It’s one week before the holiday, and your crazy person is going to be at the family gathering. You know how uncomfortable it has been in the past, trying to remain pleasant with them while you’re dying on the inside. You’d like to avoid them but know that’s not possible. You rehearse your encounter with them over and over during the next week, anticipating the worst while hoping for a miracle.
It’s a miserable week.
After arriving at the event, you see them walk toward you. Your encounter with them is brief and cordial, but you’re relieved when they walk away to talk with someone else. By the time the event is over, you’re emotionally exhausted. The relationship isn’t any better, but it isn’t any worse. You survived, but your crazy person held your heart hostage for that entire week. You think, “OK, that’s over. At least I don’t have to go through that for a while.”
But it took a lot of energy to get ready for that encounter. Even though it wasn’t comfortable, the hardest part was done: the conversation had taken place. If you knew you had to see them again the next day, it would be a little easier because you survived the first conversation. You could simply build on that one without having to get geared up again.
It’s called inertia. In physics, inertia means that an object tends to stay exactly where it is unless another object makes it move. Once it’s in motion, it tends to stay in motion until something intervenes to stop it. It still requires a little work to keep it moving, but only a fraction of what it took to set it in motion. If that work doesn’t take place, the object gradually slows down and ends up where it started.
In relationships, inertia means that nothing changes unless someone starts the process. Once that action is taken and there is some movement in the relationship, it takes a lot less action to keep it going. But if no action takes place, the relationship reverts back to where it started.
We understand that it takes a lot of energy to begin working on an unhealthy relationship. But do we want to keep it moving? That’s a valid question, because we don’t have any guarantees about where it will go once it’s in motion.
When I was in high school, my first car was a 1967 Chevy Camaro. It wouldn’t start one day as it sat in my parents’ driveway, and a friend and I decided to hotwire the ignition. It was a fairly simple task, since older cars didn’t have antitheft devices. We opened the hood and connected a wire from the starter to the battery, bypassing the ignition switch.
It worked. The car started. But it lurched forward, and we realized that we had forgotten to put the manual transmission in neutral. Since no one was in the car, it began a journey of its own. We scrambled to get inside and hit the brakes, but we didn’t make it in time. The car finally stopped when it crashed through a fence near the end of the driveway.
That’s like our fear in relationships. The hardest part is building up to those initial encounters. But once the connection begins, we’re afraid it might take off and we’ll lose control.
Why Bother Starting?
“OK, so I made the connection. But isn’t that enough? If I avoid that person from now on, I can just skip the drama. Why bother?”
Building on that first encounter makes it easier to connect in the future. When we fail to build on those connections, the relationship always goes back to the way it was. Then, when we are forced into dealing with them again in the future, we have to start from square one because we haven’t kept building.
We talked in earlier chapters about basing our emotional energy on the importance of the relationship. The closer someone is to us, the more emotional energy our relationship with them deserves. The less connected we are with a person, the less energy we should expend. We don’t need to spend a lot of time with a stranger who criticizes our behavior, but we do need to invest in family, friends, or work associates whom we encounter each day.
People on the fringes of our lives should be dealt with in fringe ways; we should not allow them to be more than a blip on our radar screen. People who are more front and center because of their unavoidable connection require more attention. That doesn’t mean we need to heal every unhealthy relationship simply because it’s close. Rather, it means focusing enough energy to determine what the relationship should be like, coming up with a plan, and setting appropriate boundaries.
It’s one thing to read books about becoming free from the impact that crazy people have on our lives. It’s quite another to make it happen.
We’ve gotten used to quick fixes. When the car breaks down, we take it to a mechanic. It might be expensive, but we usually get our car back the same day and the problem is solved. Relationships don’t respond to quick fixes. Working on relationships feels like trying to fix cancer; it’s been growing for a long time unnoticed, it often requires drastic measures, and the outcome is uncertain.
When we see someone making totally crazy choices and exhibiting irrational behaviors, we tend to look at the surface impact. We forget that those patterns have been growing for a long time in their lives. That doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it helps explain it.
A friend and I were discussing a co-worker who drove us crazy. We talked about the way she approached people, the manipulation and intimidation she used in most relationships, and how other people perceived her.
Then my friend said, “I wonder what happened.”
“What happened to what?” I responded.
“What happened to her. I wonder what happened in her life that has brought her to the place where she feels like she has to act the way she does. It’s not normal for people to act like that. Something happened.”
That was a turning point for me. I still had to work with this person and had simply been seeing her as crazy. I wasn’t thinking of the journey that took her to that point. I could keep avoiding her to keep my set point comfortable, but nothing would ever change. We would still have a shallow, unhealthy, superficial relationship.
Since I had to work with her, I decided to overcome inertia. Even though I still considered her to be crazy, I began to relate to her as a whole person. I didn’t have to figure her out; I just needed to understand that there are reasons people become crazy and focus on how I would respond.
It took effort and risk for me to move in that direction. I determined what boundaries needed to be in place and planned my responses when she pushed those boundaries. I also had to look at my own contribution to the outcomes.
My co-worker still seems to be on a mission of making people crazy. However, by taking the time to carefully think through the relationship, I was able to develop a healthy way of relating to her. It took time and planning, and things still aren’t comfortable. But the effort to keep that relationship healthy is just a fraction of the effort it would take to start over each time.
Finding Hope
When a relationship has been painful for a long time, we feel hopeless for any change to take place. We’ve learned to coexist with our crazy person; while that’s not healthy, we no longer notice the pain because we’ve gotten used to it. We’re afraid that if we start working on the relationship we’ll stir something up that could be uncomfortable.
It’s like being submerged in debt and going shopping to feel better. We’re denying the reality of our financial situation by thinking, “Since I’m buying things, I must not be in financial trouble.”
If we try to fix everything in our relationships overnight, we’ll be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task. But if we don’t take any action, with either the crazy person’s behavior or our own responses, there’s no hope for healing on either side. It might take work to get a relationship moving, and there’s no guarantee of where it will end up. But nothing will happen until we take the first step.
Overcoming inertia simply means taking the first step.
A Prescription for Progress
A strained relationship is already delicate, and we don’t want to send it into a tailspin. When we choose to overcome inertia and work on our connection with that person, there are several steps in the process.
1. Develop an Honest Perspective
The reality in relationships is that they take time to grow. When things aren’t right, we want to fix them. But there are no quick fixes between people. When we try to rush relationships, the healing slows down. When we allow time for healing, the process speeds up. That’s why the first step in overcoming inertia is to live with the reality of each situation, not the fantasy of our desires.
2. Value Tiny Steps
Whenever we see a huge task ahead, we assume it will take more work than a small task. We don’t even want to start because it seems overwhelming. A big task is simply a series of small tasks done in succession. We can’t do every part of a project; we can only do one step. If we recognize that we can only do one step followed by another and another, we can accomplish huge things. Consistent small steps can have dramatic results and immediate payoff.
Relationships are the same way. The more painful and close a crazy relationship is, the more work it feels like it’s going to be. It’s futile to think of everything that could go wrong in the future. All we have is the current moment. Deal with one situation at a time. A single step isn’t wasted effort; it’s the beginning of a long journey in the right direction.
3. Believe in the Possibilities, but Accept the Way Things Are
Can our crazy person change? As long as they’re alive, there is always hope. Something could happen, and that something could impact them in a way that could change their thinking and behavior.
That perspective has to be balanced with the fact that they might not change (and probably won’t). If our happiness and sanity is based on the expectation of them changing, we’ve handed them the reins in our lives.
4. Don’t Straddle the Centerline
It might seem safe to stay in the middle of the road, straddling the line between working on a relationship and leaving it alone. But staying in the middle is unhealthy because there is no progress in any direction. We’re avoiding pain instead of pursuing health. We sidestep making a decision because we’re afraid it will be the wrong one. However, it’s better to make a decision and take action, then steer the results as they arise.
There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.
5. Live in the Present
While it’s natural for us to focus on outcomes, that’s a poor standard for evaluating relationships. Instead of judging results, we should celebrate progress. Our purpose is not to guarantee a healthy relationship; it’s to determine what choices are best in the present, stay current, and focus on what’s happening this moment. It’s dangerous to wish for the past or fantasize about the future. When it comes to relationships, all we have is today.
6. Find the Big Picture
The crazier the relationship and the closer the person is to us, the more likely that they’ll provide drama. But we are more than our relationships. We need to look through the lens of reality, seeing all of the things that make us human instead of judging ourselves by that one part of our lives.
Someone said we miss 100 percent of the opportunities we never take. If we let our relationships remain as they are, nothing will ever change. If we overcome inertia, we have hope for the journey.
We need to take the first step.