metaphortunate | my way and the highway

Crossposts: http://metaphortunate.livejournal.com/34749.html

Entry tags:

family,
thoughts

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.

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For those strategies I think sticking to firm yet gentle declarative statements are helpful, like with toddlers. They can still melt down, yet you are still going to do whatever it is. Repetition is key. You can acknowledge the arguments. LIke, "I see that you are very concerned that your grandchild has proper nutrition... thank you. But you are not feeding beef jerky to my 3 month old. Excuse me but now it is TIME FOR NURSING. See you in half an hour. Yes, thanks. TIME FOR NURSING, byeeee" You know how in the Teletubbies this voice just comes out from nowhere and goes "Time for a nap!" It is like you take control of abstraction, kind of the superego of the situation. But then you have to actually stick to what you have declared is going to happen somehow. (And have the means set up to make it so; the car to leave in, or the door to lock, my own chocolate to eat, or whatever)

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.

I made a locked post about how whenever I try to limit conversations with my mother, she calls me controlling. What she doesn't notice is the 90% of conversations that I have with her and don't attempt to limit, even though I would rather not be having them either. But there is no nice way to point out "I don't enjoy talking to you in general" or "spending time with you is stressful", so I guess that I can live with her thinking that 1)I am controlling, and 2)I enjoy the time we spend together.

I have a similar situation, and I spent some time thinking about, well, do I actually WANT to be nice? I don't have to! It is a choice!

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.

That's pretty similar to my thinking, most of the time. It still stings, though, when I try to set some very basic limits in the form of "I can't talk now, I'm busy" and then get an earful about how controlling I am. So I guess I need to work on expecting that, and not taking it to heart.

I feel a bit like a cad, because I manipulate conversation rather than explicitly name boundaries. One of my strongest conversational strategies is to listen (over the phone works best, but in person too) with no expression of interest. I make clear that I'm listening, but let the topic absolutely die. My interlocutor will eventually falter and wrap up the call, or pause long enough that I can change the topic.

(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.

I feel a bit like a cad, because I manipulate conversation rather than explicitly name boundaries. One of my strongest conversational strategies is to listen (over the phone works best, but in person too) with no expression of interest. I make clear that I'm listening, but let the topic absolutely die. My interlocutor will eventually falter and wrap up the call, or pause long enough that I can change the topic.

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.

I think the feeling like a cad is a big part of the issue: like, with my mother, I could stay and fight, but I don't want to be the person that I would have to be in order to win that fight. There are fights I could win, but I would have to be a huge jerk. And because I don't want to be a huge jerk, I prefer to leave.

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.

I'm pretty lucky with immediate supervisors, which is to say, we actually talk about what best practices are, how to handle things professionally when the people around you (above you) do not hold themselves to that same standard. She hadn't realized till I told her that I was classically conditioning him, and that her actions were undermining my conditioning.

(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.

It doesn't seem to me cadlike to manipulate conversation, but that's partly because I do it, too, as a survival strategy. Like, manipulation is better than dropping bombs into conversation, IMO.

I wouldn't say that it's categorically better; it's a different strategy, with different costs and different strengths. I think there are different situations where each might be most effective, and of course it depends on who's using them, too.

Thanks for the check (and balance): I should've clarified "better by my lights, for me." It's certainly true that some individuals are deft with conversational bomb deployment.

Repetition is absolutely key.

Man, you are reminding me of how happy I am that in my worst situations, leaving was absolutely the simplest and best option. :)

Yeah, once you set boundaries, you have to defend them. Which is no fun!

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my way and the highway

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