There’s a lot of discourse online about pathologizing people. Calling people narcissists, toxic, and cancelling them, then recommending going NC (no contact) with them.
Call me crazy, but I think you miss out on some of the most rewarding parts of loving someone the moment you do that.
Of course, I’m not recommending that you continue to give of yourself endlessly to people who are genuinely abusive, especially in cases of domestic, sexual, or intimate partner violence. In those cases, know that I have compassion for you and truly hope you get out soon. Be safe. Take care of yourself. That takes priority.
But in some situations, I think as a society, Americans are quick to turn on others. It’s baked into the values of capitalism and individualism that permeate American culture.
Emotional discomfort is, well, uncomfortable.
And for some tough love here – a lot of us have really low capacity to tolerate it.
That doesn’t automatically mean, though, that you should jump to going no contact with someone.
If you do, I think you miss out on one of the hardest, but also most rewarding, parts of loving someone.
As the only child to two Asian immigrant parents, it’s practically inevitable that we get into disagreements and don’t always see eye to eye. In many of those occasions, there are almost always things said that I don’t think my parents always fully mean.
It doesn’t mean that they hurt any less.
But sometimes loving people doesn’t look like a Hallmark movie, especially when you’re navigating cross-cultural dynamics.
When I was working abroad in Milan, I took a class with the wonderful Brandi DeMont who introduced me to Erin Meyer’s 8 Dimensions of Culture Model[1] and Mitchell Hammer’s Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Inventory[2].
While based on more of a business relationship perspective, it definitely opened up my eyes to something that I had noticed, but I never had a baseline for putting into words sooner, even as a social work student whose primary area of study IS effective communication.
I think sometimes the source of our understanding has to do with cultural beliefs about communication that go unsaid.
Sometimes, I say things more directly, when Filipino culture is all about indirect communication, and seemingly innocuous things I’ve said get interpreted as deeply disrespectful and offensive, when they were not meant that way.
Sometimes I don’t understand where my parents are coming from because they are non-confrontational, and it’s not until resentment has built up to an unbearable point that they finally say a word about things that have been bothering them for quite some time.
Sometimes, I feel close and comfortable with my parents since we are a very small family unit. Other times, I get taken off guard and get upset because they feel the need to re-establish family hierarchy more clearly within our family unit.
On different occasions, I wish they could comfort me during moments of emotional expression and get hurt when they show emotional restraint.
Knowing that these are often due to cultural differences, not personal ones, has helped me better manage my expectations for how they may react in similar situations moving forward.
And this brings me to the whole point of this article: how we move forward past conflict. Past the hurts. Past the disagreements. Past resentment.
Ignoring what happened and trying to move on doesn’t lead to effective reconciliation – it just causes resentment to build.
Instead, what I’ve found to work, is that people need to approach conflict together, as a team. Remember you’re not fighting each other – you love each other. And to work together, you might need to bring a little extra humility[3], patience, and even forgiveness to the table.
My lolo recently asked me, “Why do I always have to be the one to swallow my hurts and be the one to say thank you to repair the relationship with my son?”
And the truth is, I can’t answer that question.
There is never a guaranteed outcome in relationships and interactions with another human being. Even if you follow a script[4], there’s no saying whether you will reach a resolution because relationships always involve multiple people, and you can’t control another person’s words, actions, and behaviors.
But what I can say with certainty is that you can’t repair or heal a hurt you’ve never voiced out loud.
If you “swallow”‘ your hurt instead of communicating it, it will only build (even in communities that prioritize indirect communication!).
And while it’s not a guarantee that things will get better, using principles of Nonviolent Communication and “I” statements often do help defuse initial defensiveness of another person during heated moments.
Your chances of repairing a relationship are 0% if you never try.
If you do, there’s a chance that your relationship is forever strengthened.
When you see happy couples who have been married multiple decades at weddings, it’s not because they’re superhuman kind and wonderful people who have never had an argument in their lives.
It’s because they know and understand that loving someone means not giving up on them after the first, or second, or fiftieth, or five hundredth conflict or disagreement.
Having disagreements is completely normal and to be expected for anyone you spend any amount of time with.
The key to continuing a relationship with a loved one after both have been hurt by each other is to remind each other of your commitment to finding a way forward. Keeping your love for each other at the heart of the conflict. Choosing the work of repair over the dissolution of the relationship every single time.
Long-term relationships don’t happen on accident – friendships, romantic relationships, familial relationships, and otherwise.
They happen by reaching this most difficult part of loving someone – the part where you need to humble yourself, move with patience and grace, open your mind to a different perspective, and communicate with honesty and vulnerability, which sometimes can take a lot of courage, even (and especially) when direct communication may not be the cultural norm.
I’ve been there.
But this is also the very best part of loving someone, because looking back and knowing your relationship has outlasted every prior challenge and difficulty is satisfying and gratifying in ways that not much else in this world is.
being a girl with the one who birthed you
when did mothers being monsters become a trope
love so ferocious they
become bears
or red pandas
fighters
or fire
i sometimes forget she, too, was just a girl
she seems so much larger than life
she who birthed me
whose dresses i wore
whose mouth is mine
whose makeup i do
whose hair i curl
i forget that she, like me, became
sharp stared
sharp tongued
tough skinned
in this world where those are the tools of our
survival
being a girl is being the best of her
and victim to the worst of her
seeing my own rage
inside her face
i know, deep down, i'm
her biggest heartbreak
and her greatest love
her worst nightmare
and her sweetest daydream
she's everything i admire
my dearest desire
and my most profound disappointment
all at once
the source of boundless strength and inspiration
my forever muse
and yet
the one whose words can tear me down
as easily as a needle to a balloon
every up feels like rainbows and unicorns,
every fight like it could be the last
we're two sides of a coin
a snake eating its own tail
what will become of us
girls or monsters or mother-and-daughter
together
4 Works Cited
1. Meyer, E. (2014). The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures. Open source
2. Hammer, M. (2005). The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory : A conceptual framework and measure of intercultural conflict resolution approaches. Open source
3. Fischer-Borne, M. C. J. &. M. S. (2015). From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence. Open source
4. Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Open source
Leave a Reply