When Someone Shows You Their Capacity, Believe Them

I have spent a lot of my life being understanding.

I can usually see why someone behaves the way they do. I understand that people have histories, fears, difficult seasons and things they haven’t worked through yet. None of us comes into a relationship completely figured out.

And because I understand that, I have made a lot of allowances for people.

What I’m realizing now is that there have been times when I’ve made allowances for someone else’s lack of capacity while I worked on creating more capacity in myself.

That’s an important distinction for me.

When I recognize that something in me needs work, I work on it. I ask questions. I look at my own behavior. I pay attention to where I’m reacting from something old. I try to communicate better and understand what belongs to me.

I don’t always get it right.

But I’m willing to look.

And I’ve reached a place in my life where I need the people closest to me to be willing to look, too.

I’m not just asking for consistency. I’m asking for depth, compassion, caring, consideration and thoughtfulness.

I’m asking to be met.

I Used to Make It About Me

When someone didn’t show up for me in the past, I would get upset and almost immediately start looking at myself.

What could I do differently?

Should I approach them differently?

Am I expecting too much?

Maybe they’re overwhelmed.

Maybe I should give them more time.

Maybe I need to explain what I need differently.

I could spend an enormous amount of energy trying to figure out how to make a relationship work when the other person was already giving me information about what they were capable of bringing to it.

I just didn’t always want to accept the information.

I wanted to understand it.

And there is a difference.

Understanding someone doesn’t mean I have to continually adjust myself to accommodate them.

When Compassion Starts Looking Like Codependency

This is probably the harder part for me to admit.

I am a compassionate person. But the clearer I’ve become about codependency, the more I’ve had to acknowledge that sometimes the two can look surprisingly similar.

Being understanding can turn into making excuses.

Patience can turn into waiting far longer than we should.

Helping can turn into taking responsibility for something that was never ours to fix.

And loving someone can become so focused on understanding their needs and limitations that we stop asking what the relationship is doing to us.

It isn’t compassionate to continually make allowances for someone else’s behavior when those allowances are hurting me.

My compassion has to include me, too.

Believe the Pattern

This doesn’t mean I expect relationships to be perfectly equal.

There are seasons when one person has more to give. I’ve lived through seasons when people gave far more to me than I could possibly give back. They loved me when I was barely able to participate in my own life.

I will always believe in that kind of grace.

But a difficult season and a pattern are not the same thing.

If someone continually says they’ll show up and doesn’t, that’s information.

If someone repeatedly promises something and doesn’t follow through, that’s information.

If I’m always the one checking in, repairing, initiating, understanding or adjusting, that’s information too.

I don’t have to turn that information into a judgment about who they are.

Someone can be a good person and still not have the capacity for the relationship I want with them.

Someone can care about me and still be inconsistent.

Someone can have perfectly understandable reasons for being where they are.

And I can understand all of that without continuing to put myself in the same position over and over again.

That’s what believing someone means to me now.

It doesn’t mean believing they’ll never change.

It means believing what they’re showing me about what they have to offer right now.

My Relationships Have to Include Me

For a long time, I thought being loving meant giving people a lot of room.

I still believe in giving people room.

But I don’t believe I have to disappear inside that room.

I know what I bring to the people I love. I care deeply. I show up. I pay attention. And when I realize there is something in me getting in the way of a relationship, I’m willing to work on it.

I don’t want to become less loving or less generous in order to protect myself.

I just don’t want to be a pushover anymore.

I want the relationships closest to me to have depth, thoughtfulness, compassion and consideration moving in both directions.

And if someone doesn’t have the capacity for that, I don’t need to make them wrong.

I can care about them.

I can understand them.

I can love them.

But I don’t have to keep trying to create their capacity for them.

That’s their work.

Mine is to keep creating my own.

And part of that work is learning to believe people when they show me where they are, instead of exhausting myself trying to meet them somewhere they haven’t chosen to go.

Continue the Work

If this brought up something in one of your own relationships, maybe you don’t need to figure it all out today.

Start by paying attention.

What are you experiencing?

What are you continually explaining away?

Where are you giving grace, and where might you be abandoning what you need in order to maintain a relationship?

And most importantly, what is yours to work on?

If you’re ready to explore some of those questions more deeply, I’ve created several resources to help.

Explore the Living Library for self-guided programs and tools focused on self-trust, confidence, journaling, emotional clarity and creating meaningful change in your life.

You can also access my free Dear Drew Extended Resources for additional exercises and practices around agency, healing, emotional work and creating a life bigger than what happened to you.

Because understanding the pattern is important.

But eventually, we have to decide what we’re going to do with what we now know.