No Misread Goes Unpunished
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 25, 2010
No matter how much you love someone, you might not be able to read them that well; signals get crossed, personalities clash, pissyness abounds. You can try to improve “communication” through several years/thousand dollars on relationship therapies, but you can never change your personality or the personality of the person you happen to love who also happens to drive you crazy. If you can never perfectly read someone, you can learn to recognize the warning signs of unavoidable conflict and accept the pain as the necessary price of making things work. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s cheaper than therapy, and cheaper still than divorce.
–Dr. Lastname
My 18-year-old nephew moved in with me and my boyfriend this summer to be close to the internship program he’s doing this year. I love my nephew, and he’s very smart about computers, but he’s a really geeky kid and never very quick to notice how people are reacting; when monopolizes the TV or leaves a mess in the kitchen, my boyfriend tries to make it clear he’s annoyed, but it goes straight over my nephew’s head. My boyfriend’s about had it and wants my nephew out because he thinks the kid’s a selfish jerk (instead of just a nerdy dork). My boyfriend, needless to say, hasn’t lived with kids in many years and tends to take things personally. My goal is to get my boyfriend to back off and/or my nephew to tune in.
Cursed be the peacemaker, because the only agreement that peacemakers are certain to create between warring parties is that they both hate the peacemaker.
If you press your boyfriend to be nicer, he’ll wonder why you’re more sympathetic to a self-absorbed, snotty kid than to your long-term, adult partner.
Your nephew, if he notices the tension at all, will wonder why his aunt can’t protect him from being picked on (and why nobody can protect him, since this probably happens all the time). Good intentions are dangerous, in a situation like this, unless you’re careful about your goals.
So, while it’s dangerous to try to stop your boyfriend’s anger, it’s reasonable to show him why you think he’ll do better to keep his anger in check and take other action, and that you also respect his right to feel angry and make his own decisions about how to manage it
Let your partner know that, if your nephew were merely thoughtless or selfish, correcting him could be expected to help. Your opinion, however, is that your nephew just doesn’t get it when it comes to being considerate about other people’s feelings and that criticism may well make him worse and get him to tune out even more.
Your advice to your boyfriend is that he hide his anger and instead issue a pleasantly worded list of rules about chores and cleaning procedures that everyone can co-sign.
If your boyfriend complains about the unfairness of this invasion into his peace and privacy, let him know that, sooner or later, family events and other disasters tend to disrupt the most orderly and peaceful lives and that this is an opportunity for the two of you to deal with such an event together.
Similarly, while letting your nephew know about your partner’s anger may do nothing but make him defensive, your supporting and implementing the list of rules mentioned above will probably help him a great deal. If he truly doesn’t know any better, he won’t take offense at your guidelines.
If your boyfriend is going to one day become a father, or deal with an aging parent, he needs to learn how to manage painful, unavoidable feelings without making them worse. It’s not about making a lasting peace; just the case for your nephew’s cluelessness, and a plan.
STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep you from feeling too responsible for either party’s feelings, and thus from becoming over-involved. “I’m sorry my partner is unhappy about my inviting my nephew into our home and that they could both become unhappy as a result of my decision; but my decision was made in good faith, they both agreed, and their current problems arise from their characters, not from any fault of mine. Without accepting responsibility for their pain, I’ll try to help them manage it. Whether my efforts work or not, I’m glad to have had a chance to get to know my nephew better and to work with my partner on a challenging parenting issue and see how he does with it.”
My wife is bipolar and was verbally abused as a kid, but most of the time she’s lively, interesting, and spontaneous, and that’s what I love about her. Sometimes, however, she gets overbearing and irritable and I can’t stop myself from raising my voice and slamming doors, which is when she really drives me crazy by telling me that I have to leave the house because she’ll never take the same verbal abuse from me that she took from her mother. After a few hours, she usually calms down and lets me back in, but I’m not a saint, and I can’t live by these absurd rules. My goal is to get her to stop provoking me.
It’s no secret that some people with bipolar illness have relatively feeling-driven personalities, even when their moods are stable and steady, their sense of reality is unimpaired, and even when they are, absolutely, not sick.
As you probably know, however, feelings are dangerous, regardless of whether you’re ill or not. They’re dangerous because they’re powerful, attractive, and drive people to act before they think, but I’ll stop before I further bite the hand that feeds me.
In any case, you probably can’t stop your wife from seeing you as dangerous and evil when you look or sound angry, and you probably can’t stop yourself from looking and sounding angry. If you try to change the rules by which she operates, you will probably make her feel more threatened, and you know where that leads.
Even if you lobotomized yourself and became truly calm at all times, your wife would probably be aggravated with the result. There is no path down which you cannot expect trouble.
At this point, you need to accept a certain degree of unavoidable storminess in your marriage; it’s too bad, but in sickness and in health, it comes with the bipolar package. Don’t ask how you can avoid it, but what you can do to manage it instead.
One thing you can do is encourage your wife to create a quiet refuge for herself when she feels threatened (assuming you can afford more than a studio apartment), and urge her to use it whenever she wishes.
Of course, she may fling some accusations your way before she shuts her door and, by that time, you’ll have started to huff and puff, and poof, she’ll push you out into the storm or threaten to dial 1-800-restraining order.
If you think she’s worth sticking with (for reasons other than your love of exciting, dramatic blowouts), then find your own refuge outside the house where you can go anytime the feelings-storm bears down.
STATEMENT:
“It’s infuriating to have my wife see me as a dangerous beast when I’ve shown her repeatedly that I love her and want to support her, but I now understand that her feelings, and mine, can’t be helped. Nevertheless, we have good reasons for staying together and I am proud of the strength it takes for me, and her, to manage a marriage like this.”
