Remember back to kindergarten? Waaaaayy back to kindergarten? When everybody would line up for everything? You would line up to go to the bathroom, line up for snack time, line up for activities and rewards, line up for going to recess.
And remember what would happen if someone tried to budge ahead in line? There would be a verbal outcry! Kids would be yelling “no budging in line.” They would be yelling to the teacher to stop this social atrocity and put that person in their place. There was an expectation of treating others as yourself; that kind of selfishness was not accepted.
In fact, that kind of wild disregard for others was nipped in the bud immediately. (Later on friends would figure out they could do “backsies” and save places in line. But hey, that was first grade. Back to kindergarten).
When kids treated others disrespectfully or disregarded the social rules, there was no discussion of their home life, their emotional temperature or whether they were entitled. Justice was loud and fast. The rules said that everyone was treated equally and everyone must follow the rules. Ahhhh, nirvana.
In a way though, we still live that way. Most of us have an inner sense of justice and fairness. We treat others generally fairly and we expect the same in return.
In relationships, we expect a certain amount of give and take with an overall sense of equilibrium, a sense of fair play. Just like the kindergarten line, we treat others with kindness and expect the same in return.
But what happens when you find after a whirlwind start to a relationship, that your loved one does not follow the kindergarten rules? They don’t see any value to the equal rules for everyone, treat others as you want to be treated, mantra.
You probably don’t even recognize the pattern of “line budging.” Your loved one always has an excuse, a reason, a story or just a stonewalled demand for better treatment, even entitlement.
You probably, being a kind kindergartner, will give them the benefit of the doubt. Over and over. And over and over and over.
Then at some point you may question this entitlement behavior. It won’t usually go well. Generally, there is: denial (without change), excuses (without change), blaming (without change), changing the subject (without change in behavior). And the ultimate “go-to behavior” – rage.
You end up blind-sided and wondering how all of that came out of response to a simple question. You probably chalk it up to one of many excuses you will learn to keep ready.
You may attribute it to stress, distress, past trauma, immaturity (that never changes), selfishness (that is a bigger issue than you realize) or any other reason that does not require them to own their behavior. You both know that is not going to happen, even though it is never spoken out loud.
Why does this happen, and continue, for months, years, or even decades? One reason is because we innately expect others, particularly those we care about, to care about us and act as we would.
So if we are the type of person who does not consider themselves to be more important than others, that our comfort is not much more important than someone else’s discomfort, than we expect others to operate from that same book of rules.
The problem is, sometimes their rule book is totally different from ours. Their book focuses on “It’s all about me” and “I want what I want when I want it” along with “if those two rules are broken, there will be hell to pay for someone.”
Sometimes it is a bad idea for us to believe that everyone is as kind as us. Sometimes the other person is just really good at getting their way.
In kindergarten we would have called them on that and found someone else to play with. Someone who was willing to treat us as they wanted to be treated. Because selfish is a big deal.
And when someone’s barrel of selfish gets big enough – we call it Narcissism. Maybe we need a kindergarten refresher course on how we should be treated in the line-up of life.
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