Archive: When Your Loved Ones Just Don't 'Get It' | Dear Sugars

The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.

Sugar is here, the both of us, speaking straight into your ears.

I'm Cheryl Strade.

I'm Steve Almond. This is Dear Sugar Radio.

Oh dear song, won't you please?

Yeah, some little sweet days with me.

I check my bell by every day.

Oh, and this sugar, using my way.

Hi Steve.

Hi Cheryl.

How are you?

I'm okay.

I'm doing okay.

I'm bracing myself.

I know.

We have a rather heavy topic today that we're going to discuss.

I'm Dear Sugar Radio.

A heavy topic on Dear Sugar Radio.

No, we're usually so light and cheerful.

It's isolation.

That feeling you have when the people, the intimate people you love, you're surrounded by them

and you feel alone and misunderstood.

You know, it can be because of experience that makes us feel alone or alienated from others.

Sometimes it's because we have an identity that's not shared with those closest to us.

And we're going to answer some letters and have a really terrific guest today.

Help us through these questions.

Well, let's just get started.

Let's hear our first letter.

Dear Sugar's, I'm a 30-something woman with a previously charmed life.

I have friends who have also lived said charmed life.

Nothing bad has ever happened to them.

They have never suffered or grieved or needed or waited and want.

I was like them until about three years ago when I started having miscarriages.

The first was bearable, the second, a late-term loss where I delivered my child

and held her powerless in my arms and said goodbye was life-changing.

I fell into a deep and paralyzing depression but tried to put on a happy face for my charmed friends.

I kept trying to have a baby over the course of the next two years.

I had four more miscarriages and six surgeries to fix my issues.

The advice I seek from you is not medical.

That's from my doctor to figure out.

The question is, rather, how do I continue to put on my happy face

and try to relate to the charmed ones when I've gone through a transformation of heart

that they cannot relate to, empathize with or even understand?

I am not the same person I was three years ago and this difference

seeps from my pores at every social gathering.

I'm like an alien.

They don't know me anymore and I deplore the easy superficial problems and thoughts

that take up the caverns of their minds.

My caverns are filled with cogs and wheels that have turned me into a new person, a survivor.

My friends have yet to be tested, they have yet to survive.

For some reason I cannot relate to those who have no scars.

I want companions, compadres, battalion buddies.

Is it wrong to wish they too had scars so I can feel close to them again?

I want them to need me the way I have needed them.

But mostly I want them to know me again, the new me, the one with all the scars,

sincerely, a lonely warvet.

Steve, I felt this letter so deep in my own heart.

I really identified with lonely warvet, not because I've had the same journey.

Obviously my losses aren't about miscarriages, but it really brought me back to this era of my life,

the decade of my 20s, essentially, when I was this young woman, this 22-year-old woman,

whose mother died young and tragically and suddenly.

I wasn't close to anyone else who had lost a parent.

I really identified lonely warvet with your sense of isolation and also your sense of rage.

That sense, why did I get scarred and you didn't?

I first want to extend a little hand to you through the airwaves of the podcast and say,

I'm so sorry for your loss.

The feeling that you're having of the isolation is part of the grieving process.

It's part of what's now true for you.

There is a way, the sounds harsh to say, but there is a way that in this experience you are alone.

The friends that you have right now who have not had these losses are not with you.

The thing that's also true is there are other people out there who have had this loss.

Part of your healing journey, as you grieve these losses, is finding those other people.

Finding the people who do have those scars, who do understand you.

What's going to happen when you have those people you can show your true self with is you're probably going to be a lot more open and loving and available to those other people who you do treasure.

Just because they don't have those same scars as you doesn't mean that they never will.

It really goes back to that essential truth about relationships.

We can't get everything from any one person.

In some ways, those friends have been people in the past who have been able to make you feel known.

Right now, they don't make you feel known anymore. That doesn't mean they don't love you.

I think that's right. It's so interesting, Lonely Warvet, that you use that pseudonym.

This is what we see in military culture.

There are so many men and women who return from what is essentially a morally chaotic traumatic experience and then they're locked inside of it.

Because they're saying to themselves rightfully, how do I possibly explain what I've born witness to and suffered to people who have not been in those situations?

The description of losing a child that you have to hold. Most of your friends are never going to experience that.

When you get feel angry, I think partly in an odd way, what you're seeing in your friends is who you used to be before this happened.

The person who walked through life saying, I'm going to have a baby and it's going to be beautiful and it will be life affirming.

That's what will happen because I'm charmed. We all walk around wishing to be charmed.

Then in one way or another, life dispels us of that.

I do want to say that saying that your friends have never suffered or grieved or needed or waited and want is certainly emotionally true, but it's not actually true.

You have to, once I think she was wise to say, sometimes you do actually have to talk to people who have shared a particular kind of traumatic experience so that you feel less alone with it.

Then you become more forgiving of yourself and then what happens is you become more forgiving of your friends and more able to see them as complicated people who appear to lead a charmed life but whose internal lives are probably pretty complicated as well.

They are not marked by a particular experience but they are marked by yearnings, unmet desires, disappointments and probably they've been keeping those a secret because that's what we do.

I think that's absolutely true. I also think the only worry that most of these beloved friends are devastated for you.

They want to understand your loss and they want to be there for you even if they can't look you in the eyes and say, I know, I know, I know exactly how you feel.

You're not going to get that from these friends and I think, frankly, you wouldn't believe it if you did.

You don't want them to have the same loss that you've had.

That was one of the most confusing things. You feel isolated in your loss and then you feel ashamed that you almost feel jealous of people who haven't had that loss even though you wouldn't wish that loss upon them.

First, just forgive yourself for that and know that a lot of these people they want to be there for you and they can be there for you. I've had friends say to me before, how can I support you in bearing this weight?

Those friends who look at you, the only worry about it and say that, they're going to be enormously helpful to you in your healing, whether they've had the same experiences you are not.

The one thing we can say for sure is, please don't try to put on a happy face.

No, happy faces never work.

They never work and it's totally understandable but in the face of this kind of tragedy, inside of tragedies, I mean this is over and over, this is surgeries.

That's been your last several years here. Nobody expects you to put on a happy face so you shouldn't expect yourself to.

I will say, lastly, that the only worry about life is long and I don't feel lucky that my mom died when I was 22 and I've had to live my life without her.

But I do know that for certain I learned a lot from that loss and carrying that loss through my life has made me a stronger person.

What's happened now that I'm 48, I'm surrounded by people whose parents have died or are dying and guess who they come to?

I've had so many friends, Steve, your mom just died earlier this year, who said to me, I thought of you. I thought of all the things that you shared with me about your grief.

Not only that, you thought of them. You reached out to me, it was very important and I thought, well, this is where it shows up. That's the thing that's really, you have to recognize as the deeper meaning of this.

You are leading a deeper life now. It's not one you would have chosen but we spend a lot of time, especially in the plentitude of America, worrying about stuff that isn't at the gut level, at the basic level of living and examined life important.

If one of the things that comes out of this is that you rid yourself of worrying about those nice cities, then that's probably good.

Your friends, if they're of enough depth and consent to go to that deeper place, will go with you.

They will. You need the company.

You'll turn this ugly sorrow into something powerful and strong and beautiful when you help those friends through their own griefs and sufferings.

It isn't going to be true as we know. Charmed lives only last as long as the days are charming.

And we never, any of us know what's going to come next.

Obviously, these are lifelong friends. You've known them since childhood. You want to know them into old age.

So, you know, wait it out. Don't expect them to be the greatest resource for you now. But know that someday that might change. You might be the greatest resource for them.

We wish you luck. We absolutely do.

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Wow, it just gets more interesting.

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You're digging in a place that's been very peaceful for a while.

Do it anyway. Dig.

So, Cheryl, that's a woman who's recalibrating really her mind and her heart around a particular experience of loss.

But it's also true that part of what isolates us as we move through our lives is that our identity in one way or another, in our inbox, as we both know is full of letters in which the essential complaint underneath the particular circumstances, I was born this.

I've realized that I'm that and that realization about who I am and my identity has caused me to lose people or to feel that I'm going to lose people or have lost them.

I feel isolated simply because of my identity.

So, let me read a letter to this speaks to that.

Dear sugars, I'm a bisexual colored immigrant woman living in the United States who has recently gotten into a relationship with a heterosexual white man.

My boyfriend is kind, compassionate and loving, but he doesn't really get it.

I often speak about my experiences and he's a great listener, but he doesn't understand.

I fear that this lack of understanding will create a wedge between us.

It hurts when I talk about issues such as privilege and the fact that he has a lot of it and he disagrees with me.

How do I help him understand what he has never and will never experience, signed social justice warrior and love?

Wow. That's a deep one.

This isn't like you said, this isn't about experience, this is about who she is.

She is in the Venn diagram of people who are marginalized.

She's got three strikes, bisexual woman of color immigrant.

We don't even have to go any further than one of those to recognize that that would be a real obstacle when you get involved with heterosexual white man, dominant normative in every moment.

So much so said the white heterosexual guy that we are essentially blind to it.

That's the thing about privilege.

You don't know you have.

The luxury of not having to investigate it.

In the largest sense, I have let a charmed life.

Because of my orientation, my skin color, my gender, there's just a whole set of things that I just don't ever even think about.

And I have to have people remind me of that.

And this is much more pronounced because social justice warrior, this is your boyfriend.

And you are just leading a completely different existence that he has no clue about.

And it's really tough, but you have to, if you think it's worth it, help him try to get it.

It's a little bit like that line at the end of a good man is hard to find with a grandmother.

The misfit says that the grandmother would have been alright if there had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

I feel, I mean, not to put too far to point it, but I feel a little bit like, hey, if you're going to get with this guy who's a white heterosexual man, nice guy, understanding compassionate, a good listener, you're going to have to shoot him every minute of your life with what your experience is moving through the world as a bisexual colored immigrant woman.

If he wants to be with you and have some empathy for what your life is like.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the advice I just gave lonely war vet about experience was, you know, go out and find other people who have that experience so that you do that so that you're not alone.

But, you know, I think that this is a different kind of isolation because the question at the core of this is, can this relationship survive this romantic relationship?

You're in love with each other and yet you feel deeply at odds with your partner and it is, it's one of those deal killer things. If you ultimately are going to feel misunderstood repeatedly and the deepest parts of yourself, unknowable to your partner, that's a relationship that's unsustainable.

The good news is that people are capable of change. People, if they are asked to do some work sometimes, they surprise us. And so, you know, I think that we should call, we have somebody, social justice warrior in love who can speak directly to the situation you're in because she is in it herself.

Her name is Tallinn Kell. She's a writer, blogger, and artist. She's written many pieces for the multimedia site, the establishment, which is a site run and funded by women. I want to know.

Including two fabulous pieces. The first is called My Husbands Unconscious Racism, Nearly Destroyed Our Marriage. And the other is why I cut my racist in-laws out of my life.

I read both of these pieces and was just really electrified by what Tallinn had to say about her situation, her family, and her marriage. And I think social justice warrior, she's going to speak straight to your point.

She sure will. Let's give her a call and we'll remind listeners that we will put links to both of those beautiful pieces on the dear sugar website as well. Let's give her a call.

Hello. Hi, is this Tallinn? Yes, it is. Hi, this is Cheryl Strait. I have Steve Almondon as well. Hi, Tallinn. Welcome to Dear Sugar Radio. Thank you for having me. We're so thrilled to talk to you.

So listen, we have been discussing this letter from Social Justice Warrior in Love. Did you have a chance to read the letter? Yes, I did. So before we ask you to weigh in with your advice, I wondered if you could share your story with us.

How have you encountered this kind of situation that Social Justice Warrior in Love discusses?

No, man, so it's such a loaded situation because it's only been recently that I've really looked at my life from this perspective as a member of several oppressed groups and I'm with someone who is actually in a very privileged group and trying to understand the dynamics of that and how that kind of impacts us as a couple.

I remember saying something along the lines of, you know, he thought reverse racism was real. And I would look at him like, are you serious right now?

So it sounds to me like what was happening is he had no awareness of his own privilege.

None at all. He didn't believe he had any. He comes from a working class family and he's like the only person in his immediate family who has an advanced degree.

And all of his extended family, they were all blue collar. So you could see that as far as the money the financial situation went, they were on the lower end of the socioeconomic status.

And it gets more complicated when you talk to somebody who's white and they don't have money because they honestly think they have no privilege.

They're like, I have the struggle. I had to work. And I'm like, no one's saying you don't have to work. What we're saying is that when you walk into a room, you have the opportunity to whoever you are.

Right. When I walk into a room, people are looking at me like, so what kind of ghetto stuff is he going to do right now?

So at what point in your relationship did this become an issue large enough for you that you needed to confront your partner about it?

You know, it was really early on. All of his friends are white and they like hanging out in areas of town that were predominantly white. I'm not sure if you know I'm in Atlanta.

And there are certain counties that we know that are still considered to be sundown towns in a lot of ways where you just, there are not a lot of black people there.

And you can expect to face some kind of hostility or over kind of racism the more you're there. Like we went to Helen Georgia, which is, you know, some mountain town and it's a tourist attraction.

And when we went in there, there were figurines of like mammies.

And I would go in and see it and be like, what in the hell? And his reaction was, why are you getting upset? And I'm like, are you serious?

Yeah. Right. And then we'd have to have a conversation. I told them in the beginning, you cannot avoid talking about race because you were not with the black woman.

This is not something you can ignore anymore. It is not something that's no longer a part of your life. And if you don't want it to be a part of your life, we should just break up because it will always be part of our relationship.

Wow. How did your new reality? How did he react to that?

He kind of went into a little bit of denial, but a bigger part of him was like, I want to be with you. So what do I have to do?

And what do you tell him to do?

Well, we spent honestly years talking and learning how to communicate about it.

It just came to a point where I was like, you can't challenge me about this because you don't know. You can go do a bunch of research. Here are some books, here are some articles you can go read. And you can start learning about this.

But you can't sit here and try and tell me that my reality isn't real. That is ridiculous. And that's really how you feel. We don't need to be the guy. I was very quick to be like we should just break up.

And Tallinn, it really sounds to me like that's perfect advice to SJW love because she's saying exactly what you're describing.

I love this guy, but I feel like he doesn't get it. And then when I pointed out to him, he still doesn't get it.

And it does seem to me SJW love that you're at this moment of truth in your relationship that your partner either needs to say like Tallinn's partner did not always perfectly, but okay, I'm going to try to begin this journey of learning about my privilege.

And it sounds like that was, he decided to do that and it worked out for you. But SJW love, you can't go forward with somebody who doesn't who's not willing to do that.

In fact, the letters as I fear this lack of understanding will create a wedge between us. SJW, it is the wedges there.

And Tallinn, you can speak to this, I think it's not just one conversation or one research binge. It's an ongoing process because it sounds like even if you came to terms with your boyfriend now husband, Tallinn, there was also his family.

And a whole new set of occasions in which you guys had to either honestly confront the reality of race in your relationship and in a society around you or, you know, at least in your book say no, we can't we can't do this.

And I'm very, very, very big on honesty. I'm very big on transparency. And so I spent a lot of time saying, hey, you are going to have questions, you're going to have concerns and you're going to worry about how it sounds.

I am willing to give you the space to talk about that so that we can try and figure some of this out. And I can help you understand what's actually happening here.

That was hard. And there were a number of times where he would say something and I was like, that is the most ignorant. I'm going to walk away.

Give us an example. Can you remember something?

We actually had a conversation recently about one of the recent shootings. There's so many. I don't even remember which one it was.

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