I’m Learning to Let People Be Upset With Me

I called Alona this morning and she didn’t answer. That wasn’t particularly unusual. She could have been on another call, exercising, doing any number of things. Normally, though, she’ll send me a quick text or send the call to voicemail in a way that lets me know she’s unavailable. About half an hour went by, and I hadn’t heard from her. At least, I didn’t think I had.

What I didn’t realize was that she had texted me about fifteen minutes after I called. I don’t keep text notifications on, and I hadn’t thought to check my messages again. So as I was driving with the girls, my mind started filling in the blank. “What if Mom’s exercising?” I said. Somehow within minutes of not hearing back from her we got to picturing her lying unconscious next to the elliptical machine. It sounds ridiculous now, but in the moment it was just plausible enough that I started wondering if we should check on her.

So I called again, and there was still no answer. Then I thought maybe she wasn’t answering me for some reason but would answer my daughter, Kylee. So Kylee called. This time, Alona picked up. And she was annoyed.

Oh. Right. Pilates.

Alona was in the middle of her Pilates class. Her Wednesday Pilates class. The class she has told me she takes on Wednesdays and Fridays. She had also already texted me to say she was in class and ask whether we could talk in an hour when she was finished. The text I hadn’t seen because I hadn’t checked my phone. So there we were, repeatedly calling her during a class she had already told me about, for something that wasn’t actually an emergency.

I could hear the irritation in her voice, including when she answered Kylee. And I understood it. I could imagine what the experience was like from her side. She’s trying to take an hour for herself and be present in her class. Her phone rings. She responds with a text saying she’ll call afterward. Then her phone rings again. Then her daughter calls. I’d be annoyed too, and likely much less gracious about it.

When I heard that tone in her voice, I felt that little internal wince. Not a huge wave of shame. More like an “ugh.” I wish I had remembered. I wish I had checked my messages. I wish we hadn’t interrupted her. But underneath that was something I’ve been paying more attention to lately: the almost instantaneous thought, I upset her.

When Someone Else’s Feeling Becomes About Me

“I upset her” sounds like a pretty harmless sentence. We say things like that all the time. I made her angry. I hurt his feelings. I disappointed them. She’s upset because of me. But I’ve started noticing what can happen inside me when I tell myself that story. Someone else’s emotional state can very quickly become evidence about me. She’s upset. I upset her. I did something wrong. Now I need to fix it.

There’s a kid part of me that knows this sequence really well. When we’re young, we don’t necessarily have the capacity to separate ourselves from the emotional states of the people around us. If Mom is upset, it can feel like I did something to Mom. If Dad is disappointed, I disappointed Dad. Their feelings become evidence of whether I am okay.

I think some version of that kid lives in a lot of us. We grow up, but we can still hear someone’s tone and feel our body contract. A partner gets irritated. A child becomes disappointed. A friend seems hurt. Before we’ve even had time to understand what happened, something inside us is already asking, What did I do?

And sometimes we did do something. I certainly did that morning. The question I’m sitting with is whether taking responsibility for what I did requires me to take responsibility for what someone else feels.

What If Her Irritation Is About Her?

This is the part I’m trying to practice. What if, instead of hearing Alona’s irritation and immediately thinking, I upset her, I became curious about what her irritation was telling me about her? Maybe she wanted ease. She wanted to stay in the flow of her class. Maybe she wanted consideration. She had told me this was something she did on Wednesdays and Fridays, and perhaps there was something painful or frustrating about realizing I hadn’t remembered. Maybe there was also a need to matter. Not in some dramatic way, just the ordinary kind of mattering that says, The things I tell you about my life stay with you because they’re important to me.

When I see her irritation that way, something changes. Her feelings stop being a report card on me. They become information about what matters to her.

That doesn’t mean my actions had nothing to do with the situation. Obviously they did. If I hadn’t called, she probably wouldn’t have been irritated about being interrupted. I don’t want “I’m not responsible for your feelings” to become a clever way of avoiding accountability. Our actions affect people. Sometimes they stimulate frustration in people. Sometimes they stimulate hurt in people. Sometimes they touch something tender in someone we love. I want to care about that impact. But I’m starting to think there is a difference between affecting someone and becoming responsible for their emotional experience.

Accountability Without Making Myself Wrong

There’s an interesting thing that happens when I believe I caused someone else’s feelings. My attention starts turning toward me. I screwed up. Why didn’t I remember? Come on, Matt. She told you about this. I should have known. Why do I always forget things. It can feel like accountability because I’m making myself feel bad about what happened.

But I’m not sure making myself feel bad is actually accountability. In fact, shame can pull me away from the other person. Now instead of being curious about Alona’s experience, I’m dealing with my own internal trial. Was I wrong? Am I inconsiderate? Should I feel guilty? How do I make this better so she isn’t upset with me anymore?

There’s another distinction in here that I’m trying to understand: having an impact on someone doesn’t necessarily mean I did something wrong. If I accidentally bump someone with my elbow and it hurts, something I did clearly stimulated pain. Their pain is real. I can care that they’re hurting, apologize, and maybe reach out to see if they’re okay. But I don’t have to turn the moment into a judgment about myself. I didn’t become wrong because I accidentally bumped into them.

I wonder how often we confuse impact with wrongdoing in our relationships. Someone feels hurt, disappointed, irritated, or frustrated after something we did, and we can so quickly assume their feeling is proof that we did something wrong. Sometimes we may look back and genuinely wish we had made a different choice, like I did with Alona. Other times, two people simply have different needs, and one person’s choice has an impact on the other. Either way, caring about the impact doesn’t require me to make myself wrong. Maybe I can care simply because the person matters to me.

What if accountability could be much simpler? I can see why that was frustrating. You were trying to take your class and I kept interrupting you. I wish I had remembered. There doesn’t have to be a villain in that story, not Alona for having a tone and not me for forgetting.

My Feelings Get to Be About Me Too

Once I let Alona’s irritation point toward what mattered to her, I realized I could do the same thing with my own feelings. I was disappointed that I had forgotten her class. I could turn that disappointment into another criticism, Matt, why can’t you remember this stuff? Or I could get curious about what my disappointment says about me.

I value consideration. I want to remember the things that matter to the people I care about. I want to know the rhythms of her life well enough that when Wednesday morning comes around, some part of me knows, Alona has Pilates. My disappointment doesn’t have to mean there’s something wrong with me. Maybe it means consideration matters to me too.

So after this happened, I put her classes on my calendar. That little action feels important to me because I didn’t need to shame myself into doing it. I didn’t have to decide I was a bad or inconsiderate husband. I just had to notice that I hadn’t shown up the way I wanted to and ask myself what I wanted to do differently next time.

Her irritation pointed toward what mattered to her, and my disappointment pointed toward what mattered to me. Both could exist without either one becoming an indictment of the other person.

Letting Someone Be Upset With Me

I think this is the part that feels hardest. Can I let someone I love be upset with me? Not dismiss their feelings. Not defend myself. Not explain why they shouldn’t be upset. And also not immediately collapse into I did something wrong. Can I stay close to someone while they’re irritated with me and remember that their feelings belong to a whole human being with needs, expectations, history, interpretations, and things that matter deeply to them? And can I still look honestly at my part?

I think I used to imagine these as opposing choices. Either I take responsibility for your feelings, which means I care, or I tell myself your feelings are yours, which means I don’t. But maybe there is a third possibility. I can care deeply about your feelings without carrying them as evidence of my goodness or badness. I can hear your disappointment without needing to make it disappear. I can acknowledge that my actions affected you without deciding that I am responsible for everything happening inside you. And I can repair something because the relationship matters to me, not because I need to escape the feeling of being wrong.

Maybe This Is What Separation Feels Like

I don’t think this distinction is something I can simply understand intellectually and suddenly be done with. The kid in me can still hear someone’s tone and think, I upset them. Maybe the practice is noticing that moment: the contraction, the wince, the urge to explain or apologize quickly or make the other person feel better so that I can feel okay again.

If I can create just a little space in that moment, maybe I can create enough of a sense of safety to ask different questions. What might matter to them right now? What are they wanting or needing that isn’t happening? And then I can turn toward myself and ask, What matters to me? What is my feeling telling me about what I care about?

Maybe that’s a form of emotional separation I’m still learning. Not separation as distance, but separation that allows two people to have their own experiences while remaining connected. You can be irritated, and I can be disappointed in something I did. I can care about your irritation, and I can wish I had behaved differently. Neither of us has to become wrong.

This morning, that looked like something incredibly ordinary. My wife got annoyed because I interrupted her Pilates class, and afterward I put her class schedule in my calendar. But maybe these ordinary moments are where we practice.

Because I don’t want to become someone who says, “Your feelings aren’t my responsibility,” and stops caring. I want to become someone who can stay present when another person is upset, care about what their feelings are telling me, take responsibility for my actions, and still not abandon myself.

Maybe I don’t have to make myself wrong in order to care that something I did affected someone I love. And maybe I don’t need shame to remind me to do better next Wednesday.

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