Friday, October 29, 2010

Suck it the fuck up

Dear men* (particularly men in committed, long-term relationships):

I love you all. You are wonderful friends and fun companions, you are strong and smell good and are hairy and have wacky dangly bits.

That having been said, you need to stop acting like a bunch of contemptible whining pukes when it comes to your relationships. Like it or not, relationships are emotionally based and need tending in order to continue to exist. So read the following and then take this GOOD, FREE advice and do yourself a favor:
Deal with your family of origin issues NOW.
Or were you looking forward to long-term unresolvable grief, horrible depression, job loss, constant ill health, getting divorced and losing everything you have, dipshit?

One of the many things you are not told about marriage is how the death of your parents will screw it up. Royally. Like a big dog. No, really, you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHATSOEVER how much impact this will have on your marriage.

Watching anyone you love going down the last road is horrible. Watching a beloved parent die is excruciatingly painful. But losing a parent with whom you had a difficult relationship comes with its own particular brand of hell.

Every single one of your unresolved 'family of origin' issues will come back to bite you in the ass. Guaranteed.

That's how the mind works. Here, now, at the worst possible time, sure as the sun rises in the east, while all your emotions are raw, all those issues will all come rocketing to the forefront, adding a huge unwanted burden of conflicted bleeding emotion to what is already a bad situation.

What you learned from your parents, good and bad, impacts your marriage daily on hundreds of levels simultaneously. Yeah. Now think about when that rug gets yanked out from underneath your feet suddenly and all those levels begin to shake down into unrecognizable rubble. And remember, you still have to deal with what's already been going on at the same time...financial issues, your own family's issues and your own personal crap, all on top of all this. You bet your sweet fucking ass your marriage is going to take a monumental hit. And do you really need that on top of everything else? No you don't.
Neither does your partner.

You cannot treat this like something you can ignore and it will go away. That shit never works anyway. Oh, you may think it's working fine. That's because the only person you're fooling is yourself. Once again, this is how the mind works: for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. Your inner upset, despite the fact that you think you're hiding it so well, is in reality translating into irrational and bad decisions, intolerable irritability, sleep and health issues, and oh so much more. In effect you are channelling your petulant inner three-year-old in desperate need of a nap, acting all your shit out on everyone and everything around you. And again; don't fool yourself: playing the 'Duh' card will not automatically cause everyone else around you to magically agree with you ('He says he's not acting like an asshole and has no idea what we're talking about...so....he must not be acting like an asshole and we must just all be wrong!' Um...yeah, no.) No, what that does is to eventually make everyone around you so angry with you and your unresolvable bullshit in their lives that they choose not to have it in their lives anymore. And that will be....disruptive, at best. You feel me?

Want to avoid this?
It is absolutely vital to your emotional welfare, as well as to the welfare of everyone around you, that you make an honest attempt to go to your parents NOW and attempt to confront all those things that have been swept under the rug. Don't wait until they're so infirm that you have no chance whatsoever of bringing anything up and finishing it because you'll never forgive yourself, or them.

It doesn't have to be a big scene. It doesn't even have to work. In fact, chances are good that if you're dealing with parents with long-term substance abuse issues, impulse control disorders or borderline personalities, you'll get absolutely nowhere.

The important thing is that you try. That you approach them in good faith, with honesty, as an adult....THAT is what makes all the difference in the world. Why? Because you will have just been shown beyond all shadow of a doubt where you end and they begin, and that you have no power whatsoever over their actions.
Just like you didn't when you were a little kid.
Just like you never had, and never will.
And this needs to happen in real time. Just accepting it intellectually won't mean shit.

What you have when a failed attempt at reconciliation is done is your adult perspective and their up-to-date reactions....information with which you can go back and re-evaluate all those things that went awry in your relationship with your parents. You use these to re-evaluate those things. You'll be surprised to realize that many of the guilty burdens you have been carrying belonged to someone else. You'll mourn all the emotional energy that you wasted trying to change people and events that were never under your control to begin with. That mourning period should burn up a couple of weeks. Have a good book handy. It won't kill you so quit putting it off.

You will come away with the knowledge that you, the adult, have been brave in the face of difficulty. You honestly tried your best. And then, when the time comes, as it will inevitably, saying the final goodbye will be uncomplicated by other issues. Your life will go on.
_______________________________

*OK fine women too. Although the only experience I have with this crap is with men doing it...and I gotta say that y'all are by far the worst offenders when it comes to playing the 'emotions are pussy so I just won't deal with any of them and ignore them and pretend that everything is fine and it will be' game. And you know that's true so get over it.

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