When it comes to the people closest to us, we tend to tolerate a lot more nonsense than we typically would, with say an acquaintance or co-worker. And there is something about familiarity that makes people feel like it’s okay to unleash hostility onto their targets and treat them in ways they would never treat someone else.
About a year ago, my brother and I got into an argument. While he had some very valid points in what he had to say to me, but he expressed it in a very toxic, destructive way. He also had unrealistic expectations of me and was expressing so much entitlement, it left me feeling flabbergasted. He can be very intimidating and for lack of a better word, scary. He refuses to compromise, and he always has to be right. There is no reasoning with him and he refuses to see another person’s perspective. He also unleashed holy hell on me when I told him that he needed to take accountability and responsibility for himself.
Now I had seen him get into altercations with other people before like this, but he had never come at me in this way. Long story short, I made the decision that how he treated me was unacceptable and I wasn’t going to put up being treated like shit. If he had chosen to apologize to me, I might feel like the relationship can be worked on, but he hasn’t. Why? Well according to what others have said, he doesn’t feel like he was wrong to treat me the way he did.
The truth is, if this had happened a couple of years earlier, I wouldn’t have stood up for myself and would have tried to fix things to keep the peace. But last year, I was at the point in my own journey, where I just couldn’t accept or tolerate his mistreatment and lack of an apology. My new sense of self-respect demanded that I take a stand. I was finally at the point where compromising myself to “keep the peace” was more harmful and anxiety inducing to me than there being some serious awkward conversations and situations in my family because of this argument and distance between me and my brother.
When it comes to people around you, even family, be careful what you tolerate. You are teaching people how to treat you.
