Arrogance

Again I am going through assorted feelings relating to a relationship break-up. I have felt very much the injured party, sure that the fault was with the poor quality of communication - not mine of course(!) - and the difficulty with pinpointing and saying the truth.


I want to get through this experience having learned something about myself, changed, and therefore less likely to feel the same pain in the future and I have focussed my prayers on this. I've been wondering if I'm getting anywhere, being the impatient soul I am, but woke in the night with a deeper understanding of something which has sobered me up a lot, yet at the same time it feels hopeful. I can at least see now how I have caused pain, not only in this relationship but in so many of my interactions all my life.


He told me that he felt uneasy around me. I didn't know what to do with this and passed it off at first.


And there's the beauty of prayer. Nothing seems to happen for a while but suddenly I wake realising that I have been wanting him to change for a very long time. I know well (in my head) that this is not a loving way to be towards a person and I say and do everything with the conscious intention of allowing him to be who he wants, do what he wants. But I'm denying the feeling within me that is the opposite Billy Joel's song

Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
And don't imagine you're too familiar
And I don't see you any more

I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
Oh what will it take 'til you believe in me
The way that I believe in you

I said I love you and that's forever
And it’s a promise from the heart
I couldn’t love you any better
I love you just the way you are

I don't want clever conversation, no, no
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are



My heart sinks when I realise how awful it is to be on the receiving end of the feeling 'please change so I can stop feeling ashamed of you, so I can feel that I have helped you and you will be grateful to me and tell the world and love me forever'.

As usual I get analytical. Where did that all start in me? And I remember that my mother's family with their professional background was praised by my father, who came from a tradesman background. I think he was proud that his children all chose to become more 'educated' than he was. Was my mum ashamed of him? I know she didn't appreciate some of his flagrantly 'earthy' mannerisms and that he probably did this to get a reaction from her. I know well that once I reached my teens I was very ashamed of my father, feeling he argued in an ignorant and headstrong way and that he wasn't like some of the 'intellectual' people I gravitated towards then.


Equally I was ashamed of my mother, her lack of polish and her difficulty in looking as well-dressed and stylish and confident among the mothers. For years I firmly believed she was stupid. She saw herself this way and perhaps in part my father did too. He was often quite condescending.


And when I trawl through my own life I can see that, having taken on similar beliefs, I condescend, I judge another based on how intelligent I believe they are, or how pretty they are, and I feel very ashamed of being with those associated with me if I believe that they are not popular or intelligent or whatever.


So my 'helping' of others has been very damaging. I think of my children who, like me, laboured under the feeling that they were not clever enough, not pretty enough, not active or hard-working enough and the rest, and not only that, they had the double whammy of two professional parents who pressured them to do well in all their endeavours.


What's wrong with that? A lot. The message that one can never be good enough, cannot be loved for who one is, for being 'just the way you are'. It's not a great thing to carry through life.


I look at the expectations I had of various partners in my life. And I look now at the pressure I still put on people I see when I tell myself I am helping them. Helping them to become what? What I want or what they want?


No wonder people feel 'uneasy'.

Hiding Places For Anger

(written 24 May)
Yesterday I was visited by someone who wasn't feeling too good. They'd had a rough morning and a busy agenda for the rest of the day. We had a hot drink and initially I tried to get them to talk a little about how they were feeling but it wasn't going anywhere so we just got into the physical work needing doing.
It didn't feel so good. Politeness was observed, attempts at friendliness but underneath there was something not admitted, some elephant that didn't have a name. I struggle when I can't put my finger on what's going on but have noticed over the years that if I'm open to it (which means, if I keep the issue in my mental 'in-tray') then some better understanding comes to me, often in the night, sometimes some days later.



This morning I saw it like this: I have always felt a lot of resistance within me whenever I feel I'm being asked to reassure or sympathise. I also really dislike sentimentality; maybe I'm suspicious of insincerity, I don't know why. And because I don't want to reassure or take sides, I probably swing too far, bypass the compassion and love I could feel instead, and just harden up. I think the unspoken request for reassurance from another leads to a feeling in me of wanting to protect myself from being sucked dry.



I'm not saying I don't want to support another because I do. I think when we can see the other person is wanting to take responsibility for how they feel it's altogether different, it doesn't feel at all like I'm going to be exhausted at the end of it all. And so I see a difference between 'support' and 'reassurance' where it feels to me that the other person is asking to be helped to feel better without facing something that feels uncomfortable to them.



Interestingly I've been involved in the 'helping professions' all my life. And, not surprisingly, have been exhausted, and seen many others become exhausted along the way. It's called 'burnout' and holidays are recommended, but increasingly I feel that none of that ever needs to happen if we stick to 'supporting' in the sense that we are not shouldering the other's emotional load but helping them to shoulder their own, and 'reassurance.



What's all this to do with anger? Well it feels to me just now that when I feel the plea for sympathy and reflexively harden myself I'm actually touching on anger within me. Anger may be a strong term but I have a feeling that if I explore this 'hardening' I will move through the passive-aggressive feeling of 'I'm not going to let you wear me out' to a real feeling of injustice that more is being taken from me than I want to give.



And how many of us are so tired, feeling that we are always being asked to give, having been taught that one day we will be rewarded? I think of Mother's Day, a celebration I was careful to discourage in my children, wanting to avoid the sadness inherent in the lot of many mothers who work hard all year to feel 'loved' on one day in the year.



But I'm getting sentimental here!