Assume People Will Break Your Heart

So you can get on to loving them anyway

a billboard by Jennie Savage in Greensboro, photo in moving car by me in 2022

A non-exhaustive list of how I have had my heart broken by people I worked with as a fellow volunteer, co-organizer, friend, or casual collaborator:

• We aligned in one meeting and then they swerved, like really swerved, the next

• They stopped showing up

• Ego became more important than shared purpose

• Precedent or “what we’ve always done” became more important than ideation

• Reinventing the wheel every time became more important than building on what came before

• They talked behind my back

• And then I’d hear what was said behind my back from someone else

• They moved away

• Impatience and urgency won out over slower, but maybe healthier, collaboration

• They didn’t resolve conflict or tension with another collaborator, thickening stress amongst the group so much it felt like it was its own invisible conversation

• Gatekeeping so newcomers couldn’t easily get involved, cool kids club vibe, etc

• I became their preferred working buddy which I loved until I noticed they treated everyone else poorly or, at the very least, without the same grace

• They stopped believing in the possible

• Tasks would get taken on and never done

• They just brought awful energy

• Things I said in private were aired in public

• They said hurtful things about our co-organizers that went way beyond venting

• We stopped hanging out as friends outside of the work

• We couldn’t stop talking about the work while hanging out as friends

The complicated part is that there isn’t a thing on this list I haven’t done too. The complicated part is that this doesn’t even begin to include serious acts of harm and it can still be enough to dissolve our collaborations. The complicated part is resolving to work with other people on things you care about, like having the practice of this and not just doing everything alone burning as a core value in your very being, while knowing all of this to be true.

For every item on the list above, there’s a framework out there that offers a way through. One problem is that most of them are geared towards professional contexts (“Help! I Work with Lazy Coworkers and My Boss Doesn't Notice”), adding an extra translative step to apply this advice to a scenario where maybe nobody is paid, there are no bosses, there is no central meeting place, and/or nobody can ever find a working pen.

Plus, as everyone who has ever worked with anyone knows, heartbreak is a hydra. On a long enough timeline, we are all bound to repeatedly mess up. You will. I will. Just when one thing is resolved, if we even have the faith to make it that far, another thing pops up.

When I didn’t understand this, I found myself encountering an issue with someone, feeling fresh and hot disappointment, finding a new tactic or framework to smack it down with, and think: well, that sucked, but at least nothing like it will ever happen again. And maybe for a few months or years it wouldn’t! But I’d change, they’d change, the complexity of our shared project would change, life stress would ratchet up or down, it was a gross cold day outside – you pick. They’d break my heart anew. It was beginning to exhaust me, all of the jostling around on the exact same rollercoaster every time.

This wasn’t a solution. It was whack-a-mole. I craved a more capacious approach, less case-by-case, something more universal maybe?

My understanding of this in myself is still in flux, but for now I think I can best explain the problem by its pattern. It would go like this:

• A new project would begin – a gathering, a strategy, a new group, getting ready for a season or campaign or moment.

• The collaborative energy in that first planning moment would be totally electric, druglike. Heart racing! The beauty of other people, my god!

• The work began

• And maybe it wasn’t in the second meeting, or the third, but someone would do something that would just break my heart

• The crash from that earlier feeling would make me want to drop it all

So lately I go right to the source: my impossible expectations. I try to assume that all of the above heartbreak will happen at least once, if not multiple times, throughout the course of working with other people.

The trick might be holding it there. This is harder than it sounds. I am saying assume people will break your heart and get to the work anyway and not expect failure and harden your heart in bitter anticipation of the innate doom in all collaborations.

Something subtle has shifted in me since I’ve made this change. I notice that my heart still flutters with excitement at the beginning of a project, but is maybe a little tempered now. I feel the same soaring belief in others that now leaves room for their full humanity. I don’t feel the drop of disappointment as harshly, but more this inner knowing of “this was bound to happen”. Mitigating my own wild hope has stretched my endurance and the duration of my working relationships with other people.

And if I’m lucky, they give me the same grace.

or simply click that ₊˚.⋆⁺₊💜₊˚.⋆⁺₊ at the top if you indeed liked it, we always appreciate that here at group hug hq!! love to you all

🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀

ALTERNATIVES TO SOCIAL MEDIA CORNER

If you dug the last GROUP HUG about creating community resources off social media, have I got some treats for you!

First treat: honored to be a guest on the Off the Grid podcast hosted by thoughtful legend Amelia Hruby.

More important than my episode is Amelia’s compassionate treatment of our tethering to social media, and her suggestions for a way out. Like this list of 100 ways to share your work off social media (“two words — bumper stickers”) and truly any episode from the Off the Grid archives, like this existential exploration into the experience of “feeling seen” on social media and what to do with the absence of that specific experience when we log off.

You can listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts these days.

Also wanted to share some of the excellent resources folks mentioned in the comments of More Than A List of Links:

• Talyssa’s digital garden

• …and a brief ethos + history on what digital gardens are

• A zine by jesikah maria ross created + uploaded online to document “a group, a time, and a process” from a Care Collaboratory experience

• A directory from Liam Rosen about ways to connect with others in New York “created out of a belief that the extant advice about ‘things to do in NYC to make friends’ is misguided”

YES YES YES!

p.s. If you’re new here, might i show you the way to GROUP HUG HQ?