Tag: Relationships

Won’t she just grow up?

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Hardly a girl escaped exposure to middle school terrorism: biting criticism about clothing, mean notes circulating, gym class taunting, teasing about lunchbox contents, cliques loudly discussing parties from which some were excluded. Even if you weren’t a target, bullying was surely on your social radar. You may have cringed as you witnessed it, rigorously monitoring your own behavior to avoid attracting the same fate. Perhaps you eventually breathed a sigh of relief, finding your high school or college niche, feeling strong in your network of supportive women. You grew out of it, beyond it, and trusted you were done with that phase of your life, having to dodge or defend against mean girls.

Then you joined a mom’s group, the PTA, or even a work setting;  flashback to middle school. Gossip flies: “did you hear what happened at Joni’s bachelorette?” Criticism is thinly veiled: “can you believe she doesn’t vaccinate her kids?” Exclusive social events are whispered or bragged about: “girls’ escape to the lake house this weekend.”   You dash out of work at lunch to volunteer for the band, only to have other volunteers ignore you and chat among themselves. When you excuse yourself for the return dash, one exclaims, “oh, too bad you’re a working mom.”  You proudly dress for a party, feeling good about the style you assembled from Nordstrom Rack, until other guests begin to brag about their $465 boots and $800 jeans. Bullying is not confined to middle school.

Relational aggression (RA) is one form of bullying. According to Cheryl Dellasega, PhD, author of Mean Girls Grown Up, RA is verbal violence in which words, rather than fists, cause damage. October is Bullying Prevention Month, a good time to look at the ways in which RA continues to have a sneaky presence in women’s lives, regardless of age.

Competition and comparison seem to be human nature. An inherent gauge of success is how our accomplishments measure up to those around up. So keeping score–and possibly bragging or lamenting about it–doesn’t stop. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are injecting it with new adrenaline for all ages. How many friends do you have? What glorious picture of your life can you paint with your tweets, pins, posts? Even at midlife and beyond, opportunities to “top this” and criticize abound. “Can you believe her son still hasn’t graduated?” “They spent that much on that wedding?!”

If you find yourself a target of RA, your first thought might be “I thought I was done with this; can’t she just grow up?” Here’s my short list of quick tips to cope with adult relational aggression directed at you:

1)  Expect people to be who they are. Bullies don’t automatically grow out of it as they grow up. If an acquaintance seems like a bully, trust your gut that you are reading it accurately. Expectations are our biggest enemy (check out my list of posts under “Expectations” to the right, for further reading) and thankfully, one category that we can control to improve our well-being. Bullies just are. Don’t expect them to be otherwise, and their tactics will lose some power.

2) This is not about me. You aren’t the problem, the bully is. You are not deficient, weak, or unlikable. Behavior like this says it all about the bully, nothing about you.

3) Toxic people aren’t toxic if we fail to react. If you apply the first two tips, it’s much easier to step away and not react. Breathe. Dismiss. Let go. Invoke the mantra “what other people think of me is none of my business.” The final authority on approval lies within you.

Have you been a victim of adult relational aggression? How have you coped?

 

 

Are you a sponge or a brick?

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The need for approval leads many women to sculpt and mold their bodies, personalities, even lives to fit either/both a societal ideal and an individual’s expectations.  Maybe the recent Olympics launched tears of boredom rather than emotion in you, but you smiled and nodded at others’ enthusiasm. In most women’s lives, it’s an ongoing struggle to find that balance of being fully me while still pleasing others.  Back in February, I explored this need for honest truth in our relationship lives, concluding that loss of self for the sake of a relationship does not lead to a happy life. It’s not a good idea to “give up me to be loved by you,” as the classic book says.

Healthy or not, backed by psychological science or not, it is often true that we are attracted to those who have characteristics that we seem to be missing. An introvert feels that that wild party person will fill life with greater fun or connection. A serious planner loves the spontaneity of that ”live-in-the-moment” person.  In the words of Jerry Maguire, “you complete me.” In the best incarnation of this trend, we seek out relationships with those who help us grow, challenging us to be the best ME we can be. It’s healthy to be a little putty-like, flexible, inspired to try on new interests, characteristics, even personas. And, ideally this is mutual. You both want to meet in the middle, stretching yourselves to be more. In long-term relationships, a sign of health is the ability to adapt to the growth of one’s partner.

(In the worst case scenario, we come to hate the very traits that drew us together in the first place. That spontaneous person fails to follow through on any planning.  The introvert needs more quiet time. We lose track of what we liked about each other at the beginning. But I digress . . .)

The grown-up challenge to the adolescent “but everybody is doing it” refrain may apply, even though you might cringe at the comparison: “Are you really going to jump off a bridge because your best friend is?” Don’t be a lemming, and follow even one other lemming off the cliff if that doesn’t feel consistent with who you are.  Do you have to homeschool your kids because your friends are and the schools do seem so scary and inadequate? Must you embrace S&M just because Fifty Shades of Grey is hiding on everyone’s ebook shelf and it might enliven your own gray sex life, even if the thought seems laughable or offensive to you? Do you have to start running because your partner does and it’s “good for you” when it makes your knees ache?

Check out this checklist about sacrificing too much for a relationship. When considering what and how much to change when the inevitable push comes from those we love, it is important to be mindful, thoughtful, careful in evaluating what parts of ourselves we do want to alter. Is this inherently good for me? Can this person inspire in me a healthy degree of change, versus complete transformation or loss of me? Will this benefit me outside of this relationship? Is this consistent with my values? What do I want to do?

The biggest challenge of our lives is to be our own version of our best selves, in the face of pressure to be someone else’s ideal, whether that someone is a loved one or the culture. Be neither a sponge–squashed and shaped to others’ ideals– nor a brick–rigid and unaffected–in your own continual evolution to be YOU.

 

Love Shouldn’t Hurt

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The fable goes that you can boil a frog alive. Just immerse the frog into a big pot of room temperature water, place the pot on the burner, and ever so slowly raise the heat. The temperature will rise so slowly that the frog will not notice. The frog’s body acclimates to the water as it gets hotter and hotter, and before the creature knows what’s happening, it succumbs, simmered to death.

In partner relationships, emotional abuse can sneak up in just this subtle way. In many families, teasing is a way to show love. As a teen or adult, you may tolerate such teasing, oblivious to the often inherent, yet thinly-veiled criticism. One woman put up with taunts of “clumsy,” which her partner turned into a nickname, “clumsy Clara.” Even though he insisted it was a term of endearment, she had not come from a teasing family and to her it was an insult. Over the course of the relationship as positive interaction declined, this label hurt more and more, affecting her self-image. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy; she tripped much more often when her critical partner was around. The socially-accepted vehicle of teasing also allowed her partner to up the ante, and he soon became overtly abusive with his words, worsening his taunts.

Emotional abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and dominate another, especially through humiliation, intimidation, and guilt. While we might recognize name-calling and constant, overt criticism as abusive, I think we need to call attention to more subtle tactics, such as repeated disapproval or even the perfectionistic demands of a partner who can never be pleased. One woman’s husband constantly chided her to work a little smarter in running their busy household. They had five children, all under the age of six. The poor woman was doing a respectable home-making job and the children were happy and healthy. But the fact that their home was not magazine-perfect allegedly authorized him to continue his criticism of her performance.

John Gottman, one of the premiere marital researchers in the United States, has identified such criticism and contempt as patterns that sound the death knell for a relationship. Criticism that involves attacks on personality or character, with the intent of making one person right and one wrong, is abusive: “You always,” “You never,” “You’re that type.” Contempt involves attacks on sense of self, with the intent to insult. Name-calling, sarcastic teasing, and nonverbal expressions such as eye-rolling and sneering are included. A third pattern that falls into this simmering pattern of abuse is stonewalling: withdrawal from the relationship to avoid conflict. This can be seen as trying to be neutral, but when stony silence, distancing, and disconnection convey disapproval, contempt and/or smugness, the effect is emotionally damaging.

The lesson of the frog becomes relevant as subtlety and sophistication of the abuse increases. In current culture, an accepted premise is that we must compromise for relationships to succeed. To stand ground on some issues, to refuse to sacrifice one’s wishes, is seen as a selfish threat to the relationship. This assumption may be true, in extremes. But the degree to which many women have accepted this directive sets us up for emotional abuse.

People-pleasing is socialized in girls from an early age, by phrases such as “did you hurt your friend’s feelings?”, or “don’t make Mommy mad”. We’re good girls. We want to get along. In the name of compromise, too often we internalize the unrealistic expectations of others for our behavior. After all, we already hold June Cleaver standards for ourselves. Or we lower our tolerance for another’s behavior; he’s stressed, she’s tired, he’s overworked. Criticism, impossible standards, or another’s temper are crosses we think we must bear to make the relationship work. We don’t see that the temperature is rising. The emotional abuse begins to wash away our self-esteem and confidence, much as boiling vegetables leaches out all the nutrients.

Healthy compromise is essential to relationships. Compromise, not sacrifice. When we sacrifice parts of ourselves to subtle efforts to control us, this is emotional abuse. The biggest mistake I see in women is this sacrifice, this loss of one’s self in order to make a relationship work. (This can happen without emotionally-abusive pressure from a partner. But such abuse accelerates the process.) In any significant relationship, the ideal is that our partners affirm us, allowing us to be our best selves, rather than attempting to recreate who we are. Compromise is about events and preferences, not changing self to fit another’s model. Compromise needs to be balanced, with both parties giving and taking. Sacrifice involves losing your strength and sense of self for the sake of the relationship, in a one-sided battle. And emotional abuse in the form of stonewalling, contempt, and endless criticism is a powerful vehicle to this loss of self.

The first step in freeing ourselves from the simmering pot of emotional abuse is awareness. We need to step outside ourselves and question. Who says this is an okay way to be treated? As a culture, we have an odd double standard, allowing behavior in couple relationships that we’d never tolerate elsewhere. If you are being chastised, teased, criticized, judged–verbally or nonverbally– in a close relationship, do a reality check. Is this any way to treat another human being? If you would not treat a friend or a coworker in this manner, speak up. “No one deserves to be treated like this” is a powerful statement to confront the abuse. Love should not hurt.

This post appeared earlier on the 411 Voices website as part of this month’s campaign, “Love Should Not Hurt.”

Truth or consequences

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One of the hardest tasks in life is being true to one’s self. However inadvertent, most little girls are taught to value niceness over self-affirmation: “Did you make your friend cry?” “Don’t make Mommy mad.” “Be a good girl and smile”. While it is admirable to be a kind, considerate, nurturing person, too often we make this a priority at expense of our own needs. When generation upon generation parents with this goal of creating “nice” girls, models and skills are lacking to teach:

  1. How to balance our own needs with the needs of others.
  2. How to be strong and secure in oneself, able choose what works for us in the face of others’ disapproval.
  3. How to preserve sense of self against the ever-constant societal expectations for women to please, serve, or nurture others.

This lack of a strong model of “this is me, warts and all” leads to the biggest mistake that I see in relationships: sacrificing one’s self for the sake of the relationship. Women aren’t silly putty, forming to the container created by others in their lives. Accepted common sense in relationships (thanks, feminist movement!) asserts that we must be willing to compromise. We know that partnerships involve give and take, negotiating so that each party’s preferences are met at times. Too often, in our ever-present all or nothing thinking, however, we confuse this healthy compromise with sacrifice. There needs to be a balance between compromise over issues and sacrifice of personality preferences that leads to loss of self.

Let’s explore this. Person A loves to entertain, and Person B, (partner of person A) is extremely shy. Person A can compromise, and agrees to only invite two guests to dinner at a time. This might be an acceptable give and take. However, if Person A does not wish to stress Person B, so gives up entertaining all together, this is a sacrifice that may lead to resentment. In a recent episode of the award-winning drama House, MD, a couple was treated who were allegedly asexual. They each had agreed that sex was not important to their marriage. House, in his relentless style, pursued this problem until he discovered a pituitary tumor in the husband which had rendered him dysfunctional sexually. When treatment restored sexual function, the wife revealed that she was not actually asexual. She had chosen this path for the sake of her husband.

Granted, this arrangement appeared to be working for this TV couple. However, too many women sacrifice similar parts of themselves, to appear to be something they are not, for the sake of the relationship. I have yet to see that this is a workable model for relationship success. The challenge is to be yourself in all realms of your life. We want to surround ourselves, in significant partnerships and friendships, with others who can accept us as we are and enable us to be our best selves. In this month of love, that’s the truth for which we want to strive. I’m my own unique me, and my choices make me who I am. My goal is to affirm that, regardless of others’ reactions. This is truly one of the most difficult–yet ultimately rewarding–challenges of life.

Be yourself. Know in your heart that you are acting in a way that works for you. And feel the strength grow within you as you do.

Don’t take it personally

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Guilt–it’s one of the most common feelings. We feel badly when someone we encounter is disappointed, angry, depressed–and we tend to feel it’s our fault. Lots of energy goes into this belief in our heads, especially in relationships. (Though I have found this to be a common belief in interaction with strangers as well.) Your significant other is quiet and sulky. A friend snubs you at a party. The boss finds fault with a project you completed. A service employee looks at you wrong. The automatic response in your head is “what did I do?” Or even “I screwed up.” The default reaction implies that event A–something you did–led to event B–the negative reaction of the other party.  We take the reactions of others quite personally, particularly when we’re stressed and running on empty.

Over the years, shifting this perspective has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced. Women, in particular, are socialized in this culture to believe that others’ feelings are our responsibility. From an early age, we’re questioned and/or chided, “did you make your friend cry?” “Don’t make me mad.” One strategy that does help is encouraging the guilt-ridden to stop and consider alternative explanations. Ask yourself, when that guilt about another’s feelings arises, “what could be going on that’s NOT my fault?”

Recently, however, I read The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom . One of the agreements that Don Miguel Ruiz advises is “don’t take things personally.” Rather than simply saying “it’s not about you,” an idea I have tried to “sell” unsuccessfully for some time, he suggests a powerful perspective shift. Ruiz says when we believe someone else’s feelings are our fault, that exaggerates our own importance. Who says we are that powerful, that moods all around us stem from our actions? Are we that critical in the lives of others? I think not.

There seems to be a paradox in why this alternative view appeals to the guilt-ridden. Just like we’re taught (incorrectly) at an early age that “good girls” make others angry or hurt, so are we taught that good girls don’t brag. Good girls aren’t self-centered. Yet when we attribute the power for another’s feelings to our actions, we are doing just that: claiming powers that are an illusion. (For once, the social training that creates the problem also contains the solution!)

No one has that much power. The flip side of the argument makes this clear. When a two year old (or a thirteen year old) is really upset, do you have the power to make it all better–especially if they’re entrenched in that mood? Maybe you’re more powerful than me, but I never succeeded at that.

Next time the guilt rushes in about another’s emotions, don’t take it personally. Sure, check it out if you want, making sure there’s no transgression on your part. But the majority of the time, moods originate within, and we only inflate our importance when we assume otherwise.

Family “vacation?”

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Practically everyone is looking forward to a vacation this time of year. Sit back, close your eyes, begin to let images drift into your mind about the perfect getaway. What do you see? Maybe you’re escaping the heat for a dose of mountain cool air or sinking into soft sand with the latest beach read. Maybe you’re sleeping until noon or bonding with your family, enjoying a beer and a raucous round of cards. Ahhh, each picture ramps up those expectations of your personal version of relief from summer and the hectic life you live, right?

Or maybe you have just returned and are devastated, or at least disappointed, about the discrepancy between what was imagined and what occurred. It rained, the kids screamed. You didn’t get to sleep in. Diapers, baths, meals continued to bombard you, if you’re a parent. Or maybe the magnetism of old family patterns launched you into autopilot. Within minutes during my last visit to my mother’s, I was bickering with my sister about who was right. Didn’t matter what the issue, the habitual way to relate seemed to grab us both and slam us into history.

There seems no better time to examine expectations than when facing holidays–and vacations count. I think we can start by dropping the word “vacation” in connection to visits to family, or trips to Disney World with preschoolers. Maybe we need to ban the word entirely when small children are in tow. Whether you are a parent or not, think back to your little reverie from the first paragraph–were there pictures of children in that? Be honest. Hmmm, I thought not.

Let’s change our ever-powerful wording again, and call these what they are: family trips. Excursions like this can be fun. But they are not relief from a parent’s regular life.

Just as with other celebrations, sit down and examine what you really want to get out of any trip. Make a list. Make concrete plans to have at least some of that happen. A psychologist friend, when his children were small, set up a schedule with his wife. When the family was out of town, he and his wife took turns being on kid duty: 8 am to 2 pm and 2 pm until 8 pm. Whichever parent was on duty fed, clothed, comforted, and amused the offspring. The next day the shifts switched. In this manner, each parent got to sleep in, go snorkeling, or lay on the beach and read. Takes two active parents and some discipline to enact this, but it’s well worth it.

So lay out your expectations, examine them, and develop a realistic plan. And when you’re stuffing those suitcases, make sure to pack your perspective and your sense of humor. Both are essential to a satisfying trip.

It’s all about the ratio

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We fallible human beings are inveterate black and white, all or nothing thinkers–especially when stressed. Either everything is good, wonderful, 110% perfect– your life, your parenting, your relationship, your job, your holiday, last night’s sleep, your weight, your food consumption–or everything is a mess and you are a dismal failure. One minor slip, and (fill in the blank) is all shot to h*)). One cookie wrecks the diet, so may as well have six more. One cranky moment where you snap at a child or loved one, and you are a wretched parent/partner. One hour–or even two–of restless tossing and turning at 3 a.m. ruins your whole night’s sleep. One traffic jam in an eight hour journey or one rainy day dooms the whole vacation. One missed deadline and you’re a terrible worker. If none of this rings true for you, sign off right now and go crack open a well-deserved bottle of champagne. You are perfect–or at least your thinking is!

If any of the above thoughts have ever crept into your embattled brain, consider one of my favorite phrases:

It’s all about the ratio.

Our lives aren’t judged by any single moment of success or failure, but by the ratio of wins to losses, grand slams compared to falling-flat-on-face-in- mud moments. Bad mommy moments to tender bedtime stories. Decisions that worked versus backfired with a vengeance. Judith Orloff says there are no wrong choices–some just lead to more painful paths than others.

When you are feeling badly about some completely human action you have blundered into, stop. Take a deep breathe. Do the math. There are 168 hours in the week. “Oh well” if you got sucked into sulking for one of them. You need to ingest 2000 extra calories to gain a pound. One cookie is only 1/10th of that. There are 365 days in the year, eight hours in a night of sleep, 100 assignments in a college career. Etcetera. You get the picture.

Self-compassion comes into play again. Forgive yourself, your errors; maybe even define what you can learn from them. Then refocus on your successes by calculating the ratio. Embrace the fact that we’re all doing the best we can, given our circumstances at any moment.

Standards to bear–or not?

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Last week, I wrote about the common human misperception that everyone around us shares our world view. When we believe that others think like we do, we stumble into dangerous territory, full of land mines of expectation.

You may recognize this thinking glitch in your own life. We expect others to hold themselves to the same standards that we enforce for our own behavior. “That idiot driver–he should use his turn signal.” “My mother should want the best for me–not be competitive and threatened.” “My friend should say thank you.” “My partner should put some thought into what would make me happy.” “The kids’ dad should play with them when he has them, not park them in front of a movie.” Who says?

Yes, in an ideal world, we would surround ourselves with people who acted just as we strive to act. What happens when reality hits, and many we encounter simply don’t behave in the way we would? It’s a certain recipe for frustration and anger.

In this situation, it’s helpful to take a deep breath and release that expectation. The standards are in your head. The target of your frustration can’t hear–or maybe does not adhere to–those rules in your head. Short of learning Jedi skills to instill the desired thoughts in that person’s head, you really have little control over them. But you do have control over your thoughts–that the party in question “should” (fill in the blank.) That’s all you can control–your expectation of others.

To release that expectation, try saying “huh–imagine thinking that way.” No time to judge; that judgement only fuels your anger. The situation just is. What other people expect of themselves is none of our business. Expect others to be who they are, to act according to the rules in their own heads. That’s what they’re going to do anyway. When you switch your own thinking, you can then either a) ask them to do it differently, in a very direct manner or b) realize that there can be any number of acceptable approaches to the problem at hand.

Control what you can: the thoughts in your head. Let go of the rest. That’s truly the full scope of your influence, after all.

But if you locate a Jedi mind training course, let me know. I’ll be right in line, signing up with you.

On sharing life’s longest path

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Who learns how to push our buttons (and we theirs) at an earlier age than our siblings? Most of us have family tales like mine. My sister, 21 months older, hit me over the head with a book when she was three because I wouldn’t read to her. I angrily pushed her down the stairs when I was six; I jammed a stitch ripper in her leg when she was twelve after she’d locked me out of the house. These stories survive even while the underlying arguments are long lost to memory. For my daughters, similar rivalry fueled the early years. When friends arrived to ooh and ahh over the new arrival, the older shook the baby’s crib, screaming that she wished the baby had died already. This came after a milder insistence, ignored by me as new mom, that we take the baby back to the hospital.

Time heals, and the bond grows. The older sister I assaulted is the one I’ll jump in the car for at the least provocation, driving five hours to share heartfelt conversation and dinner over a bottle of wine, and breakfast the next day before reversing my route on I-35. Ten hours invested in order to share six. At my younger daughter’s senior recital celebration this month, my older daughter offered a tear-inspiring toast full of praise and love for her sister’s talents.

Siblings, our first chance to learn to relate to others, are the peers we don’t pick to inhabit our lives, unlike spouses and friends. We define ourselves by seizing the open spaces in the family. She’s the cute one? Then I’ll be the smart one. You can’t play the French horn, because I’ve already picked that and want to defend my musical territory. I’ll be the good kid, since you’re the rebel. Degrees of freedom for decisions diminish with number of siblings.

Growing up with three sisters was immersed in camaraderie as well as competition. Melded by moving and month-long family vacations, we had no one but each other. Today, these three women are as important to me as anyone in my life. I live the research that cites the contribution of sisterly conversations to our happiness. During my early years of parenting, I yearned to live closer to my parents, needing their practical support. Now, facing the real permanence of the empty nest as my baby nears college graduation, all I think about is living closer to my sisters. A tough task, given that we’re scattered from Texas to Pennsylvania to Minnesota.

I never missed having a brother, until I realized recently that one dear friend talks daily to her brother who lives several states away. Perhaps I’d understand the opposite sex better if I had a brother to help unravel the curiosities of men (and vice versa, I’m sure.) The male-female relationship of siblings is free of the mess incurred with lovers, the never-ending question of whether men and women can be true friends. What an enviable wonder that would be.

A dear friend lost his brother this week, suddenly, leaving this friend as the sole family survivor. This unexpected death reminded me again of how precious siblings are, and what a hole there will be in my life if I survive my sisters. They are the human beings with whom our lives overlap the most: neither your spouse/partner nor your children share more years of your life. So I was glad to see that a national “Sibling Day” is in the works. The first was celebrated, unbeknownst to me, on April 10. I’m marking my calendar for next year, but meanwhile:

THANKS, SISTERS, FOR ENRICHING MY LIFE–then and now. I’d be lost without you all.

On failing to ask for help

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“I don’t want to bother her.” “I’ll just drag him down.” “It’s my job to be strong.” “I don’t want to be a burden.” “I can do it myself.” Excuses abound for why we fail to ask for help–whether practical pitching in on chores or emotional support that could ease us through a tough spot in our lives. The cultural press, in this nation that so prizes independence, is to do it ourselves in order to not irk or stress others.

What about the flip side? Think about when you are able to support someone who is dear to you. How do you feel when you can listen, give a hug, or lend a hand? There’s lots of research expounding upon the psychological and health benefits of giving to others–in many forms. I’m sure that you are aware of the bonus for you when you help a friend or loved one. You get a little glow, a boost to your own day, from feeling valuable to another.

So next time you find you are shutting down, failing to ask for help or confide to a loved one because you don’t want to “bother” or “stress” them, ask “who says?” Who are you to deprive another of a chance to feel good by helping you? Put yourself in her shoes. For example, I often hear women say “I can’t ask my mother for help–she has so much on her plate.” Then reverse the scenario. If you had a daughter, wouldn’t you want her to ask you for assistance if she needed it? You’d want to be helpful if you could be–every chance!

Of course, when we are asked for help, it’s healthiest to give freely if we’re able–and to speak up honestly if we really can’t step in with an open heart at the moment. No room here for passive-aggressive giving shrouded with anger or resentment. It’s each person’s job to police her own resources, and say “no” if a request is not possible. That’s the job of the person being asked. It’s not for the person in need to ‘prescreen’ and second guess.

Give your loved ones a chance to show love and support–ask for it! Benefits all around will abound.