The last time I spoke to my brother, he told me that he had been in therapy for over ten years and that a primary focus of his therapy sessions was to process the pain that I had caused him over these years by ‘pulling away’ from him and his family. This was the reason, he explained, that he and his family had decided not to invite me to my niece’s wedding.
It was a shock to consider the idea that I had been causing someone pain for more than a decade and that this person, despite being in therapy, had not mentioned this pain to me. It wasn’t like he had anything to lose by saying, ‘You seem like you’re pulling away — is everything okay?’ I had no power over him: I wasn’t his boss or his coach or his relationship partner. We did not have any business dealings or shared investments. I was flummoxed. ‘It seems pretty cowardly,’ I finally said. He agreed, but he did not apologize or acknowledge the pain that he was inflicting on me by sharing this assessment. I next asked him if I had been a ‘bad brother’ on the many trips we had taken together during this same period or while I was working on the songs he asked me to produce for him. ‘There was that,’ he begrudgingly admitted, but he refused to alter his overarching narrative about me.
I next asked him for examples of how I had pulled away, and in responding, he sounded prepared and invigorated. He said that if I had cared more about his daughter, I would have seen her more than three times when she was in graduate school in New York City. She subsequently reinforced this message in an email, saying that while she appreciated the first time I took her out to dinner at Bryant Park, she had been ’22-25 years old’ and had wanted me to be the one to ‘reach out’ to her. She didn’t mention that I had taken her out to dinner a month later in Harlem, where I (along with Stephen, who was present) emphasized that if she ever needed anything — a meal, a conversation, tickets to the opera — all she needed to do was let us know. She subsequently introduced me to her girlfriend — I was the first person in her family she came out to — but never followed up when I broached the subject of having a ‘double-date’ with her girlfriend and Stephen. But even if she was wrong about the facts underlying the grievance, I understood that in her mind, the events had transpired (or not transpired) the way she remembered them, and in this narrative, I had been a negligent uncle. As in the conversation with my brother, I was shocked by the fact that these events had all occurred more than a decade earlier, and that my niece — like her father — had failed to mention any resentment until now. Even the lowliest crew member on Below Deck understands that letting resentments fester is a recipe for disaster: you must either air them to the person at the center of your grievance to give them a chance to explain or apologize, or you must let them go.
Recently, I’ve been talking to my therapist about the ways I resemble my father, who was a very difficult, enigmatic man with some endearing traits. My therapist asked me to imagine how my father would deal with difficult situations if he were in my shoes. I said, ‘probably not by blogging about them.’ Still, I was taken by the question. It’s not surprising that, in the same manner of physical traits, behaviors — good and bad — are passed down from our parents. What exactly have we inherited from them? And what did my brother inherit, and how is it different than what I inherited?
My therapist emphasized the importance of identifying and giving voice to these behaviors, so that, if I want to, I can choose to fly away from them.
