Move towards pain

Listening to an audio of a Tyler Duren conference, I heard him say most men are living their lives with one goal: to avoid pain. But to advance as a human being, you must choose happiness and accept the pain that comes with it. He also states many men fear apologizing will sacrifice their place of power. These two concepts speak to my thoughts on my brother.

It hurts to maintain distance from my brother, but over the last couple of years our relationship has become more and more unhealthy. Only after I developed enough of my own identity was I able to recognize this. Until then, I felt so much admiration for who he was that the thought of disapproving of him was unthinkable. Disapprove? Hell, whoever he was, I wanted to be.

So imagine my shock when I realized a hypothesis that continues to seem solidified: he feels a desperate need for approval and power, so much so that he is willing to maintain the sense of approval and avoid the feeling of disapproval at a high cost.

In the book The Manipulative Man, Dorothy Mccoy says the manipulative man, often a narcissist, is a charming and seemingly generous, adventurous person. But try to focus on his flaws and he expresses his (come on, or her) need for power and approval by either passive aggressive manipulation or direct intimidation. At most, you will hear a vague acceptance of some error, but rarely, if ever, will they admit something major. It's not in their nature to share someone else's reality, to even agree to disagree when the perception of the positive character so vital to their reality comes into question. Instead, they manipulate the discussion, sometimes to your faults instead. Often they side-step the issue without ever addressing your concerns. When that doesn't work, they switch to plan B, intimidation, alternating between the two.

I remember my own behavior in the last few years, especially after I accepted my first management position, and see some startling parallels with her analysis and myself. I remember thinking about the clichéd rush of power, how silly people are to lose their grasp on reality, but only now look back at realize how far out of touch I had become. I think I've been lucky enough to undergo some humbling experiences later on that slapped me back into a more stable reality.

Indeed, one reason I need to distance myself from my brother is to distance myself from this behavior. Experiencing the pain of the other side, I do not want to fall back into it. The journey to supercede my ego is difficult but powerful and one I enjoy sharing.

To maintain my closeness with my brother required me to offer him only support, and as described above, why wouldn't I? The thought of directly disagreeing with him was not possible. My reality, insecure as I was (and to be honest, still am), could not allow for such an event.

The journey to my own identity began full force when I moved to Hattiesburg several years ago, gasp, a full 2 hours away! Minor though the distance seems now, the situation forced me to grow into my own person. Since then, I've found things to disagree with, and the conversations, minor or significant, have gone much as is described above, with one caveat.

If the conversation remained on subjects that had nothing to do with him, or at least did not call it into question, we could have a full blown discussion.

If the conversation turned to question a personal issue involving him, for a long time I often encountered manipulation. We rarely, as poker players say, WENT DEEP to address how he could have been at fault. We examined the issue and brought out other details, either pointing out where I needed clarification, or latching onto any relevant fault of mine and focusing the conversation to that instead. This fault could be anything, including minor semantics.

More than once I recall thinking a conversation indeed had opened the door for growth, only to realize the conversation never addressed my specific concerns. In a particular conversation, we revealed I could help matters if I would do everything I could to first convince him I am sorry. Only then could he feel emotionally ready to satisfy any concern of mine.

Well, I've done that for a while, increasingly less, and at this point I would feel like I had to grovel just to make any headway with him.

Back then, I assumed the blame for not stepping up to give details and insist on specific answers. It is our responsibility to communicate our concerns. Otherwise, we can not expect someone to ever know what we want.

So what happened when I felt confident enough to voice my concerns? I encountered the full force of a person I believe is addicted to approval and power. The manipulative ploys felt frustrating, and the intimidation tactics felt brutal.

Now I think the important issue is not in the details. It's in the ability to discuss, even if in the end you do not agree. It's fun to be right, but it betrays a deep insecurity if you are unable to admit you are not, even if you think you are.

In another lesson, Tyler Durden offer several methods to deflect or plow through shit-tests, ploys meant to determine the depth of your character and, above all, if you are congruent with the image you present. The danger, Tyler states, is lacking calibration. Suddenly, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE becomes a shit-test, and unfortunately you stop addressing legitimate concerns with any response except to plow plow plow.

To move forward with my life, I decided to distance myself from him and the potential for abuse. Some people close to me have urged me for a quick reconciliation, but as I've stated before, I don't believe that's possible. They hint it would be awful to go for days, months, years, and not have this relationship. How could I think I could cut him off? We don't get to choose who our family is.

Agreed, but I also think we do not choose which relationships go sour. I do my best to have a healthy relationship and influence it to grow more-so. Unfortunately, this relationship has turned toxic. I want to one day have a healthy relationship with my brother. A quick way to prevent us from having a healthy relationship would be to accept it in its toxic state and interact as though nothing was wrong, referred to as dual enabling. As awful as it is to distance myself from him, I would feel worse if I let myself continue to live with this destructive, painful relationship. Separating us is the best way I can see to allow for the possibility we can one day be close again.