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silveradept[The December Days theme this year is "Things I Used To Fully Believe About Myself." Some of these things might be familiar, some of them might be things you still believe about yourself, and some of them may be painful and traumatic for you based on your own beliefs and memories. The nice thing about text is that you can step away from it at any point and I won't know.]
#19: "I'm Not Good At Managing Resources."
I mean, that's kind of true in a flippant way, in that I tend to be the person who hoards all of the rare items and bonuses in various games in case I need them in some other situation, even when the situation that I'm currently in is that I'm fighting the hidden superboss that's specifically there to be an extremely difficult fight that requires not just tactical knowledge, but that would be made much easier through the application of some of those rare items and bonuses. After all, the game designers put them there to be used, right? That's what they're supposed to be there for, and yet, here I am, going, "No, no, I can manage this without needing these things. I might need them in some other situation. Instead, I can use some of this thing that I have a full stack of and therefore don't need to worry about whether I can get more of them."
More seriously, the thing that this statement represents is the feelings that I had while I was in the middle of my terrible relationship. Yes, I was working under rather difficult conditions, given that one part of the relationship was determined not to change anything about herself or to listen to me when I said that things could not continue in their current form. But I hadn't really had all that many examples in my life of people who were openly talking about their struggles and, past that life skils class, I didn't have a window or an insight into the budgeting process and how my family handled competing needs and bills and other such things. We played games where math and managing money were important, but we understood the abstractions of them. Joking how many relatives we had who kept dying and leaving us inheritances, because one of the squares on Payday was about that as a way of getting money. But also the abstraction that the savings account in Payday pays 10% interest every month. The loan charging 20% interest every month? That, regrettably, is completely true, and in these days, it might even be considered a good interest rate for a credit card. Because of that middle-class upbringing, I had it somewhat fixed in my head that the definition of success at resource management was being able to cover all the regular bills, all the unexpected expenses, and to still have money left over at the end of the month that could be put into savings or other investment vehicles to make more passive income. This is a lot easier to do when you're a single person with a professional salary in an apartment than in just about any other situation.
So, having gotten myself into a relationship situation, I was trying to make sure I was contributing to the expenses of what I was doing, and with tracking the expenses themselves, that was a significant outflow of money from me. That raised some concerns for me, looking at what was going on, but my ex didn't see it as an issue and told me that I didn't need to do things the way that I was. And, because I didn't have much experience with any of this, I went along with it, thinking she was doing okay with her finances. And when I figured out she wasn't, not really, I kept trying to do things that would help change the situation so we could both be stable, between my income and her investments, but she didn't change, and so the situation continued. And then I did things like moving in with her and then eventually getting the current house with the tax credits and the recession pricing and all the rest so that I could try to make things stabilize and otherwise figure out how to manage the resources in a way that would result in success, as I had defined it. And the continued failures of getting that equation to balance, or trying to tweak things in one way or another with the levers that I could pull so that the equation would move more toward balance, were highly distressing. To the point where I was considering extremely drastic solutions to the problem. (For more on that, see #13, and mind the content warnings.)
All the way through this, my ex acknowledged that I was the income that was handling the expenses, but seemed impervious to just about every single suggestion that the expenses needed to change. She did get SNAP, and we used that as well, and it still didn't make the equations balance, because of that unwillingness to change. And all throughout, she was telling me that if I was getting so stressed about managing all of these resources, that I should let her manage them, instead, and relieve myself of that stress in my life. She was implicitly letting me continue to tell myself that the fault in why I wasn't succeeding was because I wasn't doing a good enough job at managing the resources. After all, if I can't make it work, that's my fault. And if I have the temerity to suggest that she might be contributing to the problem, she'll escalate and tell me all of the services that she's providing me for free, and that no income that she could collect would be enough to cover the fees for all those services if we have to send out for them. (Thus, she doesn't have to change at all, since she's alerady contributing so much to the household by staying home and handling things.)
Yes, it seems obvious to everyone who was observing the situation, and much more obvious to me now that the problem in that situation was that we were never agreed about how to budget and how to spend so that we could not only cover all the expenses, but then make progress in retiring the debts already created on the credit cards so there would be more money freed up to work with. We had different goals and different ideas about how to achieve those goals. I couldn't do more to try and achieve my goals than I already was doing, and because I couldn't fix it by myself, it wasn't getting fixed. But this was also a sitution where I couldn't give in to despair or otherwise abandon trying to make it work, because I knew what was at the end of that pathway. So I kept trying, and when I kept failing, I kept blaming myself and my own inadequacies as to why I kept failing. It built a narrative that I wasn't good at managing resources, because, again, when you're the thing you can control, and you're the most consistent thing in a situation where things are failing, the obvious conclusion is that you are failing because of something that you can control. Even if that something is an outlandish idea like "not currently working seven days a week at two jobs and a side hustle to bring in enough money."
This statement's truth value got blown out of the water almost as soon as I finally succeeded at separation and then started engaging in my post-terrible relationship management. Even though I'd taken on different debts (and more debts) to get out of the situation and during the bad relationship, I suddenly found myself once again able to make ends meet, to pay off the debts that I was incurring, and to have at least a little bit of money put away every month for savings and retirement savings. Even when I added more people into my household, I was still able to keep building savings and retirement saving and pay off cards and take on new debts and new policies and otherwise prove that I am, actually, quite good at managing resources. Because now I had people who were aligned with my goals, and who were willing to either state their case for why now, or to delay for a little while to make the money situation work, and to otherwise work within the system so that things didn't get out of whack. It's not at the perfect point I would like it to be, yet, but it will be a lot closer to that perfection over time, as old debts retire and there's more to work with so that I can get back to the tasks that I was trying to get to before I got derailed by the bad relationship I was in. It's pretty remarkable how well it has gone, honestly, even though there's been an additional debt shouldered for getting rid of my ex, and plenty of times where paying in installments has been the only way of getting necessary things done. It certainly doesn't go quickly, not yet, but it is going, and it's pretty consistently going in the right direction.
Managing resources sometimes does trigger some of the issues where I start putting my own needs last or when I put off things that would be nice and that I would enjoy because I don't think there's as much resource available as there actually is. Or because I feel like I haven't earned any such luxury or enjoyment through superior moral virtue, Protestant Work Ethic, or any of the other things that are deployed as a way of enforcing denial or trying to make someone feel guilty about taking a small amount of enjoyment for themselves instead of always keeping their eyes heavenward, or focused on the grindstone, or similar things. It often takes someone else telling me to go get the thing and reminding me of all the research and thoughts that I've put into it, and that now is likely a great time for it, since it's on sale. It's easier to do this for others, because others' happiness is important to me, but I'm hoping that as I continue to feel like I have actual resources available to me that it will get easier to make some of those decisions about things for myself and for others without worrying that doing so is going to break the bank.
#19: "I'm Not Good At Managing Resources."
I mean, that's kind of true in a flippant way, in that I tend to be the person who hoards all of the rare items and bonuses in various games in case I need them in some other situation, even when the situation that I'm currently in is that I'm fighting the hidden superboss that's specifically there to be an extremely difficult fight that requires not just tactical knowledge, but that would be made much easier through the application of some of those rare items and bonuses. After all, the game designers put them there to be used, right? That's what they're supposed to be there for, and yet, here I am, going, "No, no, I can manage this without needing these things. I might need them in some other situation. Instead, I can use some of this thing that I have a full stack of and therefore don't need to worry about whether I can get more of them."
More seriously, the thing that this statement represents is the feelings that I had while I was in the middle of my terrible relationship. Yes, I was working under rather difficult conditions, given that one part of the relationship was determined not to change anything about herself or to listen to me when I said that things could not continue in their current form. But I hadn't really had all that many examples in my life of people who were openly talking about their struggles and, past that life skils class, I didn't have a window or an insight into the budgeting process and how my family handled competing needs and bills and other such things. We played games where math and managing money were important, but we understood the abstractions of them. Joking how many relatives we had who kept dying and leaving us inheritances, because one of the squares on Payday was about that as a way of getting money. But also the abstraction that the savings account in Payday pays 10% interest every month. The loan charging 20% interest every month? That, regrettably, is completely true, and in these days, it might even be considered a good interest rate for a credit card. Because of that middle-class upbringing, I had it somewhat fixed in my head that the definition of success at resource management was being able to cover all the regular bills, all the unexpected expenses, and to still have money left over at the end of the month that could be put into savings or other investment vehicles to make more passive income. This is a lot easier to do when you're a single person with a professional salary in an apartment than in just about any other situation.
So, having gotten myself into a relationship situation, I was trying to make sure I was contributing to the expenses of what I was doing, and with tracking the expenses themselves, that was a significant outflow of money from me. That raised some concerns for me, looking at what was going on, but my ex didn't see it as an issue and told me that I didn't need to do things the way that I was. And, because I didn't have much experience with any of this, I went along with it, thinking she was doing okay with her finances. And when I figured out she wasn't, not really, I kept trying to do things that would help change the situation so we could both be stable, between my income and her investments, but she didn't change, and so the situation continued. And then I did things like moving in with her and then eventually getting the current house with the tax credits and the recession pricing and all the rest so that I could try to make things stabilize and otherwise figure out how to manage the resources in a way that would result in success, as I had defined it. And the continued failures of getting that equation to balance, or trying to tweak things in one way or another with the levers that I could pull so that the equation would move more toward balance, were highly distressing. To the point where I was considering extremely drastic solutions to the problem. (For more on that, see #13, and mind the content warnings.)
All the way through this, my ex acknowledged that I was the income that was handling the expenses, but seemed impervious to just about every single suggestion that the expenses needed to change. She did get SNAP, and we used that as well, and it still didn't make the equations balance, because of that unwillingness to change. And all throughout, she was telling me that if I was getting so stressed about managing all of these resources, that I should let her manage them, instead, and relieve myself of that stress in my life. She was implicitly letting me continue to tell myself that the fault in why I wasn't succeeding was because I wasn't doing a good enough job at managing the resources. After all, if I can't make it work, that's my fault. And if I have the temerity to suggest that she might be contributing to the problem, she'll escalate and tell me all of the services that she's providing me for free, and that no income that she could collect would be enough to cover the fees for all those services if we have to send out for them. (Thus, she doesn't have to change at all, since she's alerady contributing so much to the household by staying home and handling things.)
Yes, it seems obvious to everyone who was observing the situation, and much more obvious to me now that the problem in that situation was that we were never agreed about how to budget and how to spend so that we could not only cover all the expenses, but then make progress in retiring the debts already created on the credit cards so there would be more money freed up to work with. We had different goals and different ideas about how to achieve those goals. I couldn't do more to try and achieve my goals than I already was doing, and because I couldn't fix it by myself, it wasn't getting fixed. But this was also a sitution where I couldn't give in to despair or otherwise abandon trying to make it work, because I knew what was at the end of that pathway. So I kept trying, and when I kept failing, I kept blaming myself and my own inadequacies as to why I kept failing. It built a narrative that I wasn't good at managing resources, because, again, when you're the thing you can control, and you're the most consistent thing in a situation where things are failing, the obvious conclusion is that you are failing because of something that you can control. Even if that something is an outlandish idea like "not currently working seven days a week at two jobs and a side hustle to bring in enough money."
This statement's truth value got blown out of the water almost as soon as I finally succeeded at separation and then started engaging in my post-terrible relationship management. Even though I'd taken on different debts (and more debts) to get out of the situation and during the bad relationship, I suddenly found myself once again able to make ends meet, to pay off the debts that I was incurring, and to have at least a little bit of money put away every month for savings and retirement savings. Even when I added more people into my household, I was still able to keep building savings and retirement saving and pay off cards and take on new debts and new policies and otherwise prove that I am, actually, quite good at managing resources. Because now I had people who were aligned with my goals, and who were willing to either state their case for why now, or to delay for a little while to make the money situation work, and to otherwise work within the system so that things didn't get out of whack. It's not at the perfect point I would like it to be, yet, but it will be a lot closer to that perfection over time, as old debts retire and there's more to work with so that I can get back to the tasks that I was trying to get to before I got derailed by the bad relationship I was in. It's pretty remarkable how well it has gone, honestly, even though there's been an additional debt shouldered for getting rid of my ex, and plenty of times where paying in installments has been the only way of getting necessary things done. It certainly doesn't go quickly, not yet, but it is going, and it's pretty consistently going in the right direction.
Managing resources sometimes does trigger some of the issues where I start putting my own needs last or when I put off things that would be nice and that I would enjoy because I don't think there's as much resource available as there actually is. Or because I feel like I haven't earned any such luxury or enjoyment through superior moral virtue, Protestant Work Ethic, or any of the other things that are deployed as a way of enforcing denial or trying to make someone feel guilty about taking a small amount of enjoyment for themselves instead of always keeping their eyes heavenward, or focused on the grindstone, or similar things. It often takes someone else telling me to go get the thing and reminding me of all the research and thoughts that I've put into it, and that now is likely a great time for it, since it's on sale. It's easier to do this for others, because others' happiness is important to me, but I'm hoping that as I continue to feel like I have actual resources available to me that it will get easier to make some of those decisions about things for myself and for others without worrying that doing so is going to break the bank.
