I was trying to tell a friend the other day that I have been feeling unconfident about our relationship, our connection. I was feeling vulnerable and so, I was nervous, and therefore, I was fairly inarticulate. If I’m being honest with myself, I think this friend knew exactly what I was trying to get at, even with my fumbling, but he perhaps used my nervousness to his advantage. Or perhaps, I am overthinking the interaction.
Either way, the exchange ended, and I wasn’t feeling particularly warm and fuzzy about anything between us.
The bottom line is that I wanted to tell him that I was pretty sick of always being the one to initiate plans. I wanted to share that it’s hard to feel cared about when it’s just words and no action, and more challenging when you see someone capable of giving what you are asking for to others, and not to you. It felt like too much to come out and just say that, so instead, I ended up sharing that I felt as though perhaps I had been imposing as of late. I had been asking too much and maybe it made sense for me to back off.
He responded by telling me that he was just matching my energy and giving me space to figure things out for myself.
Yeah.
I had not a clue how to respond to that. I’m not sure it’s true, but beyond that, it’s not at all what I’m looking for. The thing is, there’s little I can do to respond to that explanation, because my out-of-the-gate approach was to make it about my inadequacies or insecurities, rather than my feelings. Instead of just saying, matter of fact, “you don’t ask to see me and it’s often me who reaches out,” I danced around and came out with something that sounded like, “I’m struggling to find my place in his life and overall, confused.”
So, of course, when he responded telling me that he’d give me space to work it all out, what was I to say? I set myself up for that one- albeit inadvertently.
The communication left me feeling more unsure and unbalanced and I wanted desperately to bring myself to level. I knew that further communication wouldn’t “fix” anything and that the best way to proceed would be to carefully consider how I actually feel and find a space where even if I can’t clearly state my needs to him, I could, at a minimum, own them for myself.
This means that I had to start thinking about the idea of how we navigate equity in relationships. I know I’ve touched on this topic before, but I want to narrow in on a very specific part of this topic. The question I’m exploring is whether we have to constantly meet the people in our lives at their energy level. Do we always need to engage in a tit-for-tat? If we give more, than do we need to wait for something matched in return before we move forward?
I honestly don’t think so. I think that there are ways to achieve balance in a relationship without constantly assessing energy output or making a determination on a minute-by-minute basis as to whether everything is even-Steven. This is my opinion for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I understand that to be human is to have ebb and flow. To be humans in relationships is to accept that seesaw between two people.
There is so much that impacts the energy that someone is willing to expend at any given time. Physical and mental health, circumstances, mood, etc. Because those factors are ever-changing, it’s natural to imagine that someone might be inclined to give more at certain times, and less at others. And because relationships are two people (or more), the best sort are those that allow for each to move within their energy allowance.
When things go off the rails, in my humble opinion, is when one partner, one participant, is endlessly giving and the other is always taking. I know, you may be thinking that there are givers and takers in the world and who are we to judge if they find each other in the universe? This is true, sort of, but also, not really. There can be some of that, but there is a point in which the taker will need to give and the giver will need to take. That’s the reality of life. And in those moments, everyone will need to bend. Bend, or break.
Let me get back to where I started. Once I revealed to my friend this inequity in a very roundabout, unclear fashion, I decided to convince myself that I am wrong. My feelings, my perspective, my opinion. Wrong. I am being too harsh, too demanding, too unyielding. I was clearly just being dramatic and perhaps, making too much out of nothing. I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t capable of doing what I was asking and therefore, I needed to be a bit more flexible.
And so, I put myself out there. I made myself even more defenseless. I’m not sure that it makes sense to get into the details, but needless to say, I fell back into my patterning of being the one to reach. Being the one to ask. Being the one to extend the olive branch. The real olive branch, not the bullshit two word text message olive branch.
Boom. Rejection. Well, maybe not outright rejection, but pretty damn close. Felt close enough to it to feel shitty. A brush off. Egoic posturing. Bullshit. And at the end of the day, I only had myself to blame. I didn’t feel better for having given it a whirl. Oh no, I felt worse. I was annoyed with myself for not staying true to what I was feeling.
And why didn’t I? Fear. Fear of loss. Fear of change.
And here is the reality that we always want to avoid, but is as clear as day: people will leave, people will choose others, and people will disappoint us. And sometimes our behavior will be the most apparent cause of these consequences. And still, we have to do it. We have to tell people what we need. We have to expect that there are times when takers will give. We have to know that we aren’t always going to be the one who reaches out. We have to be okay with not always being the bigger person. Sometimes we can make ourselves smaller, and not to suit someone else, but, to feed ourselves.
It is scary to ask people to be what we need them to be, but I’ll tell you something, it’s way scarier to settle for less.
X
L.
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