Dedicated to: Valeria and Sebastian.
Introduction.
Being forced to be separated from the people we love hurts like hell, but having to take them out by ourselves doesn’t stay behind.
Sometimes we have to live with people that aren’t good for us. We spend too much time trying to elaborate a reason why they are, often coming with nothing but deceptions that reveal the lack of clarity we have.
There is a limit to how much you can change for your counterpart as well as how much change you can expect of them, but that doesn’t mean we should keep them around, it is fairer and wiser to know when to create distance with people.
Pruning our bad relationships is as important as building good ones, as we can focus our time and energy into the ones that truly matter. How do we know which ones to invest in? Just keep reading.
Part I – Fighting.
Every relationship will have troubles. The happy-ever-after fallacy —the belief that we just need to find the right person for us and then everything will march smoothly— is just that, a fallacy; a lie.
There isn’t a way to completely avoid friction. We are human beings and that means we are irrational, selfish, lazy and vengative. Everyone you love will do something that hurts you at least once, not because they want it, but because they don’t know any better. You aren’t responsible for their behavior, even if you tried, the only capacity of change in the individual is through himself.
This friction is caused by being improperly socialized. When we don’t learn effective ways to interact from our childhood it becomes very difficult to even have relationships, not to say have good ones.
While being improperly socialized is frustrating, the cure to it is in fact a universal struggle: we all have blind-spots and we all need to work on our communication. Our need to be more socially sophisticated —appropriately complex is a synonym of it— is a work in progress for everyone.
Why do we need to be properly socialized? Because socialization allows for individual resilience —the capacity to endure against challenge— and therefore the improvement of our private and communal lives.
People are part of the process, you cannot truly improve in your interpersonal behavior unless you actually interact with someone else, and as we know, friction cannot be avoided, it can only be reduced.
Imperfect beings will take imperfect decisions and will have imperfect ideas, and those will inevitably lead to challenges that must be overcome. If you ignore the problem, it will grow bigger and harder to deal with.
Once we sense that friction, we only have 4 real possibilities to choose from:
- You fall back on the familiar. If the relationship has lasted long enough it will have routines —communal habits— that you use in response to problems. While these are reliable —they get the job done— can very easily be irrational.
- You dominate. You don’t listen to whatever your counterpart is saying and you ensure your control over him by manipulation or aggression.
- You surrender. You don’t listen to yourself, you just do whatever is going to reduce the likelihood of you being separated from your counterpart.
- You negotiate. You try to listen as much as you can to satisfy both desires. You look for an intersection that seems fair but also sustainable.
The first one is just a routine, which means it is often rooted in manipulation, aggression or indifference.
Both, surrendering and dominating are vices that will just inevitably lead to dysfunctional relationships. Of all these four there is only one that can be used as a general strategy: negotiation.
When a negotiation happens, it implicitly shows two things:
- Both parties have a mutual interest in one another. They crave what the other can offer, so their relationship is bound by mutual value.
- Both parties have mutual respect for one another. They see themselves as competent people who can and should make their own decisions, know what is better for them, and defend their positions as well as being able to exchange.
The exchange of value is essential. When one party gives and the other doesn’t the relationship is also dysfunctional, as the only foundation is interest, anything can make it crumble.
Negotiations need a solid foundation, otherwise, there is nothing that can sustain interest, —the desire to be together— consent, —the permission for their commitments to happen— commitment —the promise of exchange of value— and the trade—the final exchange of value.
After a negotiation happens successfully in each of those steps, we have formed a social contract, and, as any contract, it implicitly requires that all the people who are part of it, have obligations, privileges, and freedom.
There must be a balance between the three. The contract needs to be fair or it will not last long, therefore, it is in both best interest that these three parts are clear.
While in our families there is a strong hierarchy —parents are often the leaders— in more leveled relationships—such as friendship or romantic/sexual connections— you have the opportunity to design them to your desires and needs.
Someone who can consistently deliver action into its promises is something worth keeping around in the same way that we are expected to be kept around when we deliver ours.
Part II – Care and loyalty.
The expectation of being kept around cared and protected can be labeled as loyalty.
When we start any relationship, there is at least a vague expectation of how long the relationship is going to last. The more good terms and help you try to bring to each other, generally, the longer the relationship is expected to last.
While we can be kind to a never-to-meet-again stranger, we naturally put a bigger priority on helping and caring for the people that matter to us.
In other words, when someone truly cares about us, it has evidence. If someone tells you that they do, but they haven’t shown any signs of care, they are just deceiving you.
While noting how to tell exactly how care is expressed can be complex —as everyone has its own unique way of showing it— you can start by asking yourself these questions —Which are based on the book “The 5 love languages”.
Does he/she/them…
- Show clear forms of physical affection, just as hugs or kisses?
- Tell the truth and try to motivate you by their words?
- Allows time for quality interaction with you?
- Helps you with your problems or uses his time to show appreciation?
- Deliver gifts as a form of gesture?
If you haven’t said yes to any of the questions then it is safe to assume he/she/them doesn’t care about you. If you said yes but you also sense manipulation or insincerity, their care might be infected with insecurity and dependency.
It is on you to decide if those stains are severe enough to justify the separation, just keep in mind that everyone has at least some of them and that not being able to live with other people’s imperfections is also a reason to break the relationship with someone.
Even as this post focuses on knowing how to deal with people that are bad for us, it is important to think if we are showing that we aren’t bad for other people too. If we are to demand loyalty, we should give it ourselves too.
And while the show of care is important, the consistency in their gestures is essential. People that withdraw their support or their presence without a justifiable reason to do so, are not desirable.
Anyone can promise to give you the world, but there are very few who are willing to share their world with you. While the shows of affection vary their regularity among the different kinds —love cannot survive distance while friendship and family can— it is not that important the absolute presence of them, but the ratio relative to your total interactions.
This means that the more affection and care they can show for each interaction matters. Someone who helps you 100 times but turned you down 1000 might not be as desirable as someone who helped you 9 times out of 10.
This also means that this person shouldn’t, under any means, betray you. Betrayal is a clear, bright, red flag that you should always consider justifiable enough to break the relationship, as it is a clear sign of disloyalty.
You should value loyalty as a principle because once you are in need and struggling to get back on your feet you better have reliable relationships to back you up. Loyalty is a matter of life or death.
Part III – Intuition vs Impulse.
Our intuition, often regarded as a trap, other times as a blessing, actually gets its value from the amount of times that we actually perform an activity. Assuming you are average on extroversion —you like to socialize from now and then— you will have plenty of experience with people.
This means that following your intuition can be a legit response when deciding to stay with someone or not. Our intuition operates on the deeper and darker level of our subconscious. The thoughts of this underlayer are enough to act even when we cannot completely articulate a verbal rationale.
Nonetheless, it is important to distinguish impulse from intuition:
- Impulse is a habit. It is the first thing that comes to mind and that you have probably been doing for a long time.
- Intuition is a feeling. It comes to you when you are consciously deciding about which road to take.
Our intuition is the subtle support of our unconscious mind to our conscious mind, therefore, you will feel it only when you are explicitly looking for answers. If you never thought of the possibility of having different answers then your impulse will be the one to trigger, causing a response that is effectively outside your control.
Your intuition might not always be right, but it is something that can improve over time as you learn and experience more things, therefore, even if you make a mistake, it can be advisable to use your intuition in low-risk, highly repetitive tasks.
As most —highly repetitive— of the people you know in your life will not be people to form close bounds —people that you see, interact or think about weekly— with and you will often be able to ask for forgiveness in case something goes wrong —low risk— I think intuition is highly applicable to gauge if someone is worth to you.
Part IV – Hope and trust.
In this post I have talked mainly about already formed relationships, but as I’ve been a sinner myself, I want to clarify explicitly that the strategies to notice a good relationship aren’t the same in formed relationships and emerging ones.
This is mainly because in an established relationship there is evidence of how the other person behaves and how he treats you. In the beginning of a relationship, however, it is important to note that we don’t know the other person enough to completely form a reasoned decision.
What this means is that while there isn’t an obligation to interact or form bonds with every new person that comes into your life, it is very dangerous and detrimental to you to assume that you can judge if a person is or isn’t a good candidate for you from the beginning.
While getting with someone wrong in a relationship can always be corrected by a creating distance, you might never know how many great people you have left behind for prejudice.
What this means is that at the beginning of any long term project —especially those in which the rewards are not immediately obvious— you should visualize all the potential rewards when the doubts become too big, so you can counteract uncertainty.
This visualization is what we know as hope. Why should we be hopeful? Because not being hopeful isn’t being neutral, is being hopeless, and when there isn’t hope to sustain our efforts we will surrender before we get the rewards or experience.
While in some things —such as fitness— you have a guarantee that your efforts will be paid, a relationship is characterized by being perpetually uncertain. There isn’t anything that can truly prevent the other person from acting his will and you shouldn’t try to see if you can.
You should be hopeful because it is one viable way of making the relationship last long enough for you to actually gather experiences with the other person. Being openly doubtful of your counterpart —specially if the stakes of the relationships aren’t risky— will awaken suspicion from him.
Even the most secure, confident and healthy individuals will be exhausted by incessant questioning, as every doubt requires a response, and every response requires energy.
Doubts are good, but carelessly throwing them at anyone is disconsiderate.
After the initial discovery period, hope isn’t as necessary anymore and you can substitute it with trust; the belief in your counterpart supported by evidence.
Conclusion.
Interpersonal relationships are highly complex. Just like a chemical compound when you add two or more elements to it, the result might not have any of the characteristics of the original reactives.
We are the same. In absence of experience you cannot know how or if your relationship with someone else is going to change your life. The opposite is also true: you don’t know what the absence of someone will do to your life.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter, other times, will either change your life for the better while in others will render it miserable.
To let someone go feels very risky, but is a fear that we need to overcome. Staying with someone who isn’t right for us is a vice of insecurity and lack of personal love.
Whatever your decision might be, remember that there are more people in the world that you can even think of. Even if something goes wrong with someone there is always the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and try to be better to the next person.
I wish you the best of luck.
Without anything else to say, goodbye!
Remember that I highly value any kind of feedback, so if there is something you want to say, be free to express it. I will gratefully take any critique, compliment, or request 😀
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Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash