Cherished Personal Narratives

We often don’t realize how sometimes, when we get ticked off at someone, it is less about what s/he is going and more because s/he’s messin’ with our heads. While we may not like what a person is doing, we may not like, even more, what it does to

the internal unspoken but very real story we have about

• who they are,
• what they mean to us,
• what that says about them,
• what it says about our relationship with them, and
• about my place in the world

I was reminded of this delightfully in the Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Committed, A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. I know, I know, I have referenced this book before, and regular readers may wonder when my periodic blurts about the book will stop. There were more corners turned over than I could write in a single blob of blog entries, so likely there will be one or two more quippy excerpts to pop up yet.

She writes:

Felipe [her partner] has the bad habit of sometimes snapping impatiently at people he feels are either behaving poorly or interfering with the quality of his life….All over the world I have watched this man bark his disapproval at bungling flight attendants, inept taxi drivers…and the parents of ill-behaved children….

I deplore this.

Having been raised by a self-composed Midwestern mother and a taciturn Yankee father, I am genetically and culturally incapable of handling Felipe’s more classically Brazilian version of conflict resolution. People in my family wouldn’t even speak this way to a mugger. Moreover, whenever I see Felipe fly off the handle in public, it messes around with my cherished personal narrative about what a gentle and tenderhearted guy I have chose to love, and that, frankly, pisses me more than anything else. If there is one indignity I shall never endure gracefully, it is watching people mess around with my most cherished personal narratives about them.

Love that quote…I giggled and giggled about that. I love it that she has the insight to notice her anger at her violated personal narratives, and then, that she has the chutzpah to aknowledge them publically.

It is annoying when people violate who we think they are or who we imagine them to be. Makes the world, and our assumptions about what we know it a little less certain. Our world becomes a little more complicated, and that just makes a person grumpy.

• Ex-husbands are supposed to be complete jerks, and when they turn around and act extraordinarily civilly or even kindly when you hit a rough spot, it’s easy to dismiss it, rather than see it as an important nuance in who he really is and the effort he is making to co-parent. A woman wants to write it off as insignificant and meaningless because it doesn’t fit with her desired picture of him as a complete jerk with no redeeming qualities.
• A wife is troubled by seeing how much a job loss rattles her husband…she sees him as a pillar of strength generally, and not only feels badly for him, she begins to wonder who he is, if this upsets him as much as it seems to. It makes her world seem a little less safe when he doesn’t behave like the rock she has in her image of him…like the internal image she has come to rely on.

I remember getting more annoyed with my toddlers’ naughtiness when I was around my parents…I felt that when my kids disobeyed me it made me look like a bad mom to my mom—who I wanted to show that I was a good mom. Now, I’ll be quick to add that part of my personal narrative of my mom was that she was judging my mothering on my children’s obedience level to me in my presence…I’m not actually sure she was, and if she was, I’m not exactly sure what the enduring impact of that opinion was. Seems pretty silly now…but it wasn’t then, at least not to me. I remember noticing this, and thinking how unfair to my kids it was that my level of discipline was “edgier” when my mom was around. This time it was my own personal narrative that was getting threatened in the situation…and I didn’t like it. My children were supposed to be perfectly behaved to show the world (or more accurately, my mother) that I was a good mom. Am I the only one who doesn’t want the personal narrative I want others to have of me messed up?

How much space do we give each other to be authentic and transparent? How quickly do we get angry when people don’t conform to who we want or need them to be? How much do we unconsciously give those around us messages to conform to the boxes we have for them to fit into our world? Think about it.