Are you afraid of being mugged in your own family?
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“…An epidemic can be reversed, can be tipped, by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment. This is, if you think about it, quite a radical idea.”
-Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Okay, so I’m a little late to the party, but I just starting reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and I can’t put it down. For anyone who’s not familiar with the book, it’s about how ideas, trends, and social behavior cross a certain threshold and spread like wildfire.
Like Pollyanna, I’m still stubbornly holding out hope that one day, folks will not only be expected to create a new “extended dual-family” after divorce and remarriage, they’ll essentially know how.
C’mon people, you can do it!
Okay…
So maybe we’re not there quite yet as a society.
Perhaps one reason has to do with the Broken Windows theory I just read about in Chapter Four. During the eighties, New York City was at the height of its crime rate. Suddenly, the crime rate dropped dramatically in the early 1990s.
Why was this?
The theory is that if you have an environment where it LOOKS like no one cares or is in charge (a bunch of random, broken windows), then human behavior follows accordingly. This was illustrated by the prevalence of graffiti and rampant fare-beating on New York subways. Trash was everywhere. The cars weren’t adequately heated or cooled. Lighting was poor. You were taking your life into your own hands just to use public transportation!
Proponents of the Broken Windows theory figured one of the first things they had to do was change the impression that crime was basically “okay.” So… contrary to standard wisdom, two visionaries from the Transit Authority and the Transit Police Dept. focused on eliminating the graffiti and catching fare jumpers, first thing. New graffiti tags were cleaned off trains at the end of their lines, before they turned around and went back out. Gate jumpers were collected, en masse, and made to wait by the ticket gates before being taken down to the station, as a public show that police meant business.
It worked!
There were other factors that contributed to the drop in crime, such as a booming economy, an aging criminal population, and a drop in the illegal trade of crack cocaine, but basically, these two simple steps had a huge impact.
Suddenly, the environment signaled a sweeping sea change—and people paid attention.
And then it occurred to me: many dual-families after divorce and remarriage are also living in a Broken Windows environment, although the broken windows are only figurative.
What are the signs and symbols of this breakdown?
The lack of manners!
The lack of civility.
The lack of common human courtesy.
I’m not sure what created the idea that it’s okay not to say hello between moms and stepmoms, between ex-husband and ex-wife, between stepchild and stepmom, but this is where we find ourselves.
Not to make eye contact.
Not to say please and thank you.
Not to acknowledge extra efforts, not to be a little more flexible, just from a sense of kindness and generosity.
To paraphrase the Talking Heads, how did we get here?
Maybe the divorce created an emotionally negative precedent that the two families never recuperated from? Maybe when the first marriage broke down, that psychic “wrenching away” from each other pushed both exes so far apart that they stayed there, due to overheated and overwhelming, unprocessed emotions?
Whatever the cause, not being treated with kindness or good manners is hugely offensive to most of us. We are social creatures attuned to extremely subtle social cues and are mostly in agreement about the standards with which we are supposed to treat each other.
A store clerk is expected to grunt their way through a “Hello, how are you,” even if they are in the worst mood of their lives. When we stand in line and are not greeted, when the grocery store cashier is more interested in an animated conversation with the bagger, or clearly wishes they could walk off their job that day, we can feel the slight, because that’s what we’ve evolved to do: to pay attention to the unspoken signals that broadcast intent.
Our caveman brains want to know if someone is, first, friend or foe. And if they’re not an enemy, we still seek further information about status, power, potential camaraderie or mutual benefit, etc.
So… I ask you…..
What’s the state of your dual-family environment? Are you living in a state of broken windows?
Do you feel like there’s a potential mugger around every corner in the form of a vengeful “other woman?”
Are you consistently dealing with rude and ungrateful strangers in the form of cold and angry stepchildren — or an angry ex-husband?
Is your husband helping perpetuate your feeling of fear and anxiety by not standing up for you when you try to create healthier boundaries with the ex-wife or with your stepchildren?
If you’re one of the exes, are you complicit in creating at atmosphere of rudeness, resistance, and competition?
And you know I have to ask it….
What’s YOUR contribution here?
Can you practice better manners, whether anyone reciprocates or not? Can you be vigilant about saying please and thank you? About saying hello and making eye contact? About maybe even cracking a friendly smile in the face of grumpitude?
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
-R.D. Laing
As we’ve seen from what happened to New York, little changes can add up to big changes. And big changes can come from sometimes just one person, initially. Positive changes can be contagious.
Refuse to do your part in trashing the subway anymore — and see what happens.
Your thoughts?
© 2010 Jennifer Newcomb Marine All Rights Reserved
Our book No One’s the Bitch: A Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship is a hands-on manual designed to help you navigate some really strange, disorienting territory. Get your bearings, learn tips and tricks for diffusing conflict and creating cooperation, and create inner peace no matter what. Coming this April! A beta version of a brand new, in-depth, stepmom/mom transformation course… and details on private consultations.
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How do you reach out to the stepmother or ex-wife in your life?
Top 10 Reasons for a Mother/Stepmother Relatioship Revolution
Caught me. But even three steps forward, two steps back is forward progress. My stepkids’ mom and I are in two steps back mode right now. And sometimes, when you know that hurt people hurt people, it’s best to keep a wide bearth. I’ve been steering wide – and what I’m learning is how to deal with someone that I don’t have 25 years or 45 years (like her mother) of learned behavior with her. I am learning how to stay in-integrity without allowing her out of integritiness to eat me up.
Two thumbs up on The Tipping Point – excellent book! So is BLINK.