GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

.................................... by Stanley

......I’ve noticed in myself and in others that, as people become more present to themselves, emerging as persons more centred in their own being, relationships can dramatically change, often bringing to an abrupt end friendships that may have endured untroubled for years.
......Friendships have the habit of defining who I am, enclosing me in a network of unspoken expectations. Unspoken and unnoticed, they fashion me into a ‘suitable’ person. A longtime friend easily relates to me because they know who I am and can trust my continued stability as a person. I’m a reliable friend. In fact, being a friend is being reliable. But my friend’s sense of my reliability may not take into account the fact that I have changed. And as I change the old expectations come under increasing strain until at last there is a blowup and they crack. Naturally, relationships crack-up for all sorts of reasons – this is only one of them.
......This scenario, or something like it, is especially true in family relationships. Nowhere is one held more tightly in a network of expectations than as a member of a family. God save us – they know who we are! Do they ever! We are immobilised. Their view of us is like a frozen picture, always the same, unmoving and reliable. There is no shifting it. They know us intimately from long experience. Or they think they do.
......At first, as I grow, I begin to define myself by who and what I am not. As I begin to change from what others think I am into someone more authentic, their projections of me gradually become more intolerable. More accurately: my acting, my pretending, becomes more intolerable. Worst of all, I am pretending for their sakes, trying not to disappoint them. The split between who I know I am and what they expect of me becomes unbearable until I blow – usually on some exaggerated minor issue. The truth is, I can no longer contain myself, pretending to be what I am not – and all just to keep them happy and undisturbed. It feels like I have been made use of all this time, merely a prop to support their fantasies about me that are useful to them.
......The awful thing is: I know there is no way of letting them know what has happened. I know it is impossible for them to actually understand me, the me I now am. They are hurt and disappointed or angry because they have made an investment in me that has suddenly ceased to pay dividends. And because they are hurt and angry by my rejection they cannot possibly see things the way I do. They are locked in their point of view.
......Even in the best and most loving relationships there are investments. The nature of such investments is a huge subject; in fact, it is what psychoanalysis is all about – something beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say that the psychological life is a life of change, a constant and gradual redefining of who we are in relation to our environment, powered by an inner personal necessity to be true to myself.
......Change is of the essence. So, it is important for me to realise just how the flow of life can be locked in a network of expectations that enclose me. I have always seen myself through their unchanging eyes. They have held me in a motionless image, like an old frozen photograph; I do not define myself, am defined by them. I am who they think I am – and I cannot escape. When I begin to realise this I’ve already taken a step towards the exit.
......I can find no justification for the changes that I happen, except to say that they happen by virtue of a mysterious force I can only describe as ‘me’.