Post #3101736

2026-05-26 17:05 UTC

People helping them regulate emotionally once the interaction ended. People quietly reinforcing that their feelings made sense. And I’m not saying this as an accusation. I genuinely do not think most people understood how much this shaped the emotional balance of those interactions. Because support does not have to be explicit to affect power dynamics. Someone can sincerely say, “I’m not talking to my partner about this,” while still being indirectly stabilized by the fact that somebody emotionally holds them outside the conversation itself. But I think what hurt even more was realizing that some of the people I believed were my partners in conflict were not actually standing beside me inside the uncertainty. I don’t necessarily mean romantic partners. I mean the people you believe are helping hold reality together with you while two people try to navigate misunderstanding honestly. In hindsight, what often happened instead was that people around me were being privately coached by loved ones on how to interact with me in conversations I was never privy to. And that changes the emotional reality of conflict whether anyone intends it to or not. (4/8)

Replies (1)

@Rosalyn@mindly.social 2026-05-26 17:05

Sometimes I would walk into a conversation believing we were jointly trying to understand something difficult together, only to slowly realize the other person had already emotionally processed parts of the situation elsewhere with people who were loyal to them first. Meanwhile, I had no voice inside those background conversations. No ability to clarify. No ability to contextualize. No ability to correct misunderstandings while interpretations about me quietly solidified somewhere outside my awareness. And then afterward I would hear things like: “Now I understand why so-and-so doesn’t talk to you anymore.” Not necessarily spoken with cruelty. Sometimes almost casually. But moments like that made me realize how much invisible narrative-sharing had already happened around me without my participation. And I think that’s part of what created the feeling of being socially outnumbered. Not because everybody was conspiring against me, but because I was often the only person in the room whose emotional support system was not also functioning as an interpretive support system. Other people had loyalty structures around them. There were people who would not associate with me if I was in conflict with their partner, their best friend, their sidekick, their social anchor. Their loyalty to each other shaped how they approached me before a conversation even started. (5/8)

Open ##3101737