Playing Nice
If you know me at all, you know I struggle with my ex-mother in law. Divorced life affords you the freedom to not have to interact with in-laws if you don’t want to, though sometimes (you live in the same town… you’re at the same kid event…) you end up in their field. Recently I’ve had more interactions with her than I am psychically comfortable to withstand, and my tracker ring is telling me I’m stressed because of it. I guess you could say I’ve had a high-conflict divorce situation with both my ex and his mom.
But the other day I had what I would call an “important conversation” with a woman I’m close to at my gym. She’s in her 60’s, just about 5 feet tall like me, and hails from the north-east where her accent and her demeanor remind you that she is unfuckable with. We were discussing a man at our gym who, like my ex MIL, has the boundaries of a toddler. This delightful woman told me the story of how gym bro got in her face at the wrong time during a workout and when she asked him to please not today bother her he ignored her, so she very clearly and unapologetically told this not so delightful man to never talk to her again. When I heard that I felt like the angels were giving me a very clear message.
For this week my ex MIL showed up at my house with her husband uninvited to visit my kids. Arriving at what felt like deliberately dinner time, she innocently shrugged her shoulders when I opened the door and asked so nicely to come see the kids. She had many reasons why, and though I could feel myself going into a freeze-state out of shock for her audacity, I found it in me to say, “Now’s not a good time.”
Nevertheless, as they say, she persisted.
This is the moment I want to examine: what we do when people get in our faces, push through our boundaries, and how, instead, to stop them.
The excuses for why women end up in abusive relationships abound. There’s the empath-narcissist theory, the trauma bond theory, the co-dependent theory. There are all the hacks we see in reels of how to put these people in their place. We see the come backs and the “one sentence to say” to those who continue to abuse, violate, manipulate, gaslight, and fuck with our personal space, energy, and well-being. And yet, when we’re actually in those situations, where that one horrible person is still trying to do that horrible thing to us, sometimes we lose our seat, we fly out of our bodies, and we waiver.
One of my ride-or-dies does therapeutic work with horses. She told me this phenomenal story of how one day she was standing out in the pasture with the mild-mannered horse with whom she’d been working for months. She looked up to see a group of horses, males, coming toward her and her horse menacingly, and with determination. “Dicks swinging,” she said, “I thought for sure I was a goner.” Then, from the distance, she heard the man who kept those horses shout to her in his thick Southern accent, “You put your energy up and you push them AWAY!” And that’s what she did. She stood tall, with all her strength, and put up her hands with a “no fuckin’ way” vibe. The horses slowed, turned cheek, and went the other direction, away from her.
Well, I’ll be.
Would that it was so easy with humans. While a good bit of holding a firm boundary is indeed energetic, sometimes we have to also find our voice. Especially with people who come at us, dicks swinging, to take the space that’s rightfully ours.
The nice lady at the gym reminded me of this. Quietly, she leaned in already at eye level and said, “It’s our right.” And she’s right. But sometimes I still suffer the symptoms of my crippling Nice People’s Disease and have a hard time owning that right. Especially when I’m around people where I’ve habitually, or previously had to for my own security, relinquish that power in order to keep the peace. While I get that that’s trauma, and that it lives in the nervous system, I don’t always see the benefit in digging into it again and again in therapy. Sometimes we have to just put our hands up, stand with all our strength, and say (more or less) “No fuckin’ way” in spite of ourselves.
This is a different kind of peace. One that comes from a calm self-awareness that we strengthen by turning towards, instead of away from our difficult feelings. Here’s where I put in a plug for mindfulness meditation, but more simply, all it takes is strengthening the reflex to turn inward and patiently observe what we’re really thinking and feeling. Through meditation or whatever practice we choose, we grow the muscle of self-awareness and get more comfortable with that awareness. Then, staying present to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions becomes, in time, second nature to us. It becomes comfortable to go deep and reflect, and the more we practice it the more quickly that awareness happens naturally, especially when we need it most.
This is what I think allows us to more easily be aware of our “No.” When we know what it feels like to be calm and centered around our own internal landscape, we can tell when we’re being pulled off that center by external circumstances. We more easily recognize the discomfort of freezing or fleeing because we know so deeply and closely its opposite. And when that calm is shaken we have the ability, because we’ve practiced it, to turn towards rather than away from ourselves and the situation. We don’t abandon ourselves. And from that place can come the appropriate action.
When I opened the door to my mother-in-law, her husband and their doe-eyed, trickster grins, I did not waiver. I was able to say “Now’s not a good time” with calm and clarity. And when they persisted, I just breathed, held my seat, and let them blabber until they’d talked themselves into their own nice little bargain. “We’ll come in, say hi, and leave.” To which I thought, ok, sure, that I can do. In they came, hugged the kids, and then quickly let them let themselves out. I felt good about that, and my kids appreciated my flexibility. It was a healthy compromise, one I arrived at because I stayed connected to my truth.
When we’ve strengthened our mindfulness habit, we begin to carry a level of trust in ourselves. Instead of letting ourselves be bowled over in a tense situation, that self-trust allows us to know we’ll protect our peace when the time calls for it. And in a high-conflict divorce, protecting our peace is always of the utmost importance.
