29/40 - Breaking "Bad"

Two events happened around the same time in my mid-twenties that upon reflection were two of the most important moments for similar reasons, even if with different constituencies in my life, one set personal and one set professional.

Both events put me on the outside looking back in from two groups that had assumed I was a card-carrying member of their way of life. When I made decisions that revealed a different point of view or a different path than what they'd expected of me, I was quickly shown the door.

After working at Northwestern Mutual Financial Network for 5 years, 3 years as a college intern, and 2 years as a full-time representative, I decided it was time for me to move on.  

After dating for five years, two in college and three long-distance between Texas and Arizona, she moved back to Dallas and we decided to move in together.

When I gave my notice to the Managing Parter of the Dallas office, he looked at me like I'd stuttered. I had my resignation letter in hand and gave it to him to let him know I was serious. He looked like I'd just kicked his dog and quickly dismissed me from his palatial office, we never spoke again.

When I told my family and friends that my girlfriend and I were moving in together, I was met with a lot of silence. I had one family member ask for clarification,

"Is this a financial thing, to like save money on rent? Or is this a physical romantic thing?"

When I confirmed that we were indeed having sex and that this was the next step in our relationship, their response was,

"Well, that's chicken shit."

I still don't know what that was supposed to mean.

When I packed my boxes up at the office, I had over 200 clients to transfer to other representatives. I thought it would be a welcome opportunity for others to divvy up my client list and work with some of the hard-fought clients I'd worked for over the years I was there.  I checked back in with some of those clients after a couple of years and found out they were never even contacted by the person I'd given a bulk of my client book to.  

When word of me and my girlfriend spread, I got wild messages from friends who I hadn't heard from in years. Messages saying how far I'd fallen. Messages saying that everything "good" I'd done in the past was now tainted by this "glaring error in judgment" that was a "slap in the face of God and family."

Speaking of family, I was scheduled to be in a family member's wedding later that year and heard a while later that because of this decision, I was almost asked to not be in their wedding.

The friendships I'd made at the office evaporated instantly.

The friendships I'd had from church, disappeared even faster.

This is when I learned about the Four Stages of Community from Scott Peck.

1. Pseudocommunity: We are all associated with something, like a family, office, school, or club. Everyone we meet there we assume shares a lot of our similar beliefs because they share the same organizing belief that brought us all together. If we don't dig too deep, we can keep it surface level and all enjoy being together.
2. Chaos: We start to get to know each other beyond the class or organization or structure that originally brought us into each other's lives. We realize we couldn't be further from simpatico and we actually disagree about some pretty big things. We are not at all what we thought we were. We are not very happy about this revelation.
3. Emptiness: We question whether it is worth even showing up for this group anymore. They're not at all what we thought they were. We wish we could have just stayed shallow and not discovered what was waiting for us in the depths. It would have been better to just keep the good times rolling.
4. True Community: Very rarely does this actually happen. This is the result that happens when a group survives that chaos of disillusionment and the despair of the emptiness that comes from the truth about our differences, we decide that the group or organization or the person is worth working through or looking past our differences to stay a part of each other's lives.

Moving in with my girlfriend was the first outward signal that anyone in my family or church friend group saw that revealed that we might not agree on as much as they thought we did. It was less of a shock for me since I'd know that, but it was a shock for me when I saw just how clueless they were to how I'd been living my life for years at that point.

I lost touch with all of my friends from work that year.

I lost touch with most of my friends from church that year.

I lost touch with some of my family members for good that year but most of them eventually found their way to True Community with me, but the Chaos and Emptiness periods were longer for some than others.  

In the homogenous community that I grew up in, leaving the fold publicly was never tolerated. It might signal to others that there is a way to do life other than the straight and narrow way that we were all taught and expected to stay in line with. If Facebook is to be believed, there are three groups that exist a couple of decades later: people who are still 100% all-in on keeping the Pseudocommunity, people who are still rocking Chaos and targeting it at their former Pseudocommunities, and a very small contingent of people who have done the work and found life exists in the shades of gray on the other side of Emptiness living in True Community.

I am so grateful to have found my True Community and to know that it contains so many of my closest family and friends.