A funny thing happened after I posted "Bad News." When I wrote this blog, my intention was to increase your awareness of the fragility of life. I wanted to remind you to treasure each day and live life to its fullest. After this posting, I began to receive emails and phone calls asking about my health. I was really surprised and puzzled. Why were they worried about me? As the only child of a very anxious, overprotective mother, I learned at an early age to carefully minimize and understate any problems or concerns that I might have. Never would I write in a way that I thought would create anxiety or upset others. Yet, totally unaware of the impact that this blog might have on some of you, create worry is exactly what I did do.
The reactions of those who expressed concern about me reminded me of my mother who projected her own feeling of inadequacy on to me. My mother immigrated to this country as a young teenager. A foreigner, unable to speak English, she had many reasons to feel vulnerable and insecure. She was close to forty years of age when I was born, healthy, but weighing only 5 pounds. Mom felt guilty and was ashamed by my low birth weight which she saw as another personal failure. As I grew up, my mother's anxiety and overprotective behavior was troubling. As a child trying to develop my own sense of confidence and competence, I perceived Mother's fears and doubts as a lack of confidence in me. I must confess I was not very sympathetic. We never spoke about the very real origins of her worry. I was unable to empathize with her issues or realize that they came from her childhood which was quite different from my own. Perhaps if we had spoken more, I would have known that those issues did not belong to me and would have been able to say "I am sorry to have worried you."
Too often I see couples who fall into the same trap because they do not communicate effectively. Expectations of each other can vary by each one's emotional needs or even differing role models from the past. Painful misunderstandings develop when they cannot speak about the differences between them. For example, one partner may expect to be taken care of while the other partner may value a more independent relationship. Different financial or sexual expectations may result in a partner feeling undesirable or like a failure. They desperately need each others' emotional support. Instead, they become more distant or antagonistic and less likely to empathize with one another, or say, "I'm sorry I hurt you."