What’ll It Be? Your Rights or Your Relationships?

As you comb the social media landscape, you’ll hear voices shouting from all kinds of different arenas — personal growth, therapy, leadership, vulnerability, emotional healing, women’s rights — you name it. Having all of these vast perspectives aggregated into one feed can be overwhelming and, in a lot of cases, the information can feel conflicting and confusing.

However, there seems to be a lot of pointed popularity around “self” right now — self-improvement, boundary setting, pursuing goals, self-care, self-forgiveness, and so on.

All of these can be noble sensibilities to give your awareness to and to mature over time, but these can also become selfish and shallow pretty fast if we’re not paying attention.

I came across a post the other day that epitomizes how easily this social conversation can become so glaringly one-dimensional. This message isn’t entirely disagreeable but there is certainly a portion of it that is unsettling.

Also, not pictured is some hashtag at the end about not needing to apologize. In all honesty, there’s not a lot to disagree with here if we’re just talking about casual acquaintances, but we’re not. Some of life’s most significant relationships are meant to be inferred from this, and that’s where this statement starts to become irresponsible to me. All of us have relationships we’ve committed to for life. This could be spouses, siblings, in-laws, kids, friends, parents, leaders. Whoever we’ve determined these to be in our lives, we have a responsibility to steward these well.

I’m picking this one post to highlight, but there are so many of these floating around trying to paint the pursuit of self, at any expense to others, as courageous and heroic, and it’s become a gross overcorrection of responsible self-improvement.

Stringing together some “you’re allowed” declarations sounds like an empowering anthem until you realize how negligent the concept of “allowance” is. Allowance is the lowest form of responsibility. It lacks any sort of meaningful regard for the relationships it affects. This is akin to the contrast between legal and ethical. “You’re allowed” may be a technically accurate assessment of your responsibilities but it lacks all moral ownership. The people we’ve committed to for life deserve a higher standard than allowance. They deserve to be honored and deeply integrated into our purposes, and frankly, they’ve earned the right to be inconveniences — or as I like to call them “surprise opportunities for growth”.

I want to speak directly to women for a moment, because this particular social conversation is aimed at us and it’s growing louder all the time. So, let me start by speaking truth to the distortion many of these messages carry: showing regard for the relationships our decisions affect isn’t apologetic; it’s decency.

Yes, technically, we are ALLOWED to navigate life by crushing all the egg shells, stepping on all the toes, and unapologetically pursuing our ambitions. And in doing so, we may feel a certain sense of “freedom”, but all the while, we’re compromising the trust and stability of the relationships around us. What’s being touted as bold and brave is actually just careless and self-serving. The truth is, we are more than capable of pursuing what’s right for our lives, while also continuing to serve others.

The way to do this is to navigate life like our personal pursuits AND our dearest relationships are BOTH top priority, and accept that they’re not always going to agree with each other. And when we do find them in opposition, this doesn’t mean the conflict is solved by compromising one to protect the other. The conflict is solved by managing the tension between two right, but momentarily opposing sensibilities and doing our part to bring them into alignment with one another. This is about getting out of the binary, EITHER-OR attitude and embracing a BOTH-AND mindset.

Here’s a really basic example. Let’s say you wanted to leave the kids with your spouse to get a good workout in, but your spouse is unusually fatigued today. What do you do? Do you let your spouse rest or do you pursue what’s right for you?

The answer is really simple — it’s BOTH.

A healthy, BOTH-AND mindset wouldn’t just admit defeat. They would expand their options to see how else their desires can play out while still respecting the needs of the other person. You could postpone until after you’ve fed the kids and put them down for a nap to lessen the maintenance for your spouse. You could alter your planned workout and turn it into something you can do from home. You could forego the workout today and wake up earlier than usual tomorrow to go while everyone is still asleep. Emotionally healthy people expand their options.

Regardless of what culture tries to tell you, this is not martyrdom, this is flexibility.

There are many voices that would like to tell women in a situation like this to stop living for others and just do what’s right for her. And I’m telling you, you are not a slave to binary decision-making.

Anyone can move through life confidently doing what they believe is right, completely unmoved by how it affects others. That’s easy. What’s actually challenging is staying devoted to our core mission, while at the same time, protecting the relationships we’ve committed to at all costs. Our emotional capacities were made to stretch. There is room enough inside of us to live a generous life toward others, while also being uncompromising in our purpose.

Ladies, don’t buy into the sensationalized, narrow-minded belief that a woman who is gentle and considerate can’t possibly be bold and ambitious. That’s garbage. These are not mutually exclusive. You can be whatever your values drive you to be, including what the binary zealots may label contradictory.

Keep purpose in your left hand and people in your right, and accept that there will be a constant pushing and pulling. It’s not a decision; it’s a dance. We have a responsibility to temper the focus we apply to either at any given moment. This mindset is what is allows you to boldly pursue what’s right for you, while also keeping honor in every relationship.