Recently, in her enthusiasm to furnish her new home, my friend bought end tables that simply didn’t fit between the sofa and the wall. Apparently, when measuring, she neglected to account for the baseboard, which added a 1/4 inch inconvenience that dashed her interior design dreams. It doesn’t mean she didn’t try every way she could think of to make those end tables fit. They never would. The wall simply had no more space to give.
Sometimes, relationships are like end tables. Family, co-workers, friends, partners; they hit walls. And all your beautiful intentions and careful measurements are reduced to pushing, and pleading, and praying for just a little bit more space so your end tables fit. But they don’t. Because the wall, just like people, can’t give you what it doesn’t have.
A person at war with herself cannot give you peace.
A person who is lost cannot give you direction.
A person in denial cannot give you honesty.
A person who is confused cannot give you clarity.
A person who is stuck cannot give you progress.
A messy mind cannot give you a clear conscience.
But pay attention. It’s only the real wall that’s an immovable object. Most of the time, the walls constraining your relationships are metaphoric walls dreamed up by your limiting imagination.
Prior to training for my first competitive race, I convinced myself I would never crest a 1:55:00 finish because running any faster was something my body simply couldn’t do. I built a wall—metaphoric and mental—and named it 1 hour and 55 minutes. I was comfortable there and the living was easy. I told myself I wanted to run faster but I couldn’t. The truth? Well, deep down I knew the truth. I wanted to run faster, I just didn’t want to do the work.
It was a betrayal of my own potential. Until one day, I was ready. I downloaded a training plan, started tracking my heart rate, running intervals, learning about VO2, and staring at my Garmin in amazement as my pace got faster, and faster, and faster. Literally, one step at a time, until I crossed a finish line at 1:41:11, running right through the 1:55:00 wall I had hidden behind for so long. And guess what? It didn’t even hurt.
And that’s how it is in relationships. You can try, with all your might, to force that end table to fit. You might even damage yourself in the process, bang up the table, and dent the wall too. Maybe that relationship has nothing more to give and that table was never going to fit. Have the courage to know when you’ve hit an immovable object and lay down your arms. Post it on Facebook marketplace and take the loss.
But maybe (and I am willing to bet on this one) the walls your relationship keeps hitting are as metaphoric as they are mental. They are movable. So stop pushing, stop pleading, stop praying for them to give you more. Have the courage to stop hiding behind them, lay down your fears, and do the work. I can almost guarantee, one step at a time, you’ll find yourself staring in amazement as the tables turn towards you in the end.
And guess what? It might not even hurt.