Internet Blues

My good friend, who I respect and care about, posted a political joke on her Facebook page by 'liking' it. As a result, I saw it in my news feed. It clearly wasn't an invitation to a discussion, it was simply a hurtful thing said by folks from one political party about folks from another political party. 

I had feelings in all sorts of different directions when I read this; anger, sadness, and disgust to name a few. But my first coherent thought was "That's not funny".  My second thought was, "Do you really feel that way about me?"

After my friend posted this, I started to let it get to me. I thought, I won't forget this for a long time. I'll remember this when I see her at the grocery store, when her kids are at the school recital and I when we see each other at trick-or-treating or other local events. 

That's horrible! She made one statement online and suddenly the reasons I like and respect her go out the window. That's not a strong friendship, I thought, if it can be destroyed by one image. 

But then I had a different thought. I didn't choose to be friends with her because of her political affiliation, her religion or her stance on abortion law. I choose a person as a friend because we treated each other kindly, and respected each other. So what was really going on here?

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When I first joined social media o-so-many years ago I made a joke at someone's expense. What I didn't realize was, that they also were able to see it. I never forgot that moment when I talked to the person later, in-real-life, and she asked me that same question, "Do you really feel that way about me?"

Of course it wasn't just a joke, right? It was an expression of a feeling I was having at one moment, based on the understanding that only certain people (people who understood how I felt, and agreed with me) were reading it. It was me saying something mean that I would never, never have said to her face.

I've seen a lot of this lately; this vitriol thrown about so that nobody can ignore it. It's as if we're going to work or school or bars or restaurants wearing our political parties on neon green t-shirts or tattooed to our foreheads. It feels like a very quiet act, when I like or share a post. But I know that to the person reading it the message has the volume turned all the way up. 

----

I wish I could go back in time and take back every re-tweet, share, like or comment on political stories in social media. But I can't undo what's been done.

What I can do is choose to try to have empathy for her. I'd rather assume she's just quietly saying "Hey, I like this". That maybe, just maybe, she didn't mean to shout at me.

Janet

Let's hear a story [part III]; Can empathy help me get along with my Mother-in-Law?

Welcome back - and now I bring you the riveting conclusion! This has been a three-part discussion between us (Growing Empathy, or GE) and our friend MiLP (Mother-in-Law Problem). As always, please share your reactions in the comments section below, or on twitter or facebook.

You can catch up on the first part here, and the second here.

As a reminder, MiL is short for her Mother-in-Law, and DIMT is short for "Dude I'm Married To", otherwise known as her husband.

[GE] I assume that after this conversation you still want to build empathy with your MiL. If not, feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. :)

[MiLP] It's not so much that I want to build empathy with her, it's more that I want to get myself out of the way, so that I'm not preventing my spouse from having a relationship with her that isn't about me and this problem.  And I figure empathy is a way to do it.

[GE] I believe that building empathy means trying to see someone else's perspective. One way to do that, as I've read, is to engage the other person with a curiosity about who they are as people and why they do the things that they do. If you cannot talk directly to MiL and ask her the questions you want to ask; can you talk to DIMT? Would he be willing to help you to understand her perspective? Perhaps talking about the things she's done in her life, the ways she's interacted with people in the past, can help you to see things through her eyes. 

[MiLP] I can't talk directly to my MiL right now.  She's hundreds of miles away, we never talk on the phone, and she's in the middle of a huge move-- it isn't the time.  But DIMT and I talked about it, enacting a conversation in which I'm his new girlfriend and he's telling her what his parents are like.

That was an interesting, and eye-opening, bit of role-playing. DIMT's initial description of his mother made me say, "She sounds kind of awful." All his initial descriptors emphasized the negative: she's bossy, insecure, difficult to deal with, intolerant, she never really listens, etc. (Yes, apart from me, DIMT does have his own issues with his mother.)

Still in character, I replied, "So what you're telling me is that she's horrible and I'll hate her."

DIMT: She's not horrible.

Me: Okay, but that's not what you're telling me.

After that, DIMT started talking about some of the things he actually likes about his mother, her sense of humor, her interest in science, etc.  It made both of us realize that my problem with the whole antisemitism thing really did influence how he feels about her. Not entirely-- she is a difficult woman, very much in the mold of Lady Catherine de Bourgh-- and it makes DIMT not want to connect with her.  But I certainly have poured a fair amount of poison into the well, alas.

That's okay.  Now that we know it happened, we can fix it.

[GE] Something else I've done in the past when I'm having trouble understanding someone else's perspective is to actually pretend that I am them. My friend says something to me, and I don't understand how they are feeling. So I repeat what they just said to myself, in my head, imagining that I just said it. 

Please indulge me for a moment, and let's take what you said above as an example of this. You said, "My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. " Let's say you and I were out at dinner. My tofu lettuce wraps were late, and your pork lettuce wraps came out very quickly. You said to me, "Oh, the restaurant is singling you out, they are deliberately snubbing you." The key is to imagine yourself saying this and asking yourself, why would you say those things?  How would you say those things, what would you be feeling? 

Would you be able to understand her perspective?

[MiLP] No, not via this method.  DIMT and I tried this today, with two examples-- the restaurant one, and one of her actually anti-semitic comments.  And it just didn't work.  I mean, with the restaurant one, I get that she was trying to make a joke because she was uncomfortable because my food was late.  She said as much at the time.  And I would probably have empathy for that with somebody else-- the whole family was clearly really uncomfortable about death, about the fact that my dad had just died, and I get that.  But the whole anti-semitism thing made it impossible for me to give her that kind of break in this regard.

Trying this with one of her actual anti-semitic comments was actually hilarious.  DIMT and I couldn't stop laughing, which was not necessarily a good thing, since we were in a fast-moving car.

It went like this:
DIMT: So give me an example of what my mom actually said.  Play her.
Me:  Okay, so we were sitting on the porch, I was reading or on my computer or something, and she was doing a crossword or something, and she made a passing comment about her nose.  (Some background.  My mother-in-law is obsessed with her nose. It's a genetically dominant trait, DIMT has it, his siblings have it, his uncles have it, his cousins.  When my niece was visiting, she was mistaken for our daughter, because she and DIMT look so similar-- they have the same nose. It's a perfectly nice nose, a bit broad, maybe, but not something you'd notice if my MiL wasn't totally obsessed about it, seriously.  She talks about it a lot as an unfortunate trait, and tends to invent histories whose fault it is.  As you are soon to read.)

Me:  So the thing she says about her nose is this: That the only explanation she has for it is that it must be a holdover from some Russian genetics that got mixed into the purely Swedish genetic stock.  That's where she thinks the nose came from.
DIMT (repeating my original response): MiL, I know a lot of people of Russian descent; I'm of Russian descent; none of our noses look like yours.
Me: Okay, so much for that theory!  (Then we spent a few minutes cracking jokes.)
DIMT: No, you have to say exactly what she said.  That's the point of this exercise.
Me (trying again): Well, maybe you have the wrong kind nose, the wrong kind of ancestry.
DIMT: Okay, so how did you feel when you said that?
Me: I didn't feel much of anything.  A little affronted, I guess.
DIMT: That was probably it.  She hates being argued with (she really does), and just wanted to shut you down as quickly as possible.
Me: By saying something anti-semitic?  That's sandblasting a soup cracker, a bit!

The only thing we got out of it was that my MiL has no filter.  Now, there are people in this world whom I love and adore who have no filter, and it doesn't matter-- I still love and adore them.  My MiL is not among them, and I don't think she ever will be.  She's not an interesting or engaging enough person to make the lack of filter loveable.  

That said, I think I'm done with this exchange.  What I really wanted to get out of it, I've gotten-- I have a clear perception of how I've created distance between DIMT and his mom, which will hopefully give me enough foresight to avoid doing it more in the future.  I don't think that means that DIMT and his mother will be skipping off into the sunset together-- she is a really difficult person and I don't know that they will ever be close.  He just can't really talk to her about the really important stuff in his life, because she can't listen.  That's sad.  The least I can do for DIMT is not add to the distance.  And I think that's where I am.

Thank you for your help!  Couldn't have gotten here without you!

- Mother-in-Law Problem

Let's hear a story [part II] - Can empathy help me get along with my mother-in-law?

Last week we heard from our friend who has a “Mother-in-Law Problem”. You responded, and some of you asked our friend to confront her MiL (Mother-in-Law) directly.

To catch up or revisit last week's post, click here.

As a reminder, DIMT is short for "Dude I'm Married To", otherwise known as her husband.

-----

[GE] Dear Mother-in-Law Problem,
 Thank you for sending your question. I want to help; so I'd like to start by trying to build empathy for you. :)
 

I can't imagine what you and your DIMT are going through, it sounds like a really difficult situation. You've said that you really want to be able to have more visits with your MiL and the family in general, and you want this because of your relationship with your DIMT. It also sounds like you don't want to be near your MiL, because she might hurt you again. Overall I'm hearing that you are afraid of her; you are scared that being near her will be uncomfortable and even painful. Let me know if that's right.

[MiLP]    So I read this, and it all made sense, until I got to the part about fear.   And that had me scratching my head.  I'm not afraid of my MiL.  She makes me angry.  But the thought of being around her doesn't make me shrink inside, it just makes me roll my eyes.
 

And then I thought, "Are you sure? Maybe you're afraid of her and you just don't want to acknowledge it!" 

So I asked DIMT, and he agreed, I'm not afraid of my MiL. Fear of her isn't a factor here.

This led to a very long conversation between DIMT and I. The upshot of the conversation was this: My relationship with his parents is mediated through him. His relationship with my parents is mediated through me. Neither of us would want to be so close to the other's parents that it would disrupt our marriage, and both of us tend to let the other take the lead in terms of how we, as a couple, interact with one or the other's parents.

As first this realization felt really strange and not good, but then we talked about it some more and realized it was okay.  Neither of us has particularly much in common with the other's parents, and the relationship between DIMT and his mother is way more important than my relationship with DIMT's mother.  That's normal - for us, the opposite would be weird.  If my MiL were my best friend, that would be strange and confusing for DIMT.

This dynamic heavily influences my options, because I am reluctant to do anything that DIMT doesn't want me to do.  He is very, very reluctant to have me directly address the problem-- to "break protocol", as it were.  There is no way of doing that, he thinks, without eliciting a negative reaction from my MiL-- shouting, resistance, upset, etc.  DIMT hates these things, and his mom has a history reacting this way.  (And yes, I recognize that I'm in part agreeing with you, in that this is where the fear in the whole situation lies; it just isn't my fear.) 

Don't be too disheartened that you misidentified the underlying emotion, though.  I hadn't realized what the actual underlying emotion was either, until I started doing this exchange with you!

[GE] Dear Mother in Law Problem,

Wow, I was so glad to read your letter. If just listening to me guess at what you were feeling helped you to have a long in-depth conversation with DIMT, that's fantastic. It sounds like you and DIMT reached some new understandings in how you all relate to each other as a family.

I assume that after this conversation you still want to build empathy with your MiL. If not, feel free to ignore the rest of this letter. :)

I believe that building empathy means trying to see someone else's perspective. One way to do that, as I've read, is to engage the other person with a curiosity about who they are as people and why they do the things that they do. If you cannot talk directly to MiL and ask her the questions you want to ask; can you talk to DIMT? Would he be willing to help you to understand her perspective? Perhaps talking about the things she's done in her life, the ways she's interacted with people in the past, can help you to see things through her eyes. 

Something else I've done in the past when I'm having trouble understanding someone else's perspective is to actually pretend that I am them. My friend says something to me, and I don't understand how they are feeling. So I repeat what they just said, in my head, imagining that I just said it. 

Please indulge me for a moment, and let's take what you said above as an example of this. You said, "My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. " Let's say you and I were out at dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. My tofu lettuce wraps were late, and your pork lettuce wraps came out very quickly. You said to me, "Oh, the restaurant is singling you out, they are deliberately snubbing you." The key is to imagine yourself saying this and asking yourself, why would you say those things? How would you say those things, what would you be feeling? 

Would you be able to understand her perspective?

[to be completed in part III]

Let's hear a story; or Can empathy help me get along with my mother in law?

A few months ago a reader of this blog asked me for advice; she wanted to get along better with her mother in law. I was intrigued, could I do this? Could empathy help?  

I'd like to share our correspondence with you. This will be a multi-part post, because her story is long and deserves a bit more of our attention. So here we go! 

 

Dear Growing Empathy,

I've been reading your blog for a while now, and I really enjoy it. Your method for developing empathy is very different from mine. I tend to construct empathy by imagining a person's circumstances and experience, and how those things might have shaped their choices and the moment they're in. This method has always worked well for me, and it's gotten me through some otherwise empathy-difficult situations in my life.  

But now it's failed me utterly. The problem is my mother-in-law.

I've been married for about 15 years. My in-laws and I have never been close; there is a lot of geographical distance, and we don't really have anything in common. But that didn't prevent my mother-in-law (MiL) and I from having a perfectly lovely relationship in the beginning. My MiL went out of her way to be thoughtful. For example, while the Dude I'm Married To (DIMT hereafter) and I were engaged, we happened to be visiting his parents on my birthday, and my MiL baked me a cake and gave me goofy little presents. It was very nice of her, and I was quite touched.

About 5-6 years ago, she started saying things to me that weren't, um, nice. Sometimes they were anti-Semitic (I'm Jewish; my spouse's family is very nominally Christian). I've been told I have the wrong nose, the wrong ancestry and the wrong upbringing. I always knew my MiL was a little uncomfortable with me being Jewish, but I figured it would vanish over time. That kind of discomfort is not that unusual for a woman of her age and background, and for a long time, her attitude definitively fell into the striving-to-accept track, not the you-are-inferior track.   

Her comments aren't always anti-Semitic. On our most recent trip, for example, we went to a restaurant after our flight landed. For some reason, my order was very late, so that I was still waiting for my food while everyone else at the table had theirs. My MiL's response to this was to tease me, telling me that the restaurant was singling me out, that they were deliberately snubbing me, etc. She went on in this vein for a good half an hour, and by the time my meal finally arrived, all I wanted to do was leave. It doesn't sound like much, but in the circumstances, her callousness shocked me: I was exhausted and hungry, but also seriously shell-shocked; my father had died unexpectedly less than a week before.  

I'd like to get her to stop, but I don't have a lot of options in that regard. I tend to be pretty direct about most things, and ideally, I would just ask her what's going on. But that approach isn't open to me in this case. DIMT thinks it unlikely that she'll admit it's even happening, and asking her would break several of the family's unspoken rules, which might make the situation worse.  

So far, what I've been doing, basically, is duck and cover: I minimize my time in her company, and she and I are never alone. This worked fairly well on our most recent visit but won't help in the long term.

This situation breaks my empathy method because I have no idea why it’s happening. Have I done something to offend my MiL? That's the most obvious explanation, but I don't know what I did, and asking would break protocol.  

I've tried to imagine events or circumstances in her life that might have brought about this reaction.  But since I only noticed the pattern over the course of years, I can't pin down a when, much less a cause.

Here's my question: 

All of this has eroded my empathy for my MiL down to zero, and, as I said, my system to rebuild it has failed. Because I have no understanding of why she's doing this, I have no empathy for my MiL. As a result, I have no desire to visit my in-laws, and so DIMT sees his parents less and less. I don't feel right about that, and I don't think it's fair to him. 

I also think that if I could seize back some empathy for her-- particularly in relation to me-- I would be able to cast her comments in a different light. They wouldn't be any less toxic, but they might bother me less.

So, Growing Empathy, can you help? Can you give me a way of regaining some degree of empathy towards my MiL, so the run up to every family visit isn't suffused with dread? 

-       Mother in Law Problem

Dear Mother-in-Law Problem,

Thank you for sending your question. I want to help; so I'd like to start by trying to build empathy for you. :)

I can't imagine what you and DIMT are going through, it sounds like a really difficult situation. You've said that you really want to be able to have more visits with your MiL and the family in general, and you want this because of your relationship with DIMT. It also sounds like you don't want to be near your MiL, because she might hurt you again. Overall I'm hearing that you are afraid of her; you are scared that being near her will be uncomfortable and even painful. Let me know if that's right.

I saw an interview the other day that talked about how one of the greatest obstacles to empathy is fear. If we are afraid of each other; no matter how much we have in common or how much we might already trust each other - we cannot build empathy. It actually removes any previous connections we have made (reduces it to zero, as you said above). For example, if my next-door neighbor pulls a knife on me, it's really hard to look past the knife and see the person. I'm just scared they are going to kill me. 

If fear is what's going on then I see two ways to look at this; you can try to build empathy (to remove fear) or you can try to remove fear (so that empathy has a chance to grow). It sounds like you've already tried the former, and it hasn't worked. I also think (and this is just my opinion here) if you confronted her directly now, I think the fear would make it really hard to listen to whatever she had to say and to ultimately build a connection. 

Let me know your thoughts on this.

[to be continued]

Self awareness - not feeling social

Not feeling social means to me that I'm tired of empathy, of sympathy, of listening. As rewarding as it is, sometimes I'm just DONE. I need to be in my own head.

This is a selfish place to be but it's also a comfortable, easy place. Like a favorite chair, well used in all the best spots.

This is, however, the worst place to be when I need to be social, for family or friends or work. I don't want to get out of that easy chair. And when I force myself out I can be mean to those around me. Resentful is probably a better word, since it reminds me of the behavior I see in my kids when I tell them to stop doing something. So consciously, I know that it's completely childish and yet I still do it.

Which is not the best thing!

So I guess acting this way is kind of like when I eat a lot of chocolate. It feels good to do but is not good for me. Mmmmm chocolate.

Thankfully for me (and for my family, friends and co-workers) these feelings often pass quickly. So my takeaway from this is to just ride it out. Once the feeling passes I'll be back to my old self again.

Another takeaway is if I see myself acting angry or resentful and there doesn't seem to be anything behind it, it means I probably just need some me-alone-time.

What do you do when you want to be alone? How do you feel?

Janet

Objects of love at yard sales

I'm a big fan of yard sales, garage sales, online trading, freecycling and ebay. I buy things used for a few reasons; first, I was introduced to it by my Dad, so roaming a garage sale always makes me feel cozy. Second, I think of it as recycling, because I'm keeping someone from adding to a landfill. Third, the prices are good, and I often find things at yard sales that are gently used for much less than I would spend on them new.

Over and above all of those reasons, the main thing I love about yardsales is it's a way to look into the past. I've seen beautiful functional things from years ago, like furniture, china and tools, that were made in a time where the people who made them cared a lot about the manufacture and design. I'm not saying we don't have beautiful and well-crafted things in the stores today, but a quick trip around my neighborhood yardsales can reveal some wonderful things.

______________________________

About two years ago I was at a moving sale and saw a tea set.  I had been in the market for a tea set, something pretty that I could take out for special occasions with my husband (like, it's 9 pm and the kids are in bed). It looked to be a set for two, with pot, sugar and creamer bowl for $5, so I snapped it up! Here are some terrible photos:

This is a Seltmann Weiden tea set made in Germany, from about the 1950s. I love the set for the look; it has such elegant shapes (the curls at the handles, the little bulges and delicate toppers on the teapot and sugar/creamer bowl). The pears appear to be hand painted and are not too orange (they aren't brightly colored, the orangey-red is very soft and makes me think about the tree they could have been picked from).

________________________________

There is a downside to yardsale-shopping, sometimes you don't get what you expect. For example, I checked before I bought the above tea set that all the parts were there. However, when I got home I realized that I was missing a cup - I think I had miscounted one of the bowls as a cup.* As a result, I have a tea set that is missing a tea cup. Yes, so this does explain why the set was $5. I still love the set, and I know that that's how things roll sometimes. 

Do you buy used things?

Have you loved something so much it didn't matter that it was slightly broken?

*Side story - when I saw the cup was missing, first I tried to go back to the house where I had bought it. I thought maybe I had accidentally left the cup behind. I was too late, they had already moved, and there was a realtor's lock on the door. I left a note saying 'please, did I forget a cup' but I don't know if it ever got to the seller. I chose to believe that I miscounted originally, and that the cup was never there, rather than assuming that the seller is keeping the lone cup and saying 'ha ha' :). 

My hobby - Cake Decorating

In the last few years I've picked up a hobby. I decorate cakes and cupcakes. My husband bought me a decorating class as a birthday present, and I've been hooked ever since. I have spent a few very enjoyable afternoons making buttercream frosting and sugar flowers.

This week all of my free time was spent building a sweet sixteen birthday cake. As per the girls' request (this was a 2-person joint event) my only requirement was that it be vanilla with raspberry filling. I also know, from previous experience, that at least one of the girls was not that fond of fondant. So a buttercream frosting it was!

Although I'm comfortable making cakes from scratch I decided to use a box mix for the cakes themselves. It saves a bit of time, I have a box mix I like very much, and that way I was able to focus my mental energies on the decorations.

Here some photos of the finished cake:

It was a three-layer cake on the inside. The raspberries are real, the roses are sugarpaste and the gold numbers and ribbon are fondant.

I really love making sugarpaste flowers, that they are pretty, and delicate, and yummy. It feels great taking a flower (which is already a fabulous thing) and then kicking it up a notch by making it sweet and edible candy. Plus my favorite memory of the birthday party was seeing the two birthday girls enjoying their flowers, one petal at a time.

I'm no professional or expert, I know that. When I look at the cake I see the flaws. I'm trying to get better, and every time I make a cake or a set of cupcakes I feel like I'm getting better. So part of the reason I made this cake was selfish - I would like to have practice, and this gave me a perfect opportunity.

However the big reason I made this cake and put everything I've got into it, is that I love these girls and I wanted them to have the best cake I could possibly make for them. They deserve it. Happy Birthday girls!

Have you made anything for someone you love? Did it come out how you hoped? Please tell me in the comments (feel free to comment anonymously).

Janet

P.S. I have to give extra props to the cake school that taught me how to attempt making smooth looking buttercream - thank you Melissa! And to Lisa, my excellent instructor in cake making and stacking, thank you!

About Me

I've been thinking about this video, that I saw the other day, and it made me think about how connected I am to people. How connected I *think* I am, and how connected I could actually be.

I realized that regardless of whatever positives and negatives I see in facebook one thing is clear - through reading my friends posts (and their friends posts) I'm finding out more about the people I thought I knew. Their fears, their lives, their desires. Plus lots of cat pictures. :)

This made me want to find out more about the people I know; more than just what they are sharing in a post or tweet. I know why we are friends or family, what I don't know is what about them is really, really different. I'd like you to tell me what makes you different from me.

So

Here's me!

I'm forty years old.  I live in New Jersey. I have two kids, ages 5 and 1.

I have a happy marriage to my husband of 11 years. I have a chicken for a pet.

What makes you different? For this first post, tell me something about your family that is different from my family.

Thanks for joining me on my empathy journey!