Foe Future

Posted by fxckfeelings on January 15, 2015

When it comes to navigating through problems in a relationship, you can’t always trust your ability to recognize the difference between major issues that can be worked through and those which mark the end of your journey altogether. Even if you can see what terrain lies ahead, there may still be no clear route to getting past the issue. So don’t assume you should have an intuitive relationship GPS to tell you how to overcome problems and know which are predictable or your fault. When things go wrong, re-analyze your plans and prepare to accept sudden changes to your destination.
–Dr. Lastname

After some rocky years, I’ve worked hard to build a supportive relationship with my son, but I’m worried about his new girlfriend. He’s crazy about her, and she seems to like him, but she was so surprisingly critical of him and everyone else at our first meeting that I left feeling very worried. He explained afterwards that she’s very sensitive because she was abused and that she’d made it clear to him that she was sorry that she had lashed out, but that didn’t do much to ease my concerns. Then again, if I asked him why she treats him badly and why he puts up with it, he would just stop talking to me. But if I say nothing, I’m worried I will lose him to a very unhappy relationship with a difficult woman. My goal is to save him from rejection or worse without possibly sacrificing what we’ve struggled to maintain.

Any time parents take on the responsibility of saving their kids, there’s often a huge sacrifice involved, i.e., a savings account, a kidney, or, if you’re literally taking a bullet for your kid, a pulse.

Thankfully, saving your kid from a bad relationship need not be your responsibility, nor must it require a huge sacrifice of any kind, from losing your life to your fragile relationship with your son.

As you predict, trying to pull your son away from his evil girlfriend will only push him away from you and into her loving, crazy arms. If, however, your goal is to enhance his ability to make observations and smart choices without controlling what those choices are, then there’s much you can do.

Prepare, however, to keep negative feelings to yourself and behave like a professional consultant rather than an avenging angel. You want to engage his mind, not attempt a daring rescue.

Begin by finding something positive to say about his girlfriend; you could tell him you’re impressed with her eagerness to say she’s sorry. Tell him that you respect his determination to help her recover from trauma and recognize the value in his hope that they’ll have a loving relationship, untainted by past pain, anger, or mistrust.

Then ask questions that will encourage him to gather data about her behavior without implying that there’s anything wrong with it, like whether she’s had any relationships that lasted a long time, despite her moodiness. Check out whether she’s struggled with any of the negative ways of managing emotional pain, like drug abuse, failure at work or school, or unjustified loss of trust in close friends and relatives. Look for her ability to apologize and stop conflict, keep working, and limit blame.

Don’t ask why she has painful or angry feelings, or even worse, dismiss her for having them, just ask how she manages them. Be equally avoidant of asking what she says about herself or her secrets, asking instead about what she actually does. And if her behavior is problematic, instead of implying that she can do better or that she should get help, ask whether she sees herself as needing to do better, has been actually doing better over time, and has ever benefited from getting help.

You can’t protect your son from falling in love with a difficult woman, but you can bolster his ability to think rationally about what he can do when she gets difficult (without implicitly demanding he make the difficult decision to dump her crazy self).

Instead of trying to rescue your son from this negative situation, tell him how to feel more positively about himself, their relationship, and his ability to see what’s coming, regardless of the problems he encounters or the urge you feel to take on those problems as your own.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t stand the idea of my son marrying a difficult woman who fights with him all the time and turns him against his family, but I won’t let fear get in the way of parenting. I will push him to ask good questions about her and their relationship and hope that, by limiting his sense of responsibility, he’ll be able to do what’s best.”

My friend and I are about to start a business together, but I’m worried that we haven’t yet figured out how to best communicate. We had no problem communicating as friends, but when it comes to work, things seem to keep slipping through the cracks, so tasks get overlooked and feelings get hurt. I try to be as open as I can with her and let her know what we should be doing and what I’m thinking (at least within reason), but I’m not picking up information from her, or she’s holding stuff back…? Either way, before I know it, she’s furious and has a list of things I did and do that make her nuts and made it impossible for her to stay on task. My goal is to figure out how to avoid these conflicts and get this business up and running.

Many people are easy to communicate with as long as you don’t have to work together. There’s something about doing work—with the demands it puts on your ability to process and digest information, create priorities, and multitask—that can put a horrible strain on friendship when the work process doesn’t work. As we always say, a business partnership is a lot like a marriage, except you make money instead of kids, and you won’t have to wait fifty years to hate each other.

If your friend knows she sometimes drops the ball and has figured out ways to correct and keep herself on track, then bringing a problem to her attention won’t spark conflict. Unfortunately, however, many bright people who have such problems have suffered all their lives from high expectations and relatively low performance. They’ve become highly reactive to being told that they’ve underachieved and haven’t kept their promises or early promise.

No matter how positively you point out that something is missing, they feel attacked, angry, chagrined, and unjustly criticized. After they’ve accused you of making it impossible for them to work, you’ll probably feel defensive and sucked into useless conversations about what you sounded like, what you meant, and whether you were unfairly critical. In this case, she might be so defensive about her issues that she just attacks preemptively and digs in from there.

Sadly, your goal isn’t to break through this defensiveness, because it’s often not possible and trying too hard will make conflict worse. Instead, back off and watch how your friend processes information. Find a way to look into her past successes and failures with school and other kinds of work. And then, after you’ve taken plenty of deep breaths, say something positive before you address a problem, and see whether it’s possible to have a constructive conversation.

If not, you know you’ve tried, and that’s all you can do; just because you were friends and you’ve chosen your words carefully doesn’t mean you can work together. Know when to quit and, if necessary, how to describe retreat as a victory for friendship. If she doesn’t accept your proposal, then it’s time to get out of the defensive friend business altogether.

STATEMENT:
“I’m still shocked at my friend’s inability to do her share of the work and her nastiness when I try to help her deal with the problem, but I understand now that she has problems getting certain tasks done and is touchy as hell about that fact. If my diplomacy can’t overcome her negativity, I will accept the possibility that our work partnership is not to be.”