Having trouble with legitimizing my feelings

PhilosophicallyLost

PhilosophicallyLost

New member
Sometimes just looking at the threads on this forum helps me feel less freaky.

Anyway, my husband and I have tried letting me be poly with his best friend for a year. In the last few months, things have settled finally, to a degree. My husband, Yorick's anxiety spells are greatly reduced, which in turn makes me happier too.

Hubby and I had a talk today about our stance on things, and some of it has me feeling unsettled again. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I hate hurting anyone in general. However, we came to the agreement that it's not entirely possible for both of us to be completely happy. I will always wish, to some extent, that Yorick was on board with the poly thing and was okay with it. He wishes that I'd be on board for the monogamy thing.

What we have now is a compromise between the two. I cannot have sex, but I can still be romantic with Eli. Also, Yorick and I are moving into our own home. He just can't deal with even the subtler signs that Eli and I love each other being present on a regular basis, so I agreed I could visit Eli at his new place. We can be ourselves much easier. Eli is not entirely happy about the arrangement, but it was the only way I saw to keep my marriage together. It's not perfect, by any means, but, at least, I hope this will be a better model of poly for all of us to work with in the long run.

Which brings me back to the fact that I wish it were possible for Yorick to be more okay. I hate seeing him in pain. He said it's not that I don't give him enough love; he feels I've done a lot to give him the support in this transition he needs. He just feels he will always wish me to be monogamous with him someday again. We are at opposite poles.

Objectively, I see we have tried really hard to meet somewhere in the middle. Emotionally, I see that I'm just causing him misery for developing feelings for someone else. I believe I'm the one who made things worse for everyone. I have struggled even before poly with hating the fact I developed feelings for someone else.

I had a horrible fight with my brother, where he accused me of being cruel and immoral for subjecting Yorick to this, and the words still haunt me. I am supposed to be entering therapy finally with my brother to work through our issues with this too. I am not looking forward to remembering how horrible he made me feel.

As logically as I can defend the practice of polyamory, I still struggle with legitimizing my practice of it because of my conservative background. I have conservative friends, and even though they support us as friends, they don't agree with the practice either. I feel very isolated sometimes. I logically feel that falling in love with someone else is not wrong and is not a betrayal, but I got the feeling from Yorick that he feels it is, to a degree. I just feel it is wrong to be deceptive about it and not adhere to boundaries.

Yet I see him struggle with his feelings on it. Granted, it's not all the time, but he more or less told me he will always have those days. And that's when I get that feeling that I'm horrible for doing that to him. I don't want to forgive myself for wanting to love others, even though I would forgive all other beings for wanting the same for themselves.

Logically, I feel I should treat this as just a difference between Yorick and me, philosophically and romantically. He feels outside of this issue that we are very compatible. Yet the stigma that comes with it just makes me feel like I'm more horrible than I actually am. I just don't know if I'm being too hard on myself or not. Yorick still thinks it's clearly worth sticking with the marriage, despite his issues with poly, and that's his decision to make, but I sometimes wonder if he'd be happier elsewhere. I told him as much, and that's when he said he felt we were pretty compatible otherwise.

But is it worth it? I guess it is for him. Otherwise, he'd be trying to leave me. And it wouldn't be fair for me to force a separation on him if he thinks he can still more or less work with it.

I want to do the right thing. It just seems so murky. It's hard to know sometimes if there even is a clear answer, or if the answer is just do the best you can, despite that it guarantees hardships ahead.

Any input is appreciated. Thanks for reading.
 
Why why why did you agree to go to therapy with your BROTHER???!!! You are your own person, an independent married woman - your brother should have no say in your life.

Oh, don't go. You already know it will make you feel like shit and that your brother's sole purpose in bringing you there is to tell you you're wrong and bad, manipulate you to stop being poly, and to shoot you down. He's looking at it as an intervention! Sheesh, why'd ya sign up for that?

Don't go there -- unless it's with a poly-friendly counselor of your choosing! In fact, that would be my condition if I were you... that YOU pick the therapist - and then make sure it's someone who specializes in alternative lifestyles and understands polyamory (but don't tell your brother that).
 
I normally associate effective therapy with building healthy relationship problem-solving skills and whatnot. Granted I am not looking forward to the first time or two because it means bringing up painful memories, and I am uncertain of how good the therapist is. More on that toward the end of my response. Still, I think my brother sincerely wants his friendship with his close sister to be improved. Given I've been doing poly for a year he should have a pretty good hint now that he can't manipulate my choices like that.

The purpose of the therapy is to provide a safe environment for my brother and me to work on the painful experiences we had when I initially told him I went poly. Those experiences spilled into relationship issues we had in general that were separate from poly, such as how he expressed his political views, and his insecurity issues. I tried to tell him my feelings when this all happened last year, but he admitted himself to a mental hospital he was so distressed. Because of this, I did not want to initiate further conversation without a neutral third party to help mediate our conversations. We have been in limbo since, because we have been unable to afford a therapist.

It is not my goal for us to magically agree on everything again. That is highly doubtful. Our relationship may never be the same, but I definitely feel it can be improved, and we should strive for that. As long as the therapist is a decent one, the uncomfortable broaching of difficult topics should be navigable. Trust me, if the therapist is less than neutral I will cease using him. However, the therapy session will be covered on my brother's Medicaid and it is the first option we have been presented with that works financially. I want to at least give it a shot and give improvement a fighting chance.
 
Your brother checked himself into a psychiatric hospital because you are non-monogamous?

He's on Medicaid? How old is he? Does he still live with your parents? Does he work? Has he ever been in a relationship?
 
PhilosophicallyLost said:
Yet I see him struggle with his feelings on it. Granted, it's not all the time, but he more or less told me he will always have those days. And that's when I get that feeling that I'm horrible for doing that to him.
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What has helped me in the past when dealing with feelings like this:
First, examine yourself and your actions. If you and husband agreed on boundaries, do you keep them? Are you honest with him, with bf, with yourself? Without looking at how your husband feels, just looking at yourself, do you feel you are doing this ethically?

If the answer to all this is yes, then think about this:
It is your husband's choice to be with you, be in a relationship with you, just like it is yours to not be monogamous with him. He is not a victim anymore than you are. He has the choice to walk away from a relationship that is not bringing him the things he wants.

Also, at some point, if you both agree that this is it, this is what you have together, the hammering on "I wish you were monogamous" and "I wish you were poly" has to stop. If you keep saying this to each other, all you are doing is putting emphasis on the differences and the pain, instead of being able to focus on the things that do work.
 
I was wondering if you'd gone to therapy with your husband. If you two are not on the same page exactly (it sounds like he struggles with it so you do too) you might have trouble expressing things firmly and positively.

Have you practiced and read about positive arguments for why poly is working for you? Are you convinced this is right for you when you are challenged by others? Are your husband and brother talking since you're being bashed for "doing this to your husband" (in which case I'd have some more conversations to have with my husband)? Unless I thought my brother was interested in trying to understand (or had a therapist I really knew was poly friendly), I really too would just cancel the brother/me counseling and say that I appreciated his concern but I was doing what was right for me. and that I loved him.

If you really think it would help your brother, then I would still go to therapy with my husband first so we could work through some these challenges first before discussing it in an office with my sibling.
 
Your brother is unstable and has a mental illness? Your being poly was the straw that broke his camel's back?

Yes, it sounds like you must live in a very conservative town if his sister's lovestyle sent him round the bend. It's not easy getting on Medicare. You've got to be pretty messed up in the head (or body) to get the government to squeak open its pocketbook.

So, I am sorry about your brother. It's no picnic having a mentally ill family member. I know. My daughter has a serious mental illness.

I don't know if going to therapy with his sister to bash her lovestyle is going to cure him, but whatever. If you feel you want to support him in opening his mind, go for it.

As for your husband, he's not happy not being your one and only. Tough shit, I say. He married you, you "changed," or grew, or somehow developed the ability to love two. I get the idea you and he and his best friend, your lover, were all living together? You must have written on this before. I hope things feel calmer with his friend having his own space. I think it should help.

If your husband really can't stand you being poly, he has a choice. Deal with it, or break up, be single, find a mono gf. Dealing with it by moaning and groaning is not acceptable long term. He needs to do self care. You can't "make" him feel better.
 
Have you and your husband tried counselling?

I can understand wanting to attend therapy with your brother. You said that the two of you had issues prior to whatever statements were made. I can understand wanting to heal any rifts. There is nothing wrong with that. You did not say, but I can assume you were a close family. Keep in mind that he has some type of mental issues. You have the right to be hurt by whatever was said. However, you should try to forgive him for yourself, and remember that despite what was said, he loves you and is still your brother. I am sure underneath it all, you still love him, too.

Not all family members take the "poly bomb" well. You did not say how long it has been. I would assume fairly recently. It has been years, and my MIL is still a bitch towards me at times because of it. She is only smiling in my face now because I am not with my girlfriend anymore. If you have the chance to improve your relationship with your brother, go for it. Just make sure it does not turn into a "Let's bash my sis" type of deal. I would hope a therapist would not allow that kind of behaviour.

Regarding your husband, I am where you are. There is something I see that no one has mentioned. You are not even confident with your decision to attempt poly. Some would say that you have to break free of social conditioning and stop feeling guilty. You are still questioning it within yourself.

I have not looked at your previous posts, but how did you know it was the right decision? I have discovered that loving two or more is the easy part. A functioning poly relationship is the challenge in my life. Mono/poly relationships can work. They require work. Right now, you have your husband's tolerance. It does not sound like acceptance. There is a difference.

Let me be honest. This was not what he signed up for. You changed. His beliefs are still the same. He is there now because I guess the positives outweigh the negatives. He may decide that he does not want to live in misery, and divorce you. Very real possibility. It is his right. Unless there is some magical breakthrough, or you stop giving a damn about his feelings, this will not just resolve itself. It has been a year. Your issues in your marriage will eventually start to weigh your relationship with your boyfriend down.

With this new living arrangement, is there a proposed schedule in place?
 
PhilosophicallyLost said:
And that's when I get that feeling that I'm horrible for doing that to him.
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This seems like the core of the issue: that you are taking responsibility for his feelings, but don't seem to be taking authority over your own life.

He is monogamous and is pained by the fact that you are polyamorous. His values are of his own design and the resulting emotions are his to bear. If he finds that his life arrangement does not honor his values, then he needs to take responsibility for this and make the appropriate adjustments, e.g., break up, date a monogamous person. Expecting that the people around him are going to change simply to embrace his limitations is unreasonable, as it is a refusal to deal with his own feelings. Further, it merely causes harm to those who are "compromising" to serve his insecurities while refusing to deal with them.

You are polyamorous and are pained by the fact that he cannot accept this as who you are. Your values are of your own design and you must take responsibility for your own worldview. If you find that your arrangement is not in line your values, then you need to take responsibility for this and make the appropriate adjustments, e.g., get your own place, state that you are unequivocally *not* monogamous, break up, etc. Changing who you are in an attempt to "compromise" to serve his insecurities is simply agreeing that neither of you will be happy.

I know, I'm basically saying that you can either both be miserable for the foreseeable future by compromising (which is an agreement to both be miserable to an equal degree), or you can break it off. In this situation I don't see why any other advice would make sense. He has made it quite clear that he is monogamous and wants you to be monogamous. You are not monogamous. So what are your options?

PhilosophicallyLost said:
I want to do the right thing. Tt just seems so murky. It's hard to know sometimes if there even is a clear answer.
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I'll help clear it up.

PhilosophicallyLost said:
I just don't know if I'm being too hard on myself, or not.
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You ARE!

PhilosophicallyLost said:
My husband still thinks it's clearly worth sticking with the marriage, despite his issues with poly, and that's his decision to make, but I sometimes wonder if he'd be happier elsewhere.
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He WOULD!

So, that's all I've got, aside from my serious confusion about why you are seeking therapy with your brother. He has some kind of issue with your chosen worldview and, since it's obviously some kind of mental illness, wants you to get therapy for it? So this is like a 'scared straight' kind of scenario? And you AGREED??

I suggest you run, do not walk, away from that suggestion. Call him right now and say "I have no idea why I agreed to this. If you need therapy, you get therapy."
 
Oh yeah, now I remember this one. I thought it sounded familiar.

Lady, grow some balls and tell your brother to fly a kite.
 
"Your brother checked himself into a psychiatric hospital because you are non-monogamous?

BoringGuy: It's not that simple. My brother, due to a combination of events, felt I was abandoning him. He felt very threatened when I first started dating my husband six years ago, and I suspected it could be a problem when I started poly. It was. E and I asked my brother to abide by a curfew because he was coming to our apartment playing video games at God awful hours of the night, and E and I admittedly wanted some alone time. I tried really hard to be diplomatic about it, but my brother took it as us gleefully shoving him out. Also, he said he felt E betrayed my husband by agreeing to poly and wanted nothing to do with him anymore. I got defensive on E's behalf, and told my brother I wish he would give people the benefit of the doubt more. He took this as an attack on his character when he already had poor self esteem. My husband later talked with him to try to help, and apparently relayed a thought I had about my brother being a hypochondriac. My husband isn't the greatest with relaying information; I felt my brother overly fretted with concerns of losing his hair and one other health issue he obsessed about. Anyway, I asked my brother if he wanted to talk because he was very cold to me on the phone after talking with my husband (whom actually told me my brother seemed okay to him) My brother said no to talking it out, and he was admitted to the mental hospital the next day. He took my husband's relaying of me calling my brother a hypochondriac as basically invalidating his feelings. So yeah, this monster of a problem includes poly but it sure as hell is not limited to it. He did blow up at me later, very wroth that I did not follow his instructions to "do the right thing" and stop poly, which is where my old posts stem from. Some of the information provided above was not revealed to me until I talked with our eldest brother, who helped calm our brother the hell down.

My brother lives on SSI. He now is attempting to start a small business, but no, he has never been in a romantic relationship.

Cleo: I have tried to pursue the ethical route as much as possible. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't I wouldn't have a marriage anymore. My husband does recognize that I try my best to give him lots of love and reassurance. Logically I think I'm doing the best with the cards that have been dealt to me. I haven't resolved in my mind if it's okay to continue a poly setting with my husband knowing there will always be those bad days. Yet, I do think there are a lot of good ones, so I'm trying to determine if it's appropriate to take the bad with the good in this scenario. Is the bad seriously detrimental or not....? That's what I am unsure of. All relationships have some harm in them, and I'm trying to figure out if this is an appropriate amount of harm to tolerate for the sake of the good or not.

Anneintherain: My husband and I have considered therapy, but we actually communicate with each other in a civil and adult way, so we haven't felt the need to. My brother and I do not, thus why we feel help is needed to bridge the communication problem.

In the months after I started poly, I felt that this was a lifestyle that resonated with me better. I felt, and do still feel, I am just the type of person that loves someone because of who they are, and I am not the type that likes to repress such feelings completely. Even though I cannot have sex with E I am infinitely happier in that I get to *express* my love. That alone has made me so much happier. I just have my bad days too because of ideological differences between my husband and I. I'm pretty sensitive to what other people think and I'm trying to work on having more confidence in my right to make adult choices regardless of what the popular opinion is.

Magdlyn: I think I clarified my situation with my brother a bit in my response up top. It is not easy, but we did have a very close relationship before this and I care about him a lot. I want us to work on our communication issues.

I have written on the issue before, and since we agreed that E needed his own living space my husband has been significantly happier. We feel this may be the route to make this work.

FullofLove: I do appreciate your understanding on wanting therapy with my brother M. My brother got the poly bomb about a year ago, and it finally started calming down around the end of July 2012. It's been a long process to even just be okay with hanging out and enjoying ourselves together again. He has had support from our eldest brother P, and comparatively he took the news much better and has been a good support for my brother M.

I would like to break from the social conditioning some. I think more than anything that's what ails me, though circumstances with my husband and my brother add to it. For the most part our friends who know are not endorsers of the lifestyle, but for the most part they seem to infinitely fault E's actions more than they ever do mine. I am just in the better habit of being considerate of people's needs and I think that has helped to garner respect. Still, it's not fun to watch others look at E as a wife-stealing snake. He kinda brings that one upon himself because he hovers so much around me and is oblivious to how he comes off to people.

Marcus: My husband Y just feels that his values are too strong to feel differently about polyamory. I'm not sure that he feels insecure or not. He just seems to just not like having me to himself, for lack of a better way of putting it. Not in a possession sort of way, but he wishes he had more of my time in his life. His love language is definitely quality time, and poly has a way of dipping into that quite a bit.

I will refer you to my response to Cleo up above. You definitely seem to be of the mindset that this is too much unhappiness to justify staying together. I don't feel terribly miserable on my end, save for reacting to how Y feels. Otherwise, my compromises may have taken getting used to but I am able to see some of the positive still handily available. As much as I love E having him move out isn't all negative. The man is frankly a slob with his possessions and I am looking forward to having a clean house and home. I may arguably be happier in the long run dating him in his own separate living space. I am not sure if Y is able to see the positive to his side of things other that he got another chance with me to make the marriage work. It may be a matter of that I am okay with the compromise, but maybe Y isn't. I challenged him last night, asking him, "Are you sure you can't find someone else that you could be happier with?" He responded that maybe he could find a monogamous gal, but he told me that outside of this one issue, he felt that we were very compatible and are a good balance for each other. Maybe even for him the good outweighs the bad enough for him to stick with it. He sure didn't lead the conversation towards the divorce question when I asked for his honesty. This is why I feel it's not that terribly clear cut.

Nycindie: In rereading those posts, I definitely perceived that poly drove my brother to a mental institution at the time, and some of it remains true. However, as I detailed in my very first response above, there were other issues in addition that led up to the hospitalization.

I am not looking forward to dredging up painful memories, but I still see plenty of opportunity for my brother and I to work on things. I could skirt around poly completely and still see ways to improve things with him. This was his idea as far as his therapist is concerned, but the idea of working with a third party was my idea from a year ago. I want this as well. Our eldest brother was supposed to help counsel us, but he's going through financial hardship and doesn't have a phone anymore. Being long distance, that kinda shot that out of the water.

Besides, last I heard from a mutual friend, my brother is a bit better ideologically on the poly thing. He's more concerned with working on our issues. I hope this helps to clear up the concerns posters had, as I really intended the focus to be on the subject of the original post.
 
Like i said, i remember this now. Thanks to the link provided by nycindie. See my post right before this one at the top of the page.
 
I hate to break this to you, but it seems clear to me that your brother had some kind of mental illness way before you embraced polyamory, and way before you got married. I have mental illness in my family; so I say this with a certain empathy and recognition. I understand your having compassion and wanting to help him, but it is obvious you will never have a normal friendship with your brother. You just won't. At some point, you're going to have to let go of wanting to fix things and realize that his problems are better left to professionals. You shouldn't let his psychosis, hallucinations, or delusions determine how you live our life with your husband and partners!
 
It sounds like the OP's entire family is wrapped around the one member's psychiatric medical issues. That's too bad. It's hard to stay involved with one's family without getting sucked into that vortex, and practically impossible to avoid getting sucked into the vortex without avoiding the family entirely. My aunt is like this. In fact, my mother was her surrogate parent and when she met my father then had me, that sent my aunt off the deep end. Now that both my aunt's parents (my grandparents) and my mother are deceased, i seem to have become the parental "figure" in this 55 year old adolescent's life. You just have to let them go and don't take everything that happens to them as a sign that something is wrong with you and you need to "work on it" with them. That's THEM bringing YOU into THEIR disease process.
 
PhilosophicallyLost said:
You definitely seem to be of the mindset that this is too much unhappiness to justify staying together. I don't feel terribly miserable on my end, save for reacting to how Y feels
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Me personally? Oh I absolutely and without a moments hesitation consider that WAY too much unhappiness to justify staying together! I generally find the concept of compromise to be an ill suited approach to apply to inter-personal relationships. It's a great approach to business dealings but I don't know how it ended up being used by people in their love lives.

However, I was not advising that it was too much misery for you to endure. People can endure vast amounts of misery for all manner of misguided sacrificial causes. I was simply stating your options...

PhilosophicallyLost said:
As much as I love E having him move out isn't all negative. The man is frankly a slob with his possessions and I am looking forward to having a clean house and home.
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So I guess that's some silver lining?
 
Nycindie and BoringGuy: I understand you are trying to speak from experience in an effort to help, and I appreciate the words of caution. There is way more to the whole thing with my brother than meets the eye. I just feel that there's not enough evidence in my forty-some posts here for anyone to declare enough knowledge on whether my brother is a lost cause or not in terms of repairing my friendship with him. As it is, the details I have given about my concerns with E and Y are no replacement for actually experiencing the various issues that have arisen. Language can help to bridge this gap, but it is not my goal to lay down my life's history just to defend my decision regarding my brother. All I can say is I feel I have due cause to believe there is a net positive to be gained by trying to repair my friendship with my brother and I will pursue it.

Marcus: Your ideology on compromise....is interesting. I just can't say I align with it, but I do find it interesting to note that E is huge on compromise on issues where I am just happy to say it's impossible to find the happy medium. Yet I just don't see any relationship, friendship, or any interpersonal relationship surviving without some degree of compromise. It's just picking what you are willing to compromise on and what not to. I'm more of a "net-positive versus net-negative" kind of gal. If compromise gets me more net-positive, then I will go for it. If it doesn't, then I won't.


Well, talked with the hubby last night, so I could get a feel for his state of mind. Here's what he told me:

If things stayed the same with E remaining to live with us, he would not be able to handle it anymore. Me going to see a romantic partner at a separate living residence is far easier for him to deal with. In that case, it's like I'm "going to a friend's house to hang out," he said. In other words, if he doesn't have to see it, it's much easier.

E is supposed to move out at the end of this summer. Y is still not sure if his issues with poly are because of poly itself or because of how E handles poly. Having E moved out would provide Y the clarity of thought he needs.

E is a very outwardly affectionate guy. You know how you can tell someone is in love by the way they just simply talk to them and they light up like Christmas lights? Even when E is trying to respect no-touch boundaries when Y is around, he seems unable to keep himself from talking to me a lot. And this pisses Y off when I'm supposed to be spending the day with Y. We have talked this issue to death and E and Y can't come to a happy medium on it. I am even bothered by how outwardly expressive E is, because all his friends pretty much suspect how he feels about me even though we haven't told them we are dating. He is not covert, at all. Having Y and I move our separate ways from E seems to be the way to force the issue from not being there anymore. E can be himself in his own living space with me when I can visit, and Y gets the space he needs from having to see E be himself with me.

I told Y that it's important there's more net positive than negative for both of us in this. He at least seemed open that once we move into another home that maybe there would be enough positive. I just don't think he knows enough about himself until he removes the "E" factor long enough to clear his mind. Still, the points I mentioned earlier in this post I think are still valid concerns still. I guess time will tell.
 
i don't think you shouldn't try to repair your relationship with your brother. I do think you shouldn't let his mental illness interfere with your personal life and happiness where it has nothing to do with him.
 
I'm so sorry.

I can't comment on the brother situation but I am concerned that you sound rough in your wellness.

On your own wellness dimensions... you seem like you are taking hit points in emotional health, mental health, social health, spiritual health. You are moving and hopefully that will improve some of your environmental health. But that's still a lot of buckets taking hit points for this polyship to continue in a less than happy way for all players. E isn't thrilled with the move, DH is accepting but not happy, you are not happy.

Is the price of admission to polyship under these conditions still worth it to you?

You list these ughs:

  • I will always wish to some extent that Y was on board with the poly thing and was okay with it.
  • Emotionally I just feel that I'm just causing him misery for developing feelings for someone else and that I'm the one who made things worse for everyone.
  • I have struggled even before poly with hating the fact I developed feelings for someone else.
  • I had a horrible fight with my brother where he accused me of being cruel and immoral for subjecting my husband to this, and the words still haunt me.
  • I have conservative friends, and even though they support us as friends they don't agree with the practice either.
  • I feel very isolated sometimes.
  • I don't want to forgive myself for wanting to love others, even though I would forgive all other beings for wanting the same for themselves.
  • the stigma that comes with it just makes me feel like I'm more horrible than I actually am.
  • I just don't know if I'm being too hard on myself or not.

My husband still thinks it's clearly worth sticking with the marriage despite his issues with poly, and that's his decision to make, but I sometimes wonder if he'd be happier elsewhere. I told him as much and that's when he said he felt we were pretty compatible otherwise...but is it worth it? I guess it is for him, otherwise he'd be trying to leave me. And it wouldn't be fair for me to force a separation on him if he thinks he can still more or less work with it
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.

You do not cover the thought of "Could YOU would be happier elsewhere and separating so YOU can be happier?"

If you accept that neither you or DH will be fully happy, would breaking up with one of them (E or DH) help reduce some of the other UGH you have in your life? So while not entirely happy, it's at least less sucky for you overall?

Or do you prefer to stay where you are and keep on taking hit points to those health buckets above?

I have no answers -- just pointing out that on this one it might not be a "win or lose" kind of thing but a "which of my options stinks the least?" thing.

Maybe at this stage just working on listing out all the questions you COULD consider is enough? Worry about actually sitting with them to consider and answering them later?

But for now just "get the lay of the land" so to speak? Not choose anything just yet but lay out the options?
  • If I do this -- the pros and cons are A. I will likely feel X in the short term than Y in the long term.
  • If I do that, then the pros and cons are B. I will likely feel X in the short term than Y in the long term.

Maybe that could help?

Galagirl
 
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