Introduction

Every time my family would drive down I-75 from our home in Toledo we would pass a perfectly boxed building encompassed in glass that stuck out of the countryside like a boomer at an EDM concert. Eventually, we came to anticipate the moment and would beat my father to his inevitable reflection: “Yes, dad. We know you tiled that building.” I’m guessing everyone has a grown-up in their life who constantly wants you to look at something they made from the nostalgic past. My father was a talented floor layer and we were often subjected to his many feats.

However, I also came to see a phenomenon from his professional ramblings. We may have been in the most mundane of places, but he would take time to inspect the tile job. My amateur eyes would just see tile. My father, however, would begin pointing out flaws: An imperfect grout gap, a degree of tilt in alignment, or even a tile with a millimeter of bulge from an uneven base.

I didn’t know it then, but I was being exposed to the reality that proximity reveals inequities.

Flaws and imperfection are always there — but you must have the experience to be able to see them. Distance and unfamiliarity often keep us from seeing the inequities, but the grass is never greener on the other side. Why do we often bail in relationships once a certain amount of intimacy is procured? Why do we spurn the power of real community and balk at the stereotype of small-town gossip? Because we are being exposed to flaws — flaws that have been there the whole time.

Everything appears better the less we see. The closer and more dependent we are, the more junk gets revealed.

Hence, we are a culture spewing independence and transience.

But the phenomenon of proximity also explains why we are mean to the people we are closest to.

Why Are We Mean to the People We Love?

We should be nicer to the people we are in most proximity to, but we usually aren’t. The occurrence is common — a close friendship or a couple who's been together for years complains about their comrade or is simply frustrated with lackluster outcomes. Eventually, you hear a slew of critiques — maybe even insults — and the relationship resembles childlike siblings yearning for greener grass and blatant distance from the one whom their heart used to desire.

Why do we do this? Four reasons may help us uncover the causes behind the phenomenon:

1 — Proximity Reveals Everything

Just like my father looking at a monotonous tile-job, the more you know and see, the more you perceive the imperfections. Your partner didn’t just start certain habits. Your friend didn’t just all of a sudden start exhibiting a dispreferred behavior. They were there the entire time. You just became aware of them.

Time and experience are to blame. Proximity is a beautiful thing — a key ingredient for any real relationship — but with proximity comes reality.

As a result, the only people we tend to like are the ones we just met. Once we get to know them more, we will certainly find attributes to spurn disapproval.

The people we love are the people we know the best. We know their hopes and dreams; their gifts and beauty. We also, however, know their perspectives and their oddities; their flaws, their failures, their shortcomings, and their past baggage. The more we see, the more we see the inevitable imperfections Our proximity confronts us with the whole person including the parts we may not prefer.

The people we are closest to are the ones we can confirm are not perfect and we have a tendency to let them know that.

2 — We Expect Too Much From Our Partners

Romanticism is to blame for this one. Was the emotional connection provided by the sentiment of love a good addition to the primarily economic conception of relationships in ages past? I think so. However, romanticism also came with a myth of finding a soulmate; someone who was perfect for you.

We inherited the idea that our partners need to be everything to us.

Which increases the likelihood that actually flawed people will let us down.

We should be honest that anyone would let us down under the guise of this expectation. The real problem here might be our presumption. We’ve made the stakes unrealistically high. The person letting you down is being asked to beat impossible odds — odds you haven’t been able to beat yourself.

Often, we are trying to satisfying a futile desire that someone just might be better than every single human being to have existed. Then, we get up close to the tile and see that they, too, are imperfect. We want another person to be what we and every other person aren’t: Free of failure. And then we find out we were wrong.

When we are mean to those we love, is it just because we are taking out that futility on them? Have we simply concluded that we have thrown away our lives for what turned out to be a normal human being?

Instead of embracing their peculiarities in the context of our unique relationship, we become demeaning, holding unnecessary grudges, and we constantly remind them that they’ve failed to be what we hoped for — to be different than ourselves.

Our partners don’t have to be everything to us. They just have to be with us; which is more than anything else has the propensity to offer.

3 — We Feel Safe With the People We Love

I recently had a conversation with a person who had just returned from a weekend trip with one of their best friends. The trip went relatively well. However, when they returned, as they were being dropped off at their home, their friend threw their stuff out of the car, slammed into reverse, and sped off without saying a word.

They had been in the car for hours after having spent every waking moment together for the past several days. Had they done something wrong? Was the relationship ruined? No. They experienced the phenomenon of proximity. They also experienced another commonality in interpersonal relationships.

This is similar to when a child screams at their parents and says, “I hate you.” Do they actually hate their parent? Why would a child say this? Because, within commitment and intimacy, we feel like we can be honest about our complicated states of being. The world is ambiguous. Life is difficult. And we often carry with us a cocktail of emotional uncertainty. Yet, there are people with whom we can allow those internal states to surface because we feel safe with them.

The child may say they hate you simply because they feel safe enough to expel the worst, most complicated, difficult parts of their world to you.

Relationships of proximity afford us the ability to be totally vulnerable — to let us show who we really are, even the messy parts — knowing that we are still safe because of the proximity.

Most people, if they saw the reality of your flawed tile, would run away quite quickly. Outside of a safe, committed, trusted relationship, we have to offer an edited version of ourselves. We have to give the other the perception of us that they want. We have to hide the hideous realities of our souls. Otherwise, we will have nothing to offer.

Love offers the safety to show who we really are — sometimes even the hideous parts. In receiving such brashness, we have the opportunity to embrace that we aren’t that different and that this person trusts you enough to bring that into the light.

4 — Antagonism is a Means of Control

A final cause forces us to retreat from the assumption of a healthy connection. Sometimes, a spouse, partner, or friend is not in the relationship for the intimacy. Sometimes, the relationship is a means to objective, selfish gain.

In this pursuit, being mean is a way to force the other into defeated submission. As a form of introspection, we have to diligently confront that we aren’t disguising vulnerability for bullying.

The spiral of silence is a relational dynamic that occurs when someone has been so critiqued that they lose any authority to speak or contribute. If we can bring up the flaws of another enough, it will give us the power in the relationship because we convinced everyone of our partner or friend’s inferiority.

That being said, the intention could be healthy. You see shortcomings and you experience a failure to meet certain expectations and you try to compel — or force — the other to improve. We use judgment to try and change people. It is worth considering that any change here will be extrinsically motivated. The recipient of your judgment may modify their behavior to receive your approval or, quite blatantly, to be safe. As soon as the circumstances change where they no longer need those extrinsic settings, the behavioral modifications will go away because they are no longer necessary.

Be careful, then, that your judgment and antagonism is not just a form of control. If it is, you may want to rethink your perception of the relationship; for which you ought to revisit reasons 1, 2, & 3.