Seasoned with Experience: Building Stronger Relationships

Taken in by free, and not my first rodeo. Building stronger relationships requires learning about this great undoing Amazon used to escalate their sales, because no one wants to pay for shipping. Go work for a shipping company and discover just how cut-throat it can be.

I had been working for a shipping company for a few months by this point. Sucked in because it was clear they were far from a high-functioning organization such as I’d known in my past, and therefore, there was a hole I could fill and I fit the job description.

Immediately, each of my new colleagues came to warn me about our manager and about each other. I felt like I was drowning on day one.

To save myself, I asked if I could take the team through an exercise I was sure was foundational for building stronger relationships. When it did prove successful, such that other people wanted to know what I did, the manager turned sour and invited me to work from home “because I’ll just find problems to solve.”

Yeah, that was the job description, but clearly help wasn’t wanted.

Unwanted Help

The weekend of the towing job, I was there contemplating my dive into the belly of the whale.

Poked the bear.

Made fun of the bully.

Outshone my manager, and other people know now too.

I was supposed to be there to list the house on the lake to make way for moving south for the job, while calculating that the job might not last as long as it might take to sell the house.

With the vehicle out of the driveway, I listed the house. Then I started dating the tow truck driver. A year later, the tow truck driver was still around, and the job transformed into a work-from-anywhere job. The real estate contract was expiring, and I was glad for it.

The relator had other plans, and when I refused to renew the contract, she threatened to call my dad.

Indeed, she did, and then I also had to tell him no, not now. I was an adult woman in my thirties, a professional in the quality industry, educated as an engineer, and I was defending my right to make my own choices.

When I finally decided to sell it, It took a year, and I was relieved when it did. Four months later, my work-from-anywhere job became an all-day-every-day-at-head-office one. Commuting two and a half hours one way became my life, one that I could not sustain.

I was alone with my problem, baffled by my aloneness. Baffled by the job change that necessitated life changing decisions.

Forced into a new life, within a few months, I was living in an apartment in the city and preparing to give my new job the boot too.

Unsolvable Problems

I received a lay-off package and took it as a win. Sitting alone in my apartment, I wondered why other people could get married and deal with life together while we could not. I could figure out many ways we could be better off financially by doing that, but we weren’t even talking.

I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just let it go and go find someone else, go do something else. Pick myself up, pivot, and move on. But I could not. I languished and despaired. Ruminated and lamented. Wasted good time and prime energy on how disposable I seemed and felt.

Note to self – always pick someone with whom you can have tough conversations. Yes, they might proceed with big gaps of silence, but continued silence and avoidance is not a strategy.

One-way conversations are difficult to end; they never seem to wrap up, always a new angle to consider, and it can take years to get through all 360 degrees of looking at it. A conversation narrows that down to mine and yours. Two. Maybe we also include those perspectives of friends and family, but it is so much fewer. Faster to resolve.

Sitting there in my apartment alone, I wondered why the people in my life thought I was a pawn. That I’d just take the new assignment, that I’d sign the new contract, that I’d suffer the commute and continue the provision of labour, groceries and other contributions I was making to his life.

Baffled, I wondered why all the benefit I provided wasn’t coming back to me. I spent much time and effort trying to get into his head and understand his logic.

Sucked into solving problems that aren’t mine to solve, applying for jobs where help isn’t actually wanted.

Unparentable Adults

The analysis is where it ends. Am I getting back what I think is worth it in this relationship? Not as others see it, because I know what they think, and I know they don’t see everything. What I think is worth it, and the answer is simply no.

An honest, full consideration without the guilt I used to feel for thinking it. Without the shame I used to feel for the amount of time that yes, I’ve gone along with it and nothing material has changed, so what does that say about who I was? An honest no.

The problem-solver in me gets hooked on potentials, not actuals. I didn’t see a rundown house as evidence that the guy who lives there doesn’t care about upkeep, but a house that could look amazing with some investment and a lot of effort. I saw a hole I could fill, but no one was asking for it.

He told me, “No one loves you like your mother.” A mother showers you with love and attention, telling you that you are perfect. Slowly, she withdraws as you become capable of doing for yourself. Finally, she moves across the lawn, always ready and able, never asking for anything in return.

Pesky girlfriends expect reciprocation.

For maybe I was looking for a father, someone I assumed was perfect and delightful only to progressively find out the truth from someone who also knew the day was inevitable.

Like Santa, it didn’t exist, but it was fun to pretend while it lasted. If he’s looking for and expecting a mother who will last about twenty years, and knows it, it would explain his demonstrated indifference to the process of events – the home-buying, the packing, the back-turning.

Withdrawing Like Velcro

Over twenty years, I’ve withdrawn, and now I’m moving an hour away. I hope it’s far enough that his tantrums and fits as he whines about having to do for himself don’t reach my ears or cross my horizon. His mom is closer, and she can have the job back.

Finally, in the final stage of grief, I accepted that we simply have two different value structures for time and other resources, for our expectations of the give-and-take in relationships, for a great many things are simply too different.

Building stronger relationships, over time, I realize that, ah yes, we are equal. Different, yes, but we each have our own pain, trauma, hurt, ego, dreams, and more that we each carry, some more prominently that others, some better packaged than others, but it’s no good to compare, it’s only good to notice that, if you get to live long enough, then you know the feelings that come with being human, even if it’s only been a taste enough to know it.

Irreconcilable differences. That’s all it is. A chasm between how two people want to live. A chasm that can swallow the souls that aren’t willing and sometimes are not able to say, I’ll go my way, and you go yours.

Perhaps our paths will cross again, each of us older, and maybe we’ll both be wiser. Maybe we’ll never meet again. Maybe we’ll stay friends, if friends are what we ever were.

Invisible, Unique, and Temporary

How would I know, for it’s not something tangible, repeatable, or permanent. You can’t point to it, you can’t measure it, and you sure as heck can’t tell me exactly what it is to any degree on which debate can no longer exist. This, I know with abundant clarity, as I look back on all the time I’ve lost to a master debater and an ego that wanted to be heard and valued.

Start with it – don’t fight for it, ever. Being heard and valued is foundational. The key to starting a relationship. Not transactional. Avoid the traps of free, finances, and all the head-fakes of negotiation by starting with a conversation and not a transaction. This I learned the hard way.

Let’s talk, not transact. Yet, professionally, this is the basic foundation I teach everywhere I go. Listen and connect, not market and sell, yet even in an attention economy, it’s still foundational, isn’t it? Is anyone listening?

In the service industry, no they are not. They are listening to who has the power, the money, the influence, the resources, whomever is the person who holds the key they need.

Since nothing in the service industry is tangible, repeatable, or permanent, it’s all a debate, and debate is won by social structure, not logic, so forget the data and pick the biggest, loudest, richest whomever and pretend everything they say is smart, unique, and timely. Behind the scenes, make sure nothing embarrasses them, implicates them, or does them any harm; perhaps one day when the stuff hits the fan, none of it will land on you.

Fast, Cheap, and Good Enough

In manufacturing…wait, manufacturing?

Where did it go?

To those who can do it the cheapest, the quickest, with good enough quality that it will last as long as the fickleness of the customers who might be forever satisfied with quality but will never know what that is, because if everyone only bought quality stuff, the wheel of the economy might grind it’s gears while making such a huge downshift.

In manufacturing, data matters. If you can measure it, you have a voice, and anyone can have that voice, because it’s easy to learn data, especially if you have AI to help you. When the world becomes level and flat, it’s the meek who finally get their voice and know what they’ve been dying to say who are poised to inherit the earth.

Fast, cheap and good enough just isn’t. Look around and there’s waste and garbage everywhere, the churn rate of consumption and what to do with the remainder is getting hard to ignore.

Where to dump it? Not in my backyard, but do take away all this extra packaging, these broken items, and this useless technology that I know costs good money, good resources, and good space to get to me.

A huge box for this bottle? All this water in my detergent? Waste is galore, especially to someone who knows it exists in so many invisible ways that have nothing to do with the final product.

Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Psychopaths

The members of the dark triad only care about themselves. Building stronger relationships requires avoiding these types.

A narcissist is someone who makes it all about them. A vulnerable narcissist is the child who doesn’t grow up and screams, “But look at me!” The empath looks, feels the pain and can’t help but step in. The empath learns to care for herself first, to close her eyes and cover her ears.

A psychopath has a goal in mind, and no matter what, that goal is first. If he’s on his way to do the wood and you announce you are moving out, he immediately calculates he will need to buy a trailer to get it done in time. Who cares about your path?

Does it matter getting the label right? It matters to find out as soon as possible, before you are invested. You have to know the flags and not confuse red ones for anything else. Lonely and needy, I was bait. Now I know that loneliness is a state of mind, and neediness is relative.