Relationship Soup

(8 min read)

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“It’s better to be healthy alone than sick with someone else.”

Phil McCraw

 

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Imagine every relationship is a soup that we are eating with the person that we are having a relationship with. We share meals with our parents, siblings, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, the woman in the bakery next door, the man who serves us coffee in our favourite café in town and many more.

What the soup is made of depends on what kind of ingredients are brought into the relationship. Some soups are made with organic, self-grown vegetables, others with supermarket quality but still fresh and home-made, and others are pre-cooked and you take it as it is. Some soups are made with a huge variety of vegetables and others with only a few select ingredients. There will be some relationship soups that you really like and there may be some that have one or the other ingredient that you don’t like so much, but it’s ok, because the overall flavour is agreeable and your digestion is also happy with the soup.

 

In the relationship soup kitchen, there is no right or wrong, unless…

 

Have you ever been struggling with a relationship and telling someone about all the negative things that you see and feel about the other person and all the hurt these negative aspects are causing you, just to hear: “Ok, but not everything is negative, right? What about the good things?”

Have you ever felt resistance against looking at the positive aspects of the relationship and using them as a way to balance out the negative aspects? Let me use the soup analogy to show you why your intuition has a point and you might want to listen to it. I agree that it is useful in life to look at the bright side, unless…

 

… unless we are talking about food poisoning in the relationship soup kitchen.

 

Imagine you are eating a soup with your partner and he or she is adding poison to your plate. If it is just a small drop you might not notice and your immune system is able to deal with it without any lasting effects on your body. It also depends on how often you actually have dinner with this person. If the soup is good quality and you only eat it every now and then, you may be ok with it. But in the end, poison is poison. Let’s have a look at some popular opinions and their corresponding soup analogy:

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“What about the good things?”

If there is poison in my soup, I will become sick (and possibly die) no matter the quality of the soup. It is up to me to take care of my health and stay away from poisoning soup (if possible) and it is my right to share my pain about the poison in the soup, because it should not be there. Looking at the good things will not eliminate that which is hurting my body and soul.

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“They did not do this to hurt you.” and “If the intention is good, you cannot speak of abuse.”

It is of no importance whether someone put poison in my soup out of good will, love, anger, hurt, as a response to their own trauma or just because they are one of those rare and really bad humans. It is important that they did put it in my soup when they should have served me a healthy meal. This is especially important for children who rarely have a chance to refuse eating the soup that they are being served by their parents. They have no other reference on what is a good and healthy soup to eat and what kind of soup kitchen they better walk out of immediately.

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“They did the best they could./They are doing the best they can.” 

I am sure they did, as basically everyone does. I also agree that forgiving anyone who is putting poison in our food is important, yet sometimes it is easy, sometimes hard and sometimes simply not possible and that’s ok too. This is everyone’s very personal choice. That said, I feel it is just as important to highlight that it is possible to forgive and at the same time refuse to eat more of the poisonous soup and stay away from this particular soup kitchen all together. If my body is not capable of fighting the amount of poison successfully and I become sick, I better leave this place. And this does not mean that I cannot understand why they are putting poison in my soup or that I do not care for them. I can, from a safe distance.

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“Maybe you can find a way to still have them in your life.”

I sincerely struggle with this approach. If someone is constantly poisoning the soup you eat with them, would you want to keep them in your life? If no amount of working on yourself and communicating with them is changing the situation, would you still want to be close to them? It is your right to walk away and not look back. Until, if you are lucky, changes are happening and you can reassess the situation. If that doesn’t happen, keep on walking and prepare some yummy healthy soup for yourself.

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“Don’t focus on what they do, focus on how you react to it.”

Imagine you have a nut allergy and you’re constantly being fed nut cake by a well-meaning friend or relative. When you tell me about it I ask you to focus on your reaction and to try to stop reacting to the nuts in the cake. It will not work. You can ask this friend or relative to only bring cakes without nuts, but if they are not willing to do that or they cannot, because they don’t know how to change the recipe and they don’t want to go to a cooking class or read a book about it, your only options are to reduce the contact considerably or cut it off completely. Because you matter and you are your highest priority.

In some cases, you can create an antidote to the poison and keep your body from future suffering, but the fact remains that there is poison in the soup. Always keep that in mind.

 

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“Stop playing the victim./Get out of the victim role and take charge.”

This approach denies the fact that people who are being fed poisonous soup are in fact victims and not playing any such role. WE can BE victims of certain circumstances AND take charge of changing the situation at the same time. Asking anyone to stop being a victim is invalidating their experience and the pain they are feeling as a result. Instead of feeling motivated to stand up and work on it, they’ll more likely feel ashamed and “wrong”.

 

 

“But he/she is your [name any family member]!”

No one has the right to put poison in our soup and we have all the right in the world to decide to not eat any poisoned soup, no matter where it comes from. In my opinion it is even worse coming from people who are supposed to protect and nurture you. Cutting ties with a family member is very painful and if someone has decided to do it, rest assured that staying would be even worse and that there has been a lot of suffering leading up to the decision.

 

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“When he or she dies/something happens to him or her, you will regret it and suffer a lot. It would be better to try to fix the relationship and make amends now before it's too late."

If it's a unilateral effort, it won't work. If you try to avoid adding poison to the soup, but the other one keeps adding amounts and nothing convinces him or her otherwise, you are already suffering. And if you love the other person very much, but you have put some distance between you so as not to get sick, you are already grieving and going through the pain of detaching yourself from the other and not waiting anymore for something to change. It is hard work, yet from the outside it can be seen as the easy way out, that of "simply running away." We need both sides to work on fixing a relationship and making amends. If this is not the case, we need to let it go ...

 

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“You’re just having a bad moment and you’re seeing everything painted in black right now. Other times I’ve seen you happy and motivated and you’ve told me about your plans and projects. It will happen again.”

What if right now I am actually allowing myself to be vulnerable and to show you how life really is and has been for me? What if my body and mind are just deeply exhausted from living 24/7 with the consequences of eating poisoned soup (all my life), which includes keeping up an outward appearance of “being ok” and trying to convince myself that it’s not that bad? What if the happy moments have been the exception and not the other way around as you think it is? I know how difficult it must be to understand from the outside, because it’s easier to understand physical illnesses than mental ones. Usually we don’t learn to talk about poison in our soups, especially when we experience it from a very young age. We learn to hide it and pretend we’re good. When we stop pretending and start pulling down or softening the walls that we built to protect us, please be kind and listen. Just because some days I am eating a good and enjoyable soup, doesn’t mean the poison from the other soup isn’t there anymore and hurting terribly.

 

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“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

If you’re eating poison and it doesn’t kill you, it will leave you sick and weak, it may even create unrepairable damage to your body. The price we pay for becoming stronger by eating poison is extremely high. And who says that we needed to be stronger and wouldn’t have been just fine and healthy without the poison? The other reason, why I disagree 100% with this quote is that it gives too much credit to the situation or person that gave us the poison as if they had done us a service by poisoning us. We deserve all the credit for surviving the poisoning and healing from it and coming out the other side, stronger or not. We deserve the credit for sometimes managing to find something positive to say about the situation. Because sometimes, what doesn’t kill you just leaves you feeling completely broken.

 

 

 

It is very important and not always an easy task to distinguish between ingredients that you personally don’t like, ingredients that you are allergic to or the ones that are poisonous. As a highly sensitive person, for example, I am allergic to harsh and strong language, to music in the background while we’re talking, to a high level of spontaneity and surprises, and many more. Others will be ok with all of that, but for me it is a challenge and can cause physical reactions that are easily reversible by taking care of my needs. Poison, however, is bad for anyone and can come in the form of silent treatment, jealousy, manipulation, co-dependency and any form of violence. Personal preferences are a choice and quite harmless, but the other two will make you sick if you are exposed to them for a longer period.

 

Allergic reactions and poisoning can happen in any relationship and aren’t necessarily a bigger issue if they are identified, worked on and eliminated over time. As always, a healthy communication is key and following Marshall Rosenberg’s “non-violent communication” something that I recommend with all my heart. If we need assistance with it, there are special soup kitchens, aka therapy, in which we can learn to identify poisonous ingredients that we mix into our own soup, or add to the soup of the person we have a relationship with, unconsciously or driven by an uncontrolled impulse. These courses are hard work, but definitely worth the effort.

 

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Children who grow up eating poisoned soup though, won’t be able to tell. It is what they are used to. If they are lucky, they will find out once they leave home and spend quality time with people who introduce them to healthy and pure vegetable soups, or later in life when they are facing unusual challenges that make them question their beliefs. Their bodies, however, will have taken a toll and any small amount of poison will trigger strong responses. It is a long process to heal a body from lifelong poisoning, because it has created physical changes in the brain and nervous system that need to be reversed and healed. The most challenging part about it is, that children who are being poisoned will not stop loving the person who is poisoning them. They will stop loving themselves, because they are still depending on outer feedback to define who they are.

 

As adults they might not notice the poison in any soup that is being served to them. They might even prefer it that way, because it is what they are used to. These adults might find they have allergic reactions to soup that is not poisoned, because their bodies don’t know how to digest it. They will need a lot of patience and to slowly get used to healthy living and eating.

 

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If someone tells you about any poison in their soups, be that the one their eating with you or with someone else, listen attentively and try to understand. Try to see it from their stomach’s point of view. It might differ from yours. Remember that each of us is different and reacts differently to certain types and amounts of poison. Be kind and gentle and believe them. Having a traumatic situation denied is like a second trauma and does not help with the healing process. The one who lives with the poison will deal with the healing in his or her way. And healing is so much easier when someone witnesses the effort and progress and celebrates each small step. Be their cheerleader, their biggest fan club imaginable. With confetti, music and dancing.

 

 

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Check-list for your own soup kitchen:

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• How good are the soups you are eating with others, especially people you spend a lot of time with?

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• How is your stomach after eating a meal with someone? Do you need a special diet in order to get your digestion back on track or do you feel well nurtured and full of energy?

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• Are there any ingredients in your soup that you simply learned to put there growing up but that in the end are not really good for you or anyone else?

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• Are you making sure you are not eating anything that you are allergic to just because of social standards or other people’s expectations?

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• Are you eating comfort food in order to cover up the taste of poisonous ingredients?

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• Can you say NO comfortably when someone offers you soup that you are allergic to or that has poison in it?

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• If someone rejects your soup, because they are allergic to an ingredient, can you see that this is about them and their bodies and not about you? Is it possible for you to cook that soup without that specific ingredient? How much effort will you have to put into making that soup? Is it worth it?

 

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May you eat a lot of delicious soup with a lot of beautiful cooks.

May you be able to choose all ingredients wisely and take care of yourself.

May your stomach always be happy.

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