Love me, no, don’t.
Come closer. Just kidding.
Mixed signals are one of the main issues I hear people talk about in relationships. One person will do something hoping for a certain interaction, only to be met with what feels like rejection. That perceived rejection then causes the other person to react based on their internal story.
We all have stories we tell ourselves, and the natural next step is to try to prove or disprove those stories.
If someone learned that getting close to others often led to those people leaving or fading away, they might be less likely to try to get close to others in the future. Or they may do the opposite and try to get close to everyone they encounter, hoping to disprove the story they have told themselves: that there is something about them that makes people leave.
Either way, they are trying to prove themselves right or prove themselves wrong.
The key here is that none of it has anything to do with the person they are trying to prove or disprove their story with.
It is about making meaning out of their circumstances, and trying to make their inner stories line up.
Over the years, I have told myself numerous different stories about myself and about others. It is how we make sense of the world around us.
The stories we create about others are usually connected to the stories we tell about ourselves. It all comes back to us.
We are living life writing a whole book about ourselves. Every other person is a character in our book, and since we are the main character, we write their part in relation to ourselves.
If we can learn to understand that everyone is doing the same thing, writing their own story, then maybe we can better understand where we fit into their story and clear up some misunderstandings.
This became especially clear to me when my daughter transitioned from a teenager to an adult.
One of the most difficult parenting phases for me so far has been when my daughter transitioned from a teen to an adult. I have many thoughts about why an arbitrary number, all of a sudden, makes someone an adult and therefore, in the eyes of the law, capable of making life-altering decisions. Someone, somewhere in time, decided that in our country, when your child reaches this certain age, they go from someone that you are responsible for to someone responsible for themselves. Literally overnight.
As parents, we know this is going to happen, but we don’t believe it. Not really. Not until your baby is walking out the door and you can’t stop them. Not until you switch from participant in decision-making to spectator. Sometimes this spectator role feels a whole lot like watching everything you love walk headfirst into an oncoming train, and you can do absolutely nothing to stop it.
When you spend almost two decades advising and controlling consequences to some extent, this shift is jarring to say the least. For me personally, it has taken almost five years to adjust, and I’m still adjusting. I don’t know about other parents because no one talks to me about it. I’m sure it depends on the person and their particular set of ideas, challenges, and stories they have written about themselves in the parent chapter of their lives.
But regardless of the story the parent is writing, the child has also been writing a story since birth. When those two stories become less intertwined, the parent’s writing team has to scramble to make sure the plot makes sense. Or in my case, to try to keep the storyline intact.
I had not only written a story about myself, but I had also already plotted her story to some extent.
While this internal struggle was going on, it should come as no surprise that it was also an external struggle, between myself and my daughter. She was fighting for her independence, and I was fighting to keep her close.
I was never one of those parents who was committed to a certain plot (career path, life plan, etc.) I have always encouraged ideas, but I did have ideas about the path I thought she would take. I expected her to be an academic or involved in politics of some sort. Not because I wanted her to be, but because when I paid attention to her traits and interests as a child, that’s what they looked like they were pointing toward. So I cultivated experiences to help nurture that path. I was also open to shifts in interest. If one day she was interested in becoming a detective, we explored detectives.
My point is that while I had ideas about the direction her life may take, I was not set in it. I was very much open to editing that part of the story.
The part of the story I didn’t want to edit was the part where I was super involved in every little thing she had going on or was doing. The part where I was the advisor and the way maker. The part where I swooped in and made things happen, or helped her find the resources.
That was not what she wanted in her story. She craved independence and needed to know she could do it without me. That was completely contradictory to my story, where she needed me and didn’t want to do it without me. So we clashed. Two intelligent women, head to head, each as strong as the other. It was not easy, nor was it pretty. It is still a learning experience every day as a mother of an adult. Especially an adult that is as strong-willed and intelligent as she is. She is by far the only person currently in my life who can match me intellectually. And I love that. I love that we have that to build on. We don’t always agree; most times we don’t. She says I’m not progressive enough, and I think she’s a little too brave sometimes, but in the end, we respect each other, and over time, we are learning our roles in this new phase.
I am finding joy in seeing her not need me. It took me a very long time to get to this place, but it is arriving. I still have my days where I have to rein myself in and realize my part in her story is whatever she decides it gets to be, but I am hopeful that soon, our storylines will inch closer and closer.
Can you think of any stories you have written for yourself or others that may be affecting your relationships?
