[1151] Friendly Refiner

 A good portion of how I understand the world is extracted from conversations and observations on relationships. I’m a pretty big believer that you can get to know a ton about yourself through introspection, but it’s still less than half of the necessary information if you don’t invoke who is, has, or you’d like to be shaping you.

For many years, before I ever knew what it actually symbolized or its history, I wore a yin yang necklace. I was literally drawn to it, noticing it dangling from a display at the Lake County Fair when I was in middle school. To this day, 25-ish years later, I’ve never read that deeply into Chinese philosophy, because the interconnected and counterbalanced symbol itself pretty much matched my intuition. It helped to have a kind of reminder imprint.

Balance is a much different place from dependence. “Codependency” is when there’s an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, and the other enables. These are not distinct and discreet measurements when you’re attempting to assess “excessive,” and as a matter of basic existence, one might argue we psychologically rely on our loved ones, networks, or imbued sense of self bred from our culture.

One of the things I’ve had to practically discuss and work out is how to balance healthy doses of traumatizing and often nakedly destructive forces against the appropriate level of State intervention, or against an individual’s sense of self and safety and security. At DCS, with a policy for children to remain with family if at all possible, that’s remaining with a sometimes wild cast of characters. In addiction counseling, you get clients describing physically and emotionally abusive partner dynamics all the time, and yet, they’re so otherwise unstable, that the abuse becomes “less bad” than being alone.

I think this is a really hard thing to understand for most people. One reason, life might not be as bad as it definitely is if you’ve occupied a certain level of wealth for a certain level of time. The exact same kinds of drama and mental health issues do not play out the same between the people attending their remote counseling session from the bench they slept on, and the people who can go to adult summer camp indefinitely. If you tell a story of someone’s impoverished circumstances to a “regular” middle-class person, they’ll tell you and them exactly what to do based on their sense of horror about it all.

Thankfully, I’ve had limited exposure in my personal life with cop-show plot levels of relationship dynamics. It’s not zero, but it’s never been remotely close to chronic. This means when I’m reflecting on what I think a “healthy” relationship is, I have the prolonged explanations and explorations of dramatic incidents from my life. I also have the dynamics, few and far between, that have sustained my more positive and prescriptive behavior.

One of the places I’ve landed is the question, “Do they even treat you like a friend?” I’ve struggled with the word “friend” for a long time, but even my proved-to-be-superficial relationships were friendly in a way that I often see missing in people’s dynamics. It’s like a movie trope to see two outwardly hateful people speak terribly to one another or occupy their own physical space, and then something weird happens that sheds a light on their deep and abiding love for one another. I think that’s a horrible and entirely misleading picture.

You can’t really see how someone is being a friend if you don’t know what constitutes you being one. I have a knack for being everyone’s “not-therapist.” Being up my own ass, reading all the things I do, and desperately trying to cling to my life values each day has lent itself to an awareness and perspective that I’ve received a waterfall of feedback suggesting it’s helpful. Getting certified as an addiction counselor was a pretty natural extension of my practice already, and if I had the money I’d become a therapist just because.

I’m also “too giving.” I want to be wanted. So when you need something from me, I’m extremely likely to go out of my way or do anything I can to help. I’m so like this, that I can recall the handful of times I’ve ever told someone no when their issues had reached a point that I would no longer be able to balance.

These two pieces alone give me enough of the half of a relationship puzzle to inform whether or not I think you’re being friendly in return. I don’t think you need to be a not-therapist to me nor be willing to give me any and everything at the drop of a hat. I do think you need to respect and recognize those things about me, and not take advantage of them. What would taking advantage look like? Attempting to use me to justify, instead of explore and fix, the things on your mind. Attempting to squeeze my effort and goodwill until I’m threatened financially or my life ends up in danger.

The third thing about me is that I’ve developed a really good ability to read and connect with people. That’s a deadly tool in the hands of someone who isn’t concerned with being transparent, friendly, or balanced. It follows then that I’m my best version of being a friend when I listen, give as much as I can, and refrain from unduly utilizing what I know about how you operate.

We make this very complicated for ourselves. An example that stuck out for me once was a speaker talking about how if our pet got sick and we picked up a prescription, we’d make sure it got the whole thing at the same time every day with the right food and cuddles until it was better. We won’t take our own prescriptions, if even go to the doctor. Now, this example is royally fucked by the practical issues of the American healthcare system, but the sentiment rang true at the conceptional level and in my experience working with people.

I know people who will work two jobs, take care of kids, put up with endless bullshit from their emotionally unwell parents or siblings, get demeaned by a boss, deal with health issues, and the impending psychological terror of whatever anniversary that’s coming up that they’ve never coped with. They’ll simultaneously struggle to take even 30 minutes for themselves a day to breathe, relax, or watch their favorite show. It’s a package of guilt, chronic stress, and “survivor mode.” They forget how to be friendly to themselves.

One of the things that confused and bugged me for a very long time was how to wrap my head around my friendships petering out. Beyond the ones that just went silent, there’s the ones that went out with someone lobbing some observation or judgment about who I was or what I was thinking, as if they ever really cared to know in the first place. I wasn’t giving myself credit for both the kind of friend I was trying to be, nor recognizing that simply existing around each other or being polite is not the same thing as establishing a friendship.

I discovered “normal” people were mostly in the pageantry and pretend game. They need you to perform and defer your actual sense of self and agency to their insecurities. I’m the type of person where literally anyone I might recognize or have enjoyed their company for an hour, I would invite “back in” in a heartbeat. I’ve been pretty confident in myself and who I am for a good portion of my young-adult to adult life. My perception of your, at the time, positive energy or influence is the thing I’d seek more of. I’d know it’s there. You can’t deny it, even if you’ve drifted into normal life morass as we’ve gotten older.

Maybe a way to illustrate this is to think about Christmas cards. If you or your family sent those out, how many people made the list that you might never talk to for years? It’s like your friend’s list on facebook. There’s like 10 people that sign on anymore, and if you’re lucky, 1% of them will notice when it’s your birthday. That kind of superficial engagement passes for normal “friendship.” It always felt fake and like a waste to me, and even when I tried to spice it up with personalized and creative messages on birthdays, they seemed to fall flat or get ignored over time.

I’ve got a lot of practical behaviors that inform my sense of friendly behavior. I’m not trying to yell. I don’t expect you to do anything for me that I’m unprepared to do for myself. I’m not lying to you about what I feel or don’t. If and when I have the money, I’m excited by the prospect of buying your ticket, meal, the gas etc. I’m one of those people who is physically unable to stop himself from voicing what he thinks is fucked up, and if that’s something about you or how we’re relating, I’ll do so out of respect and hope it can be fixed, and in a respectful way. I’m not going to ghost you after years nor stay vague and passive aggressive about the road forward. If only! I was treated the same way.

I believe it’s important to living well that you find your center independent of anyone else. The moment I return to the kind of teenager I was ensconced in limerence, be it with a person or too-compelling idea, I’ve hit a codependent state and am looking for ways to enable it. The adult version is to belabor the story of how many years you’ve been with someone, or employ a cliche about not knowing who you’d be without them, or reflexively listing all of the services they provide you that justifies whatever you need them to.

I do not think you can truly be of service to other people if you’re unable or unwilling to figure your own shit out. What happens when someone you care about dies? They’re going to. Sooner than you think. Mostly sooner than you think because you never think about it. What happens if you get critically injured? I think about this one all the time. If I lose a hand, I’m thinking about how to get a chip that let’s me write with brain waves or a robot one that types faster than I ever could. The point is about looking forward and rooting in the idea that life, my life, is worth it for it’s own sake, despite what may happen or my inability to square my ideas with my actions in any given moment.

I think we collectively reel at the idea of abusing animals. We’re animals. We’re our own kind of confused, dumb, and helpless. Give yourself pets and treats. Find habits and ideas you can cuddle up next to. Ask yourself what the people who treat you best would do, and then if you’re doing the same for yourself. If not, that should give you pause. If you don’t have people treating you that well, that should inform some larger shifts in your behavior or priorities. They will become you way more than you’ll become them, because they don’t have a real and friendly relationship with themselves, so neither will you.