The Price We Pay To Keep The Peace

It’s a beautiful night here in Georgia. I’m sitting on my back porch, and the air is a little chilly, but the moon is full, and it’s amazing. Last month’s full, pink moon hid behind a curtain of gray clouds. But tonight, the sky is clear, and the moon is striking. Spring has been a fickle visitor here in the South for the past few weeks, occasionally stopping by with no intention of staying. But, at the moment, I’m in no hurry for the seasons to change. Tonight there is a sweet, little breeze floating through the trees and my new, furry friend and I are peaceful.

Last year, I published a post which generated more heartfelt response and introspection than any I’d published previously. In that post, I posed a question I’d been pondering for some time. That is, do we accept the love we think we deserve? Or, rather, do we settle for what we’re given knowing, all the while, we deserve more?

I wrote I believe, for many of us, it’s the latter.

Following that post, I received a score of emails which led to some truly genuine and eye-opening conversations. One of those emails came from Brad W. from Pittsburgh, PA.

So much of what Brad wrote resonated so deeply. In his first email to me, he said he’d been thinking about the question I’d posed, and this is what he said:

“It’s definitely the latter. I’m still trying to figure out how I let myself get there.” 

Sadly, this is a place where so many of us find ourselves. We look around one day and realize the life we’re living does not resemble the life we had envisioned.

When Brad wrote to me, he and his wife had been married for twenty-one years. They had two kids, a son in middle school and a daughter in high school. Brad said for a long time things weren’t great, but they were “okay”, until one day they weren’t. His wife said something to him that changed everything. He remembers he was angry about something that he admits was “probably stupid”, and she made a comment to him that he was angry all the time. That, at first, made him even more angry, but, after stewing for a few days, he finally admitted to himself that she was right. He was always angry.

 “Almost nothing made me happy anymore.”

Brad and his wife went back to couples’ therapy. At first, he refused, but she persisted, and he finally gave in, which, he said, was nothing new.

 “I always gave in.”

But this, Brad said, would be a turning point and the best decision he didn’t make. Before long, he realized something he’d known all along but had been reluctant to examine. He was unhappy about so many things that he’d never said anything about. In an effort to keep the peace, for years, he’d kept his disquiet to himself.

“At first, it was little things like what movie to see, or what restaurant to go to, even the clothes I should buy. But I went along because I wanted her to be happy.”

But soon, the kids came along and the little things grew into big things. There were decisions to be made about moving to a new town, whether or not to take a promotion, moving again to change school districts, decisions about birthdays, youth sports, braces, practices and piano lessons, sleepovers and vacations and holidays and colleges, and all the wheres, whats, whens, and hows of raising a family, having a career, a marriage, a life, and the truth of it was, he really didn’t have a hand in any of it.

“I was basically a bystander in my own life.”

Brad’s story is one so many of us can relate to. So often, we get to a place where we feel we’ve lost control over our own life. And I have to wonder, how do we get there?

Truly authentic relationships require honest and open communication. But even in the best of relationships, our views and visions don’t always align. Compromise is the way we make it all work. And it does work when both parties are committed to achieving goals with mutual consideration and respect. We give and we receive, and it all balances out, and, yes, sometimes we even give in. Sacrifice is something we’re happy to do when it’s something we do for each other.

But what happens when all of that changes? What happens when one begins to compromise more than the other? When disagreement means conflict is sure to ensue, and one party feels unheard and unable to communicate their needs, opinions, and desires?

Often, for a while, we tell ourself it’s okay, and maybe it is. That is, until it happens again and again and becomes a pattern, and one day we look around and find we’re afraid to speak up or speak out, or disagree, or rock the boat. So, instead, we learn to keep our ideas and our disquiet to ourself, and, after a while, it becomes a given that we will always give in.

It seems so many of us are wired to avoid conflict, so much so that we’re willing to forego our own peace of mind in order to keep the peace.

Maybe, it’s because we believe, or have been told, that selfless love means we should continually sacrifice ourself in order to make others happy.

I’m a firm believer that loving someone means we desire their happiness and well-being as much as our own. But it would seem so many of us have forgotten that this also applies to us. We’ve learned to ignore our feelings and our frustration at the expense of our own well-being, and we’ve forgotten we are worthy and deserving of the same love and respect and consideration we so readily give away.

Perhaps, what we need to understand is that loving another does not mean foregoing a healthy sense of self-worth. In fact, just the opposite is true. Love, I believe, is contingent upon a healthy sense of self. Loving selflessly and unconditionally means both parties feel free to be their true and authentic selves and are able to communicate their views and visions and needs and desires, knowing they will be loved and accepted.

Perhaps, we’ve come to confuse the idea of self love with selfishness, and the idea of selfless love with sacrificing ourself for another. So many of us have the notion we’re supposed to martyr and sacrifice ourself to show love to another. But there is no person whose opinions, thoughts, or desires carry more weight or deserve more consideration, or whose life is of more value than ours. And loving selflessly does not mean giving up everything that makes us who we are and all we desire in order to make another happy. There is no true and authentic love that would require that of us.

The truth, I think, is that we are supposed to want to live our very best life, and we should want the same for each other, even when our needs and desires don’t align. Maybe, especially, when they don’t align. But for those of us who prefer to avoid conflict and would rather give up and give in, this is something we easily forget. And, sadly, there are many who are just the opposite, who welcome, and even create, discord in order to get what they want.

The unfortunate result is an imbalance that puts one in control and leaves the other of us feeling unheard and wondering why our life doesn’t feel like our own.

This, Brad said, is where he found himself after years of going along and towing the line, and believing the way to show love was to keep quiet. Six months of marriage counseling left him feeling defeated, so he made a decision which, he said, was the first he’d made for himself in a very long time. He stopped going to counseling with his wife, and, instead, he began going on his own.

“If anything was going to change then I had to be the one to change. I couldn’t fix my marriage at that point. I needed to fix myself.”

Brad admits his decision caused a great deal of tension, but it led him to an understanding he hadn’t had before and helped him to change in ways he couldn’t have otherwise.

“I think I’m exactly like my father. My whole life I watched my dad give in and let my mom have her way so she wouldn’t be angry. And I was glad when he gave her what she wanted because things were really bad when she was angry. I learned to really hate confrontation. I still don’t like it.” 

The hard part, Brad said, was telling his kids things were not going well, but even harder, still, was learning they already knew. It was his daughter who, especially, broke his heart when she told him she’d grown used to watching him give in and the fact that he didn’t have a say in anything.

“You want your kids to respect you, but, for a lot of years, I don’t think they did. That was really hard.”

It would seem, no matter where our story begins, often, we wind up in a place we never thought we would be. But, maybe, if we are willing to show ourself the same love and consideration we give away, we can find a way to make it better. Brad says he is still getting there, but, for the first time, he knows he will have a say in the way his story goes.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Sometimes I find myself sliding back into bad habits, and I get mad at myself, and I’m a little resentful. It’s not [my wife’s] fault, but I think she took advantage that I would give her whatever she wanted. I still love her, but we fight about a lot of things, and I wonder if we will agree on anything. I want to make it work, but I want to change some things, and that’s not going good. I don’t know what the future looks like, but it doesn’t look like the last twenty years.”

I’m eternally grateful to Brad for his willingness to share so much with me and for the honest and open conversations we’ve had. For years, I was in the same place Brad was in, and I, too, remember feeling overwhelmed, and hopeless, and powerless.

I think, for many of us, we become resigned to the way things are. We desire change, but we fear the unknown. We become so far invested in the life we’re living, even if it doesn’t feel like our own, that we find it hard to imagine how we could possibly go from where we are to where we would really like to be.

But the truth is, none of us is ever powerless. We are free at every moment to choose. We can choose faith over fear and change our situation. Or we can choose to ignore our feelings and stay where we are.

So often, we choose the latter because it’s easier.

But is it worth it?

It is true that change doesn’t come easy. And, maybe, like everything else, it comes with a price.

But the one thing I know is that we all deserve love and respect, and kindness and consideration, and the ability to chase our dreams and share our visions, and express ourselves and be ourselves and feel valued, and heard, and appreciated, and loved. I know I do. And I know everyone else does, too.

But our peace of mind and our well-being, and our sense of self-worth and our self-respect should not be the price we pay for what is supposed to be love.

Perhaps, at some point, we should take an honest look at what we are giving and what we’re receiving, and be willing to ask ourself what is the price we are paying.

And is it too much?

M.C. Greene

This lovely photo was taken by Kari Shea

P.S. Do We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve?