Distance replaces close relationships in many ways, but when the memory of them remains, you know you’ve shared a resilient bond.
Today is my older sister’s birthday. Although I know it, there were years when I didn’t note it. I let it go by without a call or a card, choosing distance over a close relationship.
She was tough to live up to, and I wasn’t up for the task. Like a tree, I could have lived in her shadow, or grown out and around. To survive, a therapist told me that at times, distance replaces close relationships for the health of everyone. When they aren’t truthful, reciprocal, or supportive leave; if there are lies, unfairness, or manipulation, leave.
Unfortunately, little kids can’t. And they are in an unfair relationship, so here’s hoping their parents are truthful and nurturing. When chaos rules, kids come to believe this is normal, and other such things tarnish their souls.
Although there was a long, fraught history of trying to make it work, it didn’t. In my opinion, we were simply incompatible, like two electrons that simply must be as far apart as possible. Insert shrug here, for sometimes, life fractures and you must carry on.
Driven by Forces
We were as different as our parents, and they got divorced. They chose each other; siblings do not, and they got divorced. Everyone gets divorced, I’m told, as distance replaces close relationships.
Relationships are difficult to get right. This is my experience with liars and manipulators who are ensuring that they don’t get the short end of the stick. Without those skills, I got the short end of the stick – the bedroom in the unfinished basement, for example, while the four other people I lived with enjoyed the warm conditions two floors above me.
When relationships are simply experiences of unfairness, manipulations, and untruths, you can keep relationships, thank you very much.
As an introvert with men on pause, I’m like Martha in Poor Things – so interested in what’s between my ears and what great philosophers and down-to-earth truth-tellers have to say about it that I’m fine solo.
Completely solo, distance replaces close relationships to keep me safe, if it may not present the same opportunities for personal growth. I’ve had enough fodder for growth as it is. I’m still working through it, like an obese person working through the calories pre-eaten and carried on the body, everywhere I go.
Becoming conscious of these forces guiding my decisions and behaviors, I can see how in the past, I’ve tried hiding behind someone to keep the rest at bay. I hid behind my older sister and her friends, until the inevitable day when I was told to go make my own friends.
Still, I did not. I just choose someone different to hide behind, to follow. It was boring, but safe. Acceptable. Did not drawn any unwanted attention.
And attention was unwanted, because it was violent and abusive, or otherwise painful and disturbing.
A Theory of Personality
To each our own personality, which might be biological, experiential, or environmental in origin.
There came the day when I realized that “myself” wasn’t mine at all, but a result of being pushed, pulled, and otherwise bent into being someone more preferable than my natural tendencies.
Relief was living in accordance with natural tendencies, but that was only acceptable when I was solo.
So be it, I finally agree, without anger, disappointment, or any dings to my ego, but rather surrender to a force much larger than me or you.
According to pioneers like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, we get our needs met, the highest of which is human potential.
In Quality of Thought, this is my second principle: Contribute Uniquely.
Do only what you can do, and if you can hire someone else to do it, do that. As you discover that you need something done and there’s no one you can hire, you’ve met your core purpose and unique way of contributing to this world.
With scarcity comes value, so now you can charge premium prices.
Lucky you, but it’s the journey available to anyone willing to take no for an answer, willing to find new communities and tribes, willing to break out and rely only on themselves, surrendering to whatever that will bring.
It’s courage, confidence, and the faith that contributing uniquely is the essence of your purpose, so come what may. It’s better to die pursuing your heart’s desire and your soul’s content than to live long shrouded in safe white walls.
You can’t live long fawning to someone else – the loss of authenticity is replaced with depression. A depression so deep that it enables you to think, “Who is this self that I want to kill?”
Attachment Theory
Early relationships form us. This is the core idea behind psychodynamic theory.
If our primary caregiver is responsive and available, kids feel safe venturing into the unknown.
You might think that two siblings have the same caregivers, and therefore should turn out the same. But actually, the first child has the undivided attention, the immediate jumping up when there is feedback from the child. The child receives consistent, timely solutions to their needs. The child develops trust.
The poor caregiver now has two. Attention gets divided. Patience is introduced as a necessity. The second child understands negotiations and sacrifices, not trust. Trust in having to get less than the child needs, this is what they learn.
The third child would have had it worse, but lo, it was the first boy! A boy!
The last child, thank God the last, has all these sources to sort and filter that didn’t exist for that first one. The last one gets diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, because it was a source of entertainment, not a call for nurturing.
With trust, that first child goes out bravely to test the world. With sacrifice, the second child grudgingly heads out, the insecurity obvious to the world. But where this attachment is insecure, seeking validation and approval, the alternate is avoidant, seeking to prove self-reliance and developing discomfort with intimacy.
When the insecure pairs up with the avoidant, it’s the epitome of opposites attracting – opposites who can never satisfy the needs of the other. However, it is the prime learning ground for personal growth. Look at the other and solve, “How can I be more like that?”
The avoidant can learn emotional intimacy. The insecure can learn self-reliance. The truth is, we are never too old to heal our personalities.
Birth Order Theory
No two children are born into the same family. The family changes with each addition, responds differently to each individual, and experiences different sibling relationships.
The first born gets brand new things. Hand-me-downs go to the rest. The first might develop an idea that they are deserving, entitled to nothing but the newest and the best. The rest develop a belief that they are not deserving, they never get to feel that crispness of new clothes, they never get the newest toys. They might develop humility, or a distaste for consumerism, or a deep knowingness that they contain multitudes not apparent on the outside, where the first might develop an unhealthy belief in their own entitlement.
Then there’s sibling rivalry. And parents who don’t see and don’t know, but rule anyway. Justice isn’t something to revere, it’s something to steer. Unfairness in decisions, power donated to the eldest without any more rationality than mere age. Confusion, explanations that don’t make sense, but you are expected to take them.
Decades and distance are the remedies for siblings who don’t provide added support for getting through the world, but instead create additional barriers and challenges.
“Why can’t my kids just get along?” my dad asks, but he is the one who always pits us against each other and stokes competition. Offering explanations like, “You can’t get braces because your sister got dance lessons.” Did I mention she got braces too?
Why rail at what you designed, especially when you are an engineer and did much more to make it happen than you are willing to admit, but everyone can observe.
Forgiveness comes from the realization that it’s not okay, but I am.
How Much?
The question is not whether you are governed or influenced in these ways; the question is how much of the time are you unconscious of it?
How much of your daily life are you spending checked out, going with pre-ordained decisions that may not actually be working for you?
It’s great when you’ve got productivity on rails and the success machine on autopilot, but when you speed ahead without knowing where you are going, you could end up straight into a wall. If the driver is angry, volatile, and desperate, that might be exactly where she’s headed.
While you cannot control other people, you can control your responses to their behaviours. You control how much effort it’s worth investing, if at all. You control your boundaries, what you let in and what you don’t, including who.
Lastly, you control your health habits, so when people aren’t healthy for you, get a new habit. Create a new assessment of your effort, the fortitude of your boundaries, or the quality of your responses.
How much is it worth, and what is the “worth” worth mentioning? If everything is here to serve you, at your command, then what is the value not yet noticed or recognized?
When distance replaces close relationships, space is created to learn, to grow, to take a second chance to do one better. For pain is never for nothing; pain is for noticing. When you notice a relationship is the source of pain, it’s time to do something about it. Resilient bonds don’t break, but break you open to heal, to grow, to thrive.
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