Retire Your Inner Lawyer

Relationships don't thrive in a courtroom.

Arbre aux pierres (1959), Jane Graverol

What is the point of any relationship? Are you there to teach another person important lessons, to extract maximum value from them, to be supported and embraced and never challenged or questioned?

Or do you collide with another human in order to become permanently changed — to get shaken to the core, to throw off sparks, to alter your previous trajectory, to shift your perspective, to welcome bewildering new sensations under your skin?

One of the saddest dimensions of being alive these days is the reigning belief that relationships shouldn’t be jarring or uncomfortable or awkward at times, that you should never find yourself taxed or confused or irritated or unable to comprehend the person in front of you, that you should never be asked to listen closely to needs and desires and dreams that don’t match your own perfectly, that you should have to stretch and grow and make space to let a very different organism into your life.

When you collide with another human, the whole point is to be moved, to have your cells rearranged, to have your entire imagination redecorated. But as a person with even the faintest shred of damage or dysfunction or trauma onboard, you have to constantly fight the urge either to put someone on a pedestal or turn them into a villain. Since you’ve been hurt and rejected before, since you’ve spent time with people who are absolutely NOT equipped to understand you (or even make an effort to do so!), you will be carrying worry and fear in your heart that make you idealize and then stigmatize everyone you meet.

You won’t want to feel awkward, because it will remind you of your hurt. You won’t want to feel confused, because it will remind you of being left behind for reasons you didn’t understand and still don’t. So at the first sign of a flaw, you will be likely to catastrophize, to panic and back away, to defend yourself unnecessarily, to hide and never return. You will want to analyze excessively and come up with a bulletproof story about how this person WILL NEVER WORK or how they are TOO CRAZY or TOO STUCK or TOO IMPOSSIBLE to love or befriend or trust.

This is why every single day, you have to remind yourself that each and every human alive is difficult in some unique and terrible way. Everyone is challenging. No one on this planet was designed to take care of all of your needs smoothly and patiently, like a dream parent, like a wash and fold laundry service and a chef and a masseuse rolled into one, like an imaginary friend, like a super-sexy superhero soulmate. People have their own stubborn quirks, their own schedules, their own needs, their own fantasies, their own ideas of HOW A HUMAN SHOULD ACT. Navigating what other people want, what they believe, what they hope for, how they’re stubborn, where they’re stuck: These are the mundane and also divine challenges of forming relationships.

So here’s the hardest part: When trouble arises, you turn off your heart and your head takes over and you start to ARGUE. You have a point to make. You know exactly how this started, where it went wrong, who fucked up. You want to let this person know that you can see clearly what’s going on, and you know how to fix this shit. You can tell them exactly where they got it wrong. You can explain to them exactly what they haven’t figured out yet. YOU WILL HELP THEM IMPROVE. They just have to listen and accept that you can see the truth with clear eyes and they are in the dark.

You just have to make your case and be heard. And then they will snap into the right place and start acting the way a person should act when they’ve fuuuuucked everything up. They will probably feel grateful to you once they see how stupid and wrong they were, right? They will understand and everything will be good again.

What’s not so awesome is that people are more difficult than this, and your insistence on FIXING THINGS using your brain and your argumentation and your unmatched naming-and-blaming services is what makes YOU difficult. You might think I’m talking about myself. I am! But I’m also talking about almost every smart, sensitive adult I know. We all think that we’re incredibly helpful but we’re exhausting. We all think that we can set everyone straight and make things better, but mostly what we need is to sit down, shut the fuck up, and learn more about the world around us by opening our hearts as wide as they’ll go.

We need to invite each collision and let it move us. We need to learn new ideas, soak in new emotions, pick up new skills. We need to learn to say nothing at all, and ask better questions. We need to learn to say

TELL ME MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED.

This is not about rolling over. Abusive relationships aren’t on the table here. Right now we’re talking about good people who are difficult. The world is filled with them, and you are one of them.

***

Every relationship doesn’t fit into this scenario, obviously. But try an experiment. The next time a good relationship with someone you love frustrates you or makes you angry, before you speak about it, say a short prayer in honor of what relationships are for. Take a breath and take a moment to remember what other humans are for, why they enter your life, why they frustrate the fuck out of you, why they inspire and upset you, why they alter the design of your heart and reroute the racetracks inside your mind.

The best, most promising relationships are formed out of reverence and fearless love and curiosity and imagination. The most divine relationships constitute a messy, awkward collaboration between two savage souls who dare to ask for more from this world. Nothing is more beautiful than two people who dare to be wild and rapacious together! The most transformative relationships between two flexible, open, complex people are dances of fear and trust and optimism, wit and aggression and befuddlement. You will be alarmed by this human’s limits at times, and at other times you will be terrified by their limitlessness. You will be stunned at their stupidity and inspired by their cleverness. You will say to yourself, every now and then, “My god, how clumsy, how repetitive, how unseeing, how rigid, how odd, how child-like, how ridiculous!”

Every single person is a complete fool in some corner of their being. Every human alive is defensive and very afraid. Everyone is a thief and a queen, a jester and a peasant, an assassin and a savior, a baby and a mother. This is why every single stranger you meet has the possibility of changing your whole life, reshaping you into something new and different, reconfiguring your heart and your mind.

Do you want to remain a well-defended fort for the stretch of your days on Earth? Or do you want to bend, change shape, see new colors, get tossed on top of a violent wave and then ground into the sand?

***

Yesterday, a friend called to complain about her boyfriend. She outlined his flaws, and I agreed that these were real problems. She explained his missteps, and I agreed there were a lot of them. She said “These things started a long time ago and I’ve tried to discuss them but he hasn’t changed at all.” I agreed that this sounded frustrating.

What I didn’t hear her say was that she is also difficult, she also has flaws, she also makes mistakes. I didn’t hear her say that she was trying to understand what he was asking for, however irrational it might seem in that moment. I understood why this might be true, and I felt for her. I didn’t want to challenge her, because I was afraid that I would be trying to fix her, when really, it’s none of my business and I need to just let her do what’s best for her.

But this is my big weakness: I have trouble biting my tongue. And it felt wrong not to push her to challenge herself a little, if only to figure out if the relationship really is doomed so she can put it behind her without regrets. She called me, after all, and this is who I am, a person with very strong opinions about how to navigate love.

So I said, “As an experiment, I would put down your arguments and simply ask him more about what he wants. Instead of making your case or blowing him off completely and feeling unsettled about it for weeks, try something new. Get curious about what’s missing for him. What’s his vision of how things could look? Find out. Put your anger aside and do the awkward work of discovering more about what he’s meant to bring into your life.”

“I’ve already done that so many times,” she said.

So I said I get it and that was that.

But what I thought was: IT NEVER ENDS. When you love someone, you go back and find out more, over and over again. You keep asking questions. That’s what love is. Relationships that last consist of two people who are committed to honoring each other’s desires, even when those desires are irritating or repetitive or stupid. True love is asking someone, “What do you think this will get you? Where do you think we’re headed? Why do you want this? Explain more about what you’re feeling to me.”

Most people aren’t up for that. Most people can’t handle it and don’t want to go there. Most people are a real mess but they don’t want to know why or how to find a real, sustainable way forward that will feel good to them, that will make them stronger and smarter, that will bring them life and inspiration and more love than they can even handle.

Don’t be like most people. Open your heart as wide as it will go. True love should be easy, and mostly, it is. Lasting, soulful friendships should feel effortless, and mostly, they do. But every now and then, loving someone is the hardest thing in the world to do. Show up and keep loving anyway. Love with everything you’ve got.

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