Friday Question – Milestones

The Friday Question: How it works

Every Friday we will pose a question for you all to discuss or privately consider. You can engage with it publicly here on the RFAS blog, or you can join our forum (details below) for a more private discussion. You can write it down to think about later, journal about it, or bring it in to a therapy session with you.

If you would like to volunteer to become a moderator and host future Questions, please email us at volunteer@asexualsurvivors.org—or join our forum and post in the moderator volunteer thread. If you just have an idea for a future Question that you want to share, we have a brainstorming topic on our forum.

Something to Ponder Today

Sometimes we can’t help knowing that a certain anniversary is coming up if it has emotional meaning. Sometimes the way we mark time is not even overly personal, but days that have meaning for many people, such as holidays, can still feel different depending on what you have been through and what you associate with those days. Also, sometimes a milestone does not have to happen by default or fall on a particular day. We set milestones or goals for ourselves all the time, telling ourselves, “I will finish this book” or “I will go to the grocery store,” like to-do lists or bucket lists. It is important to remember to celebrate little accomplishments, and try not to become obsessed with possibilities of not handling something well or not doing something “right” or “in time.” It can be helpful to have a mixture of short-term and long-term, easier and harder, goals, so you consistently feel like you are living meaningfully but you also always have things to look forward to.

What kind of milestones do you notice or set for yourself? 

• How do you feel when you reach a milestone? Do you ever feel like you should feel a certain way, but don’t?
• What do you do? How do you celebrate happy milestones and cope with sad ones?
• Do other people remind you of milestones, and do you want them to? How could you get them to stop or start? What support do you have at these times?
• Do you try to keep milestones few and far between, or do you have frequent ones? How do you feel in the time between? Are you very focused on reaching that goal or moment, or do you avoid thinking about it?
• How do you feel when you think about, or are encouraged to pursue, milestones that you don’t want to set for yourself? You may not want to get married, have children, move to a new community, or do other things that many people consider normal or expected — how do you remind yourself that it is okay to have different goals?
• Have your milestones changed over time? Have you added more, or stopped observing a few? Does anything that once seemed important now seem unimportant, or vice versa?

You don’t have to answer every (or any!) question, of course. These are just different ways to approach the topic which might be helpful to consider. You can share as much or as little as you like.

On the Forum

• You can discuss this question privately after registering at the forum
• Here are instructions for how to join the forum
• Here’s the invite request form
• You can also still discuss previous questions as well. There is no time limit for joining the discussion.
• Please abide by our rules in both comments and forum posts.

Please note that we are still working things out in the forum, especially technical issues. We are gradually letting people in now who are not moderators or volunteers, but it can basically be considered “in beta” for now. So if you do join, please excuse our forum being a bit of a mess while we get everything tested. There may also be a little bit of a wait time for sending out invites.

Here are a couple of things you should know about posting to the forum:

• All posts are private, and can only be viewed by members
• It is against forum rules to discuss any personal stories shared on the forum with anyone who is not a member without permission of the person who shared it
• You can post as anonymous, once you are a member

The Spoiler Tag

You can hide especially triggering details behind a spoiler tag—which also works in blog comments. Here’s an example:

[spoiler title=’Triggering stuff’ collapse_link=’true’]Explicit/triggering material would go here.[/spoiler]

To make one, just type…

[ spoiler ] ... [ /spoiler ]

…without the spaces. I hope that this helps everyone safely navigate this conversation.