mon·o·chro·mat·ic
Adjective
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Just finished watching the film "The Age of Innocence". As I watched it, I kept thinking that the character May Welland was so utterly monochromatic: the range of her personality, while nice enough, only had one frequency. This line, at the end of the film, is quite telling:
"The world of her youth had fallen to pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever noticing. This hard, bright blindness, her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their views from her just as Archer concealed his. She died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own."
Made me think of the Ns I know, they also seem to be just as flat. My husband used to have a friend years ago that came on a couple of holidays with us. This guy would never ever be in synch with the group. He only had one speed, and it made no difference whether the occasion required to be fast or slow. Made no difference to him if there was people waiting for him either. We bumped into him the other day and he remains unchanged. Just like May Welland, his world remains static. As if every day is a "groundhog day" for him.
My sister also only has one frequency. My MIL once remarked that everything she does is approached with the same intensity whether the task requires it or not. When she said this, I thought this was also true of the level of drama she pumps up. When I had a conversation with her recently she hurled all sorts of accusations. The dramatic way she was saying it you'd think I'd stolen from her, kidnapped her children and slept with her husband. Once she went away and I thought about her list of my "alleged" offences, what they really came up to was this:
- I had disagreed with her
- I had said no to favours she wanted from me
- I had stopped hanging out with the same people as her
Kara, this is a perfect little gem. One frequency, and the only control on it is volume. Man, you are good at crystalizing things.
ReplyDeleteThanks CS. Once I pushed the "mute" button it became easier to see clearly what was really going on.
Deletelol--Isn't the mute button a multi-purpose delight!
Deletehahaha indeed it is ;)
DeleteMy sister is willfully stuck in her dramatic existence. She doesn't want solutions; she wants attention. When I realized she didn't want things to get better and stopped trying to help, she disappeared from my life for more fertile targets. It makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that VR. It must be hard for you. I suppose that ultimately it is their choice. If they don't want to get better they don't want to get better. There's not much anyone can do I'm afraid. I realised the same thing about my sister when she said to me: "it's all very well you learning about this "boundaries thing" but don't do them to me, or I am going to be just like anybody else to you?". Well, that just says it all, doesn't it?
DeleteInteresting observations. I was thinking how my NM is such a drama queen, and yet I stopped and thought and considered how she is always "bright and chipper" when she speaks to me. It's really creepy. I hope I remember to notice what the real complaints are next time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Judy. It's like they're performing acts of prestidigitation. You really have to be on the ball to be able to see what's going on, and it's not easy. We just need to keep practicing :) xx
DeleteWhat I respond to here is the bullet point about "saying no to favors." I think this was the final nail in my coffin as far as my sister was concerned. She was taking some sort of layperson counseling course through her church, and she asked me to be a "case study" of some sort of dysfunctional role (I don't remember what it was). I said "no" for a couple of reasons. First, my sister has bad boundaries and I could not trust her to keep my identity anonymous (and since I knew some of her church friends, this was disturbing to me). Second, and more importantly, when this occurred I'd reached a point in my recovery where I didn't want to be seen anymore as the family fuck-up (pardon my language), and I was unwilling to do anything that would cement my sister's view of me in that role.
ReplyDeleteOf course, she was livid that I said no. And of course, she wouldn't actually have a conversation about it with me, either, because she was so uncomfortable with her own anger. But her passive-aggressiveness and hostility toward me the next time I saw her--talking over me as if I weren't there, saying embarrassing things about me to my SO, etc., etc.--was over the top. And when I tried to talk to her about, denial, denial, denial. She actually had the nerve to say, "I'm not angry at you!" and "I thought we had a nice time!" Once again making me the "angry" one and letting her off the hook.
Sorry for the rant. Arghhh. It is still such a no-win situation. As VR said, it makes me sad.
Kitty
Hi Kitty,
DeleteI see so many similarities between your sister and mine. Livid is the precise term to describe their demeanour when we say no. Denial is their default mode. If in doubt, deny everything. I slowly accepting that the only way to deal with them is to change the whole approach and not try to speak to them as you would with reasonable people, but to actually get them to say what they want. Their answers are quite revealing.
No worries about the rant, no win situations are really frustrating... :P