Our families are mini-cultural hubs of relating and socializing. It is easy to make the mistake that the way Mom or Dad relates to you is the way to relate in the world. I have made this mistake. It wasn’t until that last week (and almost three years with my now husband) that I realized there were other ways of relating in most intimate relationships.
I don’t know what I want. Yet, I phrase all my asks the same way my mother does, “do you want to____?”
Do you want to do the dishes?
Do you want to take this inside for me and I’ll finish up out here?
Do you want to hand me that spoon?
Do you want pasta for dinner?
Do you want to watch a movie?
This infuriates my husband. When ever he asks me, “do you want…?” I can never give him a straight answer.
Do you want the last of the pasta?
Uhhh well, I don’t have a preference.
I um, I uh, um that’s not really what… you know it’s fine.
I have written before about the rage dragon that lives inside of me; exploding out of me like a volcanic explosion on whoever awakens her. My words are thrashing and violent. I have one goal when I am this angry: I am right and you are wrong.
I am also a recovering people pleaser. I permission seek; asking people if they want to do something I want to do to get permission to do it (see above). I have a bad habit of twisting myself up into a version of a person who is likable or pleasing to the other person. Although, I have always had my limits… I do have bad motherfucker tattooed on my arm.
At 29 years old I am learning who I am and I have a self-understanding of what I like, what I am good at, and what my Self entails at probably the level of a two-five-year-old. I didn’t achieve a lot of important ego/eco-development milestones due to being swallowed by the big beast of our ego-centric/narcissistic culture. I am realizing that part of knowing myself is also knowing what I want…what I desire.
Cody says that the reason my inability to tell him what I want makes him so angry (he suspects) is because it is a form of dishonesty. It is true that when I do not speak my desires into the world I am being dishonest but I am also following the rules. When I get really mad at Cody it is often because he is doing what he wants. He’s taking his time, he’s playing, he’s eating exactly what and how much he wants, he asks for his needs to be met, he’s taking up space. And in the back of my mind is the dragon silently seething, “Don’t you know you can’t take up so much space!” I want things too, I want to do things too, I want, I want, I want but I’ve shrunk them all down - why aren’t you also doing it?
My Mom told me about her Christmases growing up her mother bought so many gifts… sometimes forty boxes and it would all be clothes. None of which she had picked out or asked for. I said, “That doesn’t sound like a very fun Christmas.” She didn’t say anything but in her silence, I sensed a niggling grief that seemed to say, “Yeah, I am just now coming to maybe accept that.”
I imagine my mother as a young girl trying to make sense of her mother showering her and her siblings in gifts none of them wanted. I imagine her learning early to be vigilant of her mother and father’s moods; to be polite and respectful; to say the right thing at the right time; to show she loved her parents and all they gave to her; to be grateful; to be a good girl. I imagine her real, authentic self-being swallowed in all those rituals not just at Christmas but on daily occurrences at the dinner table on a Wednesday night when she asked to take ice skating lessons when she wanted to play with her brother and sister.
In Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul Plotkin explains how in an ego-centric society we experience domination and obedience training from a young age. Our soul is cut off from us through subtle and overt conditioning that begins with our parents. Wanting is a huge feeling that we are conditioned from a young age to dismiss via coercion and shame.
Stop crying or you can’t have dessert.
You’re so ungrateful. I buy you so much. We are buying a gift for your cousin, not you.
If you don’t do your homework - you’re grounded.
If you don’t stop whining about dinner you’ll get a spanking.
Girls and women are subjected to a diminishment of their wants whereas boys and men are given a grandeur of wanting (so long as it is within the confines of the man-box). Being in a heterosexual relationship I feel the dichotomy between my longing and my husband’s desire like my pulse beneath a toothache. Dull and aching I bite down on my lips silencing my wants and desires over and over again until I can’t take it anymore and I explode in anger.
The explosion that brought the dragon part to the surface was over a year and a half ago. this new part that is emerging from beyond the fold is a bambi-like girl. Weak, trembling, and thin. She is very hungry. Hungry to be heard, to be given, to ask, to take up space, to receive. To say the following feels both exactly right and audacious: I want money, I want sex, I want food, I want to be listened to, I want to be respected, I want to ask the waiter to take back my food when I receive the wrong thing, I want to say No, I want or No, I don’t want with blinking an eye.
To pretend not to want is enraging because it is self-abandonment. When you abandon yourself you give over your agency, your authority, and your truth. Over the last couple of decades have danced between the rage dragon and the bambi girl. I’d apologize for my outbursts and return to people pleasing. Cody is the first person who demanded I be neither and for the last few years couldn’t process what he was asking of me.
I um, I uh, um that’s not really what…
It is incredible how everyday language can slowly strip a person out of their own agency and into rhythms of self-abandonment. I’ve had to experience a different way of relating to realize how annoying it is to be asked do you want to… anytime it was I who wanted. It is important moving forward that I learn to claim what I want without asking or expecting anyone else to want those things too. I also need to learn that if someone doesn’t want to do something with me or wants the same thing as me I can still have what I want (within reason). I can have ice cream even if Cody doesn’t want any. I can go on a bike ride even if he doesn’t want to come with me. My last small and important task here is to phrase asks as asks, “Can you do the dishes tonight? I’d like to make the bed.”
I believe our egos are important to us. I believe we need to know ourselves and all our idiosyncrasies; like a D&D master knows their players. Growing up in a ego-centric society our egos are leveraged and manipulated. Our hijacked egos are playing out scenerios that are so dishonest and far removed from our truth we don’t even know it is happening. I feel a bit like Tyler Durden (placing myself above society) saying this but hey, at least the man was iconic.
In short, when we move through our ego-development and bring it back in relationship to us (without self-dominance and control) we can align with our Soul. This is a key-piece in Plotkin’s work (summarized). I am curious if you have read this far, what feel audacious to you to want? What feels scandalous or hard to say aloud? I want to know because as someone who has self-denied my wanting for so long I don’t even know what desires could be…