A Hand to Hold

I did not come up with my list of reasons people push away love on my own. You see, for many years I worked with drug addicts, drug dealers, single teenage moms, killers, and criminals. It was my job to get them to stop pushing me away.

Pushing people away in boyfriend/girlfriend relationships is just like pushing people away in other life relationships. They usually follow a consistent pattern:

Stage One -- Guarded Stage -- They cross their arms. They sit as far from me as possible. They avoid eye contact. They answer in curt, short responses or not at all. The important thing in this stage is that I let them have their distance, but remind them they will have to open up eventually. I generally say something like, "If you don't want to talk today, it is okay, but I am here to help you and I will listen when you are ready to talk".

Stage Two -- Testing Stage -- They ask loaded questions like "Do you know what it is like to go hungry?", "Did your father rape you?", "Did you grow up in the hood?" The important thing here is to be 100% honest, admitting when I did not experience what they have gone through and discussing my own situation if it truly relates. It is also important to never, ever say this phrase -- "I understand" -- because I don't REALLY understand. I sympathize. I empathize. I never understand.

Stage Three -- Anger Stage -- They throw stuff. They leave the program. They scream cuss words at me. They say mean things. The nastier they are, the closer they are to breaking. I try to remember that this is their desperate attempts to hold up their wall. They are trying to protect themselves. I tell them their behaviors are inappropriate, but I am not giving up on them and I will help them if they let me.

Stage Four -- Release Stage -- They break down. They give up their anger. They cry... sometimes on my shoulder. They ask me to hold their hand. They apologize for their behavior in stage three. They ask for help.

Some people go through the stages in days or hours. Some take months or years (like Chucky), but everyone breaks eventually if I patiently demonstrate my worthiness of earning his or her trust. And, once they break, they are rewarded with support, honest dialogue and my genuine caring. For years, my old clients would stop by to tell me they were still drug-free or away from the abusive relationship or getting straight As.

We are all walking this path through life and no one, not the hardest, bravest, strongest of us should walk that road alone. Sometimes when we reach for a hand in the darkness, we find another warm hand to hold.

Why People Push Away Those They Love (2)

In my last post, I said a lot about my own personal experience, but I never really answered the question.

WHY PEOPLE PUSH AWAY THOSE THEY LOVE

1. WHEN THE PUSH IS MEAN -- She wants to know if you can love her shadow side. She is mean to you. She does not answer your calls. She is late for your dates. She tells you the relationship isn't working. She does things she knows will annoy you. She doesn't really want you to go. She wants you to say, "I am not going to let you push me away". She wants a man that loves her enough to put up with her ridiculousness.

2. WHEN THE PUSH IS RUNNING -- She wants to know that you will sit and wait for her to return. She wants to know that you will let her go. She wants to know that you don't "need" her, that you aren't trying to "trap" her. She wants to know that you don't want to control or change her, but that you love her enough to give her freedom.

3. WHEN THE PUSH IS "YOU DON'T KNOW ME" -- She feels unworthy of you. She has dated guys before that seemed to like her and then they got to know the "real" her and they decided they didn't like her. She seems confident. She will even tell you she IS confident, but she isn't. She thinks that guys love the "fake" her, but no one understands the "real" her. Once you see this "real" her, you won't want to talk to her anymore. She wants you to be patient. She wants you to make her feel safe. She wants you to find the real her and love her anyway.

4. WHEN THE PUSH IS BEING DISTANT-- She makes jokes when you try to talk about serious things. She tells you to lighten up. She may use drugs or alcohol to force herself to emotionally distance herself from you. She probably dated guys before that lied and told her they loved her when they did not. After she started to genuinely care about them, she found they were using her for sex or they just needed her to fill their own egos and make them feel important, but they walked away easily and she was left hurt. Either way, she is not going to be hurt again, not by you, not by anyone. She is protecting herself from you. She doesn't know if she can trust you.

5. WHEN THE PUSH IS SLEEPING WITH/DATING OTHER GUYS -- Look to see if she has a long dating history. Perhaps she uses guys to fix her ego. She is experiencing a lack of self-esteem. "Look," she is saying, "I am important. He is sexier than you. He makes more money than you. He is more educated than you. And HE likes me. HE knows how important I am, even if you don't". She is trying to prove to herself that she can do better than you, that she doesn't need you... because she does.

6. WHEN THE PUSH IS TALKING ABOUT HER SOULMATE -- She has experienced real love. She knows what it is like to breathe his presence. She knows what it is like to have unconditional, eternal love. She knows what it is like to be willing to die for someone. She wants to feel it again, but is scared that there is ONE AND ONLY ONE person for her and she already ruined it with him. She wants you to reassure her that maybe the universe will allow such a miracle to occur more than once for a person.

Of course, there are times when a woman pushes you away because she really just doesn't like you. But, if you feel a push/pull, if it seems like she really loves you and doesn't want to push you away, realize that there is probably one of these issues (or several) in motion.

And, I don't mean to imply that it is your job to fix these problems when they arise. A person can only be so patient and so understanding before it becomes masochistic. On the contrary, I am trying to tell you that when you see these problems occuring, you should know IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with you. It is about her. And once she heals herself, these problems with disappear on their own.

Blogblast for Peace 2009

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” ~Peace Pilgrim

Today, I cannot help but think about my ex-boyfriend, Sami. He grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. When we dated, he was in his early 20s. From the moment he was born until the moment we met, his homeland had been in the middle of the 30-year Ethiopian/Eritrean war.

Most of that time, Sami's father was the lead General in charge of the Ethiopian forces.

When Sami was in his late teens, the Eritrean forces surrounded his father in an abandoned building. His father put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. When I asked Sami why his father had killed himself, he said, "You don't understand. They would have tortured him to death and then drug his dead body through the streets. He was already dead before he pulled the trigger".

Naively, I said, "Well, at least he spared your family from watching him being drug through the streets". Sami took a breath. "No, we weren't spared from watching that at all. I watched all three days as they pulled him back and forth".

One of Sami's best friends was named Ziggy. Ziggy grew up, oddly, in Eritrea. He lived his entire life on the opposite side of the war. Ziggy's father and older brothers had been shot and drug out to the doorstep of his home. The soldiers told the family that they could not bury the bodies or they would be killed. The family was forced to let the bodies fester in the heat for nearly a month before they could remove them.

A few years later, his mother and sisters were raped in front of him by Ethiopean soldiers and then slowly mutilated (while they were still alive). He ran from the house, with the screams of his mother in his ears. He walked for days, on his own, to get to a distant relative's house. Thankfully, the relative got him out of the country.

In a small rural town, these two people found one another. An ignorant college administrator saw they were from the same area and put them together as dorm roommates.

Years after we met, the General that replaced Sami's father looked out upon the extensive trenches the Eritrean army had constructed, and famously said, "The Eritreans are good at digging trenches and we are good at converting trenches into graves. They, too, know this. We know each other very well."

The thing I remember most about it all was Ziggy. He often openly cried about the carnage he had seen. Once, when we were talking about his friendship with Sami, I said, "Well, perhaps you find some peace in the fact that Eritrea won the war in the end".

Ziggy said words I will never forget: "There are no winners in war. Only those that suffer and those that suffer more".

I Am Chicken Poo

I like to think of myself as fertilizer (i.e. chicken poo) in my relationships with friends and family. I don't plant the seeds. I have no control over what my friends were "meant" to be. I don't know if my friends were meant to be tall oak trees or tiny buttercups. I don't know if they were meant to be corn stalks or ivy. I do not prune them. I try to allow them to decide when it is time to let parts of themselves fall away. I do not know when they should change their leaves from green to red. I have no idea when they should shed their leaves altogether. I am not a stake in the ground, guiding them to grow straighter or fuller or further from the ground. I don't say if they should bend to the right to get more light or twist around a troublesome weed. I am just the chicken poo. I help them grow.

Sometimes it means that people surprise me because they grow into something I did not expect. Sometimes I look at a tiny seed and think I will see a flower, but it grows into a giant oak tree. Sometimes I think the tree will be laden with fruit and, instead, it loses all its leaves.

That is, I think, the point. I can't say what path a friend was meant to walk. I can only hold her hand as she walks it. Encouraging him to follow his soul and go where he feels he was meant to go is my sole (and soul) purpose.

The Secret to Running a Company

For years, I worked for a market research company "helping companies make better business decisions". For seven years in a row, a certain bank (who, due to my fear of litigation, shall remain nameless) hired my company to conduct a one million dollar study. Each year, we surveyed 100,000 customers and 100,000 non-users, conducted impressive regression analyses and wrote a massive report complete with charts and obtuse statistical calculations.

Each year, I identified the same seven or eight things the company should change. Each year, I made a logical, clear and concise argument for the cost savings it would generate for the company. Each year, I presented the report to the CEO.

Each following year, I realized the company had never implemented the suggestions I made.

One year, I was particularly frustrated. As I stood to make the annual presentation, I said, "Look. I don't even know why you hire us. I do all this work every year, tell you the exact same thing and OBVIOUSLY you aren't listening to me. You are wasting your money, my time, your customers' time. I don't know why I am even giving this to you. You aren't going to listen to me anyway".

The CEO started to chuckle. He said, "You are correct. I am going to go back to my office, hand it out to my board of directors and file it on my shelf until next year. But, it isn't because you have done anything wrong. I am very confident your research is unbiased. I am sure you collected it well. Your arguments are logical. Your charts are very pretty. It is worded well. It makes sense and seems right. But, you are wrong. This is an important life lesson and the secret to running a company: collect the data, research the facts, listen to the experts, and ignore it all and go with your gut".

He went on the explain that he paid for the survey because it made his customers feel better about using the bank when we asked their opinion, that some of the non-customers became customers because they were impressed that the company did the survey, that his Board of Directors was comforted by the existence of the study and the reputation of my research company. But at the end of the day, my report wasn't the truth. It was just my best guess at the truth. "The best managers don't guess at the truth, they feel the truth", he said.

Years later, I attended a conference for women leaders. Female CEOs from several Fortune 500 companies presented the qualities they felt had brought them to their current position. They all agreed that the #1 secret to running a company was the ability to "feel it", "to just know", to "sense the right decision in your gut". Each of them talked about making decisions that defied logic, making career moves that seemed like career suicide, taking a risk when the odds seemed against them. Each time, they said, they had made the decision because they "knew" it was the right decision even though it wasn't at all logical.

And, somehow, that had made all the difference.

Sometimes I Do Things Besides Blogging...

Like... uh... tweeting...

http://twitter.com/mycrotchetyson

The View from 30,000 Feet

(Like the picture I took while flying over Kansas???)

It is all about perspective, isn't it? Sometimes when we are in the screaming chaos of a situation, it helps to back up and look at it all from a silent distance.

Lately, I have been a horrible meditator. In the past, there were times that I meditated for eight hours a day and craved more. Lately, however, I can barely manage 10 minutes. Last week, I attended Quaker meeting and sat for a while. Then, I got up to check the coffee in the kitchen because I am the clerk of hospitality and it is my responsibility to be on top of such things. Then, I went back to meditating... and got up to check on the book I reserved. It wasn't there. Then, I went back to meditate... and got up to make sure I filled out the curriculum log last time I taught First Day School. Stopped to have a conversation with someone in the hall... then, back to meditate. Stare at the light from the ceiling for a moment and make my grocery list and ta dah! ... the meeting was over.

(whew!)

The next week, I skipped.

Truth be told, I was running from the silence of my own mind. I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts. I didn't want my mind to force me up to that 30,000 foot view.

But, as fate would have it, I found myself on the way to a conference, trapped in an airplane with no movie option and a terribly boring book. And the silence screamed at me.

Trapped at 30,000 feet, I had no where to run. And so, I stopped running.