Dealing with loved ones who make you want to scream

 

How much time do we spend wishing people in our lives were different?

Friends, sisters, brothers, parents, sons, daughters . . . we all have someone who takes up a disproportionate amount of mental real estate because of the behaviors we don’t like and resentments we have.

 

1. Maybe they are selfish. 
2. Maybe they don’t call us as much as we would like just to check in, or only ever call us when they need something. 
3. Maybe we always end up picking up the check at lunch, or they get jealous any time something good happens to us. 
4. Or maybe it’s less about their negative traits, and more to do with the fact that we aren’t as close to them as we’d like to be—that in some key way, the relationship isn’t as we’d hoped. 

 

Often we bring our own baggage to these situations:

guilt and regret about the part we feel we had to play in why the relationship is hard, or why they are the person they are today; the ways we take it deeply personally that they are behaving the way they are toward us (despite how they may be doing the same to others!); resentment at all the ways they haven’t been there for us in the past.

We also bring our (often futile) aspirations for what we think the relationship could, or should, be like. This is often nothing more than a fantasy of what we wish it could be. 

All of this winds up being a way of not being present with the actual relationship we have with a person, or with who they are. The baggage we bring to the relationship is a form of living in the past; the idea we cling to of what it should be like is a way of living in some fantasy future. 

A lack of presence can make us spend so much time wishing they were someone else that we miss who they actually are. It keeps us stuck repeating a past dynamic, blind to the opportunity to begin a new chapter in the relationship today, starting from where we stand right now. 

The opposite of this is true presence in our relationships. 

• Presence occurs when we observe what is in the relationship or this person. 
• We accept who they are today, or who they have always been. 
• We accept the relationship that is actually possible with them. 

We no longer expect them to be a certain way, and we ditch the resentment that they are not that way. This is simply what is. 

From this place of acceptance, we are free to just love someone. Or at least to experience them as they are. 

The effect of this is an immediate kind of lightness. 

We have removed the weight of expectation, or the need for change. We are no longer prisoners to the old way of being in the relationship. Out of this can emerge a new relationship with this person—one with a new kind of beauty. 

This kind of presence might make the relationship better than it’s ever been, if for no other reason than the relationship benefits from a new, less heavy kind of energy, and less reactivity on our part. Even if it doesn’t get better, our acceptance removes the frustration and stress of expecting it to change. 

There is, however, a giant caveat to all of this: 

Accepting the relationship as it is only works if we are willing to reset what we are giving to the relationship. 

Accepting people doesn’t work if you keep giving the same amount that’s making you feel resentful in the first place. 

Here’s a new rule: 

Don’t give an amount of time, energy, trust, or support to this person that will make you feel resentful if they stay the same as they are now. 

 

If you never reset your giving, you will always resent their staying the same. 

But, if you recalibrate what you give to this person, you will magically no longer need them to change at all. Then when you do give to them—at a level you’re entirely happy to do—it becomes possible to actually enjoy the giving again. 

This second part of the equation is the part that’s the most overlooked. 

You simply cannot “accept who they are,” while continuing to give the same amount as you used to back when you were expecting more from them, and hope to feel better. 

Remember, you always reserve the right to give more if the relationship changes in positive ways. 

But for now, if you want to feel better: 

1. Accept them as they are. 
2. Accept the relationship as it is. 
3. And reset the giving. 

Key Takeaways

1. The baggage we bring to the relationship is a form of living in the past; the idea we cling to of what it should be like is a way of living in a fantasy future. 

2. Presence occurs when we observe what is in the relationship or this person. We accept who they are today, or have always been. We accept the relationship that is actually possible with them.

3. Acceptance only works if we reset our giving. Don’t give an amount that will make you feel resentful. If you never reset your giving, you will always resent their staying the same.

What About You?

• Who’s been driving you crazy with a certain behavior for a long time? 
• Could you simply accept that this behavior might never change, and accept that a relationship (at whatever distance) IS possible with this person, while losing the expectation of what you’d like the relationship to be? 
• How might taking this pressure off of the relationship actually end up improving it? 
• In which ways do you need to reset the amount you are giving to the relationship in the meantime, and redraw the boundaries? 

Matthew Hussey