On feeling welcomed, invited, and feeling feels for friends on a loveseat

Last night, I spent a few hours squished into a small loveseat with a very snuggly couple--one a long-term friend (and ex-boyfriend, full disclosure) the other his long-term partner who I'd only met a few times. It felt very magical. I had zero complaints about the fact that the movie we were watching was slow as fuck, and I could spend long swaths of time just quietly feeling feels and never really miss anything important.  Everyone else in the room, all squished together into the other big couch, filled up the slow slow pace of the movie through endless and hilarious Mystery Science Theater comments. (Although, the award for the comment that almost broke me goes to my friend next to me: "I'm getting a psychic message from the space anus!"). I was so happy to see my friend again, and so happy that he and his partner were so warm and full of hugs and "invitation", for lack of a better word.

But this isn't really just a blog post about sitting in a couch and feeling feels.  This particular group of friends actually used to be a source of a lot of anxiety for me. The hosts in particular are people I like and admire and always wanted to be friends with because they are fantastic people, but who also always always made me feel a little small and a little judged.  Especially the wife. She's the kind of person who makes her opinions and judgments of other people pretty public knowledge, and expects you and everyone around you to have thick enough skin to handle it and see it as a non-threatening thing.

I never had thick enough skin.

I remember times hanging out with this group of friends, and hearing her go on about the stupidity or terrible choices someone else (from work, or an absent friend) had made. Sometimes it was about relationships. Sometimes it was about work or jobs, etc.  There was never ever any true malice in the way she talked though.  It was more of a "what can you do?" or "stupid's gonna dumb." I remember hearing and watching her, and seeing how everyone else in the room laughed, and empathized, and I felt like an outsider, pretending to smile and chuckle while inside my innerJane was kind of curled up in a ball in tears because I just knew that when I'm not in the room, her judgments and jokes must also be about me.

This was also a time when I felt very much like my "membership" in this group was sort of contingent and temporary since the only way I'd gotten to know any of them was through people I'd dated. I felt like I had no legitimate claim to be in this group because of it. That as soon as I stopped dating one of them (and I've sort of serially dated 3 "members" of this group. My current partner included.) I'd no longer be welcome. I'd no longer be invited.

But I understand now that this isn't true. "Anxiety/insecurity lies," as another close friend reminded me recently. It really was mostly just a case where the Anxiety/Insecurity Monster found a little source of fuel and inflated itself in my head.  For years.  For no good reason.

I know this for sure now because of how different I felt around them all last night. I was there alone (my partner was sick and couldn't come) which a year ago would have resulted in me making some excuse and not going at all.   But instead, I was happy to go alone and dive into this group of friends. It really drove home the fact that I've changed and healed and grown from who and what I was when I was filled mostly with anxiety and depression and insecurity (not saying all of those things are gone, but I feel like they are no longer my foundation).  Even though my partner was sick and couldn't join us, I felt completely welcome, open, happy to see everyone, and confident that my invitation wasn't "by accident" or "out of obligation" or "because you're engaged to..." I felt like I was Part of the Group. I really was invited for me. I really was welcome.

And it wasn't anything that they did differently that changed things either. Host Wife still made some of her usual "haha-is-she-judging-them-I-can't-tell" comments about the fact that the two people who were late (the friends I spent the movie squished with on the couch) don't use traditional labels or even boundaries to define their relationship, but when I heard her comments, they sounded and felt different in my head. Instead of feeling so anxious and judged myself, or defensive of them, I surprised myself by actually not being bothered by it. Like, I had to kind of mentally take a step back and be surprised at myself. And kind of proud. All of a sudden, it didn't sound threatening. And it didn't make me feel threatened. I even managed to say some things in a tone that showed not only did I not judge them for being that way, I was really looking forward to seeing them, and I knew that they were on their way.

And when they arrived, I didn't hold back the hugs, or worry (much) about what it looked like for me to accept their invitation to join them on the too-small love-seat. Years of conditioning of course made me conscious of the possibility that Host Wife looked at us in a judging way (my fiance was absent, afterall), but I feel like that was a kind of residual reaction and nothing more.  I relaxed and gave myself full permission to just quietly feel the feels for these two fantastic friends who make me feel welcome and loved even though we rarely ever see each other.

So yeah... shit's different now in my head.  *does a little dance*  I won't pretend that my battles with the Anxiety/Insecurity monster are over though. This was just one of those days where I went to a place where the monster usually lives, and to my surprise discovered that he'd shriveled up into a tiny cute ball of "non-issue" and I could just greet him and gently pat him on the head and tell him it's okay to be small and irrelevant.

:)