Dear O.: I know I've been hassling you lately to get rid of some clothes and to go shopping with me. I know it's a pain, because I was not always on this side of the great divide between the keeper of old clothes and the promoter of new clothes...
I grew up hearing my mother complain regularly about the sagging necks on my father's t-shirts, the frayed edges of his beloved red sweatshirt, the poor condition of his well-aged tennis shoes. He has always disliked shopping and getting rid of old things. I shared his dislike, and always felt worried about my own well-loved shoes and t-shirts when his were criticized. Of course I assumed I would never be in the position of telling my husband, "You need new shoes, and that shirt has got to go."
Meeting O. only reinforced this expectation. When we started dating, he was better dressed than me: always in a well-ironed polo shirt and black (cargo) pants. A common outfit for me, busy Californian college student that I was, was still a t-shirt from summer Day Camp plus a pair of patched jeans.
What I didn't realize was that O. was not entirely responsible for his wardrobe. In retrospect, it is obvious that an engineering student, living at home with a mother who cares more about his appearance than he does, would not be doing his own ironing, and that if his mother likes shopping (which O.'s does), she would regularly offer him new clothes. It is obvious now that as her responsibility and opportunity to clothe O. were severed by his moving out and our marriage, O.'s wardrobe would lose its crispness. At the time, however, I was oblivious.
Thus, in the past year and a half, as holes have gaped wider and wider in each of O.'s three pairs of shoes, admitting water, mud and the occasional pebble, I was surprised to find myself saying, "Honey, how about getting a new pair of shoes?" and then, "I'd like to buy you a new pair of shoes," and finally, "You have to get new shoes!" As small holes opened at the pocket-corners of one t-shirt and then another, I found myself asking, "How attached are you to that shirt?" I was shocked to discover that it really does bother me to see two tiny circles of skin peeping through his shirt. I can't say exactly why it bothers me, but it does.
Somehow on the other side of that age-long debate between the keeper and the tosser. It's a strange place to be, but I feel all right about it.
And O., we have to go shopping again sometime. I'm sorry.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
In which I give thanks and remember
For basil plants growing on my windowsills despite the cold outside;
for a well-stocked and orderly bookshelf;
for the amarillys on my counter, with four glorious red blossoms open:
For summer at Berkeley four years ago,
sleeping on my friend K.'s tile floor and baking peach & plum pie;
for a midnight walk and a young stag that bounded across the sidewalk and the street,
into another garden--
For the Linguistics Institute, three weeks of glutting myself on ideas;
for dozens of papers read and learned from,
for classrooms full of linguists (students and professors)
from all over the country, gathered in one place--
For naps on the lush green lawn in the golden sun, between classes:
For pumpkin pie and knowing how to make it, confidently;
for my mother's expertise in the kitchen
and her persistence in passing it on to me:
For my own kitchen, and a house to myself,
shared with O. and the bunnies and no one else;
for O.,
for rabbits--
For friends we shared the house with
and for friendship surviving ten weeks of sharing
one bathroom and one refrigerator--
For a marriage that is so much easier and happier this Thanksgiving
than it was a year ago:
For two casserole dishes of borscht in the refrigerator, and a huge pot of turkey juk,
so that I won't have to cook for days;
For Pastor T. who invited us to his Thanksgiving,
and for all the church friends there (especially the vibrant single people),
and for the scrumptious turkey and potatoes and carrots and even parsnip we ate;
for the turkey skin and bones and scraps of meat that T. did not want,
which I brought home and boiled into juk;
For the telephone that let me call my father and mother to ask for the juk recipe;
for my mother, for my father:
I feel the abundance in my life today, and felt it yesterday, and will feel it tomorrow. The season is turning. It will be a strange season, but it is familiar this year. I remember the leaves changing last year, I remember the furnace we struggled to ignite. I remember learning to sleep in the same bed as O., how to regulate my body temperature so I wouldn't wake up drenched in sweat as I first did when I wore the warm pajamas I depended on during all the winters before. I remember Thanksgiving on the east coast, far from my old friends and the places I called home. Now I call this place home, too, though in my dreams I am always in California.
I remember, not so long ago, when I organized my own life without consulting anyone about my schedule. I remember feeling my life was my own. I remember watching my money carefully because there wasn't any coming in. That season has come back. Wednesday was O.'s last day of work and now we are living off of savings and my small income. Suddenly the money I bring in babysitting and working for the church really counts, and suddenly I feel so much more confident of my place in the household economy, more entitled to my opinion and my decisions. The season of confidence and independence is returning, and I am grateful (though I know something is off in my emotional logic).
Also I remember, not long ago at all, writing essays, emailing professors, impressing people. I remember understanding, teaching, explaining, leading. That season is coming back, too. I am writing my statement of purpose and remembering I've done lots of awesome things and I really am qualified, and I'm scanning and uploading my transcript and noticing with pleasure how monotonously perfect the grades are (marred only by one A-, the semester I started dating O.). I'm corresponding with my favorite professors and feeling their love. This is strange and it is familiar, and it is a promise of things to come. I do want to go to grad school. Learning is what I was made for.
The leaves have changed and they are beautiful. Soon they will fall, but when they do, I will be grateful for that beauty, too, and I will remember that the season will change again, and spring will come. It is already on its way.
for a well-stocked and orderly bookshelf;
for the amarillys on my counter, with four glorious red blossoms open:
I give thanks.
For summer at Berkeley four years ago,
sleeping on my friend K.'s tile floor and baking peach & plum pie;
for a midnight walk and a young stag that bounded across the sidewalk and the street,
into another garden--
For the Linguistics Institute, three weeks of glutting myself on ideas;
for dozens of papers read and learned from,
for classrooms full of linguists (students and professors)
from all over the country, gathered in one place--
For naps on the lush green lawn in the golden sun, between classes:
I give thanks.
That I can remember so clearly, that I can remember at all--
I give thanks.
For pumpkin pie and knowing how to make it, confidently;
for my mother's expertise in the kitchen
and her persistence in passing it on to me:
I give thanks.
For my own kitchen, and a house to myself,
shared with O. and the bunnies and no one else;
for O.,
for rabbits--
For friends we shared the house with
and for friendship surviving ten weeks of sharing
one bathroom and one refrigerator--
For a marriage that is so much easier and happier this Thanksgiving
than it was a year ago:
I give thanks.
For two casserole dishes of borscht in the refrigerator, and a huge pot of turkey juk,
so that I won't have to cook for days;
For Pastor T. who invited us to his Thanksgiving,
and for all the church friends there (especially the vibrant single people),
and for the scrumptious turkey and potatoes and carrots and even parsnip we ate;
for the turkey skin and bones and scraps of meat that T. did not want,
which I brought home and boiled into juk;
For the telephone that let me call my father and mother to ask for the juk recipe;
for my mother, for my father:
I give thanks.
* * *
I feel the abundance in my life today, and felt it yesterday, and will feel it tomorrow. The season is turning. It will be a strange season, but it is familiar this year. I remember the leaves changing last year, I remember the furnace we struggled to ignite. I remember learning to sleep in the same bed as O., how to regulate my body temperature so I wouldn't wake up drenched in sweat as I first did when I wore the warm pajamas I depended on during all the winters before. I remember Thanksgiving on the east coast, far from my old friends and the places I called home. Now I call this place home, too, though in my dreams I am always in California.
I remember, not so long ago, when I organized my own life without consulting anyone about my schedule. I remember feeling my life was my own. I remember watching my money carefully because there wasn't any coming in. That season has come back. Wednesday was O.'s last day of work and now we are living off of savings and my small income. Suddenly the money I bring in babysitting and working for the church really counts, and suddenly I feel so much more confident of my place in the household economy, more entitled to my opinion and my decisions. The season of confidence and independence is returning, and I am grateful (though I know something is off in my emotional logic).
Also I remember, not long ago at all, writing essays, emailing professors, impressing people. I remember understanding, teaching, explaining, leading. That season is coming back, too. I am writing my statement of purpose and remembering I've done lots of awesome things and I really am qualified, and I'm scanning and uploading my transcript and noticing with pleasure how monotonously perfect the grades are (marred only by one A-, the semester I started dating O.). I'm corresponding with my favorite professors and feeling their love. This is strange and it is familiar, and it is a promise of things to come. I do want to go to grad school. Learning is what I was made for.
The leaves have changed and they are beautiful. Soon they will fall, but when they do, I will be grateful for that beauty, too, and I will remember that the season will change again, and spring will come. It is already on its way.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Istanbul [Turkey, pt. 1]
We walked by the Bosphorus, looking across the moving water to another continent. The sun was setting, and the heat of mid-morning, when we stood in a serpentine column of tourists waiting to enter the Hagia Sophia, listening to chatter in a dozen languages, and hoping my mother's doomsday forecasts of waiting here for an hour would prove overly pessimistic, and the sun shone directly down on us despite the tall palm trees nearby--that heat was a distant memory.
The water lapped on chunks of broken stone and concrete. The occasional fisherman stood by his rod and line, waiting for movement. On the sidewalk, couples strolled and children skipped. It was my first evening in my husband's country, and my ears strained to catch the few words of Turkish I know. Çok, deniz, çocuk, iyi aksamlar... I held O.'s hand and tried to grasp the fact that I was really here, in this place from my tenth grade geography tests, in the nation O. once worshiped, in his homeland, this place where the continents kiss.
Here, so far from home, but here, with my sister (the person who is most often in my dreams, more often that O. still), my parents (Who more strongly evokes home than the people who made that house, that country, your home?), my husband (who is becoming my home, who is my new home).
It was the beginning of a long trip, and I did not take any photos, because my sister and mother were doing it for me. Now the trip is over and I am sitting in my own home, and I don't have those pictures because home, for the moment, is on the Atlantic side of the country, and not with my parents and their camera on the Pacific.
I mark my places by the seas that nourish them.
That night we walked by the Bosphorus, and thought about crossing the Sea of Marmora the next morning. That night we walked by the strait between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea. That night the voluptuous moon cast her shining reflection on the water, and S. took pictures, and O. held my hand, and that night was lovely.
The water lapped on chunks of broken stone and concrete. The occasional fisherman stood by his rod and line, waiting for movement. On the sidewalk, couples strolled and children skipped. It was my first evening in my husband's country, and my ears strained to catch the few words of Turkish I know. Çok, deniz, çocuk, iyi aksamlar... I held O.'s hand and tried to grasp the fact that I was really here, in this place from my tenth grade geography tests, in the nation O. once worshiped, in his homeland, this place where the continents kiss.
Here, so far from home, but here, with my sister (the person who is most often in my dreams, more often that O. still), my parents (Who more strongly evokes home than the people who made that house, that country, your home?), my husband (who is becoming my home, who is my new home).
It was the beginning of a long trip, and I did not take any photos, because my sister and mother were doing it for me. Now the trip is over and I am sitting in my own home, and I don't have those pictures because home, for the moment, is on the Atlantic side of the country, and not with my parents and their camera on the Pacific.
I mark my places by the seas that nourish them.
That night we walked by the Bosphorus, and thought about crossing the Sea of Marmora the next morning. That night we walked by the strait between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea. That night the voluptuous moon cast her shining reflection on the water, and S. took pictures, and O. held my hand, and that night was lovely.
Who am I?
I need to write about my race/ethnicity/culture, but I have no idea where to start. I can't make up my mind how I feel about the various cultures I partake in, or whether I can claim to belong to any of them. Genetically, I am half white, half Korean. Socially, this makes me neither white nor Asian. As a child, I lived in Japan, where I stuck out as an obvious foreigner. There, children demanded that I teach them English, but simultaneously asked how I could be an American since my hair isn't blond. Then we moved back to California, where I did all I could to conceal my differences. I avoided mentioning that I'd lived in Japan. My sister, who may not have been as discreet, had classmates make fun of her "Chinese eyes."
My memories are a patchwork of confusion and exclusion. In Japan I was a gaijin; in America I was an Asian. In Japan I counted myself a staunch American, but in California I realized I didn't fit in here either. Only when I moved to New York for college did it become apparent that ten years in California had made their mark, and I felt entitled to call myself a Californian. Finding out more about the way things are in the rest of the country, I only became more set in my Californian identity, declining to identify myself with the country as a whole. Yet now, married to a Turk who doesn't really believe in democracy, I find myself defending American ideals and institutions with a patriot's indignation.
What am I to say about myself? Who am I? American, Californian; Japanese by adoption, Korean by heritage, German somewhere in the tangle of genealogies; a smidge French after my term abroad in my teens; turning Turkish in infinitesimal adjustments to my husband. How much of what? How many dimensions of identity are we talking about? Genetic, ethnic, cultural, familial, geographical, ... On each dimension, what would be the percentages? Racially, I am half Caucasian and half Asian: 50% each. Ethnically? Is that the same as racially or genetically? What about my culture--is that about food and dress and language, or about the deep, subconscious structures, the filters that determine how I communicate and what I expect? what I value and what I condemn, what I feel entitled to and how I respond if I don't get it? Impossible to determine which cultures influence me to what degree--Korean, Japanese, my father's Hawaiian upbringing, the political correctness of northern California, my innate personality, the expectations of my mother?
I turn away.
Such calculations are impossible and, in the end, useless, even foolish. They are just another way to draw lines around reality, to compartmentalize, to pin down and dissect, to control. But personhood doesn't have a body to dissect, except my body, which breathes and sweats and will not be pinned down. And when I try to dissect my personality, it is not like my seventh grade lima bean dissection (too simple), nor like my eleventh grade cat dissection (fascinating, but dead).
It is more like trying to pull up a sturdy plant whose roots grip the stones and soil, too strong for me to break with my hands and too intricate for me to untangle with my eyes.
I can look at myself through a dozen or a hundred filters, to pull forward this or that set of characteristics, to mute one color and find hints of another in unexpected places. Every filter may reveal something new.
Still, my soul is an atom, and I have no desire for fission. So I wait. Perhaps in heaven I will understand what quarks and leptons roam the spacious hall of my self.
My memories are a patchwork of confusion and exclusion. In Japan I was a gaijin; in America I was an Asian. In Japan I counted myself a staunch American, but in California I realized I didn't fit in here either. Only when I moved to New York for college did it become apparent that ten years in California had made their mark, and I felt entitled to call myself a Californian. Finding out more about the way things are in the rest of the country, I only became more set in my Californian identity, declining to identify myself with the country as a whole. Yet now, married to a Turk who doesn't really believe in democracy, I find myself defending American ideals and institutions with a patriot's indignation.
What am I to say about myself? Who am I? American, Californian; Japanese by adoption, Korean by heritage, German somewhere in the tangle of genealogies; a smidge French after my term abroad in my teens; turning Turkish in infinitesimal adjustments to my husband. How much of what? How many dimensions of identity are we talking about? Genetic, ethnic, cultural, familial, geographical, ... On each dimension, what would be the percentages? Racially, I am half Caucasian and half Asian: 50% each. Ethnically? Is that the same as racially or genetically? What about my culture--is that about food and dress and language, or about the deep, subconscious structures, the filters that determine how I communicate and what I expect? what I value and what I condemn, what I feel entitled to and how I respond if I don't get it? Impossible to determine which cultures influence me to what degree--Korean, Japanese, my father's Hawaiian upbringing, the political correctness of northern California, my innate personality, the expectations of my mother?
I turn away.
Such calculations are impossible and, in the end, useless, even foolish. They are just another way to draw lines around reality, to compartmentalize, to pin down and dissect, to control. But personhood doesn't have a body to dissect, except my body, which breathes and sweats and will not be pinned down. And when I try to dissect my personality, it is not like my seventh grade lima bean dissection (too simple), nor like my eleventh grade cat dissection (fascinating, but dead).
It is more like trying to pull up a sturdy plant whose roots grip the stones and soil, too strong for me to break with my hands and too intricate for me to untangle with my eyes.
I can look at myself through a dozen or a hundred filters, to pull forward this or that set of characteristics, to mute one color and find hints of another in unexpected places. Every filter may reveal something new.
Still, my soul is an atom, and I have no desire for fission. So I wait. Perhaps in heaven I will understand what quarks and leptons roam the spacious hall of my self.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Book reflection: From Bondage to Bonding
Nancy Groom's book From Bondage to Bonding is summarized succinctly by its subtitle: Escaping Codependency, Embracing Biblical Love. (I've got the 1991 edition. It's from NavPress.)
Readability: Small margins and print, intensely sad anecdotes, and a lack of dialog mark this book as the product of the previous century (or should I say "millennium"?), and put it in contrast to How We Love. This book takes some serious contemplation. Every chapter does come with a summary and a diagram at the end, but you won't find easy-to-read bullet points in this book.
Ease of absorption: The hardest part of reading this book is thinking through how/whether the material applies to your own life. The tone of How We Love is very sympathetic, non-judgmental. Bondage, in contrast, does not hesitate to mark a behavior or attitude as sinful. Groom does discuss how codependency develops (Part 2), with a compassionate perspective as a recovering codependent and the child of an alcoholic herself, but she is very clear about placing the responsibility to change on the shoulders of the codependent (through the power and love of God, Part 3). Codependence is a disorder or addiction, not a "normal" or healthy condition, and so the decision to accept or reject the label of codependent is a much weightier one than identifying which insecure "love style" is yours, as in How We Love.
Key concept: Groom offers a (frightening and intense) definition of codependency on p. 21: "Codependency is a self-focused way of life in which
Organization & Overview:
The first chapter explains how the definition of "codependent" evolved. "Codependent" originally described the spouse of an alcoholic, or the co-alcoholic, whose patterns enabled and reinforced the alcoholic's dependence on alcohol. Later, codependence was recognized as an addiction in its own right--an addiction to approval.
The other chapters of Part 1 unfold the various characteristics or manifestations of codependence:
Part 2 consists of some chapters exploring how a person becomes codependent: A child's natural Fervent Longings for relationship are not met by parents, so the child suffers Painful Losses and goes on to develop Self-Protective Pretenses. In attempting to reverse the bondage of addiction to the approval of others, a codependent may turn to Autonomy, which Groom summarizes as a "refusal to trust or need," but autonomy does not actually offer freedom from bondage but only deepens the codependent's disconnection from true relationship.
In Part 3, Groom outlines the path a codependent must take to move "from bondage to bonding." These include grieving, accepting grace, and surrendering to God. She then goes on to describe what real bonding looks like, in Part 4. I haven't read Part 4 yet; I'm still in the last chapter of Part 3 ("The Freedom of Surrender").
My relationship with the book thus far, briefly: I'm a bit embarrassed not to have finished reading this book yet, since I started it over a month ago, and it's a slim volume (200 pp). I stalled after coming back from Turkey and found myself surrounded again by more pleasant books! Then we had a murky discussion about codependency with the counselor, in which I found myself totally overwhelmed and left with a number of misunderstandings of what she'd been trying to say. So I gave myself some time off to process subconsciously, and I'm only picking up the conscious processing again now... I'll write more in another post, but for now I'll say that the chapter that resonated with me the most was "Self-Deception: Committed to Denial." This one was an eye-opener, putting a name to some patterns of thought that I'd never even registered as artificial before.
More personal thoughts to follow, and eventually a summary of Part 4, on real love, real relationship, real Bonding.
Readability: Small margins and print, intensely sad anecdotes, and a lack of dialog mark this book as the product of the previous century (or should I say "millennium"?), and put it in contrast to How We Love. This book takes some serious contemplation. Every chapter does come with a summary and a diagram at the end, but you won't find easy-to-read bullet points in this book.
Ease of absorption: The hardest part of reading this book is thinking through how/whether the material applies to your own life. The tone of How We Love is very sympathetic, non-judgmental. Bondage, in contrast, does not hesitate to mark a behavior or attitude as sinful. Groom does discuss how codependency develops (Part 2), with a compassionate perspective as a recovering codependent and the child of an alcoholic herself, but she is very clear about placing the responsibility to change on the shoulders of the codependent (through the power and love of God, Part 3). Codependence is a disorder or addiction, not a "normal" or healthy condition, and so the decision to accept or reject the label of codependent is a much weightier one than identifying which insecure "love style" is yours, as in How We Love.
Key concept: Groom offers a (frightening and intense) definition of codependency on p. 21: "Codependency is a self-focused way of life in which
- a person blind to his or her true self
- continually reacts to others
- being controlled by and seeking to control their behavior, attitudes, and/or opinions,
- resulting in spiritual sterility, loss of authenticity, and absence of intimacy."
(Bullet points mine, inserted to compensate for the minimal punctuation in the original.)
Groom does mention that "you can be just a little bit codependent," and our counselor D. prefers to think of codependency not as a bin but as a smooth continuum. "Everyone's a little bit codependent," D. says. I think this is a misleading way to put it, because codependent is a real and weighty label. What I'd say instead is that everyone has imperfect relationships and imperfect self-knowledge, and everyone uses certain strategies to protect themselves in the midst of their broken relationships. Those strategies, taken to an unusual extreme, render a person codependent--and so everyone follows the strategies of the codependent "a little."Organization & Overview:
The first chapter explains how the definition of "codependent" evolved. "Codependent" originally described the spouse of an alcoholic, or the co-alcoholic, whose patterns enabled and reinforced the alcoholic's dependence on alcohol. Later, codependence was recognized as an addiction in its own right--an addiction to approval.
The other chapters of Part 1 unfold the various characteristics or manifestations of codependence:
- self-forfeiture,
- self-contempt,
- self-aggrandizement,
- self-sufficiency, and
- self-deception.
Part 2 consists of some chapters exploring how a person becomes codependent: A child's natural Fervent Longings for relationship are not met by parents, so the child suffers Painful Losses and goes on to develop Self-Protective Pretenses. In attempting to reverse the bondage of addiction to the approval of others, a codependent may turn to Autonomy, which Groom summarizes as a "refusal to trust or need," but autonomy does not actually offer freedom from bondage but only deepens the codependent's disconnection from true relationship.
In Part 3, Groom outlines the path a codependent must take to move "from bondage to bonding." These include grieving, accepting grace, and surrendering to God. She then goes on to describe what real bonding looks like, in Part 4. I haven't read Part 4 yet; I'm still in the last chapter of Part 3 ("The Freedom of Surrender").
My relationship with the book thus far, briefly: I'm a bit embarrassed not to have finished reading this book yet, since I started it over a month ago, and it's a slim volume (200 pp). I stalled after coming back from Turkey and found myself surrounded again by more pleasant books! Then we had a murky discussion about codependency with the counselor, in which I found myself totally overwhelmed and left with a number of misunderstandings of what she'd been trying to say. So I gave myself some time off to process subconsciously, and I'm only picking up the conscious processing again now... I'll write more in another post, but for now I'll say that the chapter that resonated with me the most was "Self-Deception: Committed to Denial." This one was an eye-opener, putting a name to some patterns of thought that I'd never even registered as artificial before.
More personal thoughts to follow, and eventually a summary of Part 4, on real love, real relationship, real Bonding.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Book Reflection: How We Love (2)
To follow up on yesterday's post, my major take-away from How We Love is that my coping mechanism of choice is avoidance.
It took me a while to come to this conclusion. But the fact is, I do a lot of avoiding! It's especially marked when I'm in conflict with my mom. But I do it all the time, which is why I don't have open conflicts with most people. For instance, I can't remember ever having a fight with a friend. A disagreement, sure, maybe a lively discussion--but not a fight. If it starts to look like a fight, I shut up or back down. The conflict just isn't usually worth it to me--the cure feels worse than the disease.
When I do get stuck in a conflict, when the tension can't just be ignored, the urge to get away is overwhelming. I want to walk out of the room, out of the house, spend the night somewhere else, not ever have to think about resolving the conflict or seeing the person whose words or actions are making me feel this way. I want to leave and never come back.
In actuality, though, the most I do is leave the room. And the next morning, things never feel as bleak.
If my tendency to avoid is so strong, why was it hard for me to identify myself as an avoider? I initially thought maybe I was a pleaser (seeking comfort through the approval of others), because I do care so much about making O. happy / meeting his expectations; then I thought I was a vacillator, because one of the markers is feeling, "My partner doesn't want to be as close to me as I want to be to them," and also because the book said vacillators tend to have a hard time identifying their own type. I knew I wasn't a Controller/Victim.
I also figured I couldn't be an avoider. Why? Partly because of the dynamics of my relationship with O., and partly because the portrayal of the avoider in How We Love was so extreme.
The dynamics of my relationship with O.
I recognized immediately I'd had a pattern of avoidance with O. during our dating. I wanted to take the whole relationship slowly, being on my guard against getting too close too soon. I wanted to protect myself by maintaining a degree of distance--after all, we were just dating, I reasoned. Friendship and school come first, then a boyfriend, because boys come and go but friends stay, and responsibilities don't go away just because they're inconvenient. O. on the other hand tended to take a "she loves me, she loves me not" view of the situation, and I believe he felt panicky when I pushed for more autonomy. (Pretty sure he's a vacillator!)
Since we got married, though, I've often been the one feeling too much distance, demanding more of O.'s attention, and pushing for greater togetherness. During our honeymoon, for instance, I felt ignored when O. would stop talking to me or looking at me to look things up on his shiny new smartphone, as if he had disappeared into this black box, into which I wasn't invited. This particular problem was quickly fixed when O. and I discussed it and he promised to be more mindful. Nonetheless, it's a good example of the small things that easily leave me feeling ignored, wanting more time together, better time together, better togetherness. These are not the characteristic feelings of the avoider but of the vacillator.
So I figured I wasn't an avoider anymore. But what I eventually figured out is that I am still an avoider, it's just that I'm not as extreme about it as the book's examples, probably because I had a fairly secure attachment to my parents. I just had to observe myself more carefully and more candidly, and think harder about the key ideas behind the book's somewhat extreme presentation.
The book's extreme examples:
My greatest criticism of How We Love is that it didn't make any concrete mention of less extreme cases. An early chapter discussed what it looks like to have a secure attachment style, but then secure attachment was hardly mentioned in the rest of the book, almost implying that if you are securely attached, you'll never employ the unhealthy strategies that mold the relationships of those who are insecurely attached. How We Love is packed with anecdotes and case studies that paint clear and vivid pictures of what each "love style" quintessentially looks like, but fails to give examples of these negative patterns working in more subtle ways, or to explain whether the securely attached can also fall into these traps. A greater range of examples, or at least some commentary on what a less extreme manifestation of each imprint might look like, would really have helped clarify the ideas for me. Precision! It's key!
Conclusions
I did eventually recognize my own pattern, though, and now it seems obvious. I seriously doubt I would have realized how often I feel like escaping or hiding without reading this book and thinking hard about which love style I tend to fall into. Equally important, I probably wouldn't have realized that not everyone feels that desire to escape in the midst of conflict.
In sum, How We Love has already been helpful to me in seeing myself more clearly and thinking in a new way about my important relationships, especially about my marriage. The greatest insight for me was recognizing my avoidance, but there are some other good take-away points too, such as the following:
It took me a while to come to this conclusion. But the fact is, I do a lot of avoiding! It's especially marked when I'm in conflict with my mom. But I do it all the time, which is why I don't have open conflicts with most people. For instance, I can't remember ever having a fight with a friend. A disagreement, sure, maybe a lively discussion--but not a fight. If it starts to look like a fight, I shut up or back down. The conflict just isn't usually worth it to me--the cure feels worse than the disease.
When I do get stuck in a conflict, when the tension can't just be ignored, the urge to get away is overwhelming. I want to walk out of the room, out of the house, spend the night somewhere else, not ever have to think about resolving the conflict or seeing the person whose words or actions are making me feel this way. I want to leave and never come back.
In actuality, though, the most I do is leave the room. And the next morning, things never feel as bleak.
If my tendency to avoid is so strong, why was it hard for me to identify myself as an avoider? I initially thought maybe I was a pleaser (seeking comfort through the approval of others), because I do care so much about making O. happy / meeting his expectations; then I thought I was a vacillator, because one of the markers is feeling, "My partner doesn't want to be as close to me as I want to be to them," and also because the book said vacillators tend to have a hard time identifying their own type. I knew I wasn't a Controller/Victim.
I also figured I couldn't be an avoider. Why? Partly because of the dynamics of my relationship with O., and partly because the portrayal of the avoider in How We Love was so extreme.
The dynamics of my relationship with O.
I recognized immediately I'd had a pattern of avoidance with O. during our dating. I wanted to take the whole relationship slowly, being on my guard against getting too close too soon. I wanted to protect myself by maintaining a degree of distance--after all, we were just dating, I reasoned. Friendship and school come first, then a boyfriend, because boys come and go but friends stay, and responsibilities don't go away just because they're inconvenient. O. on the other hand tended to take a "she loves me, she loves me not" view of the situation, and I believe he felt panicky when I pushed for more autonomy. (Pretty sure he's a vacillator!)
Since we got married, though, I've often been the one feeling too much distance, demanding more of O.'s attention, and pushing for greater togetherness. During our honeymoon, for instance, I felt ignored when O. would stop talking to me or looking at me to look things up on his shiny new smartphone, as if he had disappeared into this black box, into which I wasn't invited. This particular problem was quickly fixed when O. and I discussed it and he promised to be more mindful. Nonetheless, it's a good example of the small things that easily leave me feeling ignored, wanting more time together, better time together, better togetherness. These are not the characteristic feelings of the avoider but of the vacillator.
So I figured I wasn't an avoider anymore. But what I eventually figured out is that I am still an avoider, it's just that I'm not as extreme about it as the book's examples, probably because I had a fairly secure attachment to my parents. I just had to observe myself more carefully and more candidly, and think harder about the key ideas behind the book's somewhat extreme presentation.
The book's extreme examples:
My greatest criticism of How We Love is that it didn't make any concrete mention of less extreme cases. An early chapter discussed what it looks like to have a secure attachment style, but then secure attachment was hardly mentioned in the rest of the book, almost implying that if you are securely attached, you'll never employ the unhealthy strategies that mold the relationships of those who are insecurely attached. How We Love is packed with anecdotes and case studies that paint clear and vivid pictures of what each "love style" quintessentially looks like, but fails to give examples of these negative patterns working in more subtle ways, or to explain whether the securely attached can also fall into these traps. A greater range of examples, or at least some commentary on what a less extreme manifestation of each imprint might look like, would really have helped clarify the ideas for me. Precision! It's key!
Conclusions
I did eventually recognize my own pattern, though, and now it seems obvious. I seriously doubt I would have realized how often I feel like escaping or hiding without reading this book and thinking hard about which love style I tend to fall into. Equally important, I probably wouldn't have realized that not everyone feels that desire to escape in the midst of conflict.
In sum, How We Love has already been helpful to me in seeing myself more clearly and thinking in a new way about my important relationships, especially about my marriage. The greatest insight for me was recognizing my avoidance, but there are some other good take-away points too, such as the following:
- Comfort is key--we're all seeking comfort (in our different ways) and the provision of real comfort is what changes the dynamic.
- Comfort comes from being heard and being held.
- The ability to identify your feelings, to name them and talk about them, doesn't come naturally. I'm blessed to have parents who taught me "soul words," asked me about my emotions, talked me through difficult feelings, etc. O. on the other hand is from a family which, though loyal and loving, does not so much discuss feelings as act them out. I can't expect him to be in the same place as me with listening, asking questions, naming his feelings, etc., when I've had years more practice. That's just setting both of us up for frustration.
- O. doesn't have to figure out for himself what to ask and how to listen; there are resources--like the lists of questions and of emotions in this book--that can make learning so much easier.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Book Reflection: How We Love
I remember taking a trip to visit friends in Japan when I was about eleven, and bringing a dozen books with me for the two week trip. Books were always the heaviest thing in my suitcase, and they still are. I've tried to cut down on the volume and weight of reading material I bring on trips, though--usually by bringing intellectually denser books that will take me longer to get through. It's been a successful strategy.
But I definitely took my Dense Book strategy too far on this recent trip to Turkey. My reading list:
To be fair, though, How We Love is very readable (as soul-searching books go). It's full of examples and dialogs from struggling couples, and almost every chapter ends with a list of bullet points. O. wasn't reading it on the trip and still doesn't seem to be interested in reading it all the way through, but he could get a sense of what I was reading and thinking about in a few minutes, thanks to the bullet points.
And what was I reading about? The premise of How We Love (subtitle: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage) is that our patterns in adult relationships are deeply shaped by the strategies we adopted to protect ourselves as children. This influence comes into play with special force in that most intimate adult relationship--marriage. The strategies we adopt as children to cope with our parents' imperfections are called imprints, attachment styles, or (in this book anyway) "love styles."
The authors introduce early in the book the metaphor of marriage as a dance. Spouses who have different "love styles" are, in effect, dancing to different music. Perhaps the husband is dancing a waltz, while the wife tries to tango. Inevitably, they step on each other's toes, and each thinks the other is dancing wrong. (It's a useful metaphor the first time the Yerkoviches introduce it, but a few chapters in I started skipping the paragraph that reappears every chapter to remind me that spouses with different love styles are like dance partners listening to different music.)
According to How We Love, there are five* insecure attachment styles or relational coping strategies. These strategies are the patterns of:
The book has a chapter on each attachment style, some helpful chapters on common combinations of partners (ex. "The Avoider Marries the Vacillator"), several chapters on how to change the dynamic of your marriage by learning to comfort each other, and lists of "soul words" and listening questions in the Appendix. I didn't have any immediate "Aha!" moments while reading it, but it's definitely a useful book, and I recommend it to any one whose parents weren't perfect. :P
More next time on how How We Love applies in my life!
But I definitely took my Dense Book strategy too far on this recent trip to Turkey. My reading list:
- How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich--A book on attachment theory
- From Bondage to Bonding by Nancy Groom--On codependence, this was a disturbing read.
- Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder--The one novel I brought, this was also an introduction to Western philosophy, an Alice in Wonderland meets Gödel, Escher, Bach.
- Rose by Li-Young Lee--a slim volume of poetry, this book lasted me the whole trip because I seldom read more than one or two poems at a time.
- And of course, my much-battered NIV Student Bible.
To be fair, though, How We Love is very readable (as soul-searching books go). It's full of examples and dialogs from struggling couples, and almost every chapter ends with a list of bullet points. O. wasn't reading it on the trip and still doesn't seem to be interested in reading it all the way through, but he could get a sense of what I was reading and thinking about in a few minutes, thanks to the bullet points.
And what was I reading about? The premise of How We Love (subtitle: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage) is that our patterns in adult relationships are deeply shaped by the strategies we adopted to protect ourselves as children. This influence comes into play with special force in that most intimate adult relationship--marriage. The strategies we adopt as children to cope with our parents' imperfections are called imprints, attachment styles, or (in this book anyway) "love styles."
The authors introduce early in the book the metaphor of marriage as a dance. Spouses who have different "love styles" are, in effect, dancing to different music. Perhaps the husband is dancing a waltz, while the wife tries to tango. Inevitably, they step on each other's toes, and each thinks the other is dancing wrong. (It's a useful metaphor the first time the Yerkoviches introduce it, but a few chapters in I started skipping the paragraph that reappears every chapter to remind me that spouses with different love styles are like dance partners listening to different music.)
According to How We Love, there are five* insecure attachment styles or relational coping strategies. These strategies are the patterns of:
- the Avoider, who seeks safety by avoiding conflict and even avoiding intimacy
- the Pleaser, who seeks safety by working hard to please the beloved and thus avert conflict
- the Vacillator, who seeks safety in intense intimacy and is angry when that intimacy is blocked or threatened
- the Controller, who seeks safety through control
- the Victim, who seeks safety through passivity.
The book has a chapter on each attachment style, some helpful chapters on common combinations of partners (ex. "The Avoider Marries the Vacillator"), several chapters on how to change the dynamic of your marriage by learning to comfort each other, and lists of "soul words" and listening questions in the Appendix. I didn't have any immediate "Aha!" moments while reading it, but it's definitely a useful book, and I recommend it to any one whose parents weren't perfect. :P
More next time on how How We Love applies in my life!
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