metaphortunate son (
metaphortunate) wrote2012-11-03 05:08 pm
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my way and the highway
A friend of mine just wrote me for advice, citing that I am the expert regarding family members being disappointing letdowns.
I don't usually think of it that way, but…maybe I'm not just being a drama queen in that I am sad and/or stressed whenever I think of my family? Anyway, I suggested that she take a look through the Captain Awkward "families" tag. But she has two kids under four, so in case she didn't get half an hour to herself in front of the computer before Christmas, I summed up all of the good Captain's advice:
1) use your words to ask for what you want
2) but you can't change other people, so
3) if people insist on being jerks, you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to stick around.
And it's good advice. I've used it myself a lot. But it's very, very culturally specific advice. It's very America Right Now advice, where if you don't like the situation, fuck off somewhere else. There are a whole lot of situations you can be in where you cannot leave, where you have to deal with people. Sometimes people in those situations write in to the Captain, and she tells them to start organizing and planning so that they can leave as soon as possible.
And that's good advice. I've used it myself. There's a reason I live halfway around the country from my birth family. But…I can't help thinking that I'm at a stage in my life where I'd also like to hear advice about what you can do when you can't get away. Or if you don't want to get away: is there really nothing else you can do? I'm not saying that would be better advice; I'd just like to see more than one perspective on the matter.
I don't usually think of it that way, but…maybe I'm not just being a drama queen in that I am sad and/or stressed whenever I think of my family? Anyway, I suggested that she take a look through the Captain Awkward "families" tag. But she has two kids under four, so in case she didn't get half an hour to herself in front of the computer before Christmas, I summed up all of the good Captain's advice:
1) use your words to ask for what you want
2) but you can't change other people, so
3) if people insist on being jerks, you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to stick around.
And it's good advice. I've used it myself a lot. But it's very, very culturally specific advice. It's very America Right Now advice, where if you don't like the situation, fuck off somewhere else. There are a whole lot of situations you can be in where you cannot leave, where you have to deal with people. Sometimes people in those situations write in to the Captain, and she tells them to start organizing and planning so that they can leave as soon as possible.
And that's good advice. I've used it myself. There's a reason I live halfway around the country from my birth family. But…I can't help thinking that I'm at a stage in my life where I'd also like to hear advice about what you can do when you can't get away. Or if you don't want to get away: is there really nothing else you can do? I'm not saying that would be better advice; I'd just like to see more than one perspective on the matter.
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If my family fails to treat me with respect, I either temporarily walk away or I make that uncomfortable for them or I adjust what I let them know and be involved in, in future.
And I've let them know, in words, that that is the deal, and gritted my teeth through the resultant OMG YOU CAN'T DO THAT CHANGE BACK NAOW PLZ, which was, um, rough. Sometimes very rough.
If they don't treat me with love, I disengage emotionally.
If they don't support me, I reduce the degree to which I'll put myself out there for them.
But as far as approval, validation, understanding, well.
Actually, I don't necessarily feel like I can always give THEM those things, either. They've all made choices I think are on the spectrum from slightly regrettable to sketchy as Hell. And if that's none of my business, which it mostly isn't... I'm not their validation vending machine, they aren't mine.
And when I realised that, it, I don't know, freed up a lot of space in my head.
Does that make any sense?
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But it's very, very culturally specific advice. It's very America Right Now advice
This is something I've noticed and often wondered about. Because, well, it pertains - and even pertains to situations where something is being done that is damaging and bad, and the "use your words" is not necessarily going to get you what you want (and if done without serious finesse can end up with things getting a lot worse), but is not so egregious that it balances off, say, cutting all contact with someone who raised you and is otherwise very important.
Of course, the problem with those situations is that it's very hard for someone to give any kind of one-size-fits-all advice, or advice at all without knowing the other players intimately.
But yeah. It's something I often wonder about.
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Or maybe off to the side, rather than between. Maybe all that advice is coming from a purely defensive place; maybe there's a place for a more offensive game (in the sense of ball games, not like being offensive.)
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Offensive strategies are extremely useful. So for example with one relative who would always ask me about myself but with an incredibly negative and stressful spin, sorta like "Well, you must be very panicky and stressed about X! And Y! and Z!" I would end-run or even pre-empt all that by asking them about their work, study, and other things that I knew THEY found stressful and might want to talk about, which seemed to relieve their mind and get where they wanted to get without poking at my anxieties.
Somehow cultivating a reputation for quirkiness has been useful. If you're already the odd one then what is another odd habit. Such as just being That Person Who Is On The Computer all the time, that's just how she is.
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It also means that when I'm handling someone's shit, the thought is "I have decided this relationship with this person is worth this shit", not "omg I cannot stop the shit." I don't have to put up with, say, the incidentally *ist crap that comes out of my aunt's mouth (all without malice, but as we all know, malice is not necessary for harm); I could, at any point, use my words (which would result in a HUGE gigantic kerfluffle and probably no improvement) and then enforce my boundaries.
On the other hand, she's a very dear person to me, she's handling a lot of really unfortunate stuff in our family about a minor member of said family who needs care, and I love her. I made a decision at some point that the level of crap I put up with from her is worth it for the relationship. And then I take self-care tactics like being able to rant at a friend over text with cries of "OMG WHAT SHE JUST SAID" and so on.
I think it's also important to figure out what it is that you actually want and can have, because all of those things will influence what the cost-benefit analysis of the relationship is. And there always IS the nuclear option (I've used it; there's a relative who used to be very important to me who won't get one word from me without a lengthy apology), but sometimes that option is like gnawing your own leg off to get out of the trap: maybe you've got to do it, but fuck it's gonna hurt.
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I like Captain Awful a whole lot, but it's sometimes clear to me that the commenters and maybe even CA have never been in a situation where "use your words" is just going to make things a lot worse, and then it becomes a kind of frying-pan-fire dilemma of, Do I just take this shit like I have been all my life, or do I risk setting off even bigger fireworks by not going along with it? Especially since there's that "change BACK" reaction where a lot of people, when faced with different behaviour, will do their almighty best to make you return to the status quo.
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(It's also personally something I have to do before I'm "allowed" to be too pissed off at someone/whatever - if I haven't actually SAID that X, Y or Z was a problem, I'm out of line expecting someone to read my mind, the same way I'd consider them out of line if they expected me to read mine. Ergo, if it's not a big enough deal for me to use my words about, it's not a big enough deal for me to sulk about, so to speak.)
But yeah, like all tactics, it's one I use either when it's going to work, or when I have to.
On places one cannot leave: a rambling
I imagine an earnest mass-produced nonprofit-collectively-written help book, Where There Is No Safeword. Or maybe How To Be Complicit.
I am finishing up reading Carol Gilligan's In A Different Voice. To way oversimplify: male-dominated discourse has often focused on rights and who has the power to stop whom from doing what, while women-dominated discourse has often focused on what we owe each other and our responsibility to reduce hurt. (Other people, please jump in and add nuance if I'm breaking things!) And I think both perspectives are necessary and useful, but when I can't leave a situation, "how do I reduce how much I'm hurting others?" is in my locus of control way more often than "what are my rights?"
Another useful distinction is that from the Hirschmann title: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. When we can't Exit a bad situation (not even venting through escape valves) and we don't feel safe speaking up about our displeasure, the sanest thing to do is to turn patriotic about it, to self-medicate with Stockholm Syndrome. Always Look At The Bright Side Of Life.
Or turn Buddhist and detach. That helps too. Where there is no exit and no safeword and no Constitution, it's rather an elegant hack to just chop out the desires, thus eliminating the heartrending conflict between what ought to be and what is.
Re: On places one cannot leave: a rambling
I'm not in favor of discarding my own desires. I figure if the world wants to deny me, I'm going to make it go to the trouble. I'm not going to save it the trouble by pre-emptively defeating myself.
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One of my problems has been that standard advice about setting boundaries is like handing a weapon over to the enemy. LIke if I say please don't talk about X, Y, or Z, then the person will just push that boundary harder, or refer constantly to the fact that they are "not supposed to talk about X Y and Z" thus invoking the whole thing and mocking it.
I could talk about this subject forEVAH.
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I made the decision that there is not a lot I can do for my mother, and one of the few things is to not tell her all about how I don't enjoy our time together. So I think of it as a gift I am giving her. And it helps me, knowing that it is something I am doing deliberately, for her, because I love her. But I don't have to.
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(This is a contentious topic at work, because I have a boss who says inappropriate things in meetings, and my (new) immediate supervisor stays engaged with him while I'm sitting there like a stone trying to make him realize his faux pas without saying so outright. I finally told her, Look, I can't be in those meetings if you're going to Yes him when he's like that; either work with me on shutting him down, or let me leave.)
Limiting contact without saying that's what you're doing works as well. I show up late to gatherings; I leave early; I find an absorbing task in the kitchen that keeps me out of the flow of conversation. I have a (Jewish) friend who rescued me from Christmas once! She whisked me away for Indian food and a movie at noon, so I could make an appearance in morning and evening without staying the whole day.
I've been told, by people with whom I'm employing these strategies, that I'm intimidating. I think that's a code word for not acquiescing; the theme among us is struggling to negotiate from a position of recognition that reasonable people may disagree. But in situations where open confrontation won't make a difference (family) or would get me fired (work), classical and operant conditioning tactics are the tactics I have to take care of myself. So I use them.
Re: On places one cannot leave: a rambling
Yeah, this is basically my approach too, a lot of the time....I don't think it's "caddish," altho sometimes people call it passive-aggressive. Maybe it can be thought of as putting into practice a lot of the "use your words" ideas -- in my family, if I try to bring stuff into the open or call people on behaviour, no matter how politely or compassionately, there's an explosion of "How COULD you say that" and "that is so UNFAIR" and then it turns into a big How Mean You Are drama fest, which is worse for me than the original bad behaviour. But trying to control the bad behaviour covertly rather than overtly, or at least limit its effects on me, can work better. Letting topics die, showing up to make a token appearance, keeping my own end of the conversation on a brisk and breezy and somewhat superficial level, and so on. One relative sent me a giant inappropriate email about what she saw as another relative's abuse of painkillers, and wanted me to say something without revealing that the urging came from her, &c &c, and I just totally ignored it. I'm sure there were many other family emails exchanged about what a terrible person I was and how I Just Didn't Care and was a self-centered bitch and so on, but at least I didn't get dragged into the emotional drama.
In my experience seven or maybe eight times out of ten the other person is depending on a response -- even just nonverbal feedback. A lot of attempted bomb-lobbing will fizzle out if it makes no discernible impact. -- This works for me, because I'm a conciliatory-type person and really hate conflict, and I'm not sure it would work for someone who wants to "stay and fight and win". It's more like "The only way to win is not to play," but without cutting them off.
Re: On places one cannot leave: a rambling
But I am now thinking about, well, maybe sometimes it's worth it to be a huge jerk. In which case, you have to think about which of your ethical guidelines you're willing to let go of, and why. And how you could get the best effect in return.
I have also noticed that a lot of this advice comes out of assuming that the person with the problem has no power in the situation. Which is often true! Otherwise they would have fixed the situation, and would not need advice! However, I'm thinking about ways in which one could get power. Like you working on getting your immediate supervisor on your side. I think that's really smart.
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(She is still an optimist, and thinks she can incentivize him to change his behavior consciously; I don't think he's that conscious an actor -- or anyway, a leopard does not change his spots that much -- and prefer covert training approaches.)
In my workplace, there are two avenues to power: friendship with the existing power structure, or the ability to do work in a way that involves end-running around that structure. Finding the people who can do a thing right, the first time, systematically, is finding your way into the shadow power structure. We all know who we are, and share around, in a way that partially compensates for the fuckups of the official power structure. One of the reasons I'm still here is that I have a lot of unofficial power in my position, that has accrued over time. My rank is pretty low, but among my colleagues (not among the officials) I feel highly esteemed, because I've proved myself. I don't think the officials will improve their habits, or recognize this shadow power structure any time soon, but there's always hope that some of them will retire.
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Man, you are reminding me of how happy I am that in my worst situations, leaving was absolutely the simplest and best option. :)
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Your three steps are kind of what I do, but I do stick around--emotionally disengaged yet still there. It'd be "lucky" for me to be able to do that, except that emotional scar tissue is the buffer, and that scar tissue is hard won; I totally recognize that lots of people don't end up with functional scar tissue that way (and for my part I try not to be so far distant that I turn into a sociopath...). For one relative in particular, the person has two living blood relatives, of whom I'm one, so I try for the mindset of respecting the person's good points and good actions, however infrequent or small, as I would for some other person with whom I didn't have the same baggage...and letting go of the rest. Leaving would be easier on me but somehow inhumane. And, well, the person is not young.
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[ETA: where by "too much" I might mean, unable to remember bad interactions and learn from them]
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First, I love you for making it clear that not everyone can leave. I also really appreciate all the comments above.
Everyone with a day job knows something about this. There's always someone in the office that you absolutely DO NOT WANT to be around, but you have to work with. Even in an open and mobile job market, they are often not worth leaving your job for, so you learn some combination of avoiding them, being with them and avoiding the hard stuff, putting up with the hard stuff, and telling them off. That combination varies from relationship to relationship, but I think it's important to remember all four pieces.
I really also like making boundaries: if you get on my case about [my weight], I'm going to remind you that I asked you not to do that. If you do it twenty times in an evening, I'm going to remind you twenty times. Maybe you'll get bored.
Some people behave best when treated with the kind of respect we use with children. Lots of positive reinforcement for behavior that doesn't make me sick to my stomach, plus a kind of patient eye-rolling when engaging in behavior that does.
That's a start.
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I think that four-piece combination is a good approach!
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I just...did it alone, a lot of the time. I don't recommend it; I've been very lonely, and often needed help that I couldn't find. It has limited my life. But for me that was better than being with people who poke me in my vulnerabilities and then get mad at me for professing to be hurt by their behavior, and blame me for causing a family fracas when I say I won't tolerate being treated that way, and call me a liar when I tell the truth about things that happened when they weren't even there to know about.
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Yes, thanks for articulating this. It's very America Right Now, very independence-oriented as opposed to interdependence-oriented, and it assumes we are all these isolated particles free to bounce around the country on our own. Which we are, and it is sort of a problem. And yes, it can be liberating to know you can just Give Up Now And Stop Trying If It Won't Work, but that's not always the best or the only way.
(I live 350 miles from my parents, refuse to visit home for more than a week at a time, and am happy with how the relationships evolved once we knew we had no control over each other's lives. On the other hand, I'm currently housing/supporting my two little sisters, and no matter what social or judgment errors they make, if I don't do that, I don't know who will...)
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And, y'know, I live in America Right Now! I grew up here, that attitude makes sense to me, again, I'm not saying it's bad advice! I just have been thinking lately about how it's not the only advice.
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It's been a bit of a mix for me? I basically used to do all the non-word approaches before, and have done some more up-front boundary setting that actually has worked with my parents. But I had to do a lot of stuff before I could go there, from being financially independent to having my own relationship with my sister to being very far away physically and etc. So... YMMV. I think it is always a process of how much you are willing to do and how much you are willing to put up with, and I think everyone's answer is different and changes and that that is okay.