the give/take fallacy
[my year in review station 14]
This station contains MATURE content. The language in the following clip will most likely offend, but please know that is not the point of using this clip. Hopefully you will see the value by the end of the station. If not, well, I truly was personally struck by the nature of these concepts, and wanted to share them in the most genuine and raw way possible.
Before you jump in to the clip, here is a the most briefest of contexts. The couple you will see here open the scene talking about their friends in the other rooms of their house — two other couples are having fights. But, the scene quickly moves to their own issues, both individually, and as a couple. Jimmy’s father has passed away weeks prior. Gretchen has been battling an especially deep and dark season of reoccurring depression. The hostility you witness in this clip is a revealing moment for them — realizing where they both are and what that means for their relationship.
Watch the Clip
You’re the Worst — Season 3 Episode 12 “You Knew It Was a Snake”
(if you can find the episode, you can watch it — however, here is the dialogue we watched)
This scene, and especially the coming dialogue were written and delivered brilliantly portraying both their respective heartbreaks.
Jimmy: Such idiots.
Gretchen: We’re not better than them.
Jimmy: Oh, speak for yourself. I’m not the one who flung my sandwich like an upset chimp at the zoo.
Gretchen: I threw it because I realized I was living I was living with a uptight dildo whose personality unmakes itself anytime something bad happens.
Jimmy: Says the woman who spent weeks catatonic on the couch in crusty yoga pants.
Gretchen: I have a clinical goddamn illness!
Jimmy: Oh, right. So you just win because your condition is listed in the DSM?
Gretchen: No! I win because I’m doing something about it. You’re just lashing out and putting me under a microscope!
Jimmy: It just happened! He just died! Right, I am still grieving, Gretchen. Jesus Christ!
Gretchen: But I was here first!
Jimmy: Where?!
Gretchen: Here! In sh*t, miserable! There just isn’t room for you to be broken right now too!
Jimmy: How is that okay?
Gretchen: It’s not. It is completely unfair.
Jimmy: No, this isn’t supposed to… One person is supposed to be in the hospital bed, and then the other uncomfortably sleeping on that little couch, just sneaking home to shower and… walk the dog.
Gretchen: Right? Right, Jimmy. And yet…
Take a breath
For many, it’s really hard to watch any kind of fight — even if it’s on TV or the big screen. But I want you to consider, not so much the lashing out at each other, but the arrival of the couple to the place where the scene ends. What did they discover? What can we see in ourselves? In our relationships?
Consider a friendship or a spouse or a parent or any other relationship
Focus on whatever relationship fits best for you.
Can you think of a time where you were needed to be the “rock” for the other person?
Can you think of time where you were struggling — needing the other person to be your “rock”?
We can all agree, i’m sure, that there is a certain GIVE and TAKE in relationships. And you likely found it easy to consider times where you needed a “rock” or had to be the “rock”. But I think this is an all too tidy way of looking at life together. Our relationships just don’t always stay on such a symbiotic connection. Have you ever been jarred by the reality that when you were in your neediest of points while the other person in your relationship was not able to give you what you needed? Have you ever found that you are both needing a “rock” at the same time — only to realize the other person is just as broken, in that moment, as you feel?
The episode hit me, as Gretchen responds to Jimmy’s revelation of the unfair nature of relationships — that it is not how it is supposed to be, “And yet . . .”. It hangs in the air on the episode. And it hung with me. When I demand so much from my broken places, am I unwilling to see the way in which I am needed by others? Or when I’m needed, do I go into “superman mode” unwilling to explore my own limitations and weariness?
This station is about SEEING . . .
Do we SEE our spouse, our friend, our parent as someone with needs as we ourselves struggle in need?
AND this station is also about VULNERABILITY . . .
Are we willing to BE vulnerable & need others, when we’ve been asked to be the rock in the relationship?
We cannot always be everything,
but we also cannot be LIMITED to just one thing.
You cannot always be the HERO. You cannot always BE THERE perfectly for others. AND you also cannot get stuck thinking you only NEED. You may feel like you have nothing to give, or cannot be enough, but you do — and you are. Can we let go of this fallacy of an expectation that one person GIVES and the other one TAKES? Can you see that their doesn’t exist this dichotomy of GIVE/TAKE but a fluid reality that sometimes we give and other times we take — and our relationships and experiences aren’t capable of fitting the rhythm perfectly.
What kind of freedom could it mean for you to let go of this impossible expectation?
Write
Consider what it might mean for you to RE-ENGAGE your relationship letting go of this GIVE / TAKE fallacy.
Can you think of one attitude or action that would change in your approach to this relationship if you no longer functioned in the trap of the GIVE / TAKE dichotomy and acknowledged the fluid nature of the two? How might you live differently in the relationship if you recognized your vulnerability and didn’t always have to be the “strong” one? How might you respond differently if you
Write it here.
