I don't know if you're familiar with structured products. I'm not. But as far as I understand, they're collections of investments (stick with me), whose dividends are paid out to investors in a certain order. The top category of investors gets paid first, then the next category down gets paid, and if there's any money left in there, the last group gets paid. If the fund runs out of money after paying the top category, too bad for the other investors. Depending on the investment strategy and the state of the economy, sometimes there is plenty of money in there for everybody, and sometimes there's not.
I've come to think of my stores of affection and patience like a structured product. Little Mabel gets the first payout. Penny gets the next payout. And my poor husband is in the last category.
So, when the affection/patience economy is good, when I'm rested and happy and feeling good about my life, everybody gets their whole share. But when the affection/patience economy is bad, when I'm tired, sad, disappointed or overwhelmed, there isn't enough to go around. D is the first one to suffer from the bad affection/patience economy. It's not good, but he's pretty robust and he can usually take the hit.
The really bad times come when there isn't enough in the fund even to pay out all of what Penny needs. She can sense when the attention/patience fund is running low, and when she sees it coming, she digs in and tries to squeeze out as much as she can before I cut her off. She climbs all over me, digging her toes into my shin bones and attacking me with hugs that have anger behind them. I see that she needs affection, so I try to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something extra to give her, and the more I try, the more exhausted I get, and the faster the reserves are drained.
Usually, when there's nothing left, I say something like "that's it, mommy needs a break, you have to get off me now." And the kicker is that after I do that, my first instinct is to pick up Mabel and distribute the reserve affection that structurally belongs only to her, because I'm so scared of running so low that I don't even have enough for the baby. Penny sees that and, understandably, gets even more pissed. Sigh.
It would probably be wise for me to have some kind of alert that goes off when the fund is running low, but not perilously low. It would say to me "Hey, you're not going to have enough to pay out all the investors, so you better do something now to replenish the reserves." And at that point, before I get into the impatience/anger spiral, I would take a break, give myself whatever I'm missing, and improve the affection/patience economy, lifting all the boats, so to speak.
I wish I could do that, because the worst part of all this is that it's not personal. It's not that I care less about D than I do about Penny, or that I care about Penny less than I do about Mabel. It's just that they're ranked in order of neediness. But yet, when the fund is emptied before someone gets their whole payout, that person understandably feels like it's a personal slight. It must mean that I don't love them enough. And that's not it at all. I just sometimes run out of the affection and patience that is usually the best and easiest indicator of love.
I'm not sure if this realization helps anything. I certainly can't explain it to a 3-year old. But somewhere in my head it does help to remind me that I'm not a terrible person when I run out of affection for Penny, but still have some left for Mabel. It helps me remember that impatience isn't permanent. It reminds me why it's important to take care of myself, because it makes the whole economy stronger. And it makes it clear to me how lucky I am to have a husband who can handle being in the last-paid group all the time and still find it in his heart to hold out for the flush days.
Most of all, it allows me to forgive myself for not being everything for everyone all the time. And the easier it is to forgive myself, the better the affection/patience economy performs.
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