Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." I have loved Robert Frost's poetry for its bluntness and symbolism, and the fact that he was still alive in my lifetime.
Not sure I agree with him on this one. In modern terms, it's enabling the wayward. Screw up. Do bad things. But when you go home, they will take you in with open arms?
I watch Dr. Phil daily, who also deals with people who have made it easy for the wayward to come home and do nothing. I get it. Mostly parents don't want to kick their kids out into the cold, cruel world with nowhere to go, but when does the caring stop? What are the boundaries?
Family is everything to me. I have spent 100% of my life involved with those I love. I have my quirks, and so do they, but we've managed, somehow. I have loved ones who have lied to me, stolen from me, manipulated others, and made life miserable. There is a point at which, eventually, I can no longer trust these people. I fear it makes me appear as a negative person, but that's not true. I feel that everyone deserves a second chance, but when chances go into three, four, five, and more, the time has come to realize that there can be no trust in the other person. That doesn't mean that they should be excluded from one's life; only that they cannot be trusted. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The "normal" order of things is:
1. Person does wrong.
2. Person regrets doing wrong.
3. Person makes amends...apologizes to the victim of his/her actions, and finds ways to make up for the offense.
4. Person takes action to make certain he/she never does the offending action again.
Sounds great on paper, but by the end of the whole process, years have passed. Maybe MANY years, and in the course of those years, other injuries have happened. Nothing is ever fixed. An apology--even a pseudo-apology--carries with it the expectation that the offending behavior will never happen again. When it does happen again, it becomes part of a pattern that is indicative that the offender has no intention of changing his/her behavior. I could write a book about the nuances of that.
Once upon a time, I reasoned that a person who was hurting me maybe didn't know that what he/she was doing was hurtful; so I told the person as calmly as I could, "That really hurts my feelings." Know what? The hurtful behavior didn't stop. What did I learn from that? The message was clear that my feelings didn't matter. I either had to tolerate bad treatment or get out of the relationship--easier to do when the person isn't family, but so much harder when it is.
Trust isn't a fragile thing until it is broken, many times over. If you feel hurt, betrayed, insulted, or helpless in the face of the way you are being treated in a relationship, you need to find the door. No one in a dedicated relationship deserves that, and no one should have to suffer from it. Once you get out, stay out. We can still care for people without letting them mess us up by being charitable toward that. Having a backbone can be difficult when others are exerting emotional extortion on us. No one wants to put their kids on the street or kick out a spouse, but what other options are there in order to maintain any kind of self-respect?
Trust means that you give someone else permission to care about you. Trust means that the someone else will take care of your heart, even when knowing the "real you". If that situation changes, a trustworthy person will tell you in order to keep things honest. When trust in someone else fails, you come to understand that your security and happiness can only come from you, no matter what else happens, and you have to surround yourself with positivity. Forgiveness can give up the anger but not the reality. Disrespect is never acceptable. Mistreatment is never acceptable. Betrayal of trust is never acceptable. I decided long ago that I didn't want to die with regrets for the way I treated anyone. And once upon a time, I figured out that I didn't want to die being mistreated, either.
Being strong doesn't mean lashing out. It means accepting whatever other people want for themselves but rejecting the same things for me. Robert Frost got it wrong on this one!
No comments:
Post a Comment