What if?
What if helping someone you love means going against some of your core values? What if it means encouraging behavior you believe is damaging in the long-term? What if it means giving up your freedom?
How much of yourself do you give up for a friend’s benefit?
The only words I can use to describe my current predicament are scary, sad, disappointing, frustrating, and painful. I don’t respond well to feeling trapped, and I’m angry at myself for letting myself be outmaneuvered into this position.
Now I just need to figure out how to fix it.
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4 Comments
Luke
Hm. Some times it’s better to backout gracefully from a situation that you can’t fix than it is to ruin yourself along with the other.
Lissa
It’s the “gracefully” that’s the problem. 😀
Dulin
What’s the situation?
Lissa
The behavior being encouraged is what may be best described as helping someone externally define themself. I would be filling his need for external validation — helping someone “make” their identity through my approval or disapproval of what they do.
It goes against so much of what I consider crucial in life — self-sufficiency, independence/looser connections with people — and ties me down to being someone else’s identity. What happens when my life takes me out of his orbit? Or should I let that happen, if I care about his well-being?
Complicated.