Being the Change Sucks Sometimes

 So I have this friend. Well, I guess I should say that I HAD this friend as she has told me that we are no longer friends. This friend is the best friend I’ve ever had. She’s a great person. A really great person. She is kind, thoughtful, gentle, hard-working, loving, beautiful in and out, smart, a total clean freak/germaphobe, a great mom, selfless, and easy to get along with. She is extremely spiritually-minded and a great example of faith and Christianity in action. She has been there for me countless times in my life when no one else was.

She also has flaws. I won’t tell you what they all are as it isn’t necessary to the story, but I am intimate with her flaws. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” is one of her favorite quotes. The ironic thing is that she is sometimes very closed off to change. As long as I’ve known her (which is a long time) she resists change, especially in herself. For a long time I thought she didn’t need to change. I thought she was perfect and that I was the one with problems, but I’ve come to my senses and realized that I was bamboozled into believing this lie.

She needs to change. I need to change. Everyone needs to change.

The hard part about change is that when you do it, it effects other people. That is why marriage counseling is so totally awesome. It helps people change together! Changing together is miraculous.  I have seen the most significant changes over the years but none are more important then those that my husband and I have made together.

They need friend counseling. They really do. I am embarking upon the second round of no-contact with this friend in the past ten years. It’s because we don’t know how to change together. It seems we can only change apart from one another. I don’t like it, but it is the reality of our friendship.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this friendship and how to handle it. It seems I am ill-equipped. This friend is very closed off. She doesn’t like to talk about her problems. She doesn’t like to admit her weaknesses. Sometimes I wonder if she is even aware of them.

On the other hand, I am a very self-aware person. I love to talk about myself. Talking is one of the greatest ways that I learn, second only to writing. I will share anything and everything with pretty much anyone. I struggle to contain private information.

You can see how this creates a problem in our friendship. It pretty much goes like this:

me: “I am so sick of my husband.”
her: “My husband is so fantastic.”

me: “I have been so depressed.”
her: “Let me help you with your depression.”

me: “I am so sick of being poor.”
her: “We just bought a house for $50,000 less than it is worth.”

me: “How are your kids doing?”
her: “They are perfect little angels.” (As they tear each other’s eyes out in the background.)

me: “You are going to be so house poor with that huge house.”
her: “Oh but it’s so worth it.”

her: “I am so glad you guys are happy.”
me: “We are happy.”
her: Whatever she needs to say to make sure I know she is happier.

I just couldn’t take it any more. I couldn’t play the game. I knew from past experience that she doesn’t like to be called out. I also know that when I tried to change and quit complaining/over-sharing we ended up with nothing to talk about. You can see if you have two “hers” in the same conversation it won’t get very far. I didn’t know what else to do to fix it for myself. I would be miserable every time I hung up the phone. I quit taking her calls. I quit calling her. We live in different states now but if we still lived in the same state I would have avoided her physically also.

After several months she messaged me and asked me what was up. I replied,

I have avoided you and it really isn’t cool of me but I’ve been felt it necessary for my own well-being. In one simple sentence of explanation: “It’s not you, it’s me.” I’ve missed talking to you too but the peace of mind I’ve gained has outweighed the benefits of broken companionship. I haven’t been able to pinpoint my issues exactly and I haven’t wanted to hurt you so I’ve just avoided it. Not very mature of me but it is what it is. I can’t even give you a complete explanation as, like I said, I haven’t figured it out myself. The best I can give you are two things. 1 –  I feel like we have had an unequal friendship. I have shared with you too much and you’ve shared too little. 2 – I have issues with comparison/competitiveness and for some reason you put those into high gear for me and it was causing me a lot of heartache. It has been easier for me to tackle this part of me that I detest by just avoiding you. I didn’t and don’t know how to address this with you and truthfully it’s made me a lot happier to not talk to you as much. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had but our relationship is somewhat toxic for me emotionally (not because of you because of me). I feel like we lack honesty and the kind of intimacy I want from my friends and I don’t think you  will be comfortable with the change it would take to make our close friendship healthy for  me. I love you______. You are like a sister to me. I’ve missed you and I’ve prayed for you. I am the first to admit that I suck at relationships. I wish I was better at it, but being so far away and because they don’t make friend therapists I think this way is better for now.

I wasn’t trying to say goodbye, but I did give her the out. I was really saying I need more from you, and if you can’t give it then it’s probably better this way.

I didn’t hear back from her. I then got a message on Facebook from a total stranger telling me that I was an evil person who treated this friend so badly. How dare I hurt her when she has never done anything to hurt me?

I promptly told this extremely codependent random person to mind her own business and immediately texted this friend to let her know I had been reprimanded by so and so (later she told me it was her sister-in-law) and that I was sorry if I hurt her with my reply.

This friend in true to form fashion immediately gave me a lengthy explanation about how she wasn’t really gossiping about me (because she’s perfect, right?) and then informed me that we would probably just be better off without each other. I told her that whatever she wanted as fine. That was it. End of story.

So for the past couple of weeks I have been pondering on this end of friendship. I can’t help but feel like I am in high-school again. It feels so wrong. I feel like I should try and fix it.

I’ve decided that I did the right thing. I can’t change this friend. I can only change myself. I could try to keep living in her facade but it was just harming me and ultimately it was probably harming her too.

I needed more and she just couldn’t give it. She probably needs something from me that I just can’t give: like acceptance of her unreality for starters.

She’s a good person. I’m a good person. We just aren’t really good for each other and that’s o.k.

I’m moving forward. I believe I’ve been much clearer in stating my needs to her than she has with me. If she ever thinks that she can be what I need, she will know where to find me. I would love to be what she needs if she can start living in reality.

The one thing that I really wish I would have said to her and didn’t though is this reply to her telling me that she can’t just sit around being vulnerable and waiting for me to call her. I wish I would have told her this. Vulnerability is not your strong suit. You haven’t been the least bit vulnerable. Ever. If you ever want to be vulnerable, you know where to find me. I’m right here with my heart always hanging out for all to see.

I have had to really examine myself if what I am experiencing with this friend is jealousy. It is easy to become jealous when one person is always talking about how wonderful her life is and the other is a total realist. I don’t think that it’s jealousy. It’s just that I feel like I’ve finally grown past being the friend who is the one being helped. A friendship takes two people who are willing to admit that they need help. Maybe she never needs help. Maybe she is perfect? Or not because perfect people only exist in their own world. It is just really psychologically and emotionally trying for a person like me who throws all her flaws out to the world to be real with people who don’t seem to understand.

Authenticity

My really cool and really successful social media marketing friend Jeremy Floyd just got a new job. I was struck while reading his bio at the new job’s website by this line:

Experience has taught Mr. Floyd the importance of the core values of honesty and following through as well as being genuine and authentic in everything that he does.

I found it a little ironic that my favorite social media guru makes authenticity a priority. Not that I don’t believe it’s true because Jeremy is an honest guy, but because I personally believe the prominence of social media is causing a problem of authenticity in our society.  According to a recent news story citing Utah moms with greater depression, authenticity among a well-blogged society is a  real problem.

I struggle with authenticity. It is something I am trying to overcome with this blog. I want to be an honest voice to motherhood. It’s not all marshmellows and lemondrops. In fact at times it’s marshmellows all smashed into your carpet and lemondrops all over your walls. I think a lot of moms feel like they need to put on a show to feel accepted when really we all just need to be real and support one another in the hard moments.

I applaud Utah’s mom of the year having the courage to talk about when she  lost her temper. Authentic is beautiful and way more intriguing than the fake alternative.

Authenticity requires vulnerability and we all need to get better at it. In fact we need to get better at it so we can teach our children to love themselves. Authenticity has to come from a place of love and self acceptance and it requires an environment of love and support. When one person chooses to be an authentic voice then others will feel the safety to follow.

In the spirit of authenticity I will share some of my vulnerable moments in the past week:

• On Monday at marriage counseling the therapist starting telling me that I needed to get in the middle of the house cleaning spectrum, especially with  my kids. Instead of letting them do whatever and then forcing them to clean.  I hated the whole session and found myself super duper defensive. How dare the lady who changes out her whole families’ towels every two days tell me how to NOT control my kids? Yes, I’m judgmental like that.
• When Abigail got home from her 4 day long Pioneer Trek yesterday and told me she didn’t have a single spiritual or emotional experience, I had to stop myself from crying because it’s all my fault that the girl has no feelings, and then I immediately deemed it my husband’s fault and the genes from his non-emotional family. Self-protection.
• While running on the trail last night I asked two women running the opposite direction to tell me their pace. I thought they looked like they didn’t run too slow and didn’t run too fast either. I was hoping they were around my pace so that I could pat myself on the back. Their mile pace was 30 seconds faster than mine. I was happy. Comparison is a problem for me.
• My husband rarely talks to me about anything fragile or emotional. It gives me anxiety that he is unhappy with me.
• I cleaned my showers yesterday. Remember that vlog when my sister visited in May? Yeah, that was the last time I cleaned the showers. Every time I do it, I tell myself not to wait as long, but every time it’s an awful task so I put it off as long as possible. Oh excuse me, it was at the end of April. The shame!
• I felt really really really sad that there were at least 5 anorexic women at the pool on Wednesday. They broke my heart. And then I saw some extremely overweight women and felt sad for them too. I pondered how the skinny ladies in bikinis and the large ladies in their old-fashioned “cover the whole body” suits are both dealing with emotional issues of the same complexity. For a small instant I was proud to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and then my baby fat belly roll slipped out from over the top of my bathing suit bottom and I thought I am not so much in the middle as I would like. According to the BMI I am still considered obese. Then, I was mortified for even having the train of thought; I got angry that we are all just victims of an objectifying society and thought of my friends (including myself) who struggle with their weight (losing and gaining) and vowed to never look at a woman in a bathing suit again….I will only be watching their eyes because that is where the true beauty lies and I want to see the beauty instead of the flesh armor of pain.
• I so wish that I have more than 26 followers on this blog, but all my followers are not my real-life friends and that makes me happy and I have to constantly fight the battle with myself that I am never going to be a famous blogger or author. Indeed I will be very very blessed to actually ever get my dream novel written someday much less published.
• In the spirit of authenticity I think I am pretty entertaining and that everyone should want to be my friend, but also in the spirit of authenticity I can see why people are afraid of me, I don’t ever pull a punch and I don’t know how to NOT say things that are considered tactless. I really really really want to be a better listener and learn to control my mouth.

I challenge anyone who is reading this to blog, facebook, twitter, instagram something that teaches authenticity to others through your own vulnerability. Tag this post if you want, but just know I will secretly be hoping you all do it because then I will know someone is actually reading this. Just keeping it real. And now I am going to give myself the same very repetitive pep-talk that I need to LET GO of being validated and just be happy with my own authenticity.

Monopoly on Self-Protection

Well, I am back in therapy. This time it is marriage counseling (for the second time.) I know, I know, I should add this fine fact to my resume – expertise on the couch – wow, that sounds kinda dirty.

It’s interesting to me that when one is in therapy they just learn the same lessons about themself over and over. Like my husband explained, “it’s like peeling layers of an onion.” And I would add, each layer just seems to make your eyes sting a little bit more.

One little tidbit about me is that I self-protect.  For whatever reason I have abandonment issues, and I cling to very destructive tendencies as if they were a cobra and my only chance at a meal when I am starving. I may get to eat, but more than likely I am just going to get bit. The bite may not kill me, but it’s keeping me from eating.

I am still trying to process (you know you have a good counselor when they make your mind reel) what I learned from my last session on Friday, but several of my self-protection methods are: keeping high standards so that others won’t meet them and will inevitably let me down (making me right), staying a step ahead of everyone so they can’t touch me, and maintaining walls the size of China’s so that no one can hurt me. The degree to which these things are causing me pain is yet to be determined as my awareness is in infancy, but I certainly recognize that they are keeping me from the emotional  intimacy I desire. I think our therapist read this article before our session. Good stuff.

So I am trying to work on allowing imperfections (in me and others), staying present, and being vulnerable. I suck at all three. I believe if I can let some of these unproductive and self destructive tendencies go I will learn to be happier in life but specifically in my life at home. Sometimes it can be overwhelming.

Yesterday while playing monopoly as a family I got a glimmer of hope. It happened towards the end of the game (after being reprimanded several times for being on my phone – someone took it away, wandering off to cook dinner and dessert – missing many rent payments on my properties, and generally just being a crappy game player who doesn’t know how to live in the present.

As the players got more and more desperate for money, they got increasingly grateful any time they received some cash. I thought of the similarities between the game and my bankrupt soul.

As I was able to force myself to be present during the game, the little moments I have been missing all these years were HUGE to my soul: all the girls training Caroline to tell everyone to “pay up”, Sophia lamenting because she only passed go three times the whole game, Bella being super-focused on her desired property negotiations, and me landing on boardwalk the turn right after I forced Abigail to sell her hotel.

The hope lied in the fact that I have only one way to go: up and out. Even if I have to sell all my properties to do it, it’ll be worth the sacrifice to get closer to those that I love. But maybe perhaps there is a merciful God and He’ll help me to win the game without selling a single property. When I get to the end, He’ll say, “See, you just needed to trust me.”