The way I understand boulders is the things that need to be addressed before talking about the little things, so any tension / important topics that act as a source of confusion between you in your relationship, and that by talking about you can then feel safer and more comfortable in each other’s presence.
You clear away the big boulders, the medium boulders, etc., whittle it down, with the goal of making it comfortable to talk about the small things.
It feels like you’re avoiding talking about those big boulders, and the symptoms of that are spiralling out with you feeling the need to look at her Reddit in order to try and understand her and connect with her a bit better; not only that, she’s there having to go to Reddit to get relationship advice instead of you. There are some weird secrets going on like with the car switching.
All of these symptoms could be resolved if you just talked to her.
The reason you two are staying casual is, from my point of view, because you’re too afraid to talk about the big things. You are “not wanting to be caught in the middle of anything;” you’ve communicated that she can’t really talk to you about the things that are bothering her because it makes you feel uncomfortable. That’s not a good set-up for anything more than a casual relationship.
From now on, in every interaction with her, you should be thinking, “What is the biggest boulder here?” That will then inform your decision on what you need to talk about. (It’s a little more nuanced than that, though this is the main thing.) I would say the biggest boulder right now is the Reddit thing; she knows you saw her Reddit, and with the deletion of that post I’m sure she feels you at least might snoop, though she doesn’t want to bring it up as she’s scared of having that conversation. I feel like you need to admit that you snooped there, admit that you should have asked her first, how that was a mistake, how and why it’s not something that will happen again, resolve that and then move on to the medium-sized boulders, and then the smaller boulders.
The biggest boulder might not be the Reddit thing, though that’s for you to decide; make sure it actually is the biggest boulder.
The medium-sized boulders are probably to do with what’s happening in her life with her ex-partner, those sorts of conversations; you need to clear the air there. If she finds out that she can talk to you about the big stuff, your whole relationship dynamic will change.
Source?
7 trillion is not 73 trillion.
Edit: Just saw the 7.8 trillion figure for the US to switch to 100% renewables by 2050. That’s a long time to wait.
Hey, that’s okay, it’s something I learnt the hard way and am dealing with catch-up at the moment.
In the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, it talks about how you should apologise after some wrongdoing as soon as possible.
This is a similar concept, following this concept the apology is the boulder. It would be uncomfortable talking about nonsense / small things when this hasn’t yet been cleared up.
In the news recently there was this talk about two long-lost twins who found each other on social media for the first time, and they then had to confront their adoptive parents on that big boulder there. For the step-parent, that boulder would have had to have been sitting there for 19 years! Imagine the relief and the safety / comfortability that would arise when that boulder was finally lifted. They could finally talk about the more nuanced things without that weight on their shoulders, that filter. It opened a whole new channel of conversation.