needed, can leave stuff in the house indefinitely, can share resources, may even be asked to do laundry.
Next, consider the elements of harmony and where the other person stopped being an “us” and started being a “them” to you: are they being unkind, untruthful, disloyal, ungenerous, too serious, or under-involved?
If not, it’s not a relationship issue but just someone not modeling the world as you do. Being neuro-atypical myself, this is my everyday life; I have to make people see things the way I do by starting from their perspective and working toward mine. It’s difficult and requires patience, coming to an understanding with people who don’t see the same structures of importance and imperative when they look at the world.
Thanks for the response, the way you explained it makes a lot of sense to me.
In the triggering situations I almost always find what I believe is strong evidence of the other person being unkind or untruthful. I realize that they will never value me like they value the other relationships in their life. My model of them suggests they view me as a “them”, and there is nothing I can do to change this.
In many situations I just accept this and move on to doing other things, but sometimes the trigger is very strong and I start going down the path of dark/anti-social thoughts. It is like I find the triggering situations are a significant injustice and therefore I’m allowed break social norms in order to make things right.
The problem is I don’t want to go down the path of dark/anti-social thoughts. Even if I can find some unorthodox solution to the injustice it is almost always a case of winning a battle, but losing the war. The dark/anti-social thoughts also start bleeding over to other situations where they don’t apply.
In that case, I recommend checking this chart (PDF link) to see how many codependent characteristics you currently have. You should know that this was made for a vaguely theistic 12-step recovery group designed by and for neurotypical people.
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