From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014_05_01_archive.html
So this advice columnist "epic smack down" has been making the viral rounds, and while everybody else who was ever picked last for a kickball team or left out of a birthday party has been cheering, I am just weirded out.
The core issue is a very small group of very close family women who, *once* a year, make a special retreat together... and another woman in the family, with very different life experience and lifestyle choices, who wants in.
So what's this woman doing with that desire? Is she shifting her lifestyle to take advantage of the activities that keep the others feeling close? Is she concentrating on building bridges across their differences in life experience by strengthening their individual friendships? No, she's playing the "I want to keep doing what I've been doing and for everybody else to react differently to it" game. She's throwing adult temper tantrums and slander. (Gee, I wonder if that kind of behavior might have something to do with why none out of a group of four or five women want her along on their yearly recharge session.)
Our letter writer asks-- rather mildly, in my opinion-- how to guide this woman into taking the personal responsibility of building up her own group of like-minded, experience-bonded, nurturing friends... and our advice columnist takes the letter writer's head off, to general acclaim.
Apparently the only reason a person doesn't "fit in" is because others aren't "making space" for them.
Great to know! Personality conflicts aren't real, life experiences don't matter, people don't actually grow apart, and nobody needs boundaries-- we just have to play nice and make space!
There's a difference between being gracious, and being a doormat. Pretending to want to be around somebody you don't want to be around is mostly a reeeeeally creepy, passive-aggressive, and seriously damaging thing to do to somebody.
I appreciate that this woman is having a hard time... but the hard truth is, it doesn't matter *why* the group she's stalking doesn't want to share their once a year most-special time with her. There is just no way around the fact that this woman really does need to make her own friends who can relate to and nurture her.
I have to wonder, if this was a close knit group who were held together by their experiences of being senior citizens, or gay, or cancer survivors, or amateur gourmet chefs... would the advice columnist have been so cavalier with their once a year special time together?
Because the picture I'm getting from the way this is written is that, because these close friends are ardent churchgoers, they're not supposed to have special friends, or special times, or personal needs.
And I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with standing by and watching "Christian" translated as "mandatory co-dependent". I'm not okay with a group of mothers getting dressed down as "horrible people" for taking one weekend a year for selfcare in seclusion with those they most trust and understand.
