truth

In which I ponder…time is a healer and other bullshit (Part One)

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There are a lot of myths out there about relationships, love, heartbreak and dating, and many of them are widely believed and quoted, but immensely unhelpful. I can’t claim to be an expert at relationships (although I was with someone for 21 years so that must count for something, surely?) but as it turns out, I am an expert in the other three, so as a public service I thought I’d give you my thoughts on some of the more popular bullshit that people will tell you. All based on my personal relationship experience, my study in psychotherapy and my own years of therapy.

(There are so many of these, I’m going to spread them over a few posts, so here’s your first installment)

Disclaimer 1: you may vociferously disagree with some, or all, of this, and that’s ok.

Disclaimer 2: just because I know this stuff doesn’t mean I do it all. But I feel like knowing it is two-thirds of the way there.

Myth 1: Time is a healer.

Nope.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just by the steadfast passing of time, all your most painful psychological wounds could be healed? It’s a compelling and attractive idea, so it’s no wonder people will tell you this, but it’s also absolutely not true and if you believe in it you will be doing yourself a disservice.

The reality is that time is only a healer if you do the work of healing. This means really honest self examination, probably therapy and being willing to confront difficult feelings about yourself and your experiences. Of course, the passing of time does make things less raw, less of a continuous, preoccupying pain but that is not healing. That’s just memory fading, and life moving on. You’ll start to feel ok again. You’ll be telling yourself you got this, you’re moving on. Time is indeed a healer.

If you have a wound though, it’s still there.

The problem is that if you just let time pass, what you learn to do is to protect that wound. You keep it safe from ripping open, from becoming painful again. Instead of confronting and working through your pain, you stand in front of it in a constant state of high alert looking for anything that might be a threat.

At its worst, this behaviour will prevent you from getting into the sort of relationship you seek, as to potential partners your distance and unwillingness to leave your command post will look like a lack of interest and a problem with commitment. You’ll be left wondering why your relationships never work out. But eventually, you’ll start to feel more comfortable. You’ll probably get into a relationship again. You’ll look pretty functional just so long as not too much is at stake and you don’t – through the feelings you are developing – start to feel vulnerable. Relationships require both the willingness to be vulnerable and courageous – Brene Brown is great on this, so I won’t go on about it. But once you start to feel vulnerable you start getting nervous. You’ve got to protect that wound. You need to keep looking out for any signs of danger. And then when you perceive that a threat is there, you can’t help but to let fight or flight kick in. And that’s when it will all start to go terribly wrong.

The thing is that, when you are in flight or fight, the oldest, most prehistoric, most unregulated part of your brain kicks in. Your autonomic nervous system can’t tell the difference between an imminent attack by a sabre tooth tiger and the fact that your boyfriend didn’t notice you’ve had your nails done. Your heart races and you get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. But most importantly your thoughts become scrambled and before you know it, you’ve persuaded yourself that he doesn’t love you, that you’re fundamentally unlovable and you’ve thrown in the towel. Despite any real evidence to the contrary. Self sabotage 101.

The good thing though, is that your wound is safe.

Or is it?

The only way to prevent all this is to be brave. Confront that fear, do the healing. See the therapist, read the books. It will take time. But at least at the end you might be healed.

Myth 2: No one can love you until you love yourself

Annoyingly true.

In the past I didn’t believe this and it annoyed the hell out of me when people said it. This was mainly because it seemed so difficult. How could I love myself when the people who should have loved me didn’t? Surely the answer to this was to get someone to love me, which would provide irrefutable proof of my lovableness? And then I’d be able to relax into loving myself.

Nooooooo…

The problem with not loving yourself, being unable to see your own strengths, your beauty, your worth and your contribution is that living with self loathing and a sense of being unlovable is a pretty bleak place to be. And so we look to others to reassure us that we are ok. We try all sorts of ways to feel loved and to feel validated. At its least concerning level, we diligently document our brilliant lives on Facebook or Instagram, carefully curating the posts so that our inner pain can never be discovered, and drop subtle hints about the more difficult things in the hope that someone will be interested enough to ask if we are ok. And then we stand back and watch the likes come in. The more likes we get the more liked we are, right?

At its worst, we get into a relationship with someone and then make them responsible for making us feel loved. But this is way too much of a responsibility for another person, even if they actually do love you. For one thing, if one partner has healthy self esteem, it creates an imbalance in terms of the focus of the relationship – because rather than loving one another equally, one person gets burdened with loving their partner enough to fill up the emptiness they feel about themselves.

But also, if you haven’t done the work and are still running to a script that tells you that you are unworthy and unlovable, loving you is going to end up like pouring love into a leaky bucket that will never be filled. Because that voice is really loud – loud enough to make sure that you never feel loved, no matter what – and you’ll be on the lookout for signs that support your world view. You’ll find yourself ignoring things that you should be noticing – the small acts of love that take place every day – and focusing on the bits and bobs that prove you are right to think that you’re unlovable. You will end up feeling resentful that your partner doesn’t love you enough and your partner will feel confused and exhausted. And they will also feel unloved, or at the very least, unsure – because your focus is not on loving them, but on ensuring that they love you.

And every time you feel unloved, that ancient bit of your brain is going to kick in again and you’ll start behaving like a crazy person.

Learning to love yourself is hard, and sometimes the relationship you’re in is part of why you don’t. But it’s more likely to be a bit more ingrained than that – in that you’ve ended up in a bad relationship because you never actually learnt to love yourself in the first place and you’ve accepted what you think you’re worth.

Again – the only way to avoid this is to do the work. Do the therapy. Practice self reflection. And be really honest with yourself about how you might have contributed to the things that go wrong in your relationships. This doesn’t mean you should take the blame – this just means being really clear about what was your shit and what was theirs and then focusing on working on yours only. Don’t worry about theirs. Don’t even bother telling them about it, tempting though it is*. That’s their journey.

And if you’re finding it hard, fake it until you make it. Shout down that voice in your head and tell yourself every day, every time you feel like you might be waivering, that you’re beautiful, you’re clever, you’re enough*. Or whatever it is that you need to hear. Eventually, if you work hard, you’ll believe it.

Myth 3: If it’s meant to be, it should be easy

Bullshit.

News flash people: relationships are hard.

When you are young, things seem so straightforward. Almost from birth we are sold the idea that we’ll meet someone, fall in love and live happily ever after. Simples. For some people this happens and that’s wonderful. I actually have quite a number of friends who met as young teens and here we all are in our 50th year, and they’re still together. I’m going to assume that they are happy – certainly they are happy enough to still be married.

However, I’m going to hazard a guess that, despite what their Facebook feed might suggest, most of those couples will have been through challenging times. They will have let one another down over the years or disappointed one another. They will have been bored and wondered where the excitement has all gone. They may have had moments when their head has been turned by someone else, and some of them may have acted upon those feelings.

But they are still together.

This won’t be because it was easy. It will be because they chose not to give up, and to ride the storms.

The reality is that all relationships are difficult – even the good ones. And when you enter into a relationship older I believe it gets harder. Maybe your previous partner left you for someone else. Maybe they treated you badly. Perhaps you had an affair which destroyed your marriage and left you deeply regretful. Whatever the reason, you will enter your next relationship with a certain amount of baggage.

Even if, as I’ve mentioned above, you’ve been doing the work, exercising your new found self knowledge in the context of a new relationship can be tricky. Perhaps you had trouble setting boundaries with your previous partner – but now you’re so keen not to make the same mistake, you’re laying down the law like a dictator with your new one. Or maybe your last partner told you that you didn’t help out enough around the house, so now you’re in a domestic frenzy almost permanently, but constantly looking for reassurance that your efforts have been noticed.

I think that the main thing you can do to make relationships easier is to acknowledge that they take time, and that it might take some years to get used to one another on a really deep level. And that there are going to be times when you feel like it would be better just to walk away.** I’m not talking about relationships that have just begun, of course. I’m talking about relationships where the limerence has gone, you’re committed and you’re into the day to day business of being together. But if you hang on in there, roll with the punches and learn together, maybe you’ll be able to laugh together in 20 years about what nightmares you both were at the beginning.

Myth 4: Closure

Again – bullshit.

People often talk about needing closure at the end of a relationship, and in my view, they end up torturing themselves looking for it.

This is because what they mean is that they want to try to understand not the things they did, but the things their partner did.

I’m here to tell you, that’s never going to happen. You are never really going to understand, and it’s not your business anyway.

It’s hard to enough to understand why we do the things we do ourselves, let alone start thinking we are going to be able to understand the internal machinations of other people. Even people we’ve loved.

The only thing you can do – and really the only useful thing you can do in terms of future relationships – is to work on why you did stuff. Because, unfortunately, no relationship really ever ends because one person was the embodiment of evil and the other was an angel. We all contribute to everything, and believe me, you will have done things. The things you did, don’t in any way condone or explain the behaviour of your partner – they are responsible for that – but you can learn from them. You may decide you would do some of the things you did again in similar circumstances, but you might think that there is also some stuff you can work on. I’d be surprised if you don’t.

So instead of closure, look for acceptance and then learning. Accept it’s over. Accept you’ll never know why your partner did this, or said that. And then learn from it all.

*I will admit to being particularly bad at this

**of course sometimes that might be true, and I’m not at all advocating staying in a relationship where you’re not happy. But make sure you definitely can’t be happy before you end it.

In which I ponder…teenagers

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(I have loads of drafted unpublished posts and I found this the other day. I imagine I didn’t post it because it might have caused offence to said teenage offspring. They are both out of their teens now, and this still rings true, so here it is).

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Unless you have teenage children, you really have no idea how stupid, emotionally unstable and embarrassing you are.

In the glory days when they are young, you are perfect. You’re the best Mum – the prettiest, the cleverest, the kindest. You can do no wrong. Children have fights in the playground over who has the best mum or dad.

Then, overnight – and without warning – you become persona non grata. It starts with the rapidly dropped hand in sight of the school gate and the cheek turned away as you lean down for your goodbye kiss, and is followed up quickly by eye-rolling and a reluctance to be seen in public with you. Then before you know it you are – apparently – a fully fledged psycho.

I’m happy to say that these stages of teenager-dom are close to being over in my household. In fact, one of my children is no longer actually a teenager, and has moved out to his own place. But I do still have one hormonally charged resident sharing my home, and although I’m fortunate that for about 98% of the time she is absolutely the light of my life, during the other 2% she comes close to driving me to the sort of psychosis she thinks I exhibit anyway.

I read somewhere once that teenagers are particularly sensitive to changes in the volume of voices. I hope I did anyway, as every time I am even slightly irritated I am accused of shouting when I’m pretty sure I am not. The problem is though that then we get into a cycle. Because originally I was mildly irritated about something like – oh I don’t know – the sink being full of washing up when I got home from work. But then I’m irritated about the fact that what we seem to be debating now is not whether it is reasonable to fill the kitchen sink with your redundant plates and mugs – often along with uneaten food – but whether or not the amount I am ‘sooooo upset’ about it is commensurate with the crime, which apparently hadn’t been anticipated*. And if I’m not careful, I can then find myself shouting things like – ‘if you want to see me soooooo upset I can do that if you like’, and I end up looking like the teenager while she sighs and does the washing up.

So the other great thing about being the parent of a teenager is not only that you can be stupid, embarrassing and emotionally labile, but you can be a complete loser as well.

This dynamic is made more difficult by being a single parent. If you’re still happily ensconced in wedded bliss with the other parent of your teenager – or maybe even if you’re still ensconced but not necessarily happily – you should have at least one other adult in the house to support you during these interactions. How I’ve longed for someone to say ‘don’t speak to your mother like that’. Also what your teenagers don’t realise is that when they say we are being unreasonable, horrible, or difficult, we are often wondering if we are or not. Am I an awful parent? Am I? There is no one to debrief with, no one to back you up, or to discuss where you might be going wrong, or could take another approach, and it makes it all that little bit harder.

I have been extremely lucky that my own teenagers have been largely lovely**. We’ve even reached a stage where sincere apologies and reparations are made after there has been an incident. But as a parent, I’ve learnt that you also have to be prepared to apologise when you’ve overstepped the mark, and that admitting that sometimes you’re not sure, or you find it hard seems to build trust and understanding. It’s ok not to be the expert, to be fallible, imperfect. And to be honest – whilst they are struggling with never being a teenager before and all that brings, we are also struggling with never having been a parent to a teenager either, so we’re going to make mistakes. When you do this, of course, it does mean that you’ve gone full circle from superhero to real actual person, but it also seems to open up the door to a new type of relationship – a more adult and authentic one. And you teach your children that it’s ok to make mistakes so long as we learn from them – the first stage of which is admitting them.

Of all the phases of parenthood, these teenage years are the ones with the highest anxiety. You must let go, you must allow them to start to assert their independence, go their own way, take some risks. Even though every fibre of your body is saying ‘stay home with me, where it’s safe!’. I have successfully traversed the nail biting experience of knowing your child is in another country alone, of first forays to nightclubs, of driving with their friends down the coast for the weekend. Every parent of a teenager will know the horror of the unanswered call, the text message with no response and of waking up in the early hours of the morning and discovering their teenager is not yet back from their night out in the city.

I’m no expert, but I’ve tended to allow a higher level of independence than many parents, often out of necessity rather than choice. As a single working parent, I couldn’t drive my children everywhere, and we live in a major city. They’ve been navigating the public transport system near and far for years, and learnt to drive right in the city centre (literally terrifying for everyone concerned). My son was at school in the UK, flying back and forth on his own. Both children have made the long trip to and from the UK alone – the first times only just in their teens. I like to think that these experiences have contributed to making them the independent, brave, adventurous young adults they are today.

However, on the rare occasion, I’ve put my foot down with regard to what I’ve felt was an unreasonable request. And when the inevitable onslaught of begging, and accusations of unfairness and being horrid etc etc has begun, I’ve asked them this. Do you think I am saying no to this because I’m a dreadful person who just wants to ruin your life (as suggested) or….could it be something else? Then I’ve made them tell me why. And of course, it’s because I love them and I want them to be safe. Even very bolshy teenagers seem to find it hard to remain quite so indignant in the face of this. And if they carry on being rude or difficult, unplug the internet and take the modem to work with you. If nothing else it will make them come out their rooms.

I would say though that it’s also my experience that teenagers often ask to do outrageous things in the hope that you will say no, in order to absolve them of the embarrassment of declining to do so, even though it would be achingly cool or would ingratiate them with someone cool if they did. I’ve been happy to be the fall guy and have everyone think I’m a bitch – to the extent that we even had a code which would tell me in a text message that I should say no, prior to the call asking me. I won’t tell you what that code was so as not to embarrass my kids, but you should think about setting one up with yours.

So if you’re currently parenting teenagers, good luck! But remember – like all those other stages, even when it feels like it’s lasting forever, it will be over before you know it. And then adulthood beckons – so enjoy them while you can.

*even though I have repeatedly, since the beginning of time, been expressing irritation at said dishes in the sink…

**well I would say that wouldn’t I? But it’s true.

 

In which I ponder…ageing and ageism

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So I’m in Canberra at the Australian Association of Gerontology’s National Conference and I have to say that I’m feeling a bit bleak.

Not just because I’m in Canberra*, but also because I’m finding out a lot of very worrying information about myself.

Here I am, a mere 18 months or so off being 50 and feeling quite dynamic really. I feel like my career has taken off again over the last few years, that I still have a lot to give and that there is still a fair bit of progression/promotion left in me. I feel better about my body than I probably ever have. And I’m probably fitter than I was in my 30s. If you ignore a tendency to forget what I was talking about, I think my mind is generally as sharp as it’s ever been. It’s certainly more full of stuff anyway.

But apparently, things are not looking good for me. I can’t tell you the number of times over the last few days that I’ve checked in with a speaker to see what they mean by ‘older’ and been told 50. The Older Women’s Network starts at 45 for God’s sake! And suddenly I feel old and relegated to the scrap heap.

The news everyone has for me is not good either. I am apparently more likely to be discriminated against at work, passed over for promotion and unable to find employment after being retrenched. As a woman, if I am single, over 50 and living in rental accommodation (oops) I am at significantly higher risk of homelessness after I retire than other groups. Of course my disease risk is much higher too, and I’m more likely to be lonely and lack social connections, especially if I’m single – and the news there is not just the tragedy of being Billy No Mates but also the added bonus of a research study that has shown that weak social connections has the same impact on our health as smoking, and increases your risk of death by between 50% and 90%. Awesome.

There has been some good news though. Older people (in this particular study, they meant over 65s – yay!) are the biggest growth group in online dating and the evidence is that they are having lots of sex with multiple partners (again yay for ageing!). However the reason we know this is that there has been a 50% increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections in the age group (oh…). It seems this age group, who often have had only one sexual partner in their life prior to divorce or bereavement, missed out on sex ed and see condoms only as barrier protection against pregnancy and not against disease. Thankfully, there are people working on addressing this.

On the other hand though, another study that was presented found positive correlation between sexual activity and physical intimacy, and happiness in older people in Australia**, so despite having gonorrhea, all those over 65s are probably feeling pretty perky.

I don’t want to think that all the future holds for me is loneliness, unemployment, homelessness and a nasty case of syphilis. I think you’ll agree that would be disproportionate. It’s hard to believe that my career might already be over (one of the speakers talked about reaching the peak of your career around 50 and then opportunities diminishing. If that’s true, I’m in trouble), and although I’m currently in retirement from the dating scene, I do try to keep an optimistic outlook – either about eventually meeting someone, or having a great life on my own.

However, I am a bit concerned about how our demographic changes and the ‘grey tsunami’ that’s on its way will work against the backdrop of a society that so values youthfulness. Which is where the photo above of Cate Blanchett comes in. Cate was born within a year of me. In the photo above she has been clearly photo shopped so that there is not a wrinkle in sight. She is as lithe as a teenager. Now to be fair, even when she hasn’t been photo shopped she is exceptionally beautiful, but really that’s the point. Magazines exort us to look younger, they try to sell us clothes that are modeled by girls who are as young as our daughters, and promote images of older women that are unachievable and what’s more, dishonest.

And how does all that play out in real life, for the normal, single woman who is knocking 50? Well I was recently out for dinner with a male, single friend and we were discussing male attitudes to women’s bodies. I was initially reassured when he was telling me about how much he appreciated ‘real’ women’s bodies with curves and imperfections and the maturity that older women bring. But later when we were having a laugh and comparing online dating profiles, it turned out that the age range he had specified started at 27 and ended a year before my age. He’s 5 years older than me. So when it comes to it, they say – hey – I see your wisdom, your emotional maturity, and your valiant efforts to hold back time and be the best version of your 48 year old self that you can – and that’s great and everything. But I’ll trump that with some pert breasts, some shapely legs and a flat tummy unravaged by pregnancy and childbirth*** thank you very much.

Where will it all end? Who knows? Tomorrow I have Elder Abuse – what’s so special? Existing legal protections and Re-imagining Ageing to look forward to. I’ll let you know if there is any better news…

*by far the weirdest city on the planet (oh ok – Australia), but I have to say it’s growing on me. Everything is so new, and so planned, and so very neat. And there are nooks and crannies and gardens with lots of public art. So not so bad.

**Seriously. Surely no one was surprised by that?

***and the Peroni, KitKat and pack of Pringles from the mini bar I had while writing this

In which I wonder about the courage required for authenticity…

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We are sitting in a local cafe having a late breakfast. Julie is staring at my face intently, in a way that suggests something beyond mere interest in what I’m saying. She suddenly interrupts.

“You shouldn’t wear that eyeshadow you know. You’re too old”

She pauses for a moment then says with conviction

“Yep. Nah. Doesn’t look good”

She should know. In a former life, she was a successful make up artist, working on Hollywood movies.

I laugh.

“Ok. What should I be wearing?”

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I am at the hairdressers. I am trying to persuade my hairdresser, who has been cutting my hair for so many years that we’ve become friends, that he should give me a fringe. He’s being a bit evasive but is pretty much saying no.

“I’m not doing that”, he says. “You’ll regret it.”

“I won’t”, I say. “Why won’t you do it?”

He sighs.

“Because you’ll look ugly”

“That’s a bit harsh!’ I say, then we both laugh. And I don’t have the fringe.

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We are on the phone. I am relating the latest drama with my boyfriend. I can hear that she is getting frustrated with me.

“I don’t know why you put up with this shit. While you put up with this sort of shit, you’re just inviting it in, and it’s why you have the same relationship over and over. Fuck Wendy. You need to get in your power. You’ve only got yourself to blame!”

She is nearly shouting.

A week or so later we are in the car on the way back from somewhere or other.

“I want to talk to you about the conversation we had the other day. I get where you’re coming from, but I’m not you, you know. I know I’m doing some of this stuff, but I’m on a journey, and I can only be as far along it as I am at each moment. And when I tell you about it, it’s not necessarily because I want advice or for you to solve it, but I’m kind of working through it in my own mind as I’m telling you…And you were shouting”

“Oh” she says. We are both laughing.

“Was I shouting? I won’t shout”

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Over the last few years, there have been some tough times. People who I thought would be in my life forever, have come and gone, and I’ve whittled down my group to a small core of people that I trust absolutely, after experiences that could have led me to distrust everyone, especially friends.

I was wondering what it is was that these people have in common – given that they are so very different, and that some live in the Northern and others in the Southern hemisphere, so few of them have met.

And I think it is authenticity.

I think I’m blessed to have friends who are courageous enough, and love me enough, to tell me the really hard stuff. And they’ve told me some really hard stuff – way harder than the shocking revelation that your eyeshadow is for youngsters, and you are no longer a youngster. This sort of honesty means that when they tell you the good stuff – you know it’s actually true.

I think women are particularly bad at this (and this is perhaps why I’ve always had lots of male friends). Friendships that are based on only saying what you think the other person wants to hear (‘no – you look great in that dress’, ‘of course it’s not you – it’s him, the bastard’ etc etc), lead to relationships that are not based in trust. And of course trust is the basis of everything.

But I also think I am fortunate to have gone far enough in my own journey to be able to hear the hard stuff, to extract out of it what is meaningful for me, what I think is my stuff to deal with and what is theirs, and then to move on forever learning. This also means that when paid a compliment by the same friends, the negative self talk that so often interrupts the pleasure of being told something nice about myself is quietened – because I know these friends don’t bother saying it if it’s not what they truly feel. And when people are speaking to you from a place of authenticity, you just know.

And it makes me wonder – what would life be like if we all told the truth a little more? Both to each other, to ourselves and about ourselves? Scary but a little bit wonderful I think.