DETECTING STRANGE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Author: Ilya Latypov Source:

There is a popular and fairly obvious truth: people differ from each other, we are not the same, and this difference must be learned to accept. Captain Obvious fully armed. These words are easy and pleasant to pronounce, while feeling like a very advanced and wise person: yes, I admit that the other person is not me, and that he has other interests than me. However, the collision with the reality of the Other (almost wrote the Alien) is a completely different, and often very difficult, on the verge of impossibility story.

It's easy to admit that your boyfriend / girlfriend, wife / husband, children / parents have hobbies and needs that don't match yours. It's easy when you have no need to share something with another person, and with a very specific one. And it is very difficult when this need is there. Then all the beautiful words are forgotten, and tolerance is replaced by either a fierce desire to get what you want, knock out, crush - or depressive melancholy, isolation and a feeling of complete hopelessness.

Often this can be seen in parents who “suddenly” discover that their growing up or grown-up children do not at all fit into their ideas about what children should be, or generally lead a way of life that is far from even simply acceptable. And there is a desire for children to grow up as "decent people", and only children can realize this desire. Once a father, fighting with his own son, told me: "He has the right to be anyone, but he has no right to be so!" - and he did not notice the contradiction in his words. "I do not limit him / her in any way, but if only he / she fits within the given framework."

The true realization that other people were not created to satisfy our desires (even our children), that these are not toys that are obliged to respond to all our emotional impulses, begins precisely with this encounter with the fact that the other does not respond to our striving for it. We really want something from another - and he doesn't care or, worse, disgusting. With the human striving for maximum intimacy, reaching the point of merging, this is a strong and sudden blow, a tub of cold water by the collar. "How to live with you like that ?!"

One of the earliest such "tubs of water" is the eternal parental "Can't you see, are we busy / talking?" And it is quite normal that parents do not always respond, that they are not always ready to put aside everything and everyone in order to turn to the child - because this is one of the circumstances by which the child begins to realize that parents and adults in general have more some other, their own life, and their needs, not connected with the child in any way. It's unpleasant, frustrating, painful - but it's normal and natural. Pathological is both constant ignorance by parents of their own otherness and separateness (readiness at any second to respond to any need of the child, not even expressed), and constant ignoring, during which the child receives a terrible message: “you are superfluous, you are always superfluous, you interfere, it would be better if you weren't there.

Nevertheless, the need for closeness with another person is so pronounced in us that, despite the "lessons" from our parents, the desire for unity and the desire to ignore differences remain strong. And already adults dream of people who, in everything and always will satisfy this longing for a close and dear person. But the other person is not responsible for the fact that he found himself in our dreams and fantasies. And for what he does in these fantasies with us and with us. Failure to distinguish between a real person and an apparatus for satisfying desires leads to the blurring of boundaries. And the dream of a vacation in the mountains turns into a dream of a joint vacation in the mountains. It doesn't matter if someone else wants this vacation, or if he just hates the mountains. The dream of a perfectly clean apartment turns into a dream for everyone to want this perfect cleanliness and to clean the apartment. "How can a normal person not want perfect cleanliness ?!" - For example, a young wife is indignant, shuddering at the words of her husband that it is possible to clean up once a month.

The pain of discovering that something infinitely close and dear suddenly turned out to be alien and rejecting can be so strong, and it can be so difficult to endure, that there are often two forms of reaction to it. In one case, the experience that we are very different in some important part and do not coincide at all becomes a kind of rust or acid, which quickly or slowly, but surely, eats away at all relationships - even where there seemed to be a coincidence. How can you live with "such a stranger that he does not love / wants / knows …" ?! Another option is to close your eyes to the differences. Do not show them in any way. Never talk about your desires, but immediately ask what the other wants - and answer in unison. "Do you want to go to the cinema?" - "And you?" - "I asked first". Or "Do you want to go there" - "Do you?" - "Yes" - "Then let's go." To find that we disagree in something is the beginning of the exit from the merger, where there are no “I” and “you”, but there is “we”, but this discovery is always painful.

How to be? Unconditionally accept and love any traits? But this is also a variant of merging, and besides, unconditional acceptance, in my opinion, is a mythological construction that is impossible in the real world. We may definitely not like something in another person or in his actions, and we have every right to feel any feelings about this. Accepting the otherness of the Other is giving up trying to do something with this person in order to eliminate the “shortcomings”. Acceptance of the otherness of a loved one is a rejection of attempts to improve him, and reliance on those of his features and qualities that are resource for us. And if these qualities are not there - why are we around?

There is no person in this world who could satisfy all our desires, be suitable for us in everything. We are doomed to find over and over again in our parents, children, friends, loved ones, colleagues that not only leaves indifferent, but also unpleasantly surprises with its strangeness. And this “surprise” becomes most painful when it signals: this person will not satisfy our need for, for example, pride in our champion son. It is for the son. I want to. But he doesn't want to be a champion. What to do …

One of the invaluable things that a patient learns in the course of psychotherapy is relationship boundaries. He learns what he can receive from others, but also - and this is much more important - what he cannot receive from others (I. Yalom)