I had a great time LARPing Friday night. My roleplaying is still a little shaky, but improving. It’s incredibly scary pretending to be a giant flirt. Growing up isolated the way I did, I never intentionally flirted with anyone in my life. Well, unless you count some IM conversations with Stacey during our super-brief courtship. I’ve been told I flirt unconsciously, but I’m not even sure what that means. Apparently being polite and personable is flirting, if the recipient is a female.
So walking up to random women and chatting them up is totally foreign territory to me. There was a moment Friday when one of the targets of my attentions reacted coldly (in-character), and instead of being smooth, devil-may-care Anson Tyrell, I turned into panicked, smooth-things-over Avdi again. Ah well. It’s a learning experience.
Also had a sizable bombshell dropped in my lap toward the end of the night. Back-room political machinations lead to me being elevated, to my shock (both in and out of character), from an unremarkable knight to one of the highest offices in the land. I’m as clueless about the position as my character, but since I’m basically a puppet that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The upside is that hopefully I will have more to do at games, and there won’t be as many dead periods where everyone is engaged in Big Important Secret Things and poor apolitical Anson has nothing to do but raid the refreshments table and keep an eye out for unoccupied Ladies.
On the other hand, it’s unhealthy for me to have these attachments. The emotional attachment of worrying about what she’s doing or thinking. The attachment to the past, bringing it into the present instead of letting her just be who she is now. And maybe it’s true that I’ll never learn to trust again if I don’t give her the opportunity to prove herself.
Distrust is another foreign territory to me. I tend to trust people by default, and it takes a lot to break that trust. But being unaccustomed to distrust, I don’t know how to move on from it. I remember talking to my shrink about it, but I don’t remember him having a lot of helpful suggestions.
I just keep thinking, isn’t it OK to have certain things that are “yours”, that you don’t share with your partner? Or is that selfish (in a bad way)?
Today the sky is clear blue and I want nothing more than to take off and drive, but I promised myself I’d do our taxes this weekend.
Have I mentioned I need a vacation recently?
sharing..
hmmm… I’m wondering about your thoughts on sharing.. While I logically see point of and the right to have your “own” things that are yours and yours alone.. some part of me wonders if such things are healthy…
On the other hand, feeling forced to share everything is also clearly unhealthy…
I don’t know.. In my current relationship.. I don’t feel the need ever for a separate “space” of my own.. but I can honestly say that this is the first relationship where that has been the case.
As for trust.. I am the reverse.. I tend not to trust people.. and if people do enough to me, then it does sometimes become impossible for me to trust them again..
then again.. I do have friends that have broken my trust and then earned it back.. but it is something that is earned.. trust is not an absolute thing that is there or not.. it is a process.. it is a built thing.. so giving someone the chance to build it back is probably a good thing.. but this should be explicit..
Re: sharing..
I have the same concerns. And objectively speaking, having a partner with whom I share my pastimes seems very desirable. In fact, some of my angst in the past has been over the feeling that we don’t share much in common. So sharing the LARP would ostensibly be a good thing.
But I’m scared to death of it going from being a pleasant escapist game to something which ties my stomach up in knots just to think about. And I believe I have had sufficient experiences for that not to be a wholly irrational fear.
I guess it boils down to this: I want some areas of my life NOT to be a proving ground for trust issues.
That makes sense…
Sometimes.. you just need to HAVE FUN! and if you have fears of something that is fun turning not fun.. then that will most certainly do damage to your relationship …
Actually.. having a space where you can have fun and create some excitement and release some endorphins will, more likely than not, actually help your relationship… so keep it to yourself..
Thanks for letting me tag-along. I had fun. Though I too am awkward feeling, haven’t quite settled into my character. I’ll improve over time I am sure. Part of it is finding my place in things.
🙂
As for having alone time…”my thing/your thing”. I do think there is a place for such. It just needs to be understood by both parties, and requires trust on both part.
It can be awkward. I sit there and wonder somewhat similar thoughts but for different reasons. Kimberley may or may eventually join me in the LARP. For now, the next few times she’ll be in school. As for me, there is that nervousness of not coming across “flirty and married”. I love my wife, I am not looking for another. That said, I am a sociable person and I tend to gravitate to a fresh social encounter. I fear such can come across flirty. (That, and I’ve never been comfortable with the standard guy talk focused mainly on the use of women and getting drunk. I do enjoy beer talk. There is a difference there. And many of my friends and the people I have gotten along with over the years have been women and a small cadre of guys.)
Life, someone really should have written a manual for it!
Yes. I reccon all couples have some aspect of their lives that they don’t share. And in many ways I consider it healthy. Take martial arts for example. Both my girlfrend and I enjoy throwing down. But taking martial arts together, rather than being a bonding experience, would likely be an experience of us directly competing, and be less than fun for either.
That’s Avdi, for you, always thinking about himself and not considering other people.
I don’t want my LARP experience to be a proving ground for your trust issues. So if you want to get it off of you, blame it on me!
See…
It’s always hard for me to have really good input here because I don’t ahve any first hand experience or standards by which to judge the overall situation… I can only go on the situation as it is described by his or your viewpoints.
Thus.. any time I give any input, I hope it is taken with LARGE HEAPING HANDFULLS of salt..
I only hope that you guys figure out what you need to do to both be happy–both separately and together.
Overall, my situation with my partner is realtively the opposite.. I’m super unsocial for the most part. I need my “down times” to recharge from being out with people. Jai, on the other hand, is a lot more social than I am, so often she goes out to do stuff without me, which is actually very cool for both her and me. If anything, she sometimes wants me to come with out with her when I would otherwise just stay at home.. so I have told her that she gets to exert “executive veto privilege” every so often and I will go without complaint. She never abuses this situation, so it has never been a problem..