418 - Spring Cleaning Your Relationships
Why should we spring clean our relationships?
Spring is a good time to declutter your home and start fresh, or to revitalize it, even. Why not apply something similar to relationships? Cleaning up your relationships doesn’t have to mean throw them all out and start over, but it’s a good idea to take a look at them and decide which ones you want to celebrate, which ones you want to mend, and which ones no longer serve you.
But where do we even start?
If you’re having trouble beginning, look for easy wins (this applies to house cleaning too!). Try evaluating what will have the biggest impact in your life and tackle that first. The other ones will fall in line after that.
And don’t forget to clean up ALL your relationships, not just a few! Take a good look at your relationships with romantic partners, friends, social media followers, coworkers, etc.
The clothing metaphor
We can apply the framework for sorting clothes to cleaning up our relationships. We have three categories:
Love it: Take the time to appreciate the relationships you love, and find ways to celebrate those people you enjoy being with. By celebrating relationships you love, you make it easier to leave ones that aren’t good.
Fix it: These relationships might be good ones, but they could need a little fixing, mending, or tailoring so they bring everyone involved more joy. Maybe you have a backlog of unresolved conflicts that implementing a RADAR might address, or you’ve fallen into boring routines that need a little more playfulness or excitement. Sometimes, you might want to sit down with the other person and adjust relationship parameters.
Donate it: Even if there is nothing wrong with the person themself, sometimes you find yourself uncomfortable, or feeling like it doesn’t fit anymore, like a piece of clothing. Starting with more distant relationships, evaluate if you want to spend less time with someone, redirect energy elsewhere, or de-escalate in some other way.
Significant breakups aren’t to be taken lightly, so don’t feel as though you need to rush into a decision, but we’ve all had relationships that we know need to end and yet we lack the motivation to end them. Spring cleaning can be your motivation.
Instead of viewing the end of a relationship as a failure or a negative thing, reframe it to mean setting yourself and the other person free to allow other opportunities or connections. Freeing up a partner or friend when you’re not healthy for each other will only benefit you both.
Don’t forget your relationship with yourself!
Clean up your relationship with yourself as well! We all need it sometimes, so here are a few ways you can get started:
Clear mental clutter. Not only are you getting rid of old stuff, you’re making room for new, exciting things and having space to appreciate the things you do have .
Plant seeds and care for them as they grow (either literally or metaphorically). This could look like:
Learning a new skill.
Being more mindful.
Improving physical and/or mental health.
Go back and try some old hobbies or interests. You might remember something you loved doing and rekindle the excitement around it.
Allow yourself to be curious and explore something new, such as:
Traveling (even a day trip!).
Take a new class.
Intentionally make time to do nothing.
Get out of your comfort zone and try something that intimidates or scares you a bit. You can always leave it if you don’t like it!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about spring cleaning your relationships. We all know that spring is historically a great time to declutter our homes, but what about our relationships? Today, we're looking at ways to clean up all your relationships, including partners, friends, social media follows, even co-workers. How can we appreciate and celebrate the relationships that are working well? How can we mend those that need just a little bit of tidying up, and what are the relationships that we need to let go of?
Lastly, we're going to talk about how to clean up your relationship with yourself, including clearing out mental clutter, planting new seeds to have a beautiful menagerie of thoughts in your brain, and getting out of your comfort zone and trying new things this year.
Dedeker: When I think of spring cleaning, I'm always curious about where the tradition started.
Emily: I was thinking that too.
Jase: Some people trace the origin of spring cleaning to the Persian New Year, which falls on the first day of spring. It maybe came from Iran, originally. Some say it comes from ancient Judaism, actually, that being tied to Passover.
Dedeker: I think there's an interesting history to spring cleaning. What it always makes me think of is the idea that we've been cooped up through the winter, and because during the wintertime we can't go out and forage, or harvest, or get the things we need. We've had to hold onto a lot of stuff, a lot of crap, a lot of, I don't know, your dried figs, and important rocks, and all those things to get you through the winter.
Then springtime happens, you're like, "I can go outside. I can go forage. I can go get the things that I need," and so we clear out--
Emily: these rocks off of my body.
Dedeker: I can get new rocks.
Jase: Perfect.
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: Have the two of you ever had an actual spring cleaning ritual?
Jase: Never one that I've really stuck to. I like a good tidy now and again, but I don't think I've ever done it specifically with spring, even though that is when a lot of people talk about doing it.
Emily: I do have a couple of Goodwill bags next to me that I'm slowly putting things into and about to go and-
Jase: Oh, nice.
Emily: -give those to Goodwill, and it happens to fall around spring.
Dedeker: Great. I'm a huge Marie Kondo fan, huge adherent to the whole lifestyle. Is it a lifestyle? I don't know, the whole way of thinking about cleaning. This is going to sound like a brag, but I did read Marie Kondo's book in Japanese, in the original Japanese. Thank you very much. Well, something I really appreciated about reading it actually in Japanese is she talks about how tidying up-- You shouldn't approach it like, "Oh, I do a little bit every day," or "I throw something out every weekend, or whatever."
Specifically, the word she uses is it should be a matsuri, which is a Japanese word for a festival. As in, you should do it all at once, make it an event, make it this big event. I think about that with spring cleaning where I do think since we're maybe a little bit less tied to the seasons, we're not so tied to, "Oh, now that it's springtime, I can go out and forage." It's like, "Whatever, I don't need to think about that," and so there's maybe less of this need for things, something like tidying to be so seasonal.
I think the whole point of this episode as we're applying the spring cleaning to thinking about our landscape and our relationships. I do like the idea of, sure, you can do this any time of year. You can do this piecemeal. You can do this a little bit at a time. I do like the idea of setting aside intentional time where, "I'm going to sit down, I'm going to make it a matsuri. I'm going to make it a festival. I'm going to sit down and really intentionally think through this and maybe do that on an annual basis."
Jase: I think if we take this back to relationships, which is we're applying this metaphor here to our relationships. I think that we do though still have a little bit of this sense of the wintertime is when I'm more staying inside, I'm hanging out with people I already know, I'm spending more time maybe with family, or chosen family groups, things like that. Then as the weather gets a little bit nicer, then maybe I'm going to go out to more events. I'm going to see people more. I'm just going to change it up a little bit, more things feel accessible.
Now, of course, if you're one of our listeners in Australia, for you, you're like, "Guys, this is the opposite for me. It's getting cold now finally." I apologize. Maybe save this one and come back and listen to it in six months when it's appropriate-ish for you. Something I wanted to talk about this, so making it a festival, like Dedeker was mentioning. Something that was a piece of advice my mom gave me when I was a kid about cleaning my room, when I would just get so overwhelmed by needing to clean my room, her advice to me was to make your bed first.
The logic was, it's a pretty quick, easy thing to do, but it's going to visually make a big difference. You feel like, "Oh, look, I'm making progress. I can see my room getting cleaner after just a little bit of work." Starting with the big items, maybe it's clearing off my desk. I'm going to start with the big item that's really visually makes an impact so that I feel more encouraged to keep going with the rest of the steps.
Dedeker: When I was a child, I could stretch out that task to two hours just making my bed. I could go so super-
Emily: Really?
Dedeker: -perfectionistic with it. Yes. I have a lot of memories of this.
Jase: Wow. I definitely have not ever done that.
Emily: Was your room just perfect to Dedeker all the time, because I could see that?
Dedeker: Goodness, no.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: I grew into the tidy person that I am today, I was very much not. My older sister was, she was the clean freak in the house and the super tidy type A person in the house, and I was not-- Not that I was the slob, but I was definitely not on top of that. That was a much later character development or skill unlock for me.
Emily: Got it.
Jase: As we're going through this and looking at your relationships and how you might want to improve these is keep that in the back of your mind of what might be a really easy win that would make a big impact for me, so that then you feel more encouraged to keep that going, and when you're reevaluating your relationships, and your relationship with yourself.
Emily: We mean relationships with everyone in your life, and that can mean relationships with partners and friends, also, things like social media. Dedeker, you've actually changed your relationship to social media pretty recently-
Dedeker: Oh, so much.
Emily: -as well, which I find--
Dedeker: Spring cleaning your social media is a great idea.
Emily: That's very, very wise. I think it is something that I'm going to maybe strive to do after this episode, after I take all of the wisdom that we're going to learn from this episode. Also things like co-workers, there is a lot of, I think, things that you can do with your co-workers. You can decide whether or not you're going to devote your personal time to co-workers. That's something that you can think about. So many different relationships in your life that you can apply these skills to.
Jase: In approaching this episode, we are going to take a tried and true method for going through your closet as a metaphor that we're going to apply here. This comes up in all sorts of organizing things. Marie Kondo does something similar to this. There's little variations here and there, but it's almost become the accepted way of going through a closet, as well as some other items.
Basically, that is, you go through all the things and you sort them into piles. The piles are the love it pile, the fix it or mend it pile, and then the donate it or toss it pile. Basically, what we're talking about is with your relationships is the love it pile, these are the ones that, when I think about this relationship, whether this is a friend, or a co-worker, or a partner, whoever, is, "Gosh, I'm just so excited about-- I really love that this relationship's in my life. I feel a lot of gratitude for that. This is great."
Then there's the fix it or the mend it pile. With your clothes, it might be, "You know what? I really like these trousers, or these pants." I've been hanging out with too many Brits lately. "I really like these pants, but they just don't fit me that well. Maybe I could have them altered, or maybe there needs to be an adjustment." With our relationships, I value this relationship, but it could use some improving. I think there's good structure to it, maybe, but I want to change it up. It doesn't quite fit me so well anymore, or it has some damage that needs to get repaired. Then the third pile, which instead of the toss it, I like to call it the donate it pile. That's the ones where maybe this isn't a good fit for you anymore. It's not something that you love having in your life and so you're going to give that away out into the world.
Dedeker: You're going to truck those relationships right down to the Goodwill along with last year's promotional mug from the conference.
Jase: Exactly. With that, let's get into talking about each of these piles and how we can actually concretely apply these to the relationships in our lives once we've started thinking about what should go in each of these.
Dedeker: Talking about creating the love it pile with your relationships. I think, again, starting with spring cleaning of any kind, again, starting is always the hardest part of the task. I think this is a pretty easy entry point into it as even just taking a really nice positive inventory of, what are the relationships in my life that make me feel good, that support me, that build me up where I enjoy spending time with these people, where it feels good to be spending time with these people?
This can be tricky because our closest relationships don't feel good 100% of the time. We're human beings, they're going to be imperfect. Again, to rope Marie Kondo back into this, I remember when the show came out on Netflix, there was all this pushback from people, being like, deciding if something sparks joy or not is not a good metric for deciding whether or not to keep it because not everything in our life sparks joy.
I think especially so with relationships, but again, in the original Japanese, this a weird translation thing, I think, or really though like the verb that is used in Japanese is , which doesn't necessarily mean spark joy. It's a hard word to translate. I think spark joy is maybe the closest they could come up with, but it also carries this nuance of, you just feel something in your chest. That's all it was. It's like you feel it.
It wasn't even necessarily about it feels good, it's just like you feel it. There's like a flutter. There's something, and I think that's something you can still feel, even if it's a family relationship where, I don't know, we get on each other's nerves, but we still love each other.
Emily: It's intuitive.
Dedeker: It's something intuitive there. Again, it's not just about your romantic relationships. It could be your friends, your family, coworkers, things like that.
Jase: To go with that, in Marie Kondo's way of doing things, she does focus a lot on working your way up to developing that sense. Starting with the stuff that's really easy of, oh my gosh, I totally love this thing, or I've always hated this one to get this out to my house house, but more often it's easier on the love it side of, I know that I love it every time I wear this outfit, or I love it every time I look at this painting, or whatever it is.
That's easier, and then as you develop your sense for what moves you. What has that feeling inside? That then you can get to the stuff that's a little more difficult because you've developed that muscle. I think the importance here when looking at our relationships is to start with that love it pile, and to focus on, one, just really celebrating these relationships and really appreciating them, but also looking at, what do you love about them?
What is great about them? Realizing that when we get into the mending pile and the donating pile, the point of those is to get more of this in your life, is either to make room more for these relationships that really fulfill you and fill you up. Or to try to turn some of your mediocre ones, or your mend it ones into ones that you feel more of this, oh my gosh, I'm just so grateful that I have this in my life. Keeping that in mind is like, this is the whole point. It's not about getting rid of stuff for getting rid of stuff's sake. It's about, how do I get more of this great good feeling in my life? How do I learn to identify this and realize that I deserve this in my life?
Emily: Let's move on to that mending or altering pile. I think this is an interesting one because there are patterns sometimes that come up of unresolved conflict, and you find in your life over and over, hey, I really care about this person. I really want to continue a relationship with them. It would help the two of us in our relationship if we learned to mend, or fix, or alter the way in which we interact with each other on a continual basis.
I think that's a really great thing to be able to look at and make a concerted effort to fix if possible. We have talked about in the past the fact that there are things like perpetual problems in many relationships, and there is a potential that a problem can't be fixed, but if you can at least work on it and discuss it, I think that that is at least a good first step.
You can do that by having things like radar check-ins, which we talk about a lot on this show. You can go to multiamory.com/radar, and you can also listen to our episode 147 on that subject. I think that's a great one. Also, our repair shop template is excellent for repairing after fights. I think it could be used in a variety of ways with a variety of people because you can repair something that you keep coming back to over and over again.
I think that repair shop really getting granular about it, and talking about your history in relation to that thing, and your stories around what happened, and taking ownership, and then preventing. and helping move forward from that standpoint. That's a great template as well to begin that mending or altering process.
Jase: To think about this in a metaphorical way, again, about clothing, or other items in your life, is that idea of this thing there's quality to it, it's well made, maybe I have a great history with it, but I just find myself not wanting to wear it that often when I see it in my closet. There's just something a little bit off about it that for us with our relationships, it can feel that way of, maybe there's a lot of history here, or maybe this is a relationship that I just find myself not getting as excited to spend time on.
Then to think about, is that something that could be fixed? I think an example, this is silly, but with clothing where I had this suit jacket that I'd gotten years and years and years ago, and loved it when I got it, but it just didn't fit me that well anymore. The style of it was a looser boxier style, which just wasn't in as much anymore, but I still really liked the feel of it and the quality of it.
I got it altered and was able to have it taken in rather than tossing it out and donating it. I was able to adjust this thing that I already loved and then I wore it a bunch more because suddenly it felt fresh and revitalized and new. I know that's a little bit of a silly metaphor, but I just wanted to point that out because with our relationships, it's not saying, oh, well as soon as this relationship doesn't feel as good, toss it out.
It's, maybe there's something really great here that you do want to mend and fix and adjust, and you might really love it again to give it that chance. That's where you have to develop that sense of, what are the ones that can be mended and which are the ones that were past that point? Maybe it's been altered too many times, there's not enough fabric left to do that anymore.
Dedeker: I think you can also apply this in just looking at, are there particular old patterns, old habits, old scripts that I'm playing out over and over again in my existing relationships with my partners or with my friends. Things like, have we fallen into just a routine of just Netflix every single night? Don't get me wrong, absolutely nothing wrong with Netflix and chill.
I think we do all need that downtime, that veg out time. Is that really the only way that we're connecting in a really passive way? Do we only ever just go out for drinks? That's the only way that I connect with this particular friend. Again, not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but evaluating, could bringing in something new really help this relationship, or help me get closer to this person, or help introduce them to a different side of my friend group.
In long-term relationships, I think it's really important to be bringing in and be consciously bringing in a sense of playfulness and of adventure. Something that's often very easy when a relationship is new and we're just getting to know someone. If we've got NRE chemical cocktails tossing around in our brain, that then becomes a lot easier to be proactive about, we could go check out this thing. We could go see this play, we could go to this concert, we could go take this weekend trip.
Then over time it becomes maybe less exciting, it becomes less motivated to turn towards those things. I remember reading some research a while ago, and again, I didn't have time to actually pull what the study was, but if I recall correctly, basically, the way that our brains work, if we have new and novel experiences with a long-term partner, our brain projects some of that new and novelty onto that long-term partner as well.
All of these narratives that we have around getting stagnant in a relationship, falling into a rut. Or even getting bored with a partner, there could be a lot of things that feed into why that may be, but also, sometimes we just stop seeking out new experiences together. Sometimes even just doing that, even if it's something as simple as, let's take a different walking path today, or let's go to a different restaurant that we've never heard of and never read any reviews. Just some kind of situation where we don't know what the result is going to be, but we do expect that maybe it will be positive. That's playfulness and adventure, and it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be time intensive, it doesn't have to be difficult.
Emily: I do want to point out that you can have those new and novel experiences with not just romantic partners but with friends as well. The three of us have been very fortunate and getting the opportunity to travel together, and that's always super cool because we've gotten to do a lot of those very fun novel experiences together, which I think is only strengthened our relationship. That's a friendship, but it's something that's really great and awesome. The same goes with family, and things along those lines, there's a variety of people that you can have novel experiences with.
Jase: To go back now to this metaphor of altering clothes and altering how they fit you, something like that. When we apply this to relationships, one thing to look out, besides just have we fallen into a rut, or do we have some communication things we need to work out, it could also be that the shape of this relationship needs to change. That maybe this relationship worked great as it was, but now you want different things from it, or maybe they feel more comfortable with different things.
Again, whether this is a friend, or a partner, or whatever, but if it's someone who you're able to be a little more intentional about your relationship with, we would really suggest checking out the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, something that we talk about pretty often. If you just Google those words, you'll find all stuff about it, but basically, it's the idea of instead of saying, a romantic partner always does all of these things and doesn't do these other things, and a friend does this different set of things and doesn't do any of these other ones.
Instead, you break that all apart, and look at all the different pieces that could be involved in a relationship and evaluate each one to see which of these works for us, which one makes sense for this relationship. You may find that it's adding some dynamic that you hadn't considered was even an option for this relationship, or maybe removing an aspect of a relationship that you felt like, "Oh, I just thought I was required to have this part of it," whether that's some physical touch, or financial entertainment, or whatever.
There's a whole range of things, and that's what the relationship anarchy smorgasbord is there to help with, is to help identify all those different aspects that you can customize your relationships to better fit you just like altering your clothes. All right, we're going to go on to talking about the donate it pile, for those relationships, when you do realize this one isn't serving me, and this one maybe isn't serving the other person either, but before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show if you value this content.
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Dedeker: Now we're going to get into perhaps the slightly more challenging aspects of the spring cleaning part. I know it's hard for me with my things to sometimes let go, but often it feels really nice to let it go out into the world, and the three of us are all members of our respective Buy Nothing groups. I think it's lovely. The metaphor that you put here, Jase, which is to donate it, to have the opportunity to give something to someone else. Or for something else to be of use to someone in a way that perhaps it wasn't of use to you.
I think that that's a great way to look at relationships as well, that you're not just tossing a person away, but instead, you are allowing a person to fly free into the world and have amazing new adventures with other people. Well, sometimes that's hard to do. There's this great Oscar Wilde quote, I forget which book or play it was from, where he wrote, there's many things that we would put down if we weren't afraid of others picking them up. He was talking about it in the context of relationships. I think many of us can struggle with that.
I hear that from clients all the time. They maybe realize this is not the relationship for me anymore. This partner is not a good fit. It's run its course. I'm not really happy, but also the idea that then they would go and date someone else, or they would go and have a happy relationship with someone else, or they would go and give all the things that I've been wanting from them to someone else. It's so upsetting that I feel like I can't let go, and I guess it mirrors maybe what we run into with trying to give up physical objects as well.
I was going to say maybe we don't feel as concerned with like, who gets the donated object but, Jase, all the time when I want to give something to the By Nothing I think you do get nervous about, but who's going to get it? Is it just going to be some hoarder, or is it going to be someone who actually appreciates this object?
Jase: I do want as you want my objects to be appreciated until they find their new home.
Emily: I find sometimes also that I continually wonder, "Well, am I going to want this thing, someday? Am I going to want to wear this item again, eventually?" I do think that sometimes can be the case also in your relationships with various people, like, "We had a really good time for a while, and maybe we can get back there again." Oh, gosh, that's challenging sometimes because you always remember how it was at one point, and that can make it more challenging and difficult to let something go because maybe you hope that it will get back there again, but it doesn't always necessary. I think it is potentially freeing to be able to say, "No, I am going to put that down."
Jase: That goes back to that idea that this is a skill. That developing this sense for it is a skill. If you think back to maybe some of your earliest relationships when you first started dating, I look back on some of those, oh, my gosh, that was not a great relationship, but I just didn't have enough basis for comparison yet. I didn't know enough about myself yet to see that, and that's just a natural part of learning that. Just keep that in mind.
This is a skill you're going to develop through your whole life, and you're going to develop it faster and better if you are being intentional about that, and giving it some thought, and thinking about these things. Let's take this back to the idea that we have these piles, and maybe even while listening to this episode, there's a part of your brain that's going, "Yikes. I can think of some relationships that probably go in this pile." If that's the case, it can feel really overwhelming to be like, "Gosh, but I can't just put them in a bag and drop them off at Goodwill.
How do I do this? One thing to do is to start with the ones that are easy, to start with the relationships that are maybe more distant or are going to be easier to de-escalate. The easiest of all of these I would say is social media. Who are you following, or who are you friends with on social media? If you look at those relationships which maybe you hadn't even thought of those yet, but is there someone that's just every time you see their shit, you feel bad in some way. Whether it's because you're jealous, or it's because they're just very negative, or something. Whatever it is, maybe it's an ex that you keep following on social media.
Dedeker: Emily.
Jase: Emily.
Emily: Not even going to say anything because I hear you. I am guilty of this. It's more like a hate-
Jase: The idea's this
Emily: -follow. Sorry. I get
Jase: You can evaluate that and think about it because this is easy. To unfollow someone or to unfriend someone is super easy, and usually they don't find out about it. You don't even have to have this confrontation about it, especially the more distant of a relationship they are, maybe there's some celebrity or someone that you follow, whatever it is, that's really easy. Then from there looking at, of the other ones that come up for me when I think about this, what are some other ones that might be easier?
Maybe this is a relationship with a coworker, or a friend, where I feel like I've just been trying to force this relationship to keep going, and it just drains a lot more of my energy. If I just stopped putting much energy into it, it would just de-escalate itself. Maybe this feels one-sided, where I'm the one constantly pursuing this relationship, maybe just letting that slip away is easy. Then from this moving your way up to some of those more significant relationships, if this is more of a best friend, or a serious romantic partner, or something, that's going to be more challenging, but still going to be very important.
If you do start to realize this is not something that just needs a little bit of mending, but this isn't right for me, and that you're not doing either of you any favors by staying in that.
Dedeker: Remember that when we're talking about donating, or tossing, or whichever verb you'd prefer to apply here, that it doesn't always have to be a complete cutting out of your life and pretending like this person is dead to you. It doesn't have to be a breakup, or a friend breakup, or, "I'm going to ghost them and just not respond to their texts anymore." Again, it can just be a redirection of that energy. It could be choosing to spend less time with them. It could be just giving up less of your emotional energy. It could just be having slightly better boundaries around the amount of time that you spend together, or the things that the two of you talk about, or how you spend your time.
I think that this comes up a lot, or at least I witnessed this coming up a lot when I'm working with people who are trying to navigate how to have a friendship with their ex, or what kind of relationship they should have with an ex, or what kind of relationship they should have after de-escalating a relationship with somebody. The advice that I like to follow is, I think it's important to determine what is the appropriate emotional distance from this person so that I can still show up in the way that I want to be showing up, living up to my values. I can still be the human being that I want to be.
An example of this is, if you and your ex are still texting every single day and seeing each other, or choosing to see each other every single day, and maybe that's fun and it's nice to have them as a friend, but it's also really activating and still really triggering, and it's really hard when they start dating, or you still get into squabbles all the time. I would evaluate that as that's probably not the way that you want to be showing up. That's probably not the way that you want to be a friend or have a friend. Just adjust the distance. It's going to be a constant distance-adjusting journey with any relationship.
Maybe it does mean we don't need to text each other every single day, at least not right now. We don't need to see each other every single day, at least not right now. Again, it doesn't have to be this extreme pendulum swing where I got to completely cut them out, but it's just feeling out what that distance is so that you can still have this person around, but not feel like it's completely robbing you of your energy, your time, your ability to live in integrity.
Emily: I think it can be really difficult to know where to begin when doing this section of spring cleaning, when trying to figure out who it is that you want to keep in your life and who might be best to send on their way into greener pastures or newer waters. Is that a thing? I don't know.
Dedeker: Fresher waters?
Emily: Fresher? Yes, I think I mixed metaphors there. Anyway, Dedeker, you just said the word values, and I think that's really important because if something isn't aligning with your values, or if a relationship is holding you back, in some way, it might be time to move on from that. We did our episode on values over a year ago. It's almost two years now, which is incredible. Episode 319. That's something to look at, again, as well, just to determine what are my values, and then also are the people in my life aligning with those values specifically? If they're not, then maybe it is time to say goodbye to them in some form or fashion.
Jase: When we are talking about ending relationships, that's not something to be taken lightly if this is a very close, very serious relationship, long-term relationship, all those things. We don't mean this to say in any way that you should take it as lightly as you should take your clothes, although I know sometimes that can also feel heavy, but it is different. This is a relationship with a human and those can change over time. It can take some time to evaluate that.
This may be something that you've known, that part of you has known for a while. Or you've been thinking about for a while, and perhaps this festival, this matsuri of spring cleaning, could be that final motivation that you need to actually make that change, to actually have that difficult conversation, especially when you think about it in terms of the purpose of it. What you're making room for is to have more room for these positive relationships, whether that's bringing new ones into your life or just making more space for the ones that you do have in your life that are positive.
One caveat to this though is, don't break up with an existing relationship just because you're excited about someone new, especially if that new relationship is less than a year that you've been together. This is just a general word of caution. Maybe you've always wanted to get out of that other relationship, maybe that's different, but I just see this happen pretty often where there's all that excitement, all those hormones from that new relationship energy is not making you make good decisions. I would say don't blow up your life for that.
If this is more just I've known for a while, or this relationship just I've tried many times to mend it, maybe last year's spring cleaning, tried to really mend stuff, and it's just not happening. That's when it is time to really think about, this sucks, but I know this is the right thing to do and I have a good reason for doing it, which is making room for the better things in my life. Then also if you want to be very generous for them in their life too.
Emily: On the flip side of that, like Jase said, it is a big decision so don't rush into it necessarily, but also don't wait for yet another year to go by, and another spring cleaning to pass, before you let that relationship go. Especially if you know, deep down, hey, this is not aligning with my values and this clearly isn't working and hasn't been working for a while.
Dedeker: Get help with that. For big, big, big spring cleaning jobs, there's now a whole cottage industry of people who will help you organize your stuff. Of course, Marie Kondo has gone on to the classic grift of certifying people in the method. There's plenty of people who are willing to take your money to help you clean if it's just too overwhelming. Same thing if you're trying to evaluate whether or not it's time to keep a relationship or to let it go. Get help. This is a really, really big decision.
Emily: We've said this before in relation to this, but you aren't the center of the universe. You are not just ending a relationship so that it's not a part of your life anymore, but you're ending a relationship so that the two of you can go off and hopefully be in better relationships. It doesn't mean that that person's bad. It doesn't mean that the two of you were terrible in this relationship, but just simply that maybe you weren't the best for one another. Instead, you're setting each other free and allowing more time and space for the two of you to get to be with other people and get to have better opportunities, hopefully, with other people. Ideally, this will benefit both of you, even though of course it is going to be challenging potentially.
Jase: In the big picture, you're not doing anyone any favors by staying in a relationship that's not good because that's just holding both of you back. All right. We've gone through our piles of our relationships, but you may have realized there is an important relationship we haven't gotten to yet. We've talked about it tangentially, but this is the relationship with yourself. How can we donate ourselves? No, just kidding.
Dedeker: Or donate your time and energy. That's not a bad thing.
Jase: That actually is great, we should have put that in here.
Dedeker: That's not bad. I was thinking more like tossing yourself in the garbage.
Jase: Put myself on the Buy Nothing group.
Dedeker: There you go.
Jase: The idea here is--
Dedeker: One boy for nothing. I don't want to go to a hoarder house. A house where someone's hoarding boys, hoarding podcasters.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Someone's going to value a boy. For this it's, how can we look at all the pieces that make up ourselves? All of our mental activity, our emotional activity, physical activity even, all those things. Again, take that look at, what are the things that are great? What are the things that I could improve some? What are the things that I want to get out of my life? One of the places to start here is with what I'll call mental clutter.
The idea is that, just like in our house, by getting rid of the cluttery stuff that we're not loving, that's not feeling cool, it's not even useful. It's just there because I don't want to get rid of it. This can also happen with our thoughts where maybe I just have this tendency to focus on really negative stuff. Maybe that means I'm just addicted to watching the news and feeling miserable about it, or always-
Dedeker: Twitter.
Jase: -checking my email the second anything pings, or Twitter, or whatever it is. I'm finding that if I think about the house, that is my mind, I'm just filling it up with shit that makes me feel bad. Maybe some of that's useful, but probably not to the degree that you have it in there, or maybe it's negative self-talk, or maybe it's just stressing over things that you have no control over. There's lots of different ways this could look, but having that sense of by decluttering that and evaluating, what are the things that I can try to not put so much energy into and not keep around in my mind?
Again, is not just getting rid of stuff for its own sake, but getting rid of it so that you can focus more on the positive things, and the-- I don't even want to say positive, just feel good, but positive in terms of aligned with your values. Maybe by freeing up some of that energy, stressing out over the news. You actually have some energy to do something positive in the world, whether that's in your micro-community or volunteering on a bigger scale thing, or something like that. How can I actually take this energy and use it for something better that fits with my values?
Dedeker: I think that's the irony, is that when we let ourselves clear out some of that stuff, when we let ourselves have access to joy and space and fun, that again, it rebuilds our capacity to actually be able to give of ourselves, and to give back, and to care. I think that we can get so inundated, especially with the news, especially with commentary on social media, so inundated to the point where it does produce numbness and apathy, which is not helpful to anybody. We do need those things. Related to that, another thing that you can do to clean up your relationship with yourself is to go plant some little springtime seeds. I do mean this literally, actually, that, honestly, last year when I was going through my super big horrible no-good breakup. There was just a day where I noticed that all my house plants had grown a tiny bit.
I remember, to my therapist, being like, "The house plants are growing, it's going to be okay."
Jase: That's sweet.
Dedeker: "They know things are okay." Sometimes quite literally just having some connection with nature, even just going and observing the changes in nature can be really helpful. Springtime is a perfect time just to be taking note of those things, but it doesn't have to be literal as well. It can be just planting seeds of something that you want to grow in your life or in your relationships. It's good to contrast this with something like New Year's resolutions which, love them, hate them, whatever, but often the practice of New Year's resolutions tends to be very absolute. They tend to be very black and white. It tends to be, I'm going to accomplish this year, or I'm not, or I'm going to stop doing this thing, or I'm going to start doing this thing for sure.
There is a gentler way that we can transition into this. It doesn't have to be, "Oh my God, now I'm going to meditate every single day for 45 minutes, and now I'm going to do that until I burn myself out on meditation and then never come back to it." It literally could be, I'm going to meditate for five minutes on Saturday mornings when I have time. Just think about planting a tiny little seed, or just little things with your physical or mental health.
If you're like, you know what? I'm going to go for a 10-minute walk around the block just to get outside in the sunshine. That's maybe different from I'm going to get up at 6:00 in the morning and run up five miles every single morning. Some people call this chunking or microhabiting, where you can think about the things that you do want to foster and cultivate and just find ways. How do we just sprinkle it in instead of trying to make these big sweeping changes?
Emily: To continue with the plant metaphor, I think we can sprinkle some new seeds, but we can also re-cultivate the plants that might be a little weathered, a little down, a little sad, or perhaps-
Dedeker: You do need to dust them.
Emily: -some carvings. Oh, dust them? Really?
Dedeker: Literally, though, there are some plants, especially if they're very broad-leafed plants where it's recommended to regularly come along and gently with a damp cloth to dust them because even the dust that accumulates can prevent them from getting the light that they need. You do have to dust your plants off occasionally.
Emily: Well, there you go. Exactly. You may be dusting off some things in your closet and then all of a sudden find something like an old tennis racket and remember, wow, I really loved playing tennis. I love doing this thing. You might pick up an old book or a manuscript that you started that you never finished, things along those lines, and remember, "Hey, I should work on that again" I really enjoyed this creative outlet of writing, things like that.
Old D&D books that you miss playing, stuff like that. I think there's so many different things that you maybe set aside because stress, relationships, kids, anything getting in the way of cultivating yourself and continuing to work on your relationship with yourself and your life. This is a great time to pick those things back up or re-evaluate what it is that really matters to you in those ways too and maybe start looking for ways to do some of the things in your life that you used to really love.
Jase: Lastly, when we're spring cleaning, one of the great things about spring is it's finally becoming warm enough that we can open our windows again and get that fresh air, freshen things up. Think about how you can do that for your mind, for your spirit, if you will. What are some things that I can open myself up to new experiences or new ideas? Maybe this is reading up a philosophy book that's different from one that I'd read before, or a particular mindfulness book that I've been thinking about reading. It also could be things like doing some travel, even if that's just a day trip. Even if it's just, I've got this one day free, I'm going to drive out to somewhere and go on a hike, or I'm going to go see this beautiful view, or something.
This doesn't even have to be a big expensive thing, but just something to get a new experience, get a new perspective. This related to planting the seeds, like Dedeker was talking about, or revitalizing some old things that you used to be into. This could be taking a class, or this could be joining a intramural sports league, or something like that. Just something that you get a new experience you hadn't had before. Find some way to metaphorically open those windows.
I would say one that is very hard for me to do, but something that I do find a lot of value in when I'm able to do it, is making time to not do anything, is making time to intentionally be a little bit bored. I guess I could say, where I'm not just instantly going to check my phone, but I'm actually just going to maybe space out, or go for a walk and not listen to a podcast. Assuming you're all cut up on Multiamory, of course, but go on a walk, not listening to a podcast, not listening to music even. Just being there and seeing where my mind goes is this really valuable thing. It's hard to do, but, again, it's just a way to not always have your mind focused on something, so it can be opened up a little bit and maybe have some new thoughts that you hadn't thought before.
Dedeker: Bear in mind that with so much of this there is going to be some inertia that you'll have to get over. Let's face it, it's really easy to do the same thing over and over again. It's easy to be passive as far as changing your relationship landscape goes. Sometimes it's easier to just sit and complain about your co-worker, or your friend, rather than taking any action to actually change it. Just remember that, if hearing all of this sounds uncomfortable to you, but doesn't necessarily sound dangerous, like my whole life is going to fall apart, maybe it's something to consider. To step outside of your comfort zone, do something that maybe switches things up, or that scares you a little, that challenges you a little.
When we're getting into changing our relationship landscape, it's not that we can say, oh, there's no consequences. You can just control Z, undo it, and then it'll be fine. Again, thinking about these baby steps and the ways that we can invite in a little bit of that fresh, clean springtime, clean laundry on a beach, in a spa, candle scent sort of energy.
Jase: Well, clean laundry on a beach, in a spa. It sounds great.
Emily: Laundry is on a beach and also-
Dedeker: In a spa.
Emily: -in a spa. Got it. Amazing.