Relational Antipatterns

Article Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Interlude to box breathing
• Josh’s list of relational anti-patterns
• relational patterns
• Misc

Introduction #

This list of relational anti-patterns started as a draft of a written list in a small notebook I carry with me most of the time.

Eventually, I was jotting down notes for both this this particular list and the list on the piece on sadness and grief, and there is certainly overlap.

This ‘relational anti-patterns’ list came about when I was overhearing a conversation among a group, while I was sitting near them at a climbing gym, overhearing their discussion of their ‘red flags’ in certain relationships.

I reflected on patterns I’ve observed, what would go on my own list I appreciated that these things seem to generally hold true for all sorts of relationships, be it family in any way, chosen family, friends, acquaintances, all relationships of love, etc.

so, overhearing their discussions of ‘red flags’, I started thinking of how I’d populate my own list. Eventually, ended up with the below list.

But… I don’t like the red/green/yellow signal of traffic lights. Why does red mean stop? Why does green mean go?

So, instead of ‘red flags’, I’m calling these ‘relational anti-patterns’, or ‘anti-relationship patterns’.

Perhaps instead of ‘green flags’ it could be called ‘relational patterns’ or ‘pro-relationship patterns’.

Some of these are friend/acquaintance filters, some are things that might be learned almost only accidentally, at any point in any sort of a relationship.

Interlude to box breathing #

Do you do any sort of box breathing? As you read these words, you could try it. I’m doing it as I write this sentence, I’m doing one long breath hold. to do a good box breath practice, it’s nice to know you can enter it from any point of your own breathing cycle.

while holding your breath, count 1 2 3 4 while exhaling, count 1 2 3 4 while holding your breath “at the bottom” count 1 2 3 4 while inhaling, count 1 2 3 4 while holding your breath ‘at the top’, count 1 2 3 4 continue

put another way:

at any cadence, I start counting in my head from one to four, repeatedly, and time either holding my breath with empty lungs, inhaling across 4 beats, holding 4 beats with full lungs, exhaling 4 beats, holding 4 beats, inhaling 4, holding 4, exhaling 4. You can imagine a box, your lungs following the outside of it, four beats to a side. sometimes I felt a way writing some of these, and found myself doing box breathing when I noticed my own feelings, sometimes. And now you have the same tool. It’s been useful to me, often enough.

Josh’s list of relational anti-patterns #

I left these mostly in the order they occurred to me, at least the first ones were indeed the first items that popped to my mind. I note some of these apply to me!

1. signs of nationalism, at all, especially american nationalism. An “american” flag (the flag of the greater united states) is an instant no-go, especially.
2. being a ‘truck person’.¹ Not just fords, and not just pickups. I have dislike for all forms of car culture, including how strongly any of us ever has to be identified with ‘our’ vehicle, or other people who possess the same kind of vehicle, or a same-enough kind of vehicle. I’ve had the experiences I’ve had, and know what I know. There’s an energy of entitlement that floats especially strongly in the space, I cannot un-perceive it. I resent their miserable sight lines, how little of the ground around them the driver can see. Sometimes I see truck drivers who seem to BARELY be able to see over their own dashboard. And then they’re also driving fast, with angry energy on the throttle.
3. being into four-wheeled-vehicles very much at all. I dislike car culture, so sometimes find cars, fast cars, going fast, to be unwillingly pushed upon me. I don’t know how to easily reconcile this with my own obvious, usually over-the-top obsession with my scooter, but I can wiggle myself into a reconciliation if I try hard.
4. drives fast, or drives with a pressured emotional energy. Hard on the gas, hard on the brake, little stopping distance, seems unaware of others that are/might be in the space, that type of thing. Again, I know how I ride my own scooter, but I also know how I then drive cars, and I don’t carry the same energy into both vehicles, generally. Many people drive like this. :(
5. un-self-consciously white-passing.
6. participates in ‘patriarchy kink’. Plenty of ppl move in a way that shows they expect/want to be treated in a patriarchal way. Patriarchy kink sometimes sounds like emotional suppression, and obligation and entitlement, participation in/vocal support of certain gender norms.
7. Speaking of patriarchy kink… any active participation in evangelicalism. here’s one of several things I’ve written about that.
8. any past participation in evangelicalism (hi, its me, I know, I wish I didn’t have past participation in evangelicalism either)
9. believes/acts like they believe in political authority.²
10. does not view american police as deputized slave patrollers.
11. any sort of sarcasm, criticism, biting humor directed at others.
12. unselfconscious (over)participation in car culture/car supremacy. this is sensitive, and complicated. Maybe it looks more like also being under-equipped with non-car options, but most of american housing is the suburbs, and they’re hateful places. Most american cities are hateful, too. Any trip that involves using an ‘arterial’ is made so much worse: Arterials as Walls as Ethnic Cleansing. This is delicate, so many systems are set up to try to coerce a way of being that is dominated by cars, so ‘that the system gets what it wants’ isn’t anything we internalize as our fault. and yet.
13. eats meat (I’ll often-enough eat salmon, sardines, sometimes shrimp)
14. others some identifiable group in certain ways, especially shaming or dehumanizing ways. I do this myself! I other ‘them’ in some ways, often enough, I wish I could find a better way! I get pushy, less often find myself feeling any sort of gentleness or openness, etc. I push the undeniably judgy energy of “because knowing is solving, if you can get to a close enough view of the situation _as I see it, you can experience dramatically more peacefulness in your day to day, in/by ceasing to support or enact {behavior that whiffs of something like supremacy}.” This seems paternalistic. or is it something else? I think it could be offered fairly to a peer, even though I’m ‘standing on business’ and offering zero compromise on my view of things, which is certainly something that is unfair in some situations.
15. grief-phobic. This looks like responses of… emotional suppression, repression, thought-stopping clichés, invalidation or dismissiveness or trying to change the feeling. It’s always done to others after it’s being done to the self, it’s always a learned response, and I can manage my side of someone else’s discomfort with grief, but I then note that I’m managing something, sometimes, which sometimes is no big deal, but sometimes… tiring, or trying.
16. never playful
17. functional blindness to the issues raised in The New Jim Crow
18. doesn’t at least occasionally really enjoy cooking/baking/food prep
19. uncomfortable with, or dehumanizing to, children.
20. if my own kid is uncomfortable around them
21. if they “put on” a voice/affect when talking to kids
22. into rules
23. into sports (american football, especially)
24. makes fun of anyone
25. doesn’t wear/resists wearing helmets. Climbing helmets (while climbing, while belaying), full-face motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets.
26. persistently, unselfconsciously channels a toxic inner critic. The story I tell myself is “sure, maybe right now that critical voice is dumping only on them, but what if it gets directed at me in some situation?” So, now, I always “Witness” someone’s toxic inner critic attacking themselves³, and sometimes someone sees it and ‘turns down’ the intensity of the critic, with improved awareness, but sometimes people don’t. I note sometimes being more critical of myself, when around people who seem very critical of themselves. Usually not.
27. reacts poorly to ‘i do not like this’ or ‘could we please do {x} differently’.
28. cannot/will not walk slowly
29. does not like to walk at all
30. plays ‘devil’s advocate’ regularly/ever
31. doesn’t sometimes embrace silence (hi, its me, sometimes, this is something I want more of for me)
32. willing to “do tourism” to Hawaii. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism is a good starting point.
33. expresses xenophobia
34. does not respond with openness towards sadness, or anger. anger can be expressed in a way that does not hurt others, and thus witnessed/received by others as easily as any other expression. It can also be mis-expressed, and can be a bummer to deal with by anyone else, and handling someone who’s mad at you is so different than handling someone’s anger that is directed towards some entirely different situation. (the skills of the latter seem like a pre-req for the former, to me.)
35. has pets (dogs especially, cats are a bit less of an anti-pattern. Still, i note it as an anti-pattern, for me)
36. for people with vulvas, wearing makeup, especially ‘lots’ or ‘always’, feels too much like a performance, and I note feeling a little out of step with the norms that lead to that sort of behavior. Feels delicate to name. some performative femininity is uncomfortable to witness, for me, same as performative masculinity, whatever that might mean, might be uncomfortable to witness.
37. also for people with vulvas, i perceive body hair elimination as at least unwitting participation in something like patriarchy, internalized patriarchy, and clock it as such.
38. ditto if a person with a penis clocks me as ‘safe for patriarchy’ and spontaneously offers up in my company objectifying (overly objectifying?) comments about someone with a vulva. I usually try to clock it, and tell them as such. (an obligation to Witness bad treatment sometimes means naming to the person doing the mistreatment, that the thing they said/did was mistreatment), and the potential or friendship is reduced.
39. ditto on a person, offering up objectifying comments about anyone else. There’s lots of ways someone might intentionally or unintentionally objectify someone else, and when I see it happen, I cannot help but notice.
40. any sort of ‘seems okay with slavery and colonialism’ energy. I note that to experience good-enough emotional safety with someone, it’s best if they’re sensitive to the different… globalized, industrialized, chains of slavery, like: the animal slaughter industry enslaves the animals and the people within it. The sugar industry enslaves the people. all batteries depend on cobalt mining done by children in the congo, so I have ethical issues with electric cars and the way they create that market. The automobile/highway industry is rooted in colonial exploitation of metal resources, rubber resources, and more.
41. A part of my soul pulls away from activities that are going to involve much driving, or from people that seem to rely lots, or unselfconsciously, on the ecosystem of driving. America does ethnic cleansing via urban renewal projects, which often enough rounded to ‘tear down some people’s buildings and replace them with parking lots’ or ‘do not issue a permit to a building unless there is a parking lot’. I wrote Parking Minimums as Ethnic Cleansing. I dislike to even be inside of a parking lot, i dislike driving and using highways. This obviously sometimes puts me at odds with some norms in the USA, it’s none of our fault’s, I wish it wasn’t this way.
42. believes in, or bases their decision-making on ‘calories in/calories out’. Certain alternatives are too sound, it’s hard to even muster the energy for someone who unselfconsciously propagates CI/CO narratives. link to continuous blood glucose post, how I eat
43. references calories at all, tbh.
44. speaks derogatorily about houseless people.
45. isn’t horrified by the slaughter of animals in medical research. rats, mice, monkeys, rabbits. horrifying.
46. overly into the DSM 5, or views it as a particularly authoritative or reputable document, instead of a piece of propaganda, capitalism/supremacy supporting. (like… the story of drapetomania being considered a real thing by ‘the medical community’ seems more sidestepped than satisfactorily resolved to me.)
47. talks about ‘men’ or ‘women’ through the lense of gender-essentialism. “Men do X” or “Women do Y”. Gender essentialism is one of the two big intellectual supports of this european american supremacy that dominates the world. The other big support is the… superstition? of “race”. I don’t find the phrase ‘white supremacy’ helpful for me to use, because it seems to concede some dignity to the very concept of race. So, even though i don’t view ‘whiteness’ as a real thing, I view the collective concept of whiteness as so dangerous, and is thus completely real. Just like ‘political authority isn’t real’, but the concept, the belief, in political authority, is obviously dangerous for anyone that’s been on the wrong side of someone who raised an army and took it out murdering. So, one doesn’t have to believe in something to get got by it.

relational patterns #

writing a list of anti-patterns sometimes knocked loose a corresponding ‘pattern’, but I’m trying to not compile that list in this post. To even start a list feels overly constraining of the many ways people can experience lovely and loving aspects of relationship, togetherness, humanity, etc etc etc.

Obviously to list anything is to be able to list many things, so I’m limiting myself to a single item.

Here’s some particularly nice patterns to encounter:

• enjoys (or is capable of enjoying) Studio Ghibli films

Misc #