The trade-off for putting your needs first
Earlier this year, I spent eight days in Mexico, split between Mexico City and Oaxaca. The trip was nourishing and memorable due to the friendliness and warmth of the people I met, as well as horseback riding to a butterfly sanctuary where monarchs overwinter, and experiencing the vast and deeply stirring array of weaving, painting, ceramics, silver-smithing and street art that underscores the vibrancy of Mexican culture.
I flew to join a friend who, three weeks earlier, escaped the chill of a Canadian winter. This was a relatively new friendship, and I looked forward to seeing my friend again after the few weeks we had been apart.
The day I arrived, I left my phone in the airport taxi as I counted out pesos to for the driver, and gathered my bags. My friend did the near-impossible and managed to get my phone back through the help of friends, who spoke better Spanish than either of us could. My friend also arranged a driver to take us to a potter’s studio in the countryside, plus a tour of Diego Rivera’s art at the Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico City, an unforgettable highlight of the trip I documented in a short instagram video.
What I failed to foresee was the dynamic that emerged as we traveled together. Where I was happy to let the loosely-planned day unfold, and the serendipity of discovering local places and customs, my friend was eager to book full days of sight-seeing, eat at restaurants backed by positive online reviews, and engage with people at a pace and intensity that differed greatly from mine.
Over years of solo, paired and group travel, I learned to discuss in advance expectations for the trip with my companions so everyone was satisfied with their investment of time and money. This was no different. Yet when my friend and I were in a decision-making process of doing “their” activity or “mine,” I often allowed their wants to overshadow mine rather than continue advocating for my alternative. I say this as someone able and willing to speak up for myself, and be considerate of other people’s needs.
Following the trip, I reflected at great length on when and how I acquiesced to decision-making counter to my interests and preferences. On the one hand, the trip was enjoyable (if exhausting) because of activities my friend arranged for us. Yet on the other, it was unsatisfying (but restful) because the alternative to doing something together was me going at it alone.
Put another way, the only available choices were “let’s do my thing together” or “see you when I get back,” and I didn’t feel an all-in enthusiasm for either. In this, I had to give something up regardless of what I picked, a concept psychotherapist David Schnarch calls the two-choice dilemma.
I share this story as it was a stark reminder of the credo that taking full responsibility for your choices means accepting the consequences of those choices. Though I look back with a mix of appreciation and disappointment on that trip, I cannot fault my friend for my experience of our time away. Perhaps this friend could have shown more flexibility towards meeting some of my needs and desires, yes. Ultimately, though, it was my responsibility to attend to my own wishes knowing the trade off, and finding a way to honour and appreciate our differing ways of spending time.
Interesting in all this is that in spite of years of learning how to make mutually satisfying choices with another person, I still tripped into appeasing another at a cost to myself. In other words, choosing to say yes to her meant saying no to myself. I further made this harder on myself by choosing not to address it in the moment. This latter part came from a belief that the only way to be or stay friends when there is a choice between you and another is to fall in behind the wants and needs of others — and stay quiet about how it makes you feel.
All human behaviour is learned early from our primary caregivers (who themselves learned from their parents and caregivers). Even when we work to shift behaviours that no longer serve us, we still risk falling into patterns we thought were over when circumstances activate our insecurities. In my case, traveling with a friend I did not know well to a place where I did not understand much of the language, combined with fatigue from all-night noise and adjusting to new foods, woke up my need to stay safe and wanted. This put me at odds with an equally strong inclination to heed my own desires.
Author Lindsay Gibson explains that “people who lack emotional engagement in childhood often can’t believe someone would want to have a relationship with them, just because of who they are. They believe,” she says, “that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first.”
As I gain greater awareness of my complicity in issues that permeate my life, I also need to make room for the equally-valid concept that everyone is acting in part from what was first learned, how hard it is to see this clearly, and when the unconscious choices we make are surfaced, to work through the letting go and starting a new path forward.
Freud mused that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I would say that sometimes a trip with a friend to Mexico is just a trip with a friend to Mexico. Until it isn’t and you discover that the real journey did not require a passport, but rather a willingness to acknowledge no matter how much you work to grow and learn, there is always further to go.
