Today marks 11 weeks since my relationship with Novice ended. Until a few days ago, I'd only met and spoken with her once since that break, in late July. An extremely difficult meeting that made me spiral pretty badly.
This Sunday we met up again for around 3 hours, and it wasn't anything like the meeting in July. It wasn't completely comfortable either, we were both anxious and a bit on edge... But it felt very similar to how we were able to talk and interact in the day after she dumped me; Familiar, compatible. Exhausting as well, sure, but so, so good.
She told me about the issue she'd been mulling over back in July, when she said "we need to talk". It related to privacy, and how she felt I'd severely overstepped when I'd told people that we were over. She needs control over who knows what about her, and it made her very uncomfortable when I told others about this issue without her knowledge. She also found it uncomfortable when I'd asked her for information about a common friend of ours. She didn't think that was her information to spread, if I wanted to know I should have asked that friend directly.
To me, these are related. I view my friends group as a loosely connected collective. Almost like ants in an anthill, we each live our lives and do our thing. But if one of us is in trouble, the others will need to know about it and will want to come and help. To me, this expectation of some degree of mutual aid is a given. I probably wouldn't be friends with them otherwise. Not everyone can help out each time, but if everyone helps out as much as they can, then most of the collective's needs will be met. To quote Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
However, this only works if information is also shared. We need to know about other people's needs and troubles, in order to allocate time and resources to them. At the same time, having 5 or 10 or 15 people each reaching out to a person in trouble to ask what they can do is extremely inefficient. It even makes the burden on the person in need larger. So information must be shared, so that the aid can be coordinated and efficient.
When a friend of ours was in the hospital, I told others that were close to him. When me and Novice ended, and I was really, really worried about her mental health, I told others that I knew cared about her. When a friend of ours was struggling, I asked Novice for information about the situation. To me, this is a given. It didn't even occur to me, that she might not have the same perspective.
Does this mean I can't keep secrets? No, of course not. I kept Novice gender a secret for a year, for example. That should be proof enough. However, most things going on in someone's lives obviously aren't secret. To live as though it is, seems bordering on paranoia to me.
What's the difference between information sharing and gossip? To me, again, this is obvious: Gossip doesn't have the intent to help someone, and can often be malicious or at least scandalous in some way. Gossip is also spread to people outside of the immediate friends group. I expect close friends to help me out when I'm in trouble, that doesn't mean that I want for example random people in my kid's school to know details about my life. The difference here is also completely obvious to me.
I wasn't aware how fundamental this is to my view of the world, until we talked it through. Like the autistic person I am, I just assume that everyone sees things this same way. Her perspective is fundamentally different from my own. She values privacy and individualism in a way I can't really comprehend. To me, her viewpoint seems like such a lonely way to see the world. As if each person is an island, completely disconnected from any others around it.
However, the fact that I can't understand this in her, doesn't make any of our perspectives "right" or "wrong". Like she'd concluded as well: We're just very, very different in this regard.
I don't think I could have acted differently in that situation. I acted according to my nature and did what I thought was right. Isolated, I still think it's right. However, I also see that I hurt her. If I could have gone back in time, I would at least have voiced my concern to her first and asked her if I might tell specific people about our break-up. I didn't do that, and I'm sorry.
I'm also sorry that she felt hurt and violated by this betrayal. I care deeply about her and don't wish to hurt her. I can apologize for hurting her, even when I'm not sure I could have acted otherwise. After all, hitting someone with your car by accident, still hurts them. Even if you didn't mean to, and couldn't have acted differently in the situation. So it's still your responsibility.
Novice: I'm sorry I betrayed your trust in me. I didn't mean to hurt you. I can't promise it won't happen again, we're very different in this regard after all. However, I want to work on understanding your perspective better, and thereby hopefully avoiding doing something similar again. Your well-being is important to me, as is your trust in me. I want to remain worthy of your trust, and I'm grateful that you're still in my life.
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