Wow… I have been getting life lessons thrown at me like a punch in the face of late. Whilst I am always open to learning more about myself, it constantly astounds me how easy it is to fall back into old patterns… let me explain…

Alex and I have been having quite a few disagreements lately.  Like, a lot…  I realised that I am triggered by her obvious inability to take any sort of constructive criticism or feedback.  Now, just so you know, I do not provide this feedback very often.  In fact, because I know she does not respond well, I tend to keep it to myself.  Which can be hard as I only want what is best for her. Let’s give you an example: Alex is currently learning how to drive.  She is doing really well but as a control freak, sitting in the passenger seat can be really difficult for me (thank you for your empathy). The other day she reversed out of a driveway, a little too fast for my liking as there is a fence behind.  So I asked her to slow down. Well. That was the wrong thing to say apparently.  She explained to me that by me saying that, it makes her feel that I think that she doesn’t know how to drive. . .

There was a part of my brain, I’ll be honest, that wanted to scream ‘YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FUCKING DRIVE!!!  YOU HAVE DONE 45 FUCKING HOURS! YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT! I AM HERE TO TEACH YOU HOW TO DRIVE SO LISTEN TO ME!!!!’

You will be pleased to know that I refrained and very calmly explained to her that whilst I think she is doing an amazing job, she is still learning and sometimes I feel uncomfortable in the passenger seat due to my being a control freak and need to express that by offering suggestions so as not to crash into the fence.’  Alex’s response to that was that she knows what she is doing, she didn’t crash into the fence and if she did, maybe that was her lesson to learn.  Ummmm…. Nope. Not in my car thank you very much!!

Anyway moral of this story is that, Alex doesn’t like to be told. 

So, here is where it gets interesting.  The other night, I picked her up from work and was driving home. There were road works up ahead (great).  They had the traffic light control ‘Stop here when red’ sign out.  The light was red, so I stopped about 4 metres from the sign.  The traffic controller person motioned for me to move forward.  So I did. Then she motioned again for me to keep moving forward and her expression on her face and her actions were quite rude.  She was pointing to the sign asking me to keep moving forward until I got to the sign (The energy I got from her was that I was an idiot and should know to stop at the sign and not four metres away from it). Now, really, when I look back it wasn’t a huge deal but my reaction may have been a little out of line.   I swore. A lot. (traffic controller person couldn’t hear me) and was ranting out loud ‘does it really fucking matter how close I am to the sign?’.  I think I may have gone on and on and on a little. Alex was sitting next to me listening to my rant (proud mummy moment right there).

So it seems it is not just Alex who doesn’t like being told. Lol.  It seems she has learnt it from the best!