This is a great article, and very smart to separate it into "things that hurt only the procrasinator" and "things that hurt others". What about a case where one person always likes to be at places early and not be rushing to get anywhere, and the other person likes to be on their own time and not worry if they get places at the last minute or a little late. So they "procrastinate getting out the front door". You have annoying conversations like "Are you ready?" "I'm coming!" (5 minutes later) "Can we leave now?" "I *told* you I'm coming"! The person who likes to be places right on time or even a little late--there have never been any *real* consequences for their behavior. They eventually get places, they never missed a doctors appointment or anything like that. It is just so stressful to the person who likes to be everywhere early (which the other person sees as a waste of time).
I don’t profess to by any kind of all-knowing expert, but my general take (with room for grace, hopefully) is that two people in a healthy relationship will do two things consistently:
1. Understand how their partner experiences situations differently than they do, and then honor those differences in word and action.
2. Communicate effectively. On a case by case basis, I would encourage both partners to talk and be in tune enough with one another ahead of time to avoid the mismanaged expectations in those final 5-15 minutes.
“Hey. This thing coming up Friday night. I know my casualness stresses you out sometimes. Is there a particular time you’d like me to shoot for to be ready, so that we start the night off on the right foot for you?”
Or.
“I know I’m a pain in the ass to you about getting places early. Since tonight is your thing with your family/friends/etc, would it help you for me to keep my time stress to myself for this?”
It’s such considerate, cooperative thinking and language that will almost always yield trust and security in our long-term relationships.
Thank you. Great advice, as always! It may seem obvious in retrospect, but people aren't usually taught how to best deal with these situations, especially when they didn't have good role models.
J. M. Barrie (author of “Peter Pan”) wrote something that has stayed with me for years — i’m paraphrasing, but he wrote that we tend to judge other people by their behavior and ourselves by our intentions.
Hi Matt hope you are doing well! I so much appreciate your insight into so many of the things that can happen in marriage/ relationships. I have continued hope that when it's time for me to be in a new relationship I can be more self aware of what I'm doing and how I am considering others. I have hope that someone will also have the same consideration for me. I love the humor you ad in as well!! I already miss the conversations in the group! Please tell everyone I said hello. Have a great weekend 😊
Thank you, Missy. We’ll look forward to having you back later when your life allows for it. The next chapter of your relationship life is going to be so much better because this version of you knows who to let in and what BS to keep out in a way the younger you couldn’t have known.
I don’t ever want to gloss over the pain and difficulty of people’s divorces, but I simultaneously look forward to seeing what’s next for you.
Dating is brutal and frustrating and rife with disappointment. But when we enter it with eyes wide open on this side of a previous marriage, a bunch of really great things can happen.
Thanks Matt, I have more excitement than fear of dating now. I'm approaching dating with a curious mind, more experimental on my part, like how will I show up for myself and hold my boundaries. Divorce was rough, but losing myself to someone else is worse. Allowing myself to be seen and not giveing an F is huge. I'm still understanding how not being considered as a child impacted my life and my marriage. It's a treasure trove of healing and growth! I appreciate your openess around your journey and am grateful to have cone across your writings, it's been a huge help on my journey 🧡
I think its also SUPER important to understand that you might need to UNLEARN supremacist ideas about clock-time before you're able to fully support your partner. SO MUCH of the perception of time is cultural determined NOT intrinsic... and in fact the opposite may be true.
Your partner might feel that they are 'being nice' or 'making an exception ' for you, and not understand that Clock-time is a colonial concept that was BEATEN into native people, who had long respected Natural time (sunset, sunrise, high-noon). Used as a tool of maximizing the productivity of oppressed working class, and the basis of believing colonization was "a gift for the colonized".
In so many cultures it is BAD to be "obsessed with numbers on a clock", and it WILL confer social stigma if you show up at the exact hour given to an event, it's disrespectful and shows that you value the predictability of your own schedule down to the minute RATHER than first honoring the unpredictability of the HUMAN experience of life.
After my spouse experienced my home country's time-culture, he was finally able to let go the deeply held (white-supremacist?) and unquestioned belief that there was a RIGHT way to deal with time. that clocktime was the superior way to perceive time. Not only did attitudes like "I know you X, BUT STILL..." "You can't expect to get a job like this ..." "Not everyone can be as understanding as me..." dissapear, but they began questioning the stringent attitude THEY and OTHERS had towards clocktime.
I OBVIOUSLY still have to deal with the practicality of being in a whole nother time-culture but AT LEAST the ONE PERSON who cared enough to understand my experience, sees these things as morally-neutral now. It's made all the difference.
Jenny Odell's Saving Time as a books that explains much of this, her first book How to Do Nothing touches on it as well. But first learned about it it when studying in a history class about colonization. Also my spouse is not white, but Black and despite his quite pro-Black rearing in 90s Atlanta, his own internalized-anti-Blackness was partially responsible for his once long-suffering attitudes about time. And him and his family have been surprised to learn that the concept of Clock-time as part of the engine of supremacist-culture. The shame confered by not mentally-physically aligning to the hegemonic status of clocktime, I THINK is a hugely compounding factor for the shame of adhd in the western world that so many people are blind to.
ALSO: a concrete tip that's worked for me (i like birds) was to get a bird clock (clock that sings a bird song every hour) and after TWO YEARS (imagine!) i felt like i could tell approximately how long an hour was, which i couldn't before. hot tip 🔥
This is a great article, and very smart to separate it into "things that hurt only the procrasinator" and "things that hurt others". What about a case where one person always likes to be at places early and not be rushing to get anywhere, and the other person likes to be on their own time and not worry if they get places at the last minute or a little late. So they "procrastinate getting out the front door". You have annoying conversations like "Are you ready?" "I'm coming!" (5 minutes later) "Can we leave now?" "I *told* you I'm coming"! The person who likes to be places right on time or even a little late--there have never been any *real* consequences for their behavior. They eventually get places, they never missed a doctors appointment or anything like that. It is just so stressful to the person who likes to be everywhere early (which the other person sees as a waste of time).
Thanks for the comment, GMP. ♥️
I don’t profess to by any kind of all-knowing expert, but my general take (with room for grace, hopefully) is that two people in a healthy relationship will do two things consistently:
1. Understand how their partner experiences situations differently than they do, and then honor those differences in word and action.
2. Communicate effectively. On a case by case basis, I would encourage both partners to talk and be in tune enough with one another ahead of time to avoid the mismanaged expectations in those final 5-15 minutes.
“Hey. This thing coming up Friday night. I know my casualness stresses you out sometimes. Is there a particular time you’d like me to shoot for to be ready, so that we start the night off on the right foot for you?”
Or.
“I know I’m a pain in the ass to you about getting places early. Since tonight is your thing with your family/friends/etc, would it help you for me to keep my time stress to myself for this?”
It’s such considerate, cooperative thinking and language that will almost always yield trust and security in our long-term relationships.
Thank you. Great advice, as always! It may seem obvious in retrospect, but people aren't usually taught how to best deal with these situations, especially when they didn't have good role models.
Ha! No we were not. Just ask my ex-wife who deserved so much better than what she received from me.
Nice guy. Terrible husband/partner.
There are a lot of us out here, and we can do better.
J. M. Barrie (author of “Peter Pan”) wrote something that has stayed with me for years — i’m paraphrasing, but he wrote that we tend to judge other people by their behavior and ourselves by our intentions.
That’s really good. And totally checks out. Thank you for sharing that.
Hi Matt hope you are doing well! I so much appreciate your insight into so many of the things that can happen in marriage/ relationships. I have continued hope that when it's time for me to be in a new relationship I can be more self aware of what I'm doing and how I am considering others. I have hope that someone will also have the same consideration for me. I love the humor you ad in as well!! I already miss the conversations in the group! Please tell everyone I said hello. Have a great weekend 😊
Thank you, Missy. We’ll look forward to having you back later when your life allows for it. The next chapter of your relationship life is going to be so much better because this version of you knows who to let in and what BS to keep out in a way the younger you couldn’t have known.
I don’t ever want to gloss over the pain and difficulty of people’s divorces, but I simultaneously look forward to seeing what’s next for you.
Dating is brutal and frustrating and rife with disappointment. But when we enter it with eyes wide open on this side of a previous marriage, a bunch of really great things can happen.
Thank you so much for reading and saying hi.
Thanks Matt, I have more excitement than fear of dating now. I'm approaching dating with a curious mind, more experimental on my part, like how will I show up for myself and hold my boundaries. Divorce was rough, but losing myself to someone else is worse. Allowing myself to be seen and not giveing an F is huge. I'm still understanding how not being considered as a child impacted my life and my marriage. It's a treasure trove of healing and growth! I appreciate your openess around your journey and am grateful to have cone across your writings, it's been a huge help on my journey 🧡
I think its also SUPER important to understand that you might need to UNLEARN supremacist ideas about clock-time before you're able to fully support your partner. SO MUCH of the perception of time is cultural determined NOT intrinsic... and in fact the opposite may be true.
Your partner might feel that they are 'being nice' or 'making an exception ' for you, and not understand that Clock-time is a colonial concept that was BEATEN into native people, who had long respected Natural time (sunset, sunrise, high-noon). Used as a tool of maximizing the productivity of oppressed working class, and the basis of believing colonization was "a gift for the colonized".
In so many cultures it is BAD to be "obsessed with numbers on a clock", and it WILL confer social stigma if you show up at the exact hour given to an event, it's disrespectful and shows that you value the predictability of your own schedule down to the minute RATHER than first honoring the unpredictability of the HUMAN experience of life.
After my spouse experienced my home country's time-culture, he was finally able to let go the deeply held (white-supremacist?) and unquestioned belief that there was a RIGHT way to deal with time. that clocktime was the superior way to perceive time. Not only did attitudes like "I know you X, BUT STILL..." "You can't expect to get a job like this ..." "Not everyone can be as understanding as me..." dissapear, but they began questioning the stringent attitude THEY and OTHERS had towards clocktime.
I OBVIOUSLY still have to deal with the practicality of being in a whole nother time-culture but AT LEAST the ONE PERSON who cared enough to understand my experience, sees these things as morally-neutral now. It's made all the difference.
Jenny Odell's Saving Time as a books that explains much of this, her first book How to Do Nothing touches on it as well. But first learned about it it when studying in a history class about colonization. Also my spouse is not white, but Black and despite his quite pro-Black rearing in 90s Atlanta, his own internalized-anti-Blackness was partially responsible for his once long-suffering attitudes about time. And him and his family have been surprised to learn that the concept of Clock-time as part of the engine of supremacist-culture. The shame confered by not mentally-physically aligning to the hegemonic status of clocktime, I THINK is a hugely compounding factor for the shame of adhd in the western world that so many people are blind to.
ALSO: a concrete tip that's worked for me (i like birds) was to get a bird clock (clock that sings a bird song every hour) and after TWO YEARS (imagine!) i felt like i could tell approximately how long an hour was, which i couldn't before. hot tip 🔥