process. Through counseling, Bill came to understand how, as the child of alcoholic parents, he
had learned to lead a dual life. On the one hand, he’d learned to shoulder excessive responsibility
at an early age—for example, as a boy sternly forbidding his stepfather to strike his mother. On
the other hand, he had another part of his life where he took little responsibility, where he made
believe everything was okay no matter what was going on. That’s how he could appear on TV
and earnestly vow that he was not involved with Lewinsky. He was in that no-responsibility and
high-denial space.
People were urging Hillary to forgive him. One evening, Stevie Wonder called the White
House to ask if he could come over. He had written a song for her on the power of forgiveness,
and he played it to her that night.
Yet Hillary could not have forgiven a person she saw as a liar and a cheat. She could only
forgive a man she thought was earnestly struggling with his problems and trying to grow.
THE PARTNER AS ENEMY
With the fixed mindset, one moment your partner is the light of your life, the next they’re
your adversary. Why would people want to transform the loved one into an enemy?
When you fail at other tasks, it’s hard to keep blaming someone else. But when
something goes wrong in a relationship, it’s easy to blame someone else. In fact, in the fixed
mindset you have a limited set of choices. One is to blame your own permanent qualities. And
one is to blame your partner’s. You can see how tempting it is to foist the blame onto the other
guy.
As a legacy of my fixed mindset, I still have an irresistible urge to defend myself and
assign blame when something in a relationship goes wrong. “It’s not my fault!” To deal with this
bad habit, my husband and I invented a third party, an imaginary man named Maurice. Whenever
I start in on who’s to blame, we invoke poor Maurice and pin it on him.
Remember how hard it is for people with the fixed mindset to forgive? Part of it is that
they feel branded by a rejection or breakup. But another part is that if they forgive the partner, if
they see him or her as a decent person, then they have to shoulder more of the blame themselves:
If my partner’s a good guy, then I must be a bad guy. I must be the person who was at fault.
The same thing can happen with parents. If you have a troubled relationship with a
parent, whose fault is it? If your parents didn’t love you enough, were they bad parents or were
you unlovable? These are the ugly questions that haunt us within a fixed mindset. Is there a way
out?
I had this very dilemma. My mother didn’t love me. Most of my life I’d coped with this
by blaming her and feeling bitter. But I was no longer satisfied just protecting myself. I longed
for a loving relationship with my mother. Yet the last thing I wanted to be was one of those kids
who begged for approval from a withholding parent. Then I realized something. I controlled half
of the relationship, my half. I could have my half of the relationship. At least I could be the
loving daughter I wanted to be. In a sense, it didn’t matter what she did. I would still be ahead of
where I was.
How did it turn out? I experienced a tremendous sense of growth letting go of my
bitterness and stepping forward to have the relationship. The rest is not really relevant since I
wasn’t seeking validation, but I’ll tell you anyway. Something unexpected happened. Three
years later, my mother said to me: “If anyone had told me I didn’t love my children, I would
have been insulted. But now I realize it was true. Whether it was because my parents didn’t love
us or because I was too involved in myself or because I didn’t know what love was, I don’t
know. But now I know what it is.”
wang
(Wang)
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