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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Droop-in-soup" data-source="post: 7954658" data-attributes="member: 7022302">I hear your perspective. But I don't experience specific things you say as a particularly accurate conclusions, for us specifically.How are your comments a help?I'm finding myself wanting to ask you also, in retrospect of working this post through: How is what you are saying to us supposed to be helpful?  As I have taken it in deeply, it seems your prognosis is we won't succeed to play, or prevent relapses even if we resolve this bit, and we don't have an adult healthy way to do anything.  Where do you see something helpful for us here?  It's a pretty grim picture you are offering. Where do you see an opportunity for progress?  Just giving up?I think it is worth expressing  what thinking this post sets in motion, because it helps to point out certain ideals that can be striven for, and clarifies things that others might also misunderstand.  This exercise should bring some new ideas out, and that is valuable.Adult skills:It isn't that we didn't have practices to deal with emotions and problems in an adult way, we do.  The problem is that problems and emotions don't get resolved until the situation is understood and comes clear.  That process cannot be forced. It has its own rules.  You are getting a view of what it looks like when an attempt is made to gather all unresolved experiences and try to organize them and make progress with it.  The drama gets bigger when the little moments remain unresolved, and get gathered in a crisis. Crisis with us was pretty rare. The small pinching difficulties showed up more often. That is how I depict it.An appropriate use of this forum?Do you fault my friend for turning this post into an invitation for constructive feedback?  I don't think it started with that intention, but circumstances opened that door, and so he chose to go with it. I doubt at all he would characterize it as seeking a crowdsourcing "fix" in a public forum. We both know that only he and I could fix anything in our situation.   I didn't know about the forum until it was well underway, and I felt my participation would bring more context and make it possible to be more productive. Widened perspective is something he and I are both inviting, and receiving, not a fix.  And we are not looking for a fix for our drama. We are looking for clarity and understanding.  If you look at the drama here you will see that it comes from lack of understanding, not drama for drama's sake.Our behavior on the thread:You suggest we don't have adult skills in managing our relationship. Do you mean to say you find our postings on this thread as not appropriate? Do you see a lack of adult tools and adult behavior being used at this thread?   Are we causing middle school drama on this forum? Why assume we act differently at our table or otherwise?  In reading some of these posts I have dealt with plenty of inner turmoil.  Do you really see no adult tools guiding this process?  I wonder what others have to say?Letting things slide:I appreciate that you value an ability to drop unimportant things, and let things slide. I'd like to point out a nuance: The practice of "it's not important, let it slide" is not actually a tool for long-term resolution, it is a tool to reduce conflict in the moment. It is something we actually very regular practice.  In fact, this crisis came because letting it slide can't go on indefinitely.  For real resolution, something has to happen for us to learn to see the dynamics we had not yet pinned down.  As it turns out, this forum process has already been hugely effective to bringing clarity and understanding.  But regardless of how I would depict things here, your message is that you don't think we would do anything but build up more problems even if we resolve these.  That is pretty bleak. I hope you are wrong on this. We'll see.A stormy table? Not particularly.Lastly, you assume that there were stormclouds at our table. Not so, really. The same with near-meltdowns.  I wouldn't even characterize my harrowing TPK night as a near meltdown.  That is not how table time went.  The most difficult moments I expect were when a repeated problem showed up, and a person would get very upset inwardly, usually around conversations where our clash of what we were trying to get from the game manifested, around rules wrangling, for example, when I asked things that didn't fit in with the agreements he thought we had, and he said no, etc.  Those seemed to be the ones that pushed us the hardest. But these moments never stormed outwardly.Any real storms raged only inside either of us, in short bursts, followed by calm email exchanges, with occasions where one of us might characterize the distress we experienced with a certain amount of drama, but always contained in an email, wrapped in clear, adult behavior.Striving for openness to learn:I'm trying to make sure that I don't dismiss any of your points out of hand.  I feel that you don't depict us correctly in the ways above, but I am trying to be open to criticism that is true or could lead to insight.  Are we particularly emotional?  Perhaps we are.  Not being emotional might not be such a desirable thing, if it means dull to one's inner life.  An ideal to be stable and unperturbed in the best sense, well that is a fine goal, to be sure.  You think that we don't have the capacity to make a long-term resolution?  Well, we haven't made a very good impression on you, I see that.   I'm striving to be brutally honest in this forum. Honesty provides the only real context.  I am a person who has moments of extreme anger, and I struggle with getting upset in games at times. So I am on that side of the ledger as a struggle.  I don't lose friends over it.  It is more on the level of a personal struggle, not a social one. My friend takes things personally more than he should and he is sensitive.  I would say that both of us are particularly sensitive, to lots of things.  That has its pluses and minuses.  It brings potential capacities in observation, art, in thinking and such. And it brings difficulties socially.  No doubt.  It is not easy for me, I'm not afraid to say.  Middle school? For some reason you want to call us out on that.  I will think about it. Perhaps something will come from what you are trying to bring.I hope I have dealt with this fairly and in a productive way.  I wonder if your position is still the same, or different? New thoughts, clarifications?</blockquote>

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