F*ck Feelings (13 page)

You may be right and have good reason to feel the way you do, but as long as the other person sees it her way—her feeling of moral entitlement is always bigger than yours—you're not going to win. Plus, arguing about fairness will probably trigger bad feelings and a vicious cycle of nastiness that hurts everyone around, the weak more than the strong. Indeed, the more you're right and the more she doubts herself, the nastier her response will be. That's why expressing yourself about unfairness is a dangerous goal.

Once you know you're not going to get someone else—your boss, wife, colleague—to go along with your idea about what's fair, shut up and think. Stop lining up new arguments for why you're right, even if you think of better punch lines. Instead, mend fences by finding legitimate ways to acknowledge the other person's right to see things the way they do.

Regardless of how you really feel, don't imply that her views reflect selfishness, laziness, or other bad values. Cite good values that, at least theoretically, may be driving her, so she no longer has to prove that she's right and you're wrong—you simply have different ways of adding things up.

At that point, there may or may not be other incentives you can use to make a deal. For instance, the boss who would ignore your dedication and find fault with your work might think twice if you told him how much you liked the job, appreciated his mentorship, and subtly pointed out how much you wanted to stay despite the rising market value for your services, as evidenced by a current job offer elsewhere.

When there's no way to get a square deal, disengage from argument and decide whether you believe enough in your own point of view that you don't need validation. If so, ask yourself what you wish to do about it. That's when, without argument, you're likely to look for a better job, tell a partner he can shape up or ship out, or decline pressure from friends or family by saying, simply, you'll have to agree to disagree and let the subject drop. Believing in your standards for a square deal, even when there's no way to get it, is what allows you to create boundaries and take independent action.

Knowing you can't get what's fair and then shutting up about it feels frustrating and demeaning, and may make you feel defeated. In reality, you're simply butting up against the chaotic way good and bad people, using differently structured brains and coming from different cultures, come up with different ideas about fairness.

If you continue to believe in your values, sidestep conflict and shit and decide what you can do with the choices you have, then you'll always get the fairest deal possible, from yourself.

Here's what you wish for and can't have:

• A square deal for everyone who deserves it

• A fair system of authority for correcting unfair actions by those who don't know better

• Faith in the power of justice to do more good than harm

• The satisfaction of eventual vindication

Here's what you can aim for and actually achieve:

• Build your strength and market value through hard work, if you're lucky

• Find people who share your vision of fairness and have the ability to make decisions

• Treat yourself fairly, apart from what your feelings tell you

• Know when to keep your mouth shut

Here's how you can do it:

• Recognize when your idea of fairness has become threatening to others

• Ease the threat by spreading honest if limited moral approval like manure

• Make deals with whatever you've got to offer, other than a common understanding of what's fair

• Never feel personally defeated by your inability to make things work fairly for yourself or others

• Never stop trying to make things work fairly in the tiny part of the world you control

Here's what to say when you're feeling unfairly screwed.

Dear [Me/Ingrate/Promise Breaker/Manipulative User],

I feel as if I'm being screwed over by a [best friend/boss/parent/partner]'s idea of what's fair, and it makes me want to [insert synonym for “have a tantrum” here]. I know now, however, that they actually believe in the fairness of what they say, which shouldn't surprise me, but I didn't think it was going to happen to me. If our relationship needs to continue for reasons of [love/kids/being unable to afford to leave town or hire a hit man or lawyer] I will mend fences, define fairness for myself, and do what's necessary.

If you're at all familiar with science fiction or fantasy novels, or maybe blues ballads, or even just the autobiography
I, Tina
, then you know that names hold a special power. Mostly, names are a target for mortal attack, presumably because they stand for identity and reputation, and once someone knows your true identity, you're exposed.

There's little that can make you feel as helpless and violated as an attack on your name. Even though there are laws to protect you, it often takes a long time before you can defend yourself and, meanwhile, you're very vulnerable. At least in this galaxy. Just ask Tina Turner.

Frequently, the person who has slandered you really believes what they say, even if facts have been distorted or don't exist. If you haven't checked in with your local anti-vaxxer lately, you might've forgotten that people believe something is true just because they believe it strongly. It's often impossible to prove something didn't happen
after someone says, sincerely, that it did. Unless you're lucky enough to have an all-seeing video cam at the right place, you can't prove a negative, and arguing about it just increases the impression that you did something wrong.

If you protest your innocence with sincere anger, you sound like an angry person who might actually have done something scary. Meanwhile, false accusations may trigger investigation, charges, and legal actions that drag on for months or years. Or they may prevent you from seeing your kids or require you to pay for guardians, monitors, and other costly services. The more you make it your goal to clear your name, the higher your risk of widening the hurt.

Sometimes false accusations can cause you to doubt yourself; even though you know you didn't do wrong, it's hard not to feel you did something to make someone mad at you and to wonder what you could have done better, especially when the accuser is family or someone trusted. You wind up focusing on the accuser's feelings and your continued interactions, rather than reassuring yourself that the distortions are his, not yours, and you have no reason to hold yourself accountable for wrongs you didn't commit.

Knowing how helpless you are to feel better and control slander is not comforting, but it can help protect you from making things worse and direct you toward realistic hope, which depends on patience and a willingness to gather information. Most lies unravel in time if you survive long enough, keep good records, and believe in your own standards of right and wrong. To survive, however, you must accept the unfairness of what you're up against and believe that it can happen to good people.

Enduring severe slander is like having cancer. It takes over a large part of your life for a long time and causes you great pain and weakness. Even so, that doesn't mean you've made a mistake or failed to fight a good fight, because whether you have the illness or die from it says nothing about you as a person.

Your having the strength and will to fight, in spite of pain and humiliation, is what says something significant about who you are. And who you are goes far beyond your name and all that it entails.

Among the wishes people express are:

• To get through to their accuser, the police, the press, the judge, other relatives, tabloids, and everyone else whose opinion matters

• To prove their innocence without having to wait a long, long time for procedures to unfold and vindication to be achieved

• To not feel horribly punished when they feel they were the ones wronged in the first place

• To protect their kids from a total family meltdown/shit-flinging contest

Here are three examples:

I've always known my wife saw nothing good about me when she was in a bad mood, but I hung in there because I love the kids. Besides, everyone knows she's vicious sometimes but gets over it, and I never thought she meant what she said. So I was shocked a month ago when she kicked me out, changed the locks, and got a restraining order after telling the judge I hit her. The fact is, she hit me and I never hit her, but I was so angry when I marched to the police station to get them to help me that I think they took her side. She won't let me have my tools, I can't work, and I don't know how I'll afford a lawyer. I can't believe how fucked I am. My goal is to get out from under this mountain of lies and get to see my kids again.

My mother says she won't talk to me because I lied to her and wouldn't help her when she had cancer, but that's just not true. She's the kind of person who makes things up and then believes them, and my family
should know that. Even so, no one will stand up to her, so she avoids me at family parties, if I'm invited at all, and the years go by. I'm worried that she'll die before we ever have a chance to make up or say good-bye, and the estrangement hurts. I wish I could be sure my family knows that what she says isn't true. My goal is to put an end to this crazy conflict before she dies.

I know my ex was bitter and our divorce dramatic (restraining orders were involved), but I thought he was out of my hair since our finances were settled by the court and he's even remarried. Then I noticed someone was writing anonymous, negative comments about me as a Realtor on every website imaginable (Yelp, various listing sites, etc.). Now I've got prospective clients, referred by other clients, who seem to drop me once they google my name, and I know he's doing it to me. My goal is to protect myself from a vicious attack that is destroying my professional reputation.

When you're wounded by false allegations and unable to retaliate or set the record straight, the biggest mistake you can make is to decide that, because what's happened to you is insane, undeserved, and agonizing, fighting back with truth and sanity is the “right thing to do.” Unfortunately, that's like violating the laws of physics and creating order out of a nuclear meltdown, and it's not going to work. You'll double the amount of disorder, given how explosive the situation is to begin with.

Unfortunately, no one can really protect themselves from this kind of trauma. Expressing your outrage will add to the chaos by giving comfort, pleasure, and excitement to your enemy. As the Bennetts' first law of insanity/energy dictates, attempting to force sanity on an insane situation just adds to insanity's power and momentum.

So if possible, starch your upper lip and prepare to communicate calmly and only when necessary. Instead of pretending you don't care, just show self-control and an ability to stay focused on business. Begin the process of documenting your transactions with whoever wants to take your words out of context or get you to say things you regret, so as to create a record of reality. Stay calm, act constructively, and demonstrate that you're the opposite of who you're alleged to be.

Be prepared to state your differences, if the opportunity arises, but not to argue, defend, or persuade. Those who are against you won't listen, and when the need to argue arises, your lawyer understands the ground rules better than you do. Yes, keeping it all inside is hard, but it will be harder if you don't.

If your relationship with your kids is at stake, don't panic. Nothing could be more important, but you've got lots of time to put things back together and you'll do better later on, when the big loyalty battle gets old and the usual divorce issues get settled. If nothing is on your side in the short run, your opportunities may get stronger as time goes by.

Your goal isn't to prove your enemy wrong, but to avoid centering your life on your enemy and his allegations, no matter how aggravated you get or how much time and money you're required to spend on a struggle. Fight to keep your focus on your usual values and to move past whoever is trying hard to hold on to you; it's easy for them to get a grip on you in the beginning and much harder later on.

Remember, the nastiness of a slanderous attack proves how right you were to mistrust the character of someone you may have once been close to and how healthy it is for you to distance yourself. You used to think there was something screwy about him, and now you know he's even worse than you thought. If a persistently strong attachment continues to make the relationship painful, accept the pain and take comfort in knowing that distancing is the right thing to do.