Binning pride and restoring relationships
Joy Attmore,
9th Sep 2019
Tags:
Life
Blog
Forgiveness
Friendship
Relationships
When was the last time you had a good falling-out with one of your siblings or a member of your family?
Maybe you’re hiding in your room from them right now, trying to avoid more conflict?
The joys of being imperfectly perfectly human.
It doesn’t matter how old we are, it’s almost guaranteed that we’ll experience moments of not seeing eye to eye with someone we’re related to. Welcome to one of the joys of being imperfectly perfectly human!
I had a falling out with one of my brothers a few months ago. It was one of those disagreements that we talked about, but didn’t really talk about. So it became like the medium sized elephant in the room, until last week, when it burst like a balloon that has had too much air pushed into it.
We’ve never had a falling out before, apart from when we were kids and we fought over the TV remote control, but that doesn’t really count.
I didn’t think was my fault.
My brother had tried to bury the moment that I’d been hurt by with platitudes and avoidance, and I had complied, not having the desire to engage in conflict resolution that I didn’t think was my fault.
My husband is currently reading ‘The Road Back To You’, by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, which unpacks the personality defining tool, Enneagram.
It is broken down into nine different personality types that are each identified by a number. Every number then has descriptions of how a person operates when in their place of optimal health, through to their least healthy state.
I can be people-pleasing and prone to pride.
I’ve realised that I’m a number two, also known as the Helper, which means at my healthiest I am a caring, interpersonal type who is demonstrative and generous, but in an unhealthy place, I can be people-pleasing and prone to pride.
Last week as I sat at my laptop looking at the dear faces of my brother and his wife via video call, whilst we mended the tears in our relationship, I realised how pride can so quickly and quietly create barriers with the ones we love.
I don’t find myself in conflict with people very often, but when I do the desire to be right and ‘win’ the argument can often be the biggest stumbling block for me to resolving what has been broken.
Maybe you don’t even understand why your friend or sibling is mad at you.
Maybe you can relate to feeling justified for not reaching out and saying sorry because it wasn’t really your fault.
Maybe you struggle with feeling too proud to be able to reach out over the gap and try and reconcile with someone.
Maybe you don’t even understand why your friend or sibling is mad at you because you didn’t mean to do anything to upset them.
You know what I’ve come to realise? It doesn’t matter how many times you replay a scenario over in your mind to try and figure out who was at fault first, and therefore who needs to do the apologising, everyone involved ends up feeling hurt because everyone’s hearts are invested in the relationship.
I had to step away from my pride, make a phone call, and ask to hear my brother’s heart in order to see our relationship healed again.
What do you need to step aside from today?
What question do you need to ask, or person do you need to reach out to, in order to save a relationship from completely falling apart?
I promise you, no amount of pride is worth holding onto in place of a brother or sister.
