Thank you starlight1, your encouragement does help.
My recovery from being ill seems to have arrived at a plateau, I can't seem to improve right now even though most of the illness is gone. Yesterday at dinner I kind of swallowed something down the wrong pipe and it immediately threw me into an epic coughing fit. That sort of event tells me I'm not quite out of the woods yet.
Going back to the topic of my posts and participation here, especially in Poly Relationships Corner, it's important to me to offer a moderate point of view that won't stir up contention or at least will keep that at a minimum. And of course it's important to me to offer a point of view that contributes to solving the original poster's dilemma. Sometimes it's hard to do both at once but I have to believe it's possible. It's usually helpful for others to offer contrasting points of view, but I'd like to think that doesn't necessitate denigrating what I said. There's such a thing as respectful disagreement, and I guess people have different views on what "respectful" means.
I know that on this forum people have the freedom to strongly object to what other people (including me) say. That's the risk I agree to take by participating at all. So while in the short term I might be hurt by what someone says about me (or about one of my posts), in the long term I have to make peace with that, as long as overall my experience here is positive. Or I have to withdraw from the forum, and I don't want to do that. In the end, one negative remark about me in one thread will generate minimal attention, and will soon fade into the past. So in that sense I am okay with what happened. Of course, I've had a few days to process my thoughts and feelings about it.
And I believe the objection raised to my post on the other thread should add something to my wisdom in the future, so that my future posts won't make the same mistake. I say mistake in the sense that I didn't take everyone's possible response into account, and I don't think it's possible to avoid that mistake, but in the future I can take one more (contrasting) point of view into account. I don't know if that will change what I'll say in the future, but it might at least in a subtle way. Hopefully that means there's a net improvement in what I contribute, and what for me was a painful experience won't be in vain.
But knowing all that isn't much of a comfort right now, I am still smarting. So, I really do need the moral support everyone has offered to me here on this blog, it has helped me to recover faster, and encouraged me to return to the rest of the site with relative confidence. I have learned hard lessons in the past before I had this blog to fall back on, so I know I can do it but the opportunity to vent about it here and receive generous support has been a welcome relief. Thank you again everyone.
Christmas will pass quietly in my house, Brother-Husband and Snowbunny are both off but I don't know if we'll go out at all even for dinner. I look forward to when we do go out so I'm somewhat bummed, but we'll see what happens. I wish all of you a good holiday, whatever your thoughts and beliefs about the holiday in question. Merry Christmas everyone.
