Allowing Space for Growth and Change in a Relationship

The best part of having relationships with others is feeling accepted for who we are now, while simultaneously encouraging our best selves to come forth.

I reconnected with an old friend today. We hadn’t talked in quite a while—and not fully, authentically, vulnerable since the first days of my divorce—and it was cleansing. I love Ryanne, and she also sometimes exhausts me. She wants to remain so focused on the silver linings and positive aspects of life, which in small doses is great, but she does it to the extent of wanting to ignore the hard stuff. I’ve always said one of my superpowers is finding the silver lining in any situation, but I have a process. First I need to feel all the feels and assess the potential ramifications. I need a little bit of time to wallow or lament or lay on the floor and cry. Then I can pick myself up, dust off my pants, find the silver linings, and get on with things.

Ryanne’s constant pushing to find the joy and blessings in each situation, even when I’m in the middle of wallowing and lamenting, takes more energy than I often have in those moments and makes me feel like I can’t just be honest with her.

In a conversation we had last summer, she was doing her sunshine Pollyanna “find-the-blessings-in-the-moment” push and I couldn’t meet her. She told me she “only wanted to hear the good stuff,” and I responded that I wasn’t in a place to access that at the moment and could listen to her, but wasn’t able to share. She bemoaned that she missed “Her Kyra,” the one full of sunshine and light and joy. She wanted “me” back. But the Kyra she’s referring to was the one she knew when I was pre-pandemic, pre-divorce, pre-homelessness, pre-business betrayal, and pre-depression. That Kyra had a lot less stress to juggle and wade through.

I responded that I wasn’t sure that “her Kyra” still existed and she told me that that made her sad. We hung up shortly after.

Following this conversation, I distanced myself. She and I had been growing apart for a while: she lives halfway across the country now, and we are in completely different places in life, with radically divergent political views and different income brackets. While I was wondering how I would afford a place to rent without any income in the previous year, she was lamenting rising country club fees and how she would survive if she divorced her husband who earns half a million dollars a year, and that she didn’t think she could live on $250,000 a year in spousal support. I had a hard time relating, and while I’m happy she is so financially secure, I value other things. Like authenticity in relationships.

In the past two years, my capacity has dwindled for carrying the bulk of the emotional load in most of my friendships. I started more or less matching the energy investment others were putting in and found that I really have maybe 4 or 5 friends, and not the wide circle of acquaintances I thought were friends. I’m okay with this and have diverted my time and energy to learning new skills (gardening, writing, learning the guitar, making jewelry). But as it turns out, Ryanne missed me.

Last night, she sent a very sweet heartfelt text apology and we followed that up with a two-hour phone conversation. She again said she wanted to hear all the highlights of my life since the last time we’d connected, but in response, I asked her if she just wanted to be a good-times pal or a real friend. She stammered out, “Real friend, of course.” And so I gently explained to her that her insistence on only hearing the good stuff was not only exhausting but also made me feel like who I am is fundamentally not enough for her. That, while I’m sure I still have sunshine and light inside me, that’s not always the dominant emotion coming out, and right now I am only really interested in investing in authentic friendships.

It kicked off an earnest and emotional conversation and both of us felt closer to the other after. And it underscored the idea of allowing for the possibility for someone to change.

My mom still talks to my ex Mother-in-Law (MIL). Evidently, my ex is still living with my ex MIL, and he has relegated himself permanently to his mother’s couch, refusing (unable?) to do anything around the house for her. According to my ex-MIL, he has given up on life because everything is too much effort. “This is why we split,” I silently think to myself. “He gave up on participating in our relationship.” Still, it makes me sad for him. Despite the verbal and emotional abuse he spit out with his glass-shard-coated tongue, I don’t want him to suffer. I wish him well. I just don’t wish him anywhere near me.

We tend to fix our perceptions of people in our minds and it’s difficult to unstick these ideas. That’s why Ryanne was so attached to the version of “her Kyra” in her mind.

My boyfriend’s sister-in-law sometimes fights with her husband, bringing up events from the past that she still stews over. Some of these events are from 30 years ago, when they were 15 years old. Surely, they are not the same people at 45 and 46 years old as they were when they were teens, but the idea has been fixed in her head. Her husband is learning new ways of communication, but for him to be successful, his wife needs to allow the possibility of his growth and change.

My mom confessed during a recent conversation that she had a shudder of unease when she was asking my boyfriend about the first time he met my dad and my boyfriend replied that he really enjoyed spending time with my pops. My parents have been divorced four times as long as they were together and both still have strong—and not positive—feelings about each other. But part of her frisson of discomfort was that her perception of my dad was about her relationship with him…nearly four decades ago. She, too, was failing to allow for the possibility of growth and change.

I’ve been guilty of this too. I wrote about my sticky relationship with my brother, and I can recognize that at that time, I also didn’t account for the possibility of his changing (though his lack of follow-up action in the months since he texted indicates that nothing is different between us, and actually seems to be more stilted and awkward than before).

We are all a work in progress, and we do a disservice to ourselves and others when we fixate on who they used to be, without granting them space to be who they are now.

Change is hard, and allowing for the possibility of change—especially when someone has hurt you—is even more difficult. But it’s also necessary for our own growth and evolution.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

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