Unanswerable questions

What do *you* do when someone asks you a question to which there is no good answer?

"Do these jeans make my butt look big?"

"Why didn't you take the trash out like I told you?"

"How could you hurt me like that?"

Wow, that escalated quickly.  The 1st question is a toughie... we don't want to hurt the other person with our answer and if they asked the question in the first place they are unlikely to accept any answer we would give anyhow.

The 2nd question isn't really a question.  It is an expression of the speaker's own disappointment, wrapped up in a question format.  Think about it.  The truth could be that the trash didn't get taken out because you were figuring out the cure for cancer but it wouldn't matter because what the speaker was really saying was, "I expected you to do what I told you and you didn't and now I'm hurt and disappointed and I'm blaming my feelings on you."  No answer would be good enough, just take the trash out.

The 3rd question though...
It is a different level.  It expresses not just the speaker's hurt and disappointment.  It indicates that a relationship has been damaged.  Trust may have been broken.  There is no good answer to that question. "How could you hurt me like that?"
"How could you hurt me?"
"How could you?"
"How?"
Sometimes when we've been hurt, we can't even get the whole question out.  It seemed unthinkable before it became known.  We couldn't even have imagined that person could do that.  Our disbelief and hurt is based on a faulty assumption.  It goes something like this:  If (person) really loved me, they would never do (behavior).  Ipso facto, if (person) does (behavior) they don't really love me.  Ergo, they never really loved me, therefore our whole relationship has been a lie.  I believed the lie, therefore, I'm a fool.

Yes, you are a fool.  Love is a foolish emotion.  In order for it to happen, we have to take the risk that we can be vulnerable with a person by caring about them and feeling cared for and hope that the other person will handle that risky choice with respect.  But they don't always do a good job with that task.  In fact, for a variety of reasons, the other person just may not handle that trust well.  And that brings us back to the unanswerable question: "How could you hurt me like that?"

The truth is that it is possible to love another person but behave in ways that are devaluing.  However, we cannot continue to behave in ways that devalue the other person and expect that they are going to continue to believe that we love them.

In couples therapy, I often run into situations where there are competing definitions of what it means to "love".  I may hear him say, "I wake up every day trying to put a smile on her face and show her how much I love her.  I'd walk a thousand miles to show her that."  Her reply, "I didn't *ask* you to walk a thousand miles.  I just want you to do a load of laundry!"  What looks like love to one person doesn't always line up with the other's view of love.  Lots of people have attempted to encompass the ineffable definition of love. Gary Chapman gave it a go with his Five Love Languages.  I use his framework frequently, but there is still more to be said.

Love is a feeling.
Love is a choice.
Love is action.
Love is ..... (fill in your favorite way to describe love)

Problem is, although we have overlapping definitions, the areas where things don't overlap cause problems.  I've adopted a definition of love from Everett Worthington Jr. from his book, Hope Focused Marriage Counseling:

Love is valuing the other person and refusing to devalue the other person.

I love this definition because it encompasses the understanding that we can say (or feel like) we love the other person, but if we aren't demonstrating it through our behaviors (in active and passive ways), it isn't really complete.

May you learn to value others and refuse to devalue them.  May you find the answer to the unanswerable questions.  And may you discover in the process that part of the answer lies in questioning our assumptions and finding ways to ask different questions.

Counterintuitive

Sometimes I run across ideas that don't seem to make much sense on the surface, but they have deeper truths that reveal themselves later.  They seem to run counter to conventional wisdom and require me to give some thought to them, so I call them "counter-intuitive".  Today's counter-intuitive idea came from a Facebook post by the straightforward thinker and TV personality Mike Rowe (https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1916686088341525).  While the entire post is well worth a read, here is the part that jumped out to me:

"Failure was simply viewed as the most common symptom of trying. Consequently, the more I tried, the more I failed. The more I failed, the more I succeeded. The more I succeeded, the more confident I became."

For many of us, 'failure' is a bad thing.  It is associated with a sense of inadequacy, with shame or with uncomfortable feelings.  Because of this, our brains begin to associate 'failure' with 'bad' and we learn to avoid not only actual failure, but anything associated with failure.  You know, like, effort and trying.  After all, if I don't try, I can't fail. See?  This can snowball into other's perceiving us as 'lazy' and cowardly, but somehow, those things are more tolerable than feeling like a failure.

Wait.  There it is.  The subtle, but powerful, distinction.  *Being* a failure vs. failing.  As Mike Rowe indicated, when we fail.... when failure is an action, an outcome of trying something... something outside of us, it is possible to learn from it.  To grow from failure.  In this sense, when I try and fail, it is feedback.  It is experience that I can use to change my attitude, my behavior, my intention as I try again and move closer to success.  Far from being a bad thing, failure is an *essential* thing for me to experience.  When we internalize failure, we begin to see it not as something that often happens when we try something.  We think that failure is something that we *are*.  Can you understand the powerful difference between thinking, "I *am* a failure." vs. "I tried something and failed at it."?

I'm thankful for people like Mike Rowe, who can succinctly remind me to think differently about failure.  I'm thankful that I can think more deeply about what it means to fail and learn that failure, far from being a bad thing, is an essential thing to my success.

And now, may you find failure, and in failing, may you find that you are successful.  In feeling successful, my you try and fail and try some more and in the process discover that you are powerful beyond belief.

-Jeff