The Gift of Stormy Relationships: How Difficult Connections Shape Us
I went to a fundraising event a few days ago, where I ran into two former high school students of mine. One student I had been close with, and knew that I was impactful in her life, because she had routinely expressed it during our time together. The other was a student who gave me a whole lot of grief. He was combative and hostile, and he took every ounce of my patience. It’s been said that your toughest students are never absent, and he never was.
When I approached him at the fundraiser, it took him some time to register who I was. Once he recognized me, I saw his eyes fill up with tears and it wasn’t long before he burst into sobs. I was taken aback by this based on our contentious history. In so many words, he told me that I was big part of getting him to where he is today.
Teachers talk about these moments a lot, running into former students who finally realize what the relationship had meant to them. It’s a big reason why so many teachers continue to stay in the profession—a profession that routinely overworks, underpays, and devalues them (this is a whole other blog post topic).
But today, I want to highlight the relationships that push us to our limits and catalyze our growth. To be clear, I’m not talking about abusive relationships, which are harmful and dangerous. I’m talking about the difficult connections that challenge us to stretch beyond what we thought we were capable of.
Easy, smooth sailing relationships are great, and we all have them in our lives—friends who don’t bring drama, family dynamics that are supportive. Mental health professionals refer to these positive connections as protective factors— relationships that buffer us from stress and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes. However, looking back, I realized that my relationship with this challenging student was transformative because it was cultivated in a pressure cooker.
He came from an extremely abusive background, and trusting adults was not in this kid’s DNA. He had to fight me in order to test my strength and fortitude and also to see how far he had to go for me to give up on him, reinforcing his belief he held—everybody abandons me eventually.
Yet, I refused to be a part of that narrative. His growth was dependent on experiencing an adult whose care was unconditional, and my growth was dependent on continuing to care for him even on his hardest days, and having faith that he could make the transformation that I was lucky enough to witness.
Think about your more spicy relationships—what lessons have they presented? How have they pushed you to expand, to metamorphosize? Maybe it’s someone whose political views clash with your own, or someone whose behaviors are provoking in some way. I truly believe (and I’m sure some researcher out there has the data to prove it), that real transformation only happens when we are tested, uncomfortable, and a little afraid. When we add another person into that equation is when we are given the opportunity to practice acceptance, forgiveness, and grace, attributes that are severely lacking in many of the spaces we inhabit these days.
Our smooth sailing relationships are the stuff of dreams, but the stormy ones are the ones that give us our sea legs.