Sans Fig Leaf
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"Too close?"
18 January, 2007
An old friend once told me about an incident that happened when he was a teen. His parents had recently divorced, and his mother had started attending a support group. One night she brought home a workbook which included a "stress index" test. It purported to measure how much stress you were enduring.
She left it laying out on the kitchen table, so the next morning, while eating his breakfast, my friend took the test, and was only moderately surprised that he came out at "Super stressed -- danger to health." But he shrugged it off and headed to school. When he got home from his after-school job he found his mother, distraught, waiting for him. He'd left his test on the table, and she was freaked because his stress index was significantly higher than hers. She hadn't perceived that her three teen-aged kids were under much stress at all.
As they talked it out, she realized that part of her perception problem was that she thought of many of the problems the family faced as her problems alone. The mortgage was her responsibility, for example, so her kids shouldn't be stressing about it--or so she thought.
Another part of the problem was that she wasn't counting all the relationships. The test gave points for various things that put pressure on us or make us worry. If two different close friends or loved ones are facing a serious illness, for instance, the test gave twice as many points as for only one. The reasoning being that when we are aware that people we love are facing difficulties, we worry about them, which adds to our stress.
So when his mom thought about how many of his loved ones had recently undergone a divorce, she had only counted herself. But the kids would have two loved ones that had recently divorced -- their mother and their father. Once he and she talked it out, she understood that she had known about all the things going on in his life, she just hadn't given them all the same weight as similar events in her own life.
We believe that we know what our loved ones are going through, or how they feel, because they are our loved ones. The more we love them, the more we think we know. But sometimes we're too close to see their viewpoint, or even to see them for who they are. This is particularly true the longer we've known them--even more so if there is a significant age difference. No matter how old we get, for instance, our grandmothers will see us as the baby whose diapers they once changed.
It's not just parents or grandparents who get these blind spots. Adult children can have big blind spots about their parents. Some of this is simply a form of sanity-preserving denial. We may be fine with the notion of a widowed or divorced parent dating, but we don't want to contemplate them having a physical relationship with their new significant other.
We do it to our friends, too. It's easy to pigeonhole them, to see them forever the way they were when we first became close. Maybe it's a form of nostalgia, maybe it's wishful thinking, or maybe it's a coping mechanism.
Sometimes we do it, subconciously, for selfish reasons. We don't want to think of our parents growing old and having declining health. We want our good friendship to always remain strong. Or we just have too much stress in our life at the time to take on any more.
Even when our motives aren't selfish, not noticing important changes in our loved ones lives is seldom a good thing. If we only see a relationship from our viewpoint, we have less than half the picture.
Of course, it's possible to go overboard. What we mean as attentiveness may come across as prying. When we try to offer support, they may feel we're trying to run their lives. Or we may discover something that we would really rather have not known.
Relationships are like gardens. Warm feelings and good intentions aren't enough; all relationships require attention and maintenance--and a little room to grow.
--Henry Winkler
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