Leaving and Cleaving
In
earlier times, leaving was defined by distance, but now it is defined
by silence. Everybody everywhere is just a text away, a phone call away.
Relationships are often defined by the frequency and intensity of
communication between two people.
The
person moving on and changing a relationship no longer makes a one-time
choice to physically go to another town. He makes a series of
minute-by-minute decisions to not text, to not email or call, to turn
intense communication into sporadic conversation or no communication.
His name was once constant on his friend’s phone screen, but now it is
rare and the void is a wound.
If you are like me you know a lot of relationships in which people haven’t managed this sort of transition well. Communication that was once honest and life-enhancing has become perverted — after a transition — by resentment, neediness or narcissism.
We
all know men and women who stalk ex-lovers online; people who bombard a
friend with emails even though that friendship has evidently cooled;
mentors who resent their former protégés when their emails are no longer
instantly returned; people who post faux glam pictures on Instagram so
they can “win the breakup” against their ex.
Instant
communication creates a new sort of challenge. How do you gracefully
change your communication patterns when one person legitimately wants to
step back or is entering another life phase?
The
paradox is that the person doing the leaving controls the situation,
but greater heroism is demanded of the one being left behind. The person
left in the vapor trail is hurt and probably craves contact. It’s
amazing how much pain there is when what was once intimate conversation
turns into unnaturally casual banter, emotional distance or just a void.
The
person left behind also probably thinks that the leaver is making a big
mistake. She probably thinks that it’s stupid to leave or change the
bond; that the other person is driven by selfishness, shortsightedness
or popularity.
Yet
if the whole transition is going to be managed with any dignity, the
person being left has to swallow the pain and accept the decision.
The
person being left has to grant the leaver the dignity of her own mind,
has to respect her ability to make her own choices about how to live and
whom to be close to (except in the most highly unusual circumstances).
The person being left has to suppress vindictive flashes of resentment
and be motivated by a steady wish for the other person’s ultimate good.
Without accepting the idea that she deserved to be left, the person
being left has to act in a way worthy of her best nature, to continue
the sacrificial love that the leaver may not deserve and may never learn
about.
That
means not calling when you are not wanted. Not pleading for more
intimacy or doing the other embarrassing things that wine, late nights
and instant communications make possible.
Maybe
that will mean the permanent end to what once was, in which case at
least the one left behind has lost with grace. But maybe it will mean
rebirth.For
example, to be around college students these days is to observe how
many parents have failed to successfully start their child’s transition
into adulthood.
The
mistakes usually begin early in adolescence. The parents don’t create a
space where the child can establish independence. They don’t create a
context in which the child can be honest about what’s actually happening
in his life. The child is forced to deceive in order to both lead a
semi-independent life and also maintain parental love.
By
college, both sides are to be pitied. By hanging on too tight, the
parents have created exactly the separation they sought to avoid. The
student, meanwhile, does not know if he is worthy of being treated as a
dignified adult because his parents haven’t treated him that way. They
are heading for a life of miscommunication.
But
if the parents lay down sacrificially, accept the relationship their
child defines, then it can reboot on an adult-to-adult basis. The
hiddenness and deception is no longer necessary. Texts and emails can
flow, not as before, but fluidly and sweetly.
Communications
technology encourages us to express whatever is on our minds in that
instant. It makes self-restraint harder. But sometimes healthy
relationships require self-restraint and self-quieting, deference and
respect (at the exact moments when those things are hardest to muster).
So today a new kind of heroism is required. Feelings are hurt and angry
words are at the ready. But they are held back. You can’t know the
future, but at least you can walk into it as your best and highest self.
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