Hmmmm... So I think I need help with this one. It seems that many of the relationships I have are not 50-50 relationships. Yes, I know that at any given moment, most relationships are askew, but over time, I think healthy relationships tend toward 50-50 on average. When I need help, you help; when you need help, I help. I call to talk to you, you call to talk to me, etc. Looking over my relationships, you guessed it - I feel more responsible for relationships than many of the people with whom I'm in relationship. This makes me really sad, and brings up all kinds of worthiness issues and shame issues. Which means it has to be dealt with. Let me give some examples: 1. A close relative promises to call on a certain date - he doesn't call, nor does he email to say that he couldn't. That was 2 days ago and I still haven't heard anything. (This is a pattern.) 2. If I want to speak with LS2, I have to call him. I can't remember the last time that he initiated contact.
I have a feeling that this isn't normal - that if these people really wanted a relationship with me, they would reach out to me and not always wait for me to contact them. I know that my past behavior has given them some sort of implicit permission to assume that I'm the one who will initiate contact no matter the circumstances, but this has to change. I think I have to give up being viewed (by myself as well as others) as the one responsible for all relationships! I think this was part of my familial role - I wasn't worthy of relationships, so if I wanted relationships, I was the one who had to do all the work. AACK! Surprisingly, this makes me feel sad, angry, shamed - but not anxious. Hmmm.. A major piece appears to have fallen off the radar. I have to begin viewing myself as worthy of having healthy, loving, caring relationships - with both parties being responsible for that relationship.
There - now, of course, the hard work of acting on it and being willing to "risk" relationships- being willing to risk the anxiety of losing a relationship with someone I love, but who may not have the same feelings towards me. I think there's always, in the back of my mind, the myth that if you love someone enough, you can somehow "make" them love you back! (Wonder where I got that idea from!?) I know intellectually that you cannot make someone love you - but I think my actions have sent the message that I'm so desperate for relationship that I'll do anything - even take on all the responsibility for the relationship - because I love you and I know that if I try hard enough, hang in there long enough, you'll love me back. So far it's not working. Time to try something new - like valuing myself enough not to continue to view relationships this way, not to view myself this way.
The rest of the story - I do have some loving, healthy relationships and they're a joy to me! It's so wonderful to NOT feel like I have to do all the work, that the other person is as fully committed to the relationship as I am, to feel like I can call on that person for help and not feel that I'll be rejected because my "role" is to the be helper, not the helpee, to know that contacting me is not a chore they perform but that they really want to talk to me and share their lives with me. These are the relationships I value and delight in. I've spent waaaaaay too much energy on the other kind of "relationship" which isn't really "relationship" at all - and that ends today.
Hi Toto,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great, great post. I wrote about this a few years back in a post called "Leaving People Behind" and another one about weeding our garden (can't remember the exact title). I too tended to have one-sided relationships, esp. w/my FOO members. In the FOO, I realized after years of recovery that there were deeply ingrained patterns that my relatives adhered to, even those I wasn't particularly close to, and that because of these patterns, we were all (not just me) sort of stuck in roles that everyone just unconsciously accepted. I had a few instances where I was able to stand back and observe this happening, such as at my mother's funeral ten years ago. It was weird, but oh so enlightening.
As for people outside my FOO, I think I tended to pick people who I felt were safe, non-threatening, but also not very satisfying, as friends and even romantic partners. The lack of even partnership in my FOO made this inevitable, I think. I usually ended up having most of the responsibility for the relationship. The healthier I got, the worse this felt--which was the origin of my "leaving people behind" post. For a long time, I felt like I had no friends at all (except my SO) because I felt like I didn't know how to make friends. I noticed that I gravitated towards certain kinds of women--fun, outgoing, charismatic, but very self-absorbed. Interestingly, a lot like my mother! It was good to know this about myself but it was hard to see, and even harder to solve.
Anyway, I guess this is a long way of saying "I can relate." Boy, can I. Count yourself fortunate that you're able to look at this, to re-evaluate what you want out of your relationships, and to be brave enough not to tolerate anything less from the people you allow close to you. This is self-care at its finest. :)
Kitty
Thanks for the encouragement. I think a lot of my taking responsibility for relationships comes from my "fixer" role in NFOO. Even if I've been wronged, I seem to feel that I'm the one who needs to fix the relationship. Crazy!!! A close friend wrote a very odd comment on a blog post (I didn't publish it) and I wrote to her to tell her that I was offended and we needed to talk. She hasn't contacted me - in years past, I would have called her and tried to mend the relationship. This time, I've decided to wait for her to contact me - she knows that she's offended me and if she doesn't contact me, knowing that, I can only assume that she doesn't care. That would be so sad, but I really can't handle both sides of a relationship anymore!!
DeleteI was the fixer in my FOO too. But I was also the youngest sib of 3, so it was a weird situation because even though there was this unconscious expectation that I would hold everything together, there was also a resentment or hostility about it. Or maybe that wasn't about me and it's just how my family relates. I'm still not sure. I got to where I hated that I seemed to be doing all the work and got no acknowledgement. And this was how most of my friendships went, too. I just had to stop, stand back, and re-figure how to do friendships. But I am with you: I can't stand handling both sides of a rel. anymore, either. Good for you for not rushing in to fix things! When we change the balance of the scales, we can find out a lot of illuminating things. I sure did.
ReplyDeleteI'm finding that I'm really, really enjoying "regular" relationships - with regular give-and-take, with each person taking a mostly equal role in the relationship. It flies in the face of "working" at or on relationships - I think we've been sold some very weird ideas via psychobabble! If I'm honest and you're honest and we respect each other's boundaries, relationships just work all by themselves. I've become less and less a fan of relationship counseling over the years - seems like each person should work on themselves and then come together in a healthier way because of that work... I think that in my life, I'll always have just a few good friends - and I'm happy with that,especially since through this process, I've found out that I'm actually an introvert, having been a fake extrovert for most of my life!!! Ah, the things we find out when we get out from under the oppression of our NFOO's!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I didn't comment on this earlier. Work got in the way. I agree with Kitty. It IS a great post. So many ACoNs do this--go way too far in relationships, do way too much work. I often thought to myself that I go 95% of the way with my mother and she won't go the 5%. My father--fuggedaboutit. And even in friendships I always felt like I cared much more than my friends did, that I valued the relationships much more than they did. And often this was the case. I was treated as if I were expendable. It's weird. Feels like a FOO curse.
ReplyDeleteIt IS a FOO curse - and probably the only way to break it is to do the hard work of letting relationships go that are too uneven. I HATE that - it's hard for me to let go even of sibling relationships that are totally out of whack - and there's a certain amount of guilt involved in having chosen a relationship and then letting it die on the vine... However, since I've started down the path to health and sanity, I think I'll continue and hope that this gets easier over time... Please let it be so!!!!
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