Did I leave you on a confusing or hopeless note yesterday? That was not my intention. I just want to be real about what it can look like. What is the what here? Likability. The quest for such. The thirst we have for approval. It’s fucking brutal.
I have, on many occasion (but mostly as a younger human), uttered the words “I don’t give a shit what _____ thinks of me” and nine times out of ten, I’m lying or have lied. I don’t actually feel that way, but I want to feel that way or I want the person I’m confiding in to believe that I feel that way. Or, I subscribe to the notion that you can fake it until you make it, and so, I’m going to fake indifference.
I am not, though. Indifferent. Far from it. Of course, I care. It rips my heart out of my chest. I feel rejected and sad and frustrated. I don’t want to change anything at all and then, I want to change absolutely everything.
The two friends that I was talking about a week ago, they broke my heart. Our relationships started out, well, better, and they’ve disintegrated into dust before my eyes. I’m not suggesting that I have no part in that unraveling. Not at all. I’m just saying that it might be a stretch when I call either of them friendships. I feel like I serve a purpose for each of those individuals and where I’m concerned, I’m just really fucking afraid to let go. Who am I to decide that a relationship has fundamental incompatibility? Isn’t that, well, pure arrogance? Isn’t that rude? Too bold? Isn’t that behavior only befitting someone of the highest likability rating? I can’t actually think I’ve climbed to that rung, can I?
Wow. Exhausting, right?
How do we escape this prison? Is the answer deciding that we don’t give a shit who likes us? No. Not really. I mean, sort of, but it’s not quite that simple. I think the real answer is gathering a more realistic notion of what likability is, or why people like us.
What do I mean? Well, if we determine that someone likes us based on something that is easily changed or shifted and only for that reason, is there an authenticity at the heart of that affection? Let’s get super ridiculous for a moment to process this thought and then, we can scale back a bit to something more realistic.
I go to the salon every few weeks and I find myself connecting to another woman who gets her hair colored as I do. We both lament getting older and finding grays and we both agree that blond is the way to go. It covers the grays in a way that is actually pretty brilliant and gives us a sunnier, lighter feel. We’ve bonded. We talk about the brassy hue that drives us bananas and the best purple shampoo and the hats that we wear when we go out in the sun. We are hair buddies. And then, one day I wake up and decide that I’m done highlighting my hair. I just want to go au natural. I’m going to slowly fade to gray, fuck it.
And now, we don’t really have anything to say to each other. Gone is the common ground and worse, she judges me or fears that I am judging her. She doesn’t understand why I would decide to do such a thing and marvels at how I might age myself with this decision and fears that I will see her as someone clinging to youth and vanity. Our conversations grow shorter and soon, we begin scheduling in the hopes of avoiding each other. We’ve lost our thing.
This sounds insane, but of course, this sort of thing happens all the time, with small and big things. I experienced this first hand when many of my friends began to get married and start families. Suddenly I was an outsider when it came to the new lives they were creating. I didn’t understand the trials of being a spouse or a mother and it felt weird to invite the single girl to various and sundry events. Again, this is just one example.
This is the reason why work friends often lose touch with each other or mom friends stop connecting when their kids find diverging hobbies or social circles. Without a cord to tether, one is left floating, and without the desire to find a different way to hang on, one tends to let go. There are other cords, and other connectors, and easier situations. Why make work when there are so many places and spaces where it feels easy?
Does this mean that we should outright reject any connection that comes in the form of a similarity or common ground? Absolutely not. That’s an absurd notion. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be the end all be all, and sometimes (particularly if we are sensitive folk), it’s not a bad idea to consider what lies beneath the surface. Perhaps common ground brought you together, but was that just the beginning? Perhaps underneath lies an entire world that you share. Similar thoughts and belief systems and senses of humor and likes and dislikes. Great. That’s fantastic.
Again, you don’t have to turn away from someone just because there is only that one thing that brought you together, but maybe you need to keep perspective when entering into the relationship. Don’t take things too seriously. Understand the nature of the friendship and its limitations. Don’t expect more than it’s likely going to produce. Stay grounded and real. Take it for what it is.
Sometimes I wonder if that was my problem with certain relationships. I might have been brought together with these folks because of particular bits we have in common and then I took it too far. I assigned a greater value that it warranted.
One of the friends I was referring to, well, we were both going through traumas at one point in our lives. Rather than understanding that we might lean on each other more heavily during that period, and once through, things might not stay at the same level, I buried myself in the comfort of the relationship. I decided that it was sadness and devastation that really took our friendship to the next level, but we would still be able to celebrate each other once the dark clouds had moved out.
Well, not so much. Does that mean the relationship meant nothing at all? No. Not even close. It just means that it had a shelf life. There was a time when it was more meaningful, when we were closer, and when that time had passed, I had to get to a better place of acceptance. I should not base the entire tone of the relationship on that time where we found a certain synergy. Rather, I should accept that as an outlier. A moment in time that would not be repeated. More pointedly, a moment in time that I don’t have the heart to repeat. In fact, it was a lesson learned moment for me, because if I’m really honest with myself, if I’d recognized it for what it was at the time, I likely would have held back. Just a bit.
X
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 