Individual headmate with counterproductive persistence

[Ranger]

I mentioned this in the cBox, but I wanted to post it here too before it got lost and forgotten.

One thing I wondered is how would Xar benefit from being a "signlet" again? Is he not getting enough time or is he afraid of people thinking he's crazy or something?

I know one thing Cat struggles with is feeling closeted by being plural. Out of desperation, she mentioned to her psychology professor about tulpamancy (but never got a response back, and the original email was asking why tulpas were weird and not actually revealing herself to be a tulpamancer) and her parents not being understanding stung too. However, even before tulpamancy, Cat struggled with making conversation with others because she had a limited number of interests to begin with.

It may help to have Xar join a non-tulpa club, Discord server, or community where he shares something in common with those other people and doesn't have to fall on thinking about plurality and feeling isolated.

Another thing we talked about is figuring out how to share time, but I want to add a little more to that here.

Cat and I have to negotiate a lot of stuff. Sometimes negotiating doesn't require intervention and it's as simple as Cat works on her math stuff for most of the day and then I am online for most of the next day and it naturally works out. However, there are times where one of us fronts for too long and we have to to plan ahead, block out some time, or help the other come up with something to do. A possible scenario could be Cat is burned out on her math stuff and her family is driving her nuts, so I help her come up with something to do and I end up pestering her to bake cookies. For long term or other stuff, I have told Cat I want to take a class all by myself, I want certain projects to be me-only, or I want to make a scheduled commitment with my friends to do something so I have something to do that requires me to do stuff.

Managing who fronts when is dependent on what kind of fronting we do, which is one of the nice consequences to our possession-switching set up. Our possession is short-term, so anyone can grab control of the body for who knows how long until Cat gets bored or interrupted again. On the other hand, our switching is reserved for me fronting for hours at a time and that requires us to plan ahead. One of the steps we take during our consent ritual is checking on how both of us feel, forming a plan of what to do while controlling the body, having a rough idea of when to switch-out, and discussing any issues that pop up. Even though our switching is tedious sometimes, I think it's a good step to make sure both of us are on the same page and it gives us a chance to work out anything that went under the radar.

We have no idea how our future is going to roll out, but we have a few ideas of what to expect and we have a few plans on how to do life as a system. Both of us agree Cat's career path is probably going to make us more successful and make us more money (I don't even know what I want to do, and being a teacher is the only idea I consistently liked and that doesn't make a lot of money). I like the idea of Cat having to teach math classes and me being switched-in for those, but it may be Cat gets some sort of com-sci job and I end up with a side hobby. All of which may have serious revisions if our in-system hierarchy changes and we share the switching front equally with our headmates.

Lastly, I want to mention romantic relationships because there's lots of room for things to get complicated there too. I don't want to go into detail about our ideas/plans on that here and would rather share them via PMs, but coming up with a plan for that may also reduce stress related to being in a system.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Ranger

[Matsuri]

22 minutes ago, Ranger said:

One thing I wondered is how would Xar benefit from being a "signlet" again? Is he not getting enough time or is he afraid of people thinking he's crazy or something?

 

He hasn't been active for quite some time now, and it's difficult for us to really trigger him towards front willingly, like he's docile. Anyhow, I can try answering that from my pov:

 

The justifications he brought up seem to be about similar things you mentioned in the post, life uncertainty and not feeling comfortable around non-plurals, which is sentiments we share but I'm guessing we have different views on it. I think it would almost be like a dilemma problem if it was possible to become singlet for us, like there's things plurality helps us with. But also feels like we can't become singlet no matter how much we try or want. That option has already been thrown out the window, and I don't wanna be singlet anyway. I will keep fighting for what I want and believe in the most, and there's no host being stronger or whatever in our system, it's equality all the way except externally, which I'll get into

 

1 hour ago, Ranger said:

It may help to have Xar join a non-tulpa club, Discord server, or community where he shares something in common with those other people and doesn't have to fall on thinking about plurality and feeling isolated.

 

We've thought about stuff like that, or if Xar and Kuri both should start doing stuff more in the front. Just generally, not only because of this incident thingy. External things seem to be mostly me. I have a theory that it might be partly because of me having developed attachments that are stronger than others that keeps me to the front, and usually makes it easier for me to grab the front. That too is an issue but not sure if and how related it might be

 

There's surely things we can reflect on from what we've read, and hopefully stabilize our foundation for the future. We can relate to a lot you say, Ranger. Might hopefully puzzle something out from what we're getting from everyone here so far and reinforce some stuff before next incident might come, or if there will even be any, hopefully not