#from a place of actual (very slowly built and very hard-won) relationship/connection security with each other

[indigochromatic]

Hm. The way I think about it, "system accountability" is recognizing and internalizing that no matter how distinct and whole we are individually, we're still interdependent. Because we're in this whole thing together, for better or worse. (Like a spaceship crew, or, y'know, all of planet earth, if you want to get philosophical.) This means thinking about and taking responsibility for how my own individual actions impact not only myself but also us collectively and the other member(s) of my system (hey, L) individually. If I have a bad day and fuck up our body--well, we only have one of those, so she also has to use it. If I'm an ass to her friends, she'd be (rightfully) mad at me, because even if they're people I don't really care about personally, I've just done the moral equivalent of walking into my housemate's room and broken her stuff (in this case, damaged relationships of hers). Dude, what the fuck. Similarly, if I'm having a rough time and L just ignores me/it for weeks, I'm gonna be (rightfully) mad, too, because, as a system, I need some amount of cooperation and help from her to fix that shit. I can't always just shove her out of front and fix it myself--sometimes I'm too deep in the back, sometimes I've already fronted for 3 days and literally Just Can't anymore, etc--so we have to be a team.

We share a brain, so if I'm depressed, we're depressed: just because it hits me first doesn't mean it won't hit her too eventually. Likewise, frustrations that I have don't just "float away and magically get fixed" if I'm not in front (fun fact: that's called repression, kids!), and self-hatred issues that she has are still "in our brain somewhere" until we fix them. Neither of us can just 'walk away' from the other one's problems, because even if one of us went dormant, all of that baggage and the underlying issues beneath it would still be there, even if it took a while to make it back up to the surface. If we only have one car and I pop the front left tire, it doesn't matter if that's "my side of the car" and not hers--the whole car's still fucked, lol. Unironically, we talk about system stuff in therapy in very similar ways to couples therapy, because on some level, yeah--our life is a group project now. It's a relationship, and relationships take work.

To us, that's how we see our system overall, and why that unavoidable interconnectedness and interdependency doesn't clash at all with seeing ourselves as full individuals. Yeah, it's a closer level of interdependence than two people with their own bodies and brains usually have. So what? Every different interpersonal "orbit distance" between two (or more) people comes with its own challenges and benefits, its own versions of healthy and unhealthy; this is ours, and the more we take care of it, the more it gives back to us.

I'm curious to open up this discussion, so:

What does "system accountability" mean to you?

I have my own feelings I just want to open up a discussion post