Note: The following post is about men, women and relationships, please do not get side-tracked by any political sensibilities due to the opening material.

MAKING PEACE, PART I:
DICTATING THE PEACE

World War I formally ended in 1919 with the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. After the Allies defeated the Axis powers, the world was more than sick of war. Legions of innocent millions died in the tragic events of World War I. Humanity even witnessed the use of chemical weapons as an unpredictable tool of war.

As the Axis powers, lead by Germany, learned painful lessons about losing a modern international conflict, the Allied powers learned very important lessons about the burdens of peace-making.

In hindsight, Winston Churchill, in Volume 1, “The Gathering Storm,” of his Six Volume account of World War II, “The Second World War,” in reference to the terms of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, explained:

The economic clauses of the Treaty were malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile. Germany was condemned to pay reparations on a fabulous scale. These dictates gave expression to the anger of the victors, and to the failure of their peoples to understand that no defeated nation or community can ever pay tribute on a scale which would meet the cost of modern war.

Over the course of the two decades that followed the end of World War I, a humiliated German people looking to recapture their dignity and rebuild their economy under impossible economic constraints, and legendary Hyper-Inflation, found themselves seduced, spell-bound and smothered under the crushing boot of the Nazi regime.

In retrospect, many historians have attributed the demands of the Peace Treaty as creating fertile ground for Nazi radicalism.

All of this comes to mind because of a conversation I remember having with my father. He once told me: “Son… you never take a man’s dignity. You always leave enough change on the table for him to catch a cab home. You don’t need to have life-long enemies.”

Although I try to life my life by those words, even when I’m angry, I still find that I’m a work in progress.

How does this pertain to men and women’s misunderstandings of each other?

Well… It’s important to understand how we make peace in our lives. Sometimes, the conditions we set to make our world safer and happier have unintended consequences that do just the opposite.

I find that sometimes, people use “being hurt” as an excuse to poison or attempt to control/put constraints on future relationships. Some costs are too burdensome to demand, even if there are reasonable explanations for the demands; and even if that hurt was so bad that it left your world burnt to the ground.

After being hurt, sometimes we are seduced into the “Independent” fantasy. Though a good deal of personal autonomy, and a healthy sense of self-interest, is a good thing, there is no real “Independent” person. We all need each other in some way. The goal of being TOTALLY INDEPENDENT is a self-defeating goal, life is about cooperation.

In relationships between people, unilateral demands and attempts at control will only last for so long before they foment resentment and anger; and soon, in some way, that anger will find its expression in actions, either passively or actively. And those actions are sometimes more destructive than we could predict.

The pain of World War I caused the Allied powers to impose constraints that were untenable in the name of Peace and safety. In relationship terms, after we’ve been hurt, we can sometimes impose conditions on future relationships that are neither viable nor practical.

For instance, I have once or twice had the unfortunate displeasure of being the recipient of the past pain of a young lady or two who believed that since she had been hurt in the past, the way to prevent pain was to be in “control.” So unfortunate. In life, we prepare ourselves to deal with as many foreseeable eventualities as possible, we control very little. Vowing to never be vulnerable is not the Golden Bullet many of us may assume it might be.

When I think to myself, I wonder if I have made demands upon women I have dated based in past hurt. I wonder if in my attempts to be my own peace-maker in my relationship-world, that I have made impossible demands.

Mercilessness, in any relationship, has unintended consequences that are far from foreseeable. The people with whom we deal (the same goes when we are the offending party), who trespass against us, be they a former partner or a current one, have to atone for their actions when they have done wrong. But no matter what they have done, if the choice is to continue a relationship, the burden placed upon them cannot be impractical; they cannot be asked to pay for their indiscretions or violations in perpetuity.

Now, I’m not advocating a position that would let someone walk all over you. What I’m asking is whether or not we understand the way we choose to make peace in our lives. Sometimes, our attempts at peace, lead us into greater peril than we imagined.

Bottom line: Of course it’s possible to gain great strength from defeat. But truth be told, I wonder if we really understand the impact of our well-intentioned efforts at protecting ourselves through peace-making, and more importantly, their unintended consequences.

Peace and Love,

nosthegametoo