The most neglected relationship

In the past few months, four books came together in an unexpected way to offer me pieces of a puzzle that had eluded me about my own most neglected relationship: my relationship with myself.

• Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril by Margaret Heffernan
• The Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
• The Power of a Positive No by William Ury
• The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner

Here's what I learned:

Willful Blindness: Once we've met our need for survival, we want purpose or meaning in our lives, and this purpose is best achieved with others (belonging). The downside is that, in pursuing our purpose and meeting out need for belonging, we may become compliant within the group or organization and lose our sense of self and our moral compass. We may turn a blind eye to what's happening.

The Passionate Marriage: David Schnarch discusses what happens "when the importance of your partner exceeds the strength of your relationship with yourself" - and what it looks like when that comes back into balance.

The Power of a Positive No: "Saying No means, first of all, saying Yes! to yourself and protecting what is important to you." A No becomes positive when it's grounded in a powerful Yes.

The Dance of Anger: All of us are eager from time to time to change who we are and what we're doing - as long as the important people in our lives are okay with it. The likelihood of them being okay with it: about 0%!

So what does all of this have to do with parenting? Everything! In the parent group, we always caution new parents that things may get worse before they get better. Why? Our kids like the status quo. They like predictability, and they like knowing what they can expect - even when they don't like the actual result. So they may not like that we yell, but they do like that we're predictable.

When our children are young, we may focus on looking after them to the exclusion of looking after ourselves. And soon we lose sight of who we are and what we want, of how we define ourselves outside of the parent/child relationship.

A friend told me about reading an obituary in the newspaper. The entire content was about what a terrific mother this woman had been, and my friend said, "That was a real eye-opener for me. I do not want to be remembered that way! There's so much more to me than my role as a mother!"

So let me ask you:

Is there anything going on in your life that you're turning a blind eye to? Are you maybe focusing so much on your teen's life that you're neglecting your own?

Has your relationship with your teen (or your self-image as a parent) become more important to you than your relationship with yourself?

What do you want in your own life that you could say Yes! to that could ground you in an equally strong No?

And what could you say Yes! to that could sustain you through the sometimes intense backlash of others?

Send comments! I'd love to hear how you're doing with this! And in a later post, I'll share part of my own recent journey with these concepts.