“I want to know about you, but not your exes, I don’t want to hear about your exes, tell me about *you*”
kind of makes about as much sense to me as “tell me all about you! I wanna know all about you, but don’t mention school. I don’t want to know anything about school or any educational intistutions you’ve been in. Don’t tell me about school, tell me about you!”
Huh?
I guess because I communicate in stories, not factiods. I don’t say things like “I needle point” to me that tells the listener actually *nothing* about me. Zippity do dah.
What I will do, instead of giving them a factiod is tell them the stories of my three favourite needlepoints. But I don’t make things for myself. I only make things for others. So all three will include the *story* of the needlepoint.
The first is a waterfall I saw - I saw pure lines of blue. My hamster, Bearnard, died and I was very upset. So I made him a burial cloth of canvas needle pointed with an abstract of a water falling on it, my sadness.
I also made a brocade cover for a stool depicting musical notes like birds on a wire, music symbolizing communication. It was for my best mate when the antique stool her gramma gave her was scorched in a house fire. She was really depressed and I wanted to show her new things could come of old.
The third was a black velvet wallet I made and needlepoint beaded a sequence of DNA across it for B (my first female long term partner) because after a three year long battle, she got published in Nature and I wanted to make something meaningful to celebrate her success.
that tell someone way *way* mare than “I like to needle point”. The fact that it has a story that includes an ex? *Really?* That would be me telling someone about my ex? That story is about me and my love of needle point and my way of interpreting art and my relationships with people and how I see them and what kind of friend I am. That is not about my ex at all. So not telling someone a story with my ex in it, I would have to cut out the story of one of my favourite pieces and why I made it. That just seems bizarre.
That’s like me telling someone “don’t tell me the story of one of the best pieces of music you wrote and why it’s so amazing, just because you wrote it for an ex when her mom died." That just makes very little sense to me. Or to "well just leave out the info that it was for your ex because her mom died." That just seems… bizarre. And hacks %50 of the information (that you loved her a lot, you are kind, you feel creative about your partners, you are empathetic and giving) from the story.
A story about writing a song for an ex when her mom died would make me go to mush. Not make me jealous or competitive. What a beautiful and lovely thing to do. How wonderful to have loved someone so much.
For me that depends. I've had a relationships based on friendship and sex (and that's all) with people who aren't over their exes. I get it. I'm happy to be a friend and talk about it with them if they are real about it. People have done it for me. And there have been times when I am still hurting and I get together with someone else who still is and we have sex, go on pic nics and make each other laugh and sort through it. I'm grateful for those.
If someone bad mouths their ex, most of the time that I've heard it, it comes from a place where they were shat on. I'm friends with the people who treated me well. even if we didn't start as friends & sex (though that's rare but there is couple and they are diamond friends. and their girlfriends and wives rock cause they have good taste
). I also expect to hear good stories too. If there are no good stories it means that person was a complete fucking prick (and I've dated a couple. whoosh. holy *crap* life is not full of kind kittens and puppy dogs!) or their view is skewed. the only way to find out if their view is skewed is to hear if that's the way they talk about everyone they have been with - BIG RED FLAG.
And if I am friends with someone after, because when we broke it was just because it wasn't a great fit in other areas aside from friendship? they won't be badmouthing me. Probably mention some of my more irritating traits LOL but so what? I know I have them. It's not a secret or a surprise... by *any* means I can be annoying!!
