i needed her to calm me down. every time. i didn't call it a problem. | musing no. 117
on the quieter version of emotional outsourcing — and what it actually cost her.
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—
the architecture of self → musing no. 101
the architecture of trust → musing no. 90
the architecture of control → musing no. 74
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i want to tell you about a version of me
i’m not proud of.
not the version that raised his voice.
not the one who disappeared.
the quieter version.
the one who got worked up
and needed her to bring him down.
every time.
—
i didn’t call it outsourcing.
i called it being close.
i called it letting her in.
i thought needing her to regulate me
meant i trusted her.
i thought needing her
was the same as loving her.
because no one had ever stayed
while i was overwhelmed before.
most people
either fought me,
left me,
or waited for me
to become someone easier.
so when she stayed,
i confused relief
with love.
i thought that’s what intimacy was —
falling apart in front of someone
and having them put you back together.
i was wrong.
—
what it actually was:
i was handing her my dysregulation
and calling it vulnerability.
i was making my nervous system
her problem
and calling it connection.
i was leaning on her steadiness
so consistently
that she couldn’t afford to be unsteady herself.
there was no room for it.
mine always came first.
—
she didn’t complain.
that’s the thing about women
who were trained early
to absorb.
they don’t complain.
they quietly rearrange themselves
around your chaos.
they steady the room.
they steady you.
they steady themselves last.
and you mistake their silence
for proof that everything is fine.
it isn’t fine.
it’s management.
—
the man who screams knows he has a problem.
the man who just needs her to calm him down —
he doesn’t always see it.
he thinks he’s being vulnerable.
he thinks he’s being open.
he thinks needing her
is the same as loving her.
it isn’t.
needing her to regulate you
is not intimacy.
it is dependence
dressed up as closeness.
—
and the cost of it —
she couldn’t have a bad day.
not really.
because if she was struggling,
who was going to manage him?
she learned
to postpone herself.
there wasn’t enough room
for both nervous systems.
her dysregulation had no room
because his always took up the space first.
she became indispensable.
and indispensable
is not the same
as loved.
people rarely notice
when they stop loving a person
and start loving
what that person
does for them.
because when what you provide
becomes your identity,
love quietly begins
to get replaced
by utility.
—
i see this clearly now.
i didn’t then.
the embodiment work,
the integration,
the slow unglamorous process
of learning to hold my own nervous system —
that’s what made it visible.
you cannot see
what you’ve outsourced
until you start
doing it yourself.
—
if you are the man in this —
i’m not here to shame you.
most of us were never taught
to regulate ourselves.
we were taught to perform.
to provide.
to fix.
we were not taught
to sit inside discomfort
without handing it to someone else.
so we handed it to her.
and she held it.
because that’s what
she was trained to do.
—
but here’s what i want you to understand.
she was not calm.
she was containing.
those are not the same thing.
calm
is a state.
containing
is labor.
and labor without acknowledgment
becomes resentment.
slowly.
quietly.
before either of you notices
what’s been building.
—
the red room directive on this
goes somewhere most men
will not want to go.
it names what you actually built inside her.
not the pattern in theory.
the specific, daily, invisible architecture
of a woman
who learned she couldn’t afford
to fall apart.
if you think you’re ready for that —
and i mean actually ready,
not comfortable —
it’s waiting.
—
this connects
to a recent musing.
musing 115 was about
what it feels like
to be the one absorbing.
this is about
what it looks like
from the other side.
the same pattern.
different seat.
and the bridge between them —
the thing that makes intimacy possible —
is a man
who can hold his own weight.
not perfectly.
not without struggle.
but without defaulting to her
as the place
where his dysregulation
goes to die.
—
because you cannot be close
to someone
and be their regulation
at the same time.
eventually,
someone has to stop carrying
so two people
can finally
walk together.
presence requires room.
and intimacy needs
two nervous systems
that are both allowed
to exist.
— author
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p.p.p.s: love you ceg