50
10/26/06
So, this is my 50th birthday; my birth was in the evening about 7:30, Mom said. So these are the waning moments of being 49.
Reading more in Nonviolent Communication, I try to think of unmet needs in connection with Darlene. I feel like she wants things that aren’t appropriate to want from other people and that she is manipulative in her efforts to get them. And that she is so well defended from any blame, and self-blame, that it’s an uncomfortable position to be in the face of that want, be unable to directly address it because doing so causes great offense and fireworks, and withholding feels very uncomfortable. I feel like I’m with someone with a huge need that isn’t mine to fill, yet it can’t be spoken of, or her efforts to get that need satisfied that often cause me discomfort, and I suppose I feel responsible for her feelings about her not getting what is not really mine to give. SHE’s the one responsible for filling that hole, but that responsibility is projected out onto her family. And she really believes that it is our behavior that makes her happy, or unhappy, by fulfilling this place inside of her. I perceive it as a demand from her, and old-fashioned
I think at her core, she feels that she is “to blame”, the blamed one. I think the threshold is very low in her to trigger that feeling. A ghost of a suggestion that she do something differently to her is a harsh unwarranted criticism and she’s angry, and her feelings are hurt. I think in some ways of getting her needs met she’s like a big, fat baby. There’s that kind of urgency in the fear that ‘her feelings will be hurt’ which feels like a mine-field we tiptoe around. When I am with her, or thinking about her, my need is to win by preventing her from winning; by blocking the satisfaction she’s seeking. I resent her efforts to satisfy her unacknowledged needs. I feel susceptible to a feeling that her getting her needs is at someone, my, expense. I don’t like the win-lose dynamic inside of me that somehow is activated in her presence. I feel like she has to have her way all the time, or risk some sort of hurt-feelings-consequence, like anger, tears, or both—or some weird undercurrent expression of it, like implying that something must be wrong if I wanted to have time away from my kids.
Yeah, there is something triggered in me that is competitive, and it’s in association with her, where it isn’t nearly so sharp and urgent with other people. And it’s about not wanting her to get her way. Maybe this is another manifestation of one of the things I was writing in my diary about feeling this feeling with girls who were extremely modest. The thought that she may experience the triumph of satisfaction whenever her wants are satisfied brings an unpleasant feeling in me, that she’s won over me. I’ve puzzled over this many times before
Later:
Just as I was sitting down to write this I thought that it was interesting that I’d trod this ground before, but without much resolution. I would notice that I felt competitive with her about Gary’s time, and I felt he deferred to her. I felt strange, icky-strange about their bond. I needed to win, and I felt that meant something really awful about me. Something about the dynamic really brought that competitiveness out in me and it felt irresistible. And sharp and painful. It was jabbing me with a pin. I was flooded with the feeling, very uncomfortable with it, I feared it meant something awful about me, and it seemed that I felt anger and frustration when I ‘lost’. I felt them very strongly. So strong that I needed to talk about it. I don’t know what comes first, something in me wanting to win or something with her. I do have a competitive instinct in other areas and with other friends, but much less intrusive, much less demanding, much more manageable. But it really flares with her. So I don’t know if that means I’m displacing a dynamic in me onto her, projecting I mean. I’m aware of the power of perception, and how it’s shaped by the person receiving the information, how what is perceived is determined by what is selected out of the massive amounts of information coming in. So that where Gary was sure everyone was looking at the scar on his nose, and it stood out to him whenever he’d see it in a mirror; to me, it was just a small part of a whole in his face, and I didn’t see his face in terms of his scar. So, was there a predisposition in me to choose certain bits of information: an intuition, Gary mentioning his mother had been upset because she hadn’t talked to him in 2 weeks, Gary mentioning how he and his mom would go out to concerts and stuff together to form a picture of a bond between them that was troubling to me? Then other things, like he’d be late picking me up for something because he couldn’t get away from her talking, or me on a phone call with him, and the call-waiting beeps and it’s her, and he felt he couldn’t tell her that he needed to go because I was on the other line; or maybe he did tell her but she kept saying,’It’s only for a few seconds’ and finally I hung up and Gary called me back really upset. He seemed to be upset about the conflict he’d been in when he had his mother on one line indicating she didn’t want to stop talking even though someone was waiting for him on the other line, and me on the other line. He sounded conflicted and confused. Noticing that she’d cut him out of a group at parties and talk to him alone—or it seemed she’d do that. The strange thing about standing around and taking forever to say goodbye. And his not doing something to end it.
So here’s what I observe:
Strong feelings in me: competitive feelings around Gary
Feelings of wanting to pull away, or being trapped when in conversation with her. Feeling anxious while in conversation with her; I guess that’s more accurate, entangle? Is that an emotion or a ‘thought’
Tension around Gary ending things with her; a conversation, a visit
Talking for very long periods of time with him when I was waiting
Her anger when I asked if she’d asked Gary to a function and not me because she was angry with me
Her stated assumption that my asking her about that was an accusation that she’s a son-clingy mother-in-law, whatever the mother’s equivalent of ‘mother’s boy’ is. She said I’d accused her—and she never named it directly, we always danced around it, but she did once refer to it as “something terrible”, and that I’d accused her of being it.
She tends to hear a refusal as something extreme. A situation where I thought I was neutral she has a memory of me being extreme: I think of extreme as red-faced shouting, and even physically threatening.
She was born to a very young mother who by all accounts didn’t want her to be there.
She’s an only child
I’ve observed her needing to be right in more than one situation
I think I resent it when Gary can’t break away from her, in little momentary decisions: excusing himself from conversation to come and help me with dishes, say, or when something minor that she wants conflicts with something that I want.
I guess for all these years I’ve been troubled by the worry: am I seeing what I think I’m seeing, or is something wrong with me that I do? Is something in me that’s wrong stitching together selected pieces of information to give a picture of a mother who’s overly emotionally dependent on her son?
And then, “Would you just cut it out?” for her, and “Would you just establish and set limits with her?” to Gary. I’ve felt disturbed that there is an enmeshment between them to the extent that it is. I suppose the reason it has upset me is a belief that a mother and adult son should have clear boundaries, and the mother should not be emotionally dependent upon her son. So I’m weighing this against the other ’shoulds’ I was having insight about the other day writing in here. Something that made me see the conflicts and resolution issues with Gary in a different way. There was a way I could see my responsibility in it that wasn’t threatening to me.
The thing is there is a way I can see that this is a way the two of them have devised to get their needs met, or did when his parents divorced. He said it once, in one of the only times I’ve seen him cry, when we’d gotten separated and he’d been angry and then said it reminded him of ‘when my dad left me’. And he was crying hard. So there was a deep sense of loss there, and it makes sense that he and his mom might have bonded in a way that confused their boundaries. And have felt a bit defensive about, both of them. There’s a part of me that sees that as an inevitable result, and with the two of them so well defended against introspection, it’s bound to continue. They’re doing their best to get their needs met. And because it worked once, they’re going to keep doing it because the prospect of not is too frightening to them. It is true if they were to both come to me, and say, maybe with tears,”this is all we had, and it feels so wrong to change it”, from the heart, my response would be from the heart too. I would feel compassion for a young woman who’d been married and at home for 11 years trying to decide what she’s going to do to be a breadwinner, and compassion for a child who’s at the same age to blame himself and really feel responsible for his mother’s feelings.
Are all of these things I’ve written above invalid, because they’re ‘judgments and diagnoses’?
So what are my needs? And to back up a little, where do my needs fit in to feeling compassionate about their needs, particularly when they are not able to access their feelings about compassion for mine? Does that mean I ‘be the bigger person’, that is, put my needs aside in favor of theirs? Because they really do have pain that one can have compassion for.
OK, I think I’ll take a little break from this and do some transcribing from vol 21.
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