Welcome back class. Today we’re going to have a vocab lesson! Mostly because I need to think of something other than what’s going on in the wider world. So we’re doing some Finishing School terminology. This will appear going forward so this counts as a 101 course in your second semester.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase “relationship landmines” at one point or another in your life. They appear in books, advice columns, ect. The term generally refers to past traumas, limits, or boundaries that you don’t know your partner has until you step on them. EIther they didn’t know, thought they were healed, or they didn’t tell you for reasons ranging from embarrassment to fear. Either way A Bad has happened, something has blown up, and now there’s emotional shrapnel all over the place that you all need to clean up, assuming the relationship even survived the initial blast.

This is a useful analogy for some folks because traumas can be sudden, unexpected, and destructive. It can also be entirely disarmed with skill, patience, and work if you find them before they blow up. So landmines make sense.

I do not care for this term and therefore Finishing School does not use it.

Why? Because class, landmines are a One and Done weapon. Oh sure you can have a whole field of them, but each individual mine only goes off once. Trauma and triggers don’t work like that. They reoccur. Sometimes in the same place, sometimes 2 inches to the left. Sometimes they wreck everything, sometimes you just need to make a minor course correction and you’ll be fine. Mines don’t adjust their damage once you trip one just because the field trusts you and you didn’t mean to hit it.

So what do we here at Finishing School use to refer to Unexpected Bads in a relationship?

Ditch Goats.

Now, I realize some of you may not have ever lived in a place where Unexpected Livestock or road drainage ditches are things, so allow me to explain where this comes from.

Occasionally, as you drive past a farm, you’ll notice that sheep or goats or chickens, maybe ducks have either escaped their confinement, or are allowed to free range entirely. This means occasionally they wander into the road. And since roads by farms are not generally full of traffic, it’s not all that dangerous so they never learn not to do it. Also, in rural areas where these farms exist there are usually septic systems, not municipal sewers. This means that there are frequently drainage ditches along the side of the road in order to keep the road from getting washed out when it rains and, at least where I live, to give plows somewhere to dump snow, since there’s no sewer grates under curbs to drain into. These roads can also be winding, full of hills and curves, which block sight lines.

What do you get when you add all that together? Sometimes Class you come around a blind corner and find a goat has escaped and is foraging in the drainage ditch, disturbingly close to the side of the road you’re driving down.

What, on earth, has that got to do with relationships, Ms. Mhari?

I’m getting there.

Much like trauma trigger a Ditch Goat can be somewhat predicted, but not with 100% certainty until you turn the final corner. Your partner may warn you “oh hey, there’s a goat farm down this road, and they tend to escape. Watch out for ditch goats.” You can remember where it was last time, and it may or may not be there. Maybe it’s around the next curve. Maybe it didn’t feel like escaping it’s pasture today in the first place and isn’t there at all.

You also have Options with ditch goats that just aren’t there with landmines.

If the goat is on the side of the road but not directly in it you can drive on by with caution to make sure it doesn’t jump out, but don’t have to stop and neither of you suffer damage. Just like, with exposure therapy, you and your partner can engage with a trauma trigger carefully without damaging your relationship. Like impact play when getting hit would normally trigger flashbacks and panic in an abuse survivor for example.

If the goat is in the road, but not the middle, and you see it with enough warning you can slow down to give it time to move, go around it, or stop entirely and shoo it to the side. This, to me, is like when you notice your partner tense up when you say or do something, or notice them hesitating, and stop to reaffirm consent and alter what you’re saying or doing, or slow down to make sure they don’t get triggered by you moving too fast. The goat is still there, and you may have had to pause for a minute to make sure you didn’t hit it, but no one got hurt.

Maybe the goat was in the middle without enough warning to avoid it and you hit the goat. Well now you have damage to your car, but it may still be driveable depending on how hard you hit the (for the record, unharmed) goat. Hitting a trigger isn’t always mass amounts of irreparable damage. Sometimes it just takes a little work before you can get back on the road to where you were going. This would be something like calling your partner a pet name that an ex used that they have bad memories associated with, or touching them in places that cause panic. You have to stop, assess, and wait for the panic to ebb before continuing, but it didn’t Destroy Everything.

Sometimes, if you’re a therapist or this is your long term partner and you’re both working on getting this goat to Stop Escaping, you’ll see that it’s out by the road, stop the car entirely, and usher it back into the designated Goat Containment Zone. You’re not required to do this for any goat farmer, it is their job to maintain their fences. But goats are crafty buggers and this is a kindness. Especially if the farmer has asked for your help with this particular escape goat.

Sometimes you have to keep avoiding the Same Damn Goat. Forever. That bugger just keeps sneaking out no matter what the goat farmer does to contain it. Sometimes you’ll think you missed it, but it’ll turn up 8 miles down the road, leaving you to wonder how on earth it ended up there. That’s normal too with trauma tied to gaslighting and moving goal posts. Sometimes something that was perfectly safe last week Is No Longer Safe, even when you’re out of the traumatic situation. Your body remembers and starts to get triggered off of feeling safe at all, since it’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. So the Ditch Goat pops up further down the road. This is a normal, though extremely frustrating, part of recovery.

And sometimes? Sometimes hitting the goat wrecks your car. The goat is fine, the jerk always is. Ditch Goats are indestructible in this analogy. But your car is totaled beyond saving. And sometimes some trauma triggers, and the response to hitting them, do blow up relationships. We can do our best to avoid them, and our best to mitigate the damage, and sometimes we can try again afterwards, but at that moment it’s not possible to go forward in a whole car. This is generally when someone you are in a relationship with, be it romantic, sexual, or platonic, was not as recovered as they thought they were and was not actually ready for the kind of relationship you had. This is No Ones Fault. Not your partner or friend’s and not yours unless you intentionally hit their trigger. Which, for the record, makes you an asshole.

No one asked for ditch goats. No one asked for goats at all, ditch or contained. Just like no one wants trauma or traumatic reactions, no matter how self aware and up front they are about having them. Therefore there’s no point in getting angry at someone for having them. Especially if they are aware of where they generally are, and how likely they are to wreck cars, and they warn you. Don’t get angry with someone for disclosing a ditch goat. Thank them and ask how to mitigate the chances of wrecking your car on it.

It’s easy to panic when confronted with Unexpected Ditch Goat. I mean here you are, just driving along, and SUDDENLY LIVESTOCK! But honestly? That’s the worst thing you could do. Panic means sudden moves and over reactions that startle the dratted thing into jumping in front of your car and wrecking it. Reacting with panic, fear, or judgement to your loved one disclosing trauma, limits or boundaries, just makes them less likely to trust you enough to disclose other important things later. It means that you’ve set your relationship success to hard mode by demonstrating that they need to focus on comforting you about their needs. That’s...not a good look class. Listen with kindness and patience, thank them for telling you, ask how you can support them, and freak out privately later.

So yes, ditch goats. This is the term. Learn it, use it, get used to it. You’re going to be hearing it a lot as class progresses.

That’s all for this lecture class. Until next time have fun, and stay safe.