Tell Me Who You Walk With
The people we choose to plug into, whether in friendship or love, serve as the most accurate mirror available in terms of our personal growth and self-awareness.
We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. ~anonymous
Many years ago when I was single and working in L.A., a very successful businessman told me his secret to hiring the best person for the job — he would take his prospective employees out to dinner with their romantic partners before making his final decision. This was not because he believed you could judge a relationship by one social event, by the way; this was because he believed that the easy markers of the PARTNER’S character and personality would tell him what he needed to know about the man or woman he was considering for employment.
SAY WHAT?
He explained it to me thusly — if someone chose to be in a committed relationship, especially if there were kids in the picture, with a partner who was obviously weaker, less intelligent or deferential to them, he would not hire this person. Because their need to be the “superior” and/or “in control” one in their love relationship spoke volumes not only about their intrinsic insecurity but also their inability to compromise and work in true collaboration. Further, he stated, anyone who would choose a weak or foolish partner to mentor their children showed not only incredible lack of judgment and foresight but a disturbing lack of interest in the well-being of those who should be his or her highest priority.
OUCH. That stings (and rings true).
His belief that anyone who wasn’t willing to bring their “A Game” to the most important relationships in their life — those with their spouse and children — would feel no obligation to bring their “A Game” to his company was his gold-standard litmus test. I have thought of it many times over the years, especially when people I know and love are struggling with the “should I stay or should I go?” question. Even in this day and age, marriage remains a wildly imperfect and imbalanced institution for sure; so why stack the deck against yourself by walking down the aisle with someone you know isn’t capable of pulling their weight?
Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are.
― Esmeralda Santiago
The idea that the companions we choose are most telling about our character, strengths, and flaws is not a new or unique one; any parent who has ever said (or any child who has ever heard) “If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” understands that the people we “walk with” determine our course in life, for better or for worse. A speaker at my son’s school recently encouraged the children to always seek out the opportunity to be the “small fish in the big pond” because that is where the optimum opportunity for growth evolved. This goes double for relationships — if we constantly surround ourselves with people who don’t challenge us to raise the bar and go further, we slip into an entitled sense of complacency and begin to atrophy even our greatest assets.
There are many personality disorders that thrive (fester) in an environment where they are surrounded by sycophants and followers who never question even their most egregious behaviors. But any serious imbalance, even in relationships where the partners are not diagnosable, creates a slippery slope with impossible to resist physics. Both partners need to have the capacity to uplift the other; otherwise the dead-weight ends up dragging both down.
So how does this apply to you and your current (or sought after) relationships?
First, (and everyone will tell you this, not just me), know thyself. You have to get really, really clear about who you are and what you want and you need to QUESTION your own availability. A friend of mine recently shared a proclivity of older women on web dating sites to openly declare that they won’t date bald men (sorry about that, The Rock!).
SAY WHAT?
How do follicular changes impact the really important things like intelligence, wit, compassion, integrity, honesty, depth? If you willingly declare these kinds of shallow parameters, I would challenge you by saying you aren’t really OPEN to finding a healthy relationship. It sounds like you are more interested in staging a photo shoot for the Hair Club for Men.
So if you are screening potential partners by how much hair they have (Bigfoot, is available, I hear!) you need to do some soul searching about what you are bringing to the table that would justify the tolerance of this kind of simple-minded sorting.
OUCH. That stings (and rings true).
Second, are you threatened by or attracted to people who appear “better” than you? In a way, this is actually the baseline, because the fact that you believe there are other humans who are “better” than you means you are not safe and comfortable with who you are; but more importantly, your repulsion versus attraction factor lets you know what direction you are headed in! If people you think are “better” than you are attractive, that simply means you are seeking the light and higher ground; if the opposite is true — well, then, the opposite is true.
OUCH. That stings (and rings true).
Third, do you want to live in the no-spin (B.S., melodrama) zone, or are you mesmerized by it?
Recently, someone I care about was bemoaning the (frankly Jerry Springer-like) melodrama playing out in an extended family member’s life and I had to give this reality check — if that is where they are choosing to “go”, they believe it serves them on some level. Have you ever heard of the condition Munchausen Syndrome by proxy? It is a mental health problem in which a caregiver either makes up or causes illness or injury in a person under his or her care, such as a child, an elderly adult, or a person who has a disability.
How many of us indulge in a little Munchausen by proxy in our intimate relationships?
If you are exaggerating your partner’s weaknesses for sympathy, if you are plugged into their melodrama because you somehow believe it makes YOU saintly or heroic, if you are enabling them in remaining co-dependent and toxic because you think it makes you look better?
GUESS WHAT? You are the problem, not them. You are the person who is closing the door on healing and growth.
OUCH. That stings (and rings true).
If you can recognize the dysfunction it is your responsibility to construct the healthy boundaries that will either end the behavior or cause the relationship to permanently fracture. It is not your responsibility to “fix” your partner, but it is your responsibility to stop enabling them and to stop using their dysfunction as your excuse for not thriving. Any relationship you lose because you stop enabling is a win for both of you, but ESPECIALLY for you because you will never walk that way again willingly.
The people we choose to plug into, whether in friendship or love, serve as the most accurate mirror available in terms of our personal growth and self-awareness. If you don’t like the reflection you are getting back, it’s time to take a turn on the path. It is on the road less traveled that you will find your true companions.
More from Kara Post-Kennedy on Medium:
The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.
About Kara Post-Kennedy
Kara is an executive editor and columnist at The Good Men Project; a blogger at YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND (http://karapostkennedy.blogspot.com/) and Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kara-postkennedy/) former Editor in Chief at OTV Magazine and current managing editor at Heart and Humanity magazine. a Mom. You can follow me on Twitter @kpk_newbf
