The strength of compassion needed in difficult relationships

I went to see the motion picture of Aretha (Re) Franklin’s life today, Respect.  One thing is for sure.  There were a number of difficult relationships in Re’s life.  With her father, with her first partner, Ted White, but not so much with second partner, Ken Cunningham.

Ken Cunningham plays a compassionate man who enters Re’s life when she’s had enough pussyfooting around controlling, demanding men (her father and Ted White).  Sadly, as the movie depicts it, he sees her spiral into her own alcohol-fuelled descent.

Rather than face a husband who’s demanding, Re herself becomes the demanding, controlling ‘queen’.

Only via an encounter with her deceased mother does she come to her senses.

At every point, Ken Cunningham, the husband, is compassionate and full of understanding and mercy.

There’s only one thing for a difficult relationship.

Meeting control on the terms of control doesn’t work—it produces fireworks.  Meeting control with submission also is not the answer.  Re submitted routinely to Daddy and to Ted, yet she gets nowhere; it only leads to more violence, where she is left on the receiving end, again and again.

But with Ken Cunningham it’s different.

He absorbs Re’s fury without submitting to it, and he’s there ready for her when she’s picking up all those alcohol bottles when she begins to dry out.  He’s got the strength in the difficult relationship not to be the doormat, and also to hold out hope for change.

The person who has the strength of compassion is the one to be in a relationship with.

Not the one who is a seething time bomb who only needs the wrong set of circumstances to blow up and abuse.

The weakness in the one who must have their demands, who must coerce and control, is a weakness that’s borne by everyone else, or in the context of a partnership, to the one who must wilt to their pressure.

But the one who is mature to the depths of compassion has reserves of strength to bear a struggle.  Not that a compassionate person’s to be taken for granted—but they will be.

The strength of compassion is necessary if difficult relationships are to be endured and ameliorated.  Any of us who consider ourselves peacemakers will need a ton of compassion for both others and ourselves if we’re to sustain a vision of holding and containing weaker (controlling, demanding) persons long-term.

But sometimes it doesn’t matter how much strength of compassion you have.  There are some people, relationships and dynamics that will not work no matter what.

There comes a time in these kinds of relationships where you say enough’s enough.

It’s about recognising where you’ve been strongly compassionate and equally recognising that that strength has gotten you nowhere because of their obstinance.

Those who have the strength of compassion have the capacity to see that they’ve done their best, and doing your best is always good enough.  It’s all that can be done.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash