Change of Living Situation

This is about my current living situation, that I already got coached about by Mars two days ago. She helped me realise, that I struggled with a lack of conversation in our home and I was committed to have all of us sit down at a table and discuss some boundaries and needs together. However, life is life and we did not manage to find time to get together before the end of next week. I decided, that this is not the end of the world and that I can probably buy us all (especially myself) some time by addressing the most pressing issue with Olena. For me this was her taking over responsibility for the plants on the balcony, that is most easily accessed through her room. The salad already struggling with the heat was dead within less than a week of her care. The reason for me worrying about other plants was a conversation we had after the coaching-call with Mars, that I tried to summarise in the following model:

C: Olena informing me, that she will make time to tidy up the balconies and get rid of the dead and old plants.
T: She will never understand, why I want the plants to be left alone
F: annoyed
A: – telling her I’d rather the plants to be watered and otherwise to be left alone
– Being impatient and evasive
– Realising, that she feels rejected
R: She can not understand, why I want the plants to be left alone
During the same conversation:
C: Olena telling me, that the two herbal fennels growing on the northern balcony are dill and need to be cut down as they are to old
T: She thinks her opinion is more important than mine.
F: defensive
A: – argue with her
– telling her, that I am sure it is a fennel in a harsher tone
– not telling her , why or only in the 3rd round of argument (I’ve grown that dam thing from a seed, planted it and not for the first time!)
– not letting her know, that she needs to stop questioning my statements
R: I keep recalling the situation and interpret it as a part of a stupid power-game

I decided to come up with a more productive thought, that would be
T: She asked before cutting the plant – that’s an improvement
F: optimistic

With this semi-hearted optimism, I decided to reach out and give her a tour and explain her the different plants we grow on our three balconies and how much water they need and showed her the soil fauna living in the larger planting boxes, that would decompose the dead plant parts and explaining, why she does not need to cut anything down and through it out.

C: During the balcony-tour O. tells me, she would never make any changes in the house without asking
T: That’s so not true!
F: annoyed
A: – Closing down and shutting her off
– not showing her how to look after the plants in a good state
– looking for evidence, where she has a different reality to mine
– not confronting her, that this is not true
R: I do not trust her and expect her not to tell me the truth

Afterwards, I took her to a late-night food-saving tour and she was thrilled about all the free food she could get and very happy to get enough meat to share with her new colleagues on a barbecue the next day (and complaining a little about the detour we had to do to get the food, we could not eat ourselves to a shelter).

The next morning (the second day in a row), she did text me to let me know, she did not have time to put her breakfast dishes and food away before leaving the house. I decided to let it go and not write an angry text about me not being a housekeeper despite working from home but to address it in person. I did clean up after her, because I did not want her stuff to be sitting in the kitchen all day (and provoking annoying thoughts for me). I went to our shared allotment for a barbecue with a friend and came home late that night to
C: find the kitchen as it was and the casseroles in the dish washer
T: She is not following basic rules. She expects me to clean after her. She is deliberately putting me off.
F: not respected
A: – angrily cleaning the kitchen
– discover tomato sauce more places (on the fridge door, sink, shelves etc) after my first clean
– text all flatmates letting them know, that I hate sticky handles and surfaces and expect whoever distributed the sauce through-out the kitchen to clean it asap
R: O. replies: “It’s obvious” and does not clean the kitchen until the next day.

I have not seen Olena since the tomato drama yesterday but my thoughts are spiralling since and my brain is finding a lot of evidence, why she is trying to put me down. A lot of these arguments are going back to her statements of our way of living (the guys participating in the housework in equal terms and do the cooking etc) being not natural. Keeping the kitchen clean is my task at the moment and my brain keeps telling me, she is messing with the kitchen, because it is my task.
I get, that it is difficult to be a refugee at the very end of your working-live leaving your own property, privledged live and son in a war zone and being confronted with much more progressive ways of life, that you disapprove of but find yourself part of (of course, that is my very subjective view of the situation). Also, we are her second host family, because after five months people hosting her before did not want her to stay longer. She is currently looking for a flat to herself as she has started a job at the beginning of August. She hopes to leave our home by the beginning of October.

I had to change host family as a teen in Australia, because I mentioned, it was oppressing to force “female” students to have long hair as part of school uniform rules. I swore to myself, no-one would ever need to leave my house, just because they have an opinion, that is opposed to mine. I also judge myself a lot for wishing her to move out straight away and for not managing my mind better and not being able to follow through with setting boundaries. I tried to do intentional models as for many situations, there might be alternative stories, why it happened. Again, a lack of communication keeps me from discovering this alternative story but parts of me are also telling me to trust my feelings about this situation and not aim for compassion but an emotion, that will get me to set up and obtain my boundaries.

My partner went away for the weekend and I met my other flatmate, Erik, in town tonight. Erik apologised for not being home most of the week but he did not feel “calm” there and decided to stay at his partner to have the head-space to deal with his currently demanding job. This and two beers started me of on most, what I am summarising here. We agreed, that this situation has to change and the four of us should meet before the end of next week and probably discuss boundaries and consequences beforehand amongst the three of us. But to me, this feels a bit like a witch-hunt and also I can not think of appropriate consequences, that she might understand and I can be ok with (kicking her out is not one, I tried to come up with some bellow but are open for suggestions). Also, it does not feel ok to me to hide behind the bold shoulders of a man or need a male friend to back me up. At the same time, I do think, it would probably be worth a try and maybe something she could accept. But this is also just an easy way out for me not to stand up for myself and communicate my boundaries, which feels utterly unsafe especially at home, which became my safe-space in the last couple of years.
Hopefully, me visiting a friend over the weekend will allow me to get some distance and come back to updated intentional models that could be the followings (tips appreciated):
C: the past week
T: It was a hard week for all of us and it is in the past
F: Forgiving
A: – stop thinking about the drama stories described above
– imagine Erik had created the C-lines and realising how completely different my T-line (and following lines) would be
– forgiving myself for being dysregulated and agitated whilst still recovering from Covid
– come up with 3 points, that went well and 3 points, that I would love to improve
– initiate a meeting for the four of us, something fun
– discuss the points that went well and the points, that need improvement
– decide on how we will take it from there
R: Have a plan and perspective for the weeks to come

C: Olena living with us
T: I want this to work
F: Committed
A: – Self-coach to accept her different opinion and culture
– Establish regular activities together
– Be compassionate and curious about her day
– Anticipate, that her acting off might be due to a huge amount of stress
– Know my boundaries (check?)
– Communicate my boundaries in the moment, when they are breached
– Not ruminate and dramatize events
– Treat her as if she was Erik (addressing points by knocking at his door, if he has one of his chaos days)
– Tell her, it is our home and she is the guest and has to adapt to our rules
– Offer to write down rules, she might not know about or tends to forget
– Get consent to remind her with a text, if she did not remember one of the three kitchen rules
– Let her know, that we will get in touch with the ngo, that arranged her stay, if she had to be reminded for the third time about the same basic rule, that we agreed upon before
R: We will settle in.

Sorry for this intense brain dump and thank you for your time and advise.

 

Answer:

Intense brain dumps are so good, we never need to apologize for them.

Let’s take a look at your first model. You said:

C: Olena informing me, that she will make time to tidy up the balconies and get rid of the dead and old plants.
T: She will never understand, why I want the plants to be left alone
F: annoyed
A: – telling her I’d rather the plants to be watered and otherwise to be left alone
– Being impatient and evasive
– Realising, that she feels rejected
R: She can not understand, why I want the plants to be left alone

In your A line, what else happens when you are annoyed? What do you do or not do? Where else do you find the annoyance showing up? Keep each model focused with one thought and one emotion and it will help you see your result more clearly.

Realising that she feels rejected probably is coming from another thought and emotion.

The R is always your result.  Often when we are giving power over our emotions to another person, our result is that we just keep reinforcing our thoughts. We build a pile of evidence that she will never understand. This colors the way you look at every situation with Olena. It’s like we put on a pair of glasses that only see her as the problem.  It’s totally normal to do this, but it doesn’t sound very fun for you. The good news is, if you want to take those glasses off and put on different ones, you can. How would you like to look at this situation if you could choose different lenses to look through?

Episode 45 of the Period Power podcast Being Nice vs Being Kind also has some great insights that will help you.