At arm's length...

(note irony after my anti-self-help sentiment of yesterday)

Last night, long after I should have gone to sleep (I have some serious cleaning and yardwork to accomplish this weekend ahead of a big ol' get-together - up to 150 people *gulp* at our house next Friday), I was watching Rachel Getting Married (a brilliant though thoroughly depressing movie starring Anne Hathaway, one of my favorite actresses). If you're neither a robot nor hatched in a factory, you won't be able to help being touched by the thoroughly complicated family story it portrays.

So, instead of nodding off during the closing credits as I should have, I stayed up a bit longer thinking about it (as I listened to deer jump the fence outside our bedroom window - calump, calump, calump - "pretty please, stay away from the garden?"). I realized that I was not as impacted by the storyline of the drug-addicted main character and how she shaped her entire family as I think I was supposed to be. Instead, I was focused on how hard everyone was trying to keep each other at arm's length while still celebrating the decidedly intimate occasion of a family wedding.

It's such a waste of energy. Keeping one's self or others at arm's length is a tremendous amount of work. It requires self control - revealing only enough to someone to carry on a conversation but not enough to form actual bonds. It requires planning - attend events where it is possible to briefly connect and then quickly retreat. "At arm's length" just isn't very far at all - keeping people there requires as much effort to invite people in as it does effort to push people away.

It's a tug-of-war, a hopeless struggle. Sooner or later, every tug-of-war ends with someone in a puddle of mud.

It's probably not possible or desirable to cut off every relationship of this sort - we all need someone to have a beer with. The trick, I think, is to learn to identify when it has become nothing but the power struggle - and let go of the rope.