polyamorous bisexual rain scaled to fit as a phone background

Don’t let another person ruin your day

ruin your own damn day

It does seem to me (as someone who’s never worn makeup) that it is probably a lot easier psychologically to be a woman who has never worn makeup than it is to be a woman who wears makeup and consciously tries to stop. Not even politically, just in the sense of recognizing your own face in the mirror. I’ve never seen this face made up so there’s nothing to get used to, whereas a woman who does makeup for let’s say half an hour every single day is going to notice a different face when she stops. Even if she still likes that face it seems likely to be unsettling.

Is it possible to create an intentional space for processing interpersonal challenges or is that work most authentically done alone, with an unrelated party, and / or with the people in the relationship and no one else?

I think about this a lot. So group processing really only works if it is an intentional space, if there are shared agreements or a shared goal because then there is a reason to share the process of reflecting, healing miscommunication, confronting abuse… Individually, we all may deal with and desire to approach conflict differently. It’s good to flesh out those approaches beforehand, so that when interpersonal dynamics happen or escalate then we have already communicated about how to go about communicating with each other about them. Beyond this, if two or three people (whoever is directly involved in the conflict) do not address it, energetically and sometimes directly it will begin to affect others in the intentional space. Perhaps there can be agreements made in case this happens too. But sometimes you have contradicting preferences too, like people who prefer to call someone in/discuss tense interpersonal disagreement or dynamic one on one, or people that prefer to do that in a group, or who don’t want that at all. Confrontation between two people in front of a group can also be triggering for some, especially if it isn’t consented too, and I tend to favor other methods (one on one) first. I think its okay to talk to each other about unaddressed dynamics as long as we arent sowing distrust or explicitly promoting bias. However, in some of the collectives I’ve been with, if there is too much unaddressed stuff, we will literally intentionally plan an interpersonal dynamics meeting/discussion. This space tends to be emotionally exhausting, though it is different from a group check in which can be brief and honest at the start of a meeting, an interpersonal dynamics gathering is to create an explicitly honest space where we are free to talk about how we feel and name or speak directly to those we may have unresolved conflict with. We take turns bringing up the stuff, listening, sometimes responding if desired, and we do so with the understanding that we are asking ppl to share how they really feel about working with us and with the goal to heal or clarify our interpersonal relationships. It’s not the best model but it has been an attempt because after yrs of working together stuff gets thrown to the side, the real emotional stuff, and it energetically effects our dynamics if left unaddressed. As for talking to unrelated parties, I feel like that’s a good supplement to self care in interpersonal dynamics but can’t exactly replace direct communication if that is a goal.