On Evaluations
Wht counts?
Most clients in therapy want a time machine.
Couples thereapy is the worst. When not turning their counselor into a judge, clients typically have some sort of unawares fantasy about time travel. They bring up old hurts and sore points that they’ve focused on for years, desperate to be liberated from past pain.
When we’ve hurt each other, somethings can be repaired. Others merely need to be accepted as something that happened and left behind.
This proves to be easier said than done.
In schools, the progressive way to evaluate a student involves judging their most recent and most consistent work.
Their best and worst grades get thrown away.
In a year long course, that crappy test, taken under durress in September, is assigned a lower percentage of the overall grade than a student’s most recent work.
Unfortunately we humans offer this grace to each other much too infrequently in our individual relationships.
As a therapist, I regularly hear about one matter or another causing relationship distress from up to a decade ago. One party wants to move on.
The other digs in their heels.
Relationships were people consistently unearth past wrongs and inflict them on present situations fail.
Some things between people, some times we’ve hurt each other so much we can’t move on and our reltionships are beyond repair.
But if you want any chance of a relationship surviving, both the hurt party and the person who have done the harm may want to pretend they are progressive educators and focus on the most consistent and most recent behaviours of each other.
Then, are they truly bad, or is the bad part an echo of how things were?
How are things trending?
What direction are they going?
No one can go back and repair a wrong.
No price in shame or subserviene can be enough to undo the past. Gratitude and a clear picture of what is happening right now are remedies for resentment and revenge.
When my students have a disagreement ie they want me to decide who is right and who is wrong, I tell them to have a discussion. I also tell them that rule 1 in business and life is preserve the relationship, if possible. Do you need to be right? Do you need them to tap out? Do you need to be better? It's lonely being better. No one wants to be in a relationship with someone who thinks they are less. If someone treats you like less, let them go. That's why you treat people like more. People will be attracted to you like honey.
Do you want a mutually respectful relationship? Let them save face. Give them credit for what did go well. Show appreciation for their 60% okay work rather than the 40% that created trouble and help them get better. Help them want to get better by appreciating what was good. What wasn't okay. Talk about it like you would with a toddler. Nice job! What would happen if we try it this way? Do you like this better? No one tells a toddler to fuck off. So, don't do that if you want a relationship. Talk to people like they are toddlers, ie new people in training. Be kind. Preserve the relationship.
Always, preserve the relationship. If the relationship is nurtured and yet, doesn't nurture you? You decide how long you want to work on it. I've ended several recently. I realized they weren't relationships. They were me taking care of people who liked to be taken care of. My life is not less full. It is less stressful. The relationship I am working on the most these days? The one with myself. That's one that is definitely worth preserving