The cost of change
A segment of today’s Rachel Ray show focused on the cost of change. In today’s example, a lady lost a lot of weight, and also her friends. And I think men and women in bad relationships need to plan when they decide to leave bad choices behind.
On Rachel Ray’s program today she featured a poignant story about Hallie. Hallie dropped 200 pounds - and lost her friends. A life coach checked into what happened, and found a familiar story. Hallie’s family had been overweight, and many of her friends were obese. I wondered when the segment opened and showed Hallie’s ‘before’ pictures, that she chose overweight friends, pretty exclusively. When she rapidly dropped, after stomach bypass surgery, from 345 pounds to 140 or size 26 pants to size 4, she was no longer fat. Hallie related that she chose the surgery because she was so heavy she couldn’t do many things and her health was at risk.
After reaching a healthy size, Hallie was shocked that she had no friends left. They had faded away, one by one. Her family considered her an outsider.
Relationships. I enjoy NML’s good work on Baggage Reclaim. NML focuses on women that pick a particular class of loser, which she calls EUM - emotionally unavailable men. Baggage Reclaim attempts to help women identify EUM’s, to recognize that a relationship with an EUM is unhealthy, and to help women overcome resistance to leaving, and to help recover from a pattern of picking EUM’s.
I think of relationships as addictive behavior. I think all people are hard-wired for addictive behavior. Why? Look at work ethics - punctual, dependable, desire to continue (getting a paycheck, performing the assigned work, working with certain people, etc.) Look at smoking, problem drinking, and tell me these are fundamentally different. The difference is the impact on our lives and health, not on whether we seek comfort and resist changing.
Eating to excess is one such addictive behavior.
Rachel paired Hallie with an experience life coach. The life coach sat down with Hallie, on camera, and showed a clip to Hallie. Hallie’s mother was angry. Hallie’s mother explained that Hallie, while losing weight, continued to focus on losing weight and what it did to her. Her mother brought up clothes. Hallie threw out all of her old ‘fat clothes’ as she called them. Remember that Hallie chose to lose weight - these clothes reminded her of her fat days, and she wanted symbolic space. But her mother felt that everything Hallie said and did was a taunt, a criticism of her mother and her family, for not losing weight. Her mother contended Hallie had been selfish, not to hand her un-needed clothes on to other family members that could have worn them.
Hallie’s friends experienced much the same disillusionment with their former friend. Where Hallie was exuberant about her success in achieving a healthier size/weight, her friends felt she was criticizing them, by her example, for choosing to stay fat. They were uncomfortable with the implied, hurtful accusation, and the apparent thoughtlessness. They withdrew.
What the life coach told Rachel was that Hallie never intended to hurt anyone, she wanted those around her to be happy for her. But in her focus on her own success, she overlooked the emotional change that occurred to all her relationships. When something major changes in our life, such as dramatic weight change, we need to plan the emotional transition. And that often takes professional help.
NML points out that there are major self image problems with women that choose to stay with abusive, neglectful, or disrespectful relationships. Because most often the women that will stay with an EUM or otherwise hurtful guy will usually pick guys that give them similar relationships again and again. To live a healthier life, they have to choose a different set of life values. To change. Not just to drop one bad apple, but to live with different values, to use different criteria to think, “This guy might be worth a try.”
Change is a ‘little death’. A clearing away of the old life to make way for the new. Hallie didn’t know this, and many of the women wanting away from their current relationship don’t know this. That change has to be managed. The change has to be complete enough that the changed person on the other side of the transition won’t repeat the same mistakes of picking the wrong type of guy - instead, they will evaluate character, honesty, and respect before they ever consider an easy smile or easy pickup line.
On the one hand, those in abusive and neglectful relationships don’t often have many good friends. They may have been ostracized by their family for the kind of people they choose. So losing that old life might go mostly unnoticed as they build a new life.
I have always described the change of leaving a lover as a form of grief, and recommended professional, trusted assistance. But what about the happiness on the other side, as better people and better things enter the lady’s new life? That transition continues.
Like Hallie, women choosing to make better choices in relationships make dramatic value changes in their lives - that affect all their relationships. If they have friends from the old life that make the same old choices - she would have to plan that emotional change, to be able to hang onto bits of the past that she still values.
Hallie’s stomach bypass cannot be readily undone, and she would not choose to change her mind today about the surgery. Women that recover from choosing EUM guys find a new contentment and joy in life that they would never give up. But what Hallie’s life coach calls “an emotional plan” can reduce the unexpected costs of friends, family, and opportunities.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:36 am
What an absolutely brilliant post and I will do some posts on managing change and an ‘emotional plan’. What I tend to see with the women I come across is that if they are in a bad relationship, it’s not the only area of dysfunction, so they may have poor friendships, poor family relationships, or just a tendency to give too much and allow people to take advantage. When I changed my attitude, I found that I didn’t want to be around certain people any longer or that I had to have a frank discussion because people are comfortable with what they know so they like the relationship that they have with you. I have found some of Hallies parents attitude with my own mother who has implied that I flaunt my happiness by..well being happy. I think if we act with care and thought, it goes a long way, but ultimately, if people are only comfortable with you when you’re on the down, I have to question what the value of these people are in your lives. That said, no-one wants to find themselves alone as a result of being happy and so when it comes to family and friends, it’s better to involve them in your shifted life as opposed to assume they are along for the ride. Great post!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
NML, I think what I find most disturbing, is that Hallie proved to be a source of change to those around her. Because she wasn’t managing that change that she chose, the trauma to friends and family was unexplained and misunderstood.
It is easy to state, now, that her mother was horrid, and her friends weren’t worthy. Hallie might well have chosen to form a different relationship with her mother and other family members, and she might well have chosen to withdraw from her current friends. Now we will never know how it might have worked out. I think it would be better if Hallie had been able to avoid causing the pain and anger and change in her relationships.
Does this mean someone starting the No Contact Rule should be warned not to tell friends and family about her progress? That might avoid a certain amount of angst. Yet it is an incomplete answer. We need trusted friends to help us make better choices in life, so keeping mum about the biggest changes in our lives has to be self-destructive. Online forums and blogs can be a big help, and keep things semi-anonymous, too. And yet..
I believe I will continue to recommend formal grief counseling for those dealing with the end of a relationship. Right now I can’t think of anything better.