Missing Trains

A letter about control (for all of us who wish we had more)

Dearest reader,

This week I find myself thinking about consequences.

I feel compelled to warn you that this letter will likely provide you with more questions than answers. I apologize in advance.

Earlier this week I was listening to Glennon Doyle’s most recent podcast, this one featuring Martha Beck (whom I spoke of in my last letter to you). It was a message from Martha at the end of the episode that sparked this rather indignant rant you’ll find below. The message was this:

“The problem is that any advice given from a desire to help and fix ends up feeling like a control strategy, BECAUSE IT IS. Wanting to fix something is wanting to control it.”

Listen.

LISTEN.

I can’t even bear to believe that this statement is true (even though I know that it is).

Because, while I very much dislike the thought of trying to control others, the fact remains that I do, quite often, want to “fix” the way that others behave. 

And I have often been called controlling as a result.

But is “fixing” really controlling though?

It’s a sticky question, and this is what I’d like to explore with you today.

Let’s get started.

The Manager

Several years ago, I discovered that my sister-in-law had a mean nickname for me that she coined to make fun of me behind my back. 

It was “The Manager”.

She used this term to describe me during the times when I noticed that people’s behaviour was off the rails, and I attempted to jump in and “fix” it before things got worse. 

Now, my opinion is this: 

If y’all would just act like grownups, you wouldn’t need anyone to manage you. 

But since the people around me sometimes insist on behaving like circus monkeys, I occasionally have to dive in and wrangle them.

This dynamic – of feeling responsible for the behaviour of others and compelled to prevent the consequences of their actions – is textbook codependency.

Codependent people (myself included), tend to have an idea in our head about how we think others should behave, and we experience intense discomfort and anxiety when we see they are not acting in accordance with that idea. 

We fall into a trap of predicting future outcomes based on past examples of similar behaviour, which is often when we dive in to start “fixing”; an attempt to prevent what we perceive will be greater hardship down the road.

Is it good for our relationships? No.

Are our predictions often right, though? Sadly, yes.

The literature on codependency forever circles back to the concept that we do not, ever, have control over anyone else’s behaviour. 

The cure for codependency, therefore, is learning how to separate your own sense of wellbeing from the actions and emotions of others. To learn to be self-sufficient in your emotional state, regardless of what absolute horse shit is taking place around you.

This sounds like a dream to me. Can you imagine?

I’ve tried and tried to achieve this state. I’ve done IFS, EMDR, TRE, CoDA and many other acronyms. And yet The Manager continues to exist inside me. Why, you might ask?

Because of one simple fact:

Other People’s Actions Actually Do Affect You

That’s it. Really. I could end this letter right here.

The thing about working to make sure that you’re unaffected by the actions of others is this: It’s literally impossible.

Even if you were living completely alone, away on a deserted island, climate change (spurred by the corporate greed of big oil executives and shareholders) would affect you. You would never remain untouched.

In a more practical context, if you are living in a home with other family members (chosen, blood, or any other configuration), their actions directly affect you. Their choices affect your life. 

They just do.

On Sleeping In

Coincidentally, after penning V.1 of this newsletter and then deciding to scrap it for being too scrappy, I came across a TikTok that spoke so perfectly to this dynamic that it made me reopen V.1 and decide to send it.

The gold here is actually not in the video, but in the comments section of the video. 

In the comments, hundreds of women give voice to the exact tennis match that happens inside our heads the moment when we notice that someone else’s behaviour isn’t in accordance with how we would prefer they act.

@anxiouslovecoachFound this in my drafts. Said retreat has passed, and i forgot this happened, and im still glad i handled it in this way. 😊 Also, that door slam at the end was my man walking in and telling me we need to get going. The irony 😅 #relationships #relationshipanxiety #rocd

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The video describes a classic partnership scenario:

Both partners need to catch a train. One partner is an early riser, the other sleeps in. 

The early riser feels anxious about the partner sleeping in, worried that they won’t catch their train. The early riser is tempted to wake the sleeper-in, to ensure they will make it on time.

The early riser chooses not to wake her sleeping partner, because she is learning to “let go of control” of him. To help her anxiety, she explores the worst case scenario: Missing the train, and having to catch the next one.

She decides that she could live with that outcome and does not wake her partner. Her partner wakes up on his own like a big boy (WOW! WHAT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT! GIVE THIS MAN A FUCKING MEDAL!) and they reach the train on time.

Moral of the story: She is proud of herself because she resisted the urge to “control him”, did not wake him up, and a potential fight was avoided. 

Can you predict what the comments section is like here?

The most obvious points presented are:

• If she had kids, she would be the sole partner awake and prepping the kids for the trip while the partner slept

• What if the partner is sleeping in accidentally? Wouldn’t he want to be woken up to avoid throwing the family’s day off?

• Why is the husband going along with her to the retreat that she is hosting?

And of course, the biggest one of all:

In deciding to allow the partner to sleep in, and accepting the possibility of the worst case scenario (missing the train), the early riser is by default making her partner’s desire to sleep in a priority over her own desire to be on time and arrive at the destination (HER destination, a retreat she is being paid to lead) according to the previously agreed upon schedule.

This, my friends, is the crux of the issue. This is where it gets sticky.

For the Betterment of the Whole

I believe that in order to exist in harmony with others, our goal should be to minimize the negative impact of our own actions on the people around us. 

I operate in accordance with this goal. For my entire life, every decision I’ve made has been made through the lens of “how will this affect the people around me?”. If you’re reading this letter, I suspect you would say the same about yourself.

But the fact remains that many of the people in our lives do not operate in this way. They make decisions based first and foremost on what works for them.

They leave the rest of us to make adjustments to our world to accommodate theirs.

In this way, it seems to me there are two kinds of people:

Those of us who make choices for the betterment of the group, and those of us who make choices for the betterment of ourselves.

Those of us who belong to the first group must swallow the hard pill that in choosing to act for the betterment of the group, we will often find ourselves picking up the pieces from the choices made by the latter group.

Why?

Because if we fail to pick up the pieces, to be the forever cleanup crew, to make everything right for everyone all the time, we feel that we would be failing to make decisions for the betterment of the group.

Are you following the loopy logic here?

Yes, it’s easier in many ways to just let the chaos exist and persist. But in choosing what’s best for us in this context (throwing our hands up in the air), we abandon what’s best for the rest of the group (“fixing” the situation so that no one else has to deal with the chaos).

Wants, Needs, and Priorities

After coaching countless codependent people pleasers (and living as a codependent people pleaser for my entire life), I’ve noticed a pattern that happens from here.

In choosing to be the cleanup crew, we begin a practice of burying our own desires under the emotional burden of endlessly questioning our motives and second guessing our right to have things occasionally “go our way”.

Let’s use the train example to flesh this out. Imagine an alternate universe in which the partner sleeps in and they miss their train.

Let’s make this a delightful little “Choose Your Own Adventure”.

Scenario 1: The sleepy partner decides that he didn’t really want to go on the trip anyway. He’d rather stay home and rake the yard. The yard seems to need immediate raking suddenly anyhow.

Scenario 2: The sleepy partner wants to go on the trip, so he decides to be “helpful” and takes the “logical consequences” off the early riser’s hands. He reschedules their train departure. And cancels their dinner reservation. He’s okay with getting takeout anyway. They wind up eating McDonald’s on the hotel bed.

Is this the “end of the world”? NO! Of course not.

In scenario 1, the early riser could still decide to go on the trip alone. OR, she could stay at home with her partner. She has choices, none of which are life or death.

In scenario 2, the early riser would survive with McDonalds. 

In both cases though, the early riser does not get what she wants. 

If she’s like most women, she justifies not getting what she wants because – hey, it’s not like she NEEDS it.

Any conversation about this dynamic would be remiss not to discuss the gender implications at play here. For millennia, women have been taught to subjugate our desires, and to only advocate for ourselves on the basis of our NEEDS (if that).

The tricky thing is that, once you start down this path, questioning want versus need, you find yourself playing a zero sum game.

You begin second-guessing what you need, wondering if it’s just a want, and in the process dismissing the vast majority of your own yearnings. 

Your needs start to shrink too. 

You begin taking up less space. 

And since space abhors a vacuum, the space you cede is taken by the other people around you. 

The sleeping partner encroaches ever more on what matters to you. 

You learn to exist only on the crumbs of what other people’s desires leave behind for you.

And you wake up every morning wondering why you’re so resentful.

Listen. I know I’m taking this whole argument to an extreme here. I know there is nuance and lots of grey and many choices we can make between point A and B. I know that in the video, the partner did the right thing, woke up on time, and the couple made the train without issue.

But the big question I am posing is:

What is the true intersection of control at play here?

Is the early riser being “controlling” by wanting to wake her partner up in an attempt to avoid her own schedule being disrupted?

Or is the sleepy partner being “controlling” by behaving in a way that forces those around him to adjust their expectations and experience to accommodate his decisions? 

Are they both controlling?

Neither?

And at what point do we exit the conversation about “control” and enter a conversation about respect?

An Inconclusive Conclusion

It is true that the only thing that any of us has control over is our own behaviour. And that, as Martha said, any attempt to “fix” another person is by default an attempt to control the situation and make it align with our own beliefs about how things should be. 

“Fixing” is in the eyes of the beholder.

But.

But.

Might the conversation around “control” be fairer and more accurate if we zoomed out a bit and explored the socio-cultural context that’s shaping the dynamic? 

The context within which those of us who have spent the majority of our lives serving others are hit with cries of “CONTROL!” the instant we dare step outside the dotted line and demand more for ourselves? 

One hundred thousand women just went on strike in Iceland. Total population of the country? 380,000. 

It’s the second time in history that Iceland’s women have organized such a massive walkout to demand equal rights.

The strike shut down public transit and left hospitals understaffed.

That’s a lot of space they took up.

Is it fair?

Is it controlling?

I suppose the only thing we can say for sure is: 

You can’t pull that shit off by sleeping in.

What do you think about this topic? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Sending you so, so much love.

Kyra

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