It's so often the stuff of therapy: People piss us off. They hurt our feelings. Lie. Deceive. Over promise and under deliver. Ex-boyfriends cheat. Former bosses withhold money we're owed. People do bad things. In NYC you hardly have to step outside for someone to rub you the wrong way. It sucks, and when that happens we have a right to expect compassion and respect from our friends.
We also need to fight to preserve the gray--the color yielded when both black and white (and lots of other colors, too, don't forget) are mixed together. Gray is the color of complexity.
Obscuring the gray
140 characters or CNN-worthy soundbites don't leave a great deal of room for complexity. Complexity doesn't fuel prime-time drama or sell breakfast cereal. When a friend has been hurt, complexity may not seem so supportive. And heck, maybe day one after a nasty breakup, "I never liked her, anyway!" is a great offering.
As the days wear on, however, if we're interested in growth, we begin to need to be more challenged. "Screw him!" might give way to, "Hey, Jill, I think it's more complicated than you want it to be. Let's take a closer look."
The art of gray
It's not easy, when we talk to a friend in pain, or talk to ourselves in our own distress, to make room for the gray. The worry, understandably, is that in asserting the gray we might be perceived as unsupportive. The work in these cases is to convey (in the myriad of ways we might--it's an art, not a science), "I'm on your side. I'm with you. And I think this is complicated."
From a distance, it can be hard to make out the subtler shades. Being close to someone in pain in a way that brings complexity demands that we get closer: Closer to the person we want to support, and closer to the pain.
The danger of simplicity
There's a lot we risk losing when we stick to the simple story. For one, it weakens our ability to see and connect with our own complexity. In a culture (that of our own minds; the culture of our relationships) of simplicity about others in our lives who hurt us it's easy to slip into wondering, in our weaker moments, if perhaps there's a simple story about us. It's too easy to consider our own transgressions and apply a simple, critical, painful judgement. We're vulnerable in these cases to wondering, perhaps, if we're just bad news.
Failing to see the gray impairs our ability to safely get close to people--it predisposes us, when we see faults in others, to either ignore them or run away. It creates a dichotomy: People are either good or bad. This doesn't allow us to handle the ambivalence that everyone comes with. It weakens our ability to forcefully take on the task of getting close to others while protecting ourselves, setting limits on them, letting them know when they're out of line. If people are either good or bad, we should either hang out with them (date them, work for them, create partnerships with them), or not. In leaving no room for the complex in between, we're left unskilled at shaping (or unwilling to shape) relationships where we make demands (and allow demands to be made on us) with the objective of having those relationships be formed, imperfectly and with complexity, as strong relationships that are safe, fun and productive.
Are people gonna walk all over these gray floors?
Not if you don't let them. The fear I often receive from my therapy patients, when I advocate for gray, is that if they look harder at the complexity around someone who's pissed them off, that they'll end up getting screwed over. There's a vulnerability that's implied, yet I find the opposite to be true. If we face the world with a posture that says, "I can handle the complexity," then we are better able to manage our relationships with others. We can improve our skill at dealing with certain kinds of mistreatment; spot it coming more quickly; assert ourselves so that people who want to build with us can, while also knowing that they need to treat us well.
Some of my best friends are gray
I'm proud to say I have lots of gray friends. Some of the people in my life I enjoy the most have a strong capacity to really piss me off. Except I don't let them. Because I face the gray, work to see it and work to manage my own relationship to it, I can enjoy the best of my friends and, most of the time, avoid the worst. Some examples:
My friend Karl is always late. I used to get frustrated--feel taken-for-granted and tossed aside. I tried talking to him about it--other friends have as well--but that didn't work either. But I love Karl. He's a great old friend. He knows I hate his lateness, but I don't want it to make me mad any more. The solution? We don't make plans that require us to be at a particular place at a particular time (and I don't by tickets for the movie until he arrives at the theater).
I like my friend Kris a lot, but his politics stink. Many of his views offend me. He knows where I stand on things and we're not so good at having productive conversations about political matters. And there are others things we can do together in our (gray) relationship--ways he's a lovey friend and we have a lot of fun. How do we deal? We stick to what we're good at.
The examples go on and on: An old boss who was prone to temper tantrums whom I had to tell, in a clear, firm tone, that I wasn't going to tolerate being around when she acted that way. She did some work on that, and knew that if she took her frustrations out on me, I couldn't work with her. She worked to find other ways of allowing me to support her, and did her tantrums in private. The result was that a potentially miserable job was a lot more manageable. There were things about that boss, and the job, that I loved. It was gray.
Successful time with family is always gray. Lasting marriages are gray. It's so very much more work, but when we don't allow for the gray it's never really satisfying. The truth is, everyone is gray, and every relationship is gray. The simple dichotomy of good and evil is an easy myth. If we allow ourselves to be seduced by it's neat, simple rhythm, we're likely to find ourselves miserable and very, very alone.
