You love your family and they're driving you crazy
You love them — and a weekend with them, or sometimes a phone call, leaves you wrung out. The old roles, the buttons only they can push, the way you revert to being fifteen the moment you walk in the door. They're your family and you wouldn't trade them, and they make you a little crazy, and both of those are completely true.
Oh, this one I know well. Both things are true — you love them and they drive you crazy — and the first thing to do is stop feeling guilty about the second, because it doesn't cancel the first. The people who can hurt you most, and exasperate you most, are exactly the ones you're most bound to; that's family. You revert to fifteen with them because they knew you at fifteen and the old roles are worn deep. You won't fix them — that's the freeing and disappointing truth — but you can change how you show up: hold your buttons a little better, take the exasperation less to heart, and love them without needing them to be different. Come, let's make family a little more bearable, and the love a little freer.
What changes unlock by starting
- You let loving them and being maddened by them both be true, without guilt
- You notice the old roles and buttons as they happen
- You put your energy into your side, not changing them
- You love them as they are, with boundaries that protect you