One of the persistent amusing (to me) ironies is that one of the most profoundly true things I've ever heard came from a damn Pirates of the Caribbean movie, where Jack Sparrow states The only rules that truly matter are these: what a man can do, and what a man can't do.
It's something that I've found utterly necessarily useful in negotiating human relationships especially: what it comes down to is what people can and can't do, can and can't live with. And sometimes it doesn't matter HOW much you love someone, your needs and what they can do, or their needs and what you can do, do not match. Sometimes you can compromise things into something you can both live with, but sometimes you just can't, and this relationship just isn't a good idea.
And it's up to each adult to decide and define what they can and can't do or live with, and we only get to decide that for ourselves.* "Should" and similar ideas only come into play after we've established "can/can't".
On a personal example, I can't handle a relationship with someone who's closeted when it comes to being with a woman. I respect and am deeply compassionate to the fact that some people have very good reasons to stay in the closet and even that coming out of the closet could be life-threatening: it just also means that this same circumstance means we cannot have a romantic relationship. I cannot handle being a secret, and cannot remotely begin to handle even the slightest implication that a partner is ashamed of me, so it's just not possible. Incompatible needs.
Or, more specifically: I can't handle those things without it seeping into the rest of my life and ending up with me being angry, insecure, resentful and bitter, and I can't be marinating in those feelings without it affecting my behaviour and my feelings towards other people in the direction of "and now we will turn M into a hateful vicious cow". Because there are a lot of things we are physically capable of enduring that we are not capable of enduring without becoming damaged, often ugly people, often in ways which in turn actually sabotage the thing we're enduring the bad things for.
(If one resents one's partner, the chances of one not having that come out in some way are very, very low, for example.)
The bit that gets unspoken because nobody likes to look at it is, sometimes that means that you can't have what you want. It's sort of like the inevitable side-effect of "I want to become less of a doormat and people-pleaser" is that some people will be less pleased with you. To be less conflict-averse is to risk more conflict. Etc. We're trained to believe that if a situation cannot be ended happily, it's because someone's done something wrong: that's not how it works. You can do everything right and still lose.
So yeah.
(This is totally Sam and Madlen, in the story: they share a huge amount of history, they love each other intensely, and they both helped the other turn into a better, fuller, stronger human being, and at the end of that process their needs for baseline happy life were so incompatible that they could not stay together and be healthy. And that sucked a lot.)
*all exceptions apply only to people who for one reason or another don't have the capacity to adult. And that's not bad or wrong either, it just makes the situation different. Clint and Natasha can both adult, in their relationship, and so the normal adult responsibilities apply; Bucky cannot actually adult, which makes Steve's responsibilities and abilities different. Back when Natasha first came to SHIELD, she was a messed up eighteen year old, so Clint's assessment of her adulting abilities was kind of suspended and involved a lot of assessment time, until he was actually sure she was up to handling her own basic human integrity.
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regna
ramble re: essay
Date: 2015-10-16 04:18 pm (UTC)It's something that I've found utterly necessarily useful in negotiating human relationships especially: what it comes down to is what people can and can't do, can and can't live with. And sometimes it doesn't matter HOW much you love someone, your needs and what they can do, or their needs and what you can do, do not match. Sometimes you can compromise things into something you can both live with, but sometimes you just can't, and this relationship just isn't a good idea.
And it's up to each adult to decide and define what they can and can't do or live with, and we only get to decide that for ourselves.* "Should" and similar ideas only come into play after we've established "can/can't".
On a personal example, I can't handle a relationship with someone who's closeted when it comes to being with a woman. I respect and am deeply compassionate to the fact that some people have very good reasons to stay in the closet and even that coming out of the closet could be life-threatening: it just also means that this same circumstance means we cannot have a romantic relationship. I cannot handle being a secret, and cannot remotely begin to handle even the slightest implication that a partner is ashamed of me, so it's just not possible. Incompatible needs.
Or, more specifically: I can't handle those things without it seeping into the rest of my life and ending up with me being angry, insecure, resentful and bitter, and I can't be marinating in those feelings without it affecting my behaviour and my feelings towards other people in the direction of "and now we will turn M into a hateful vicious cow". Because there are a lot of things we are physically capable of enduring that we are not capable of enduring without becoming damaged, often ugly people, often in ways which in turn actually sabotage the thing we're enduring the bad things for.
(If one resents one's partner, the chances of one not having that come out in some way are very, very low, for example.)
The bit that gets unspoken because nobody likes to look at it is, sometimes that means that you can't have what you want. It's sort of like the inevitable side-effect of "I want to become less of a doormat and people-pleaser" is that some people will be less pleased with you. To be less conflict-averse is to risk more conflict. Etc. We're trained to believe that if a situation cannot be ended happily, it's because someone's done something wrong: that's not how it works. You can do everything right and still lose.
So yeah.
(This is totally Sam and Madlen, in the story: they share a huge amount of history, they love each other intensely, and they both helped the other turn into a better, fuller, stronger human being, and at the end of that process their needs for baseline happy life were so incompatible that they could not stay together and be healthy. And that sucked a lot.)
*all exceptions apply only to people who for one reason or another don't have the capacity to adult. And that's not bad or wrong either, it just makes the situation different. Clint and Natasha can both adult, in their relationship, and so the normal adult responsibilities apply; Bucky cannot actually adult, which makes Steve's responsibilities and abilities different. Back when Natasha first came to SHIELD, she was a messed up eighteen year old, so Clint's assessment of her adulting abilities was kind of suspended and involved a lot of assessment time, until he was actually sure she was up to handling her own basic human integrity.