Why? - A football story

Boundaries breached

“Who’s number 12?” I turn around to see who’s asking from behind the low metal fence. I don’t recognize her so I give a quick answer, “that’s Sally” before turning my attention back to the game and doing my job as umpire for at an U12/U14 mixed ladies football game. Slight pause, “tell her to get tighter on her marker” the voice came again. Now, this did register with me a “WTF is this? who the hell are you?” moment but I assumed she was the coach or another team, perhaps for the U14’s, maybe for the U10’s but honestly, I didn’t recognize her. To keep the peace, I gave her a diplomatic answer, “sure I’ll tell her as needs be, she’s doing great at the moment”. The lady continued, “why is she out so far, tell her to get back and mark up”. “yep, I got it, thanks” I responded, before thankfully the awkward conversation was cut off. The ball arrived causing a flurry of action including Sally making a frantic but successful run back to cover her opposition player. The lady walked off but not before shouting a few instructions to Sally regarding getting tighter and marking up etc. Now, what I should have said to that person was “I’ve been coaching her all season, we’ve worked on this stuff, I’ll do the coaching if you don’t mind, thanks”. What I actually did was:

• Assume that she knew better than me.
• Assume that she is somehow better than me (hierarchial-thinking perhaps).
• fawn. An earlier version of me from maybe a year ago would have held this latter belief but now I know better. I recognize that this person’s actions were totally out of line. I suspect an inflated sense of entitlement, grandiosity and haughtiness. My observations would later be confirmed in a conversation that lasted all of ten seconds but made me want to scream at her and bash her head with something.

It’s late August. U12 ladies’ football is still in full flight. A league comprising of perhaps weaker under 14 players who don’t normally get the chance to play complemented by under 12’s making up the numbers is underway. I help coach the under U12 team, my daughters’ team. I’m not sure if I officially help coach this mixed team or not, I didn’t hear anything either way so I turned up to help out for their two games so far, found some usefulness and wasn’t told to leave. Phew!

I fawn

You see, I’m the most socially awkward person I know. Coaching kids is not something I’m cut out for. After every game and every training session I agonize over “did I do anything stupid?”, “do the real coaches think I’m weird and awkward?”, “do they think I’m useless?”, “do they think I bring down the mood?”, “do the players think I’m weird?”, “do the parents think I’m unsuitable?”, and of course “did I disappoint my daughter, does she still think I’m ok?”.

So when somebody breaches my boundaries like this, I fawn. Others fight, others flight, others freeze. Me, I fawn. It’s my natural response to everything confrontational. It’s my instinctual response to any threat. Keep the peace, be agreeable, avoid conflict, please the aggressor to remove the aggression. It works. I don’t do conflict, I don’t do anger, I’m easy going. It has served me well my whole life. Or has it? Let’s come back to this.

I fawn. I get this. I’m not sure why. It could be insecurity, lack of conviction, low self-esteem, an inherent visceral belief that I am somehow inferior to others. Is it that I can’t really relate to other people’s emotions, and focus only on my own, lacking empathy for others, only looking inward? Is it hierarchal thinking? I don’t know. I have always felt inferior to others my whole life. I carry a sense of shame around with me.

Narcissistic abuse again

Later that evening, I’m ok again, I’ve had a coffee in my car while listening to Richard Grannon narrating his excellent book “A Cult of One”, I’ve had a walk. I’ve unwound. My daughter is in bed, my wife is loudly on the phone in “her” room. I’m watching Netflix on my own, my laptop is beside me on the couch, I’m hoping to open it and type words. I don’t. My wife comes in. It starts slow, I ignore, I’ve got the subtitles on, I focus on them. She continues, beginning to ramp up now, getting louder. I don’t bother to tell her she’ll wake our daughter. It’s what she wants; a reaction, some kind of satisfying response from me. She’s reading my affidavit of means and affidavit of welfare loudly. Every line of it is a lie apparently. She’s appalled by my behavior. Her mother agrees, her friend agrees, her sister agrees, a social worker she knows agrees, her therapist agrees. A barrister her social worker knows agrees.

“You’re a useless parent. I do all the parenting. You don’t provide enough nutrition; I do the cooking. I do the cleaning. When was the last time you cleaned the oven? I do the homework with her while you’re too busy on your fucking computer. How dare you say you pay all the bills; I pay the bills too. How can you be a parent when all you do is work all day. And then you throw your penis around in my face”. On and on and on. “You’re a fucking asshole, you’re a prick and you’re a liar”.

I get a short break then she returns.

“I won’t be getting a lawyer, I don’t need one, I’ve been to the police, I’ve filed a report on you, about how you tried to kill me, yea, you remember that don’t you. I told them how you hit Emma. I told them that you slept in the same bed as her. They were disgusted with you. I mean business and your lawyer will be getting two nice letters from me. I’ll be suing her”.

And on and on and on. We’re 25 minutes into this. I made a point of not opening my mouth once. Throughout the whole thing, she pretend cried but stopped when she saw it wasn’t getting a response from me, then she’d try again, fake crying even more intensely. And yes, it was most definitely fake. She could do very well in Hollywood.

The Netflix episode ended. I can’t say I actually followed any of it, but it didn’t matter. I feel old, drained, tired. As I prepared to go to my own bed (away from “hers”), she disappeared off into “her” room. I checked Emma, she was awake. How much of all that she heard; I’ll never know.

Easily threatened

I fawn. My wife fights. We both have the same insecurities, we both have extremely thin skin, we’re easily injured, easily upset, we both have the same paranoia, we both ruminate, we both have the same trauma. We both behave in ways that are outside of the six-sigma norms. She fights. I fawn. Everything we do, everything we are, comes from the same broken places deep within us. We both have volatile emotions. However, make no mistake, her responses are bad, her responses do harm deliberately, her responses are malignant and I do believe that using the word “evil” to describe her is not unreasonable. S/He who has not lived it can never truly know the pain inflicted. She attacks the threat and nullifies it by any, and all means possible. She must survive, she must be strong. My response is to make peace to nullify the threat. And we are both easily threatened.

Back to the game

It is just as well I am a peacekeeper. I gathered the flags that marked the sidelines and corners of the pitch following a hard-fought draw. I had to be told to of course because I’m still green in this coaching world. I was of course happy to be of some use again. I was deep in thought. My daughter hadn’t played particularly well. Naturally, she’s being affected by the ending of the most dysfunctional marriage in history. She had wanted to do basketball training instead which happened to clash. I respected her decision until we got hijacked by her friend’s parent announcing that she would do the match if my daughter did. Without them, we would have had to forfeit the match. We had no substitutes, just the exact number of players required. I reluctantly explained the situation to my daughter in a joking way that did not burden her with the weight of the match being forfeit. She was happy to play but disappointed to miss basketball training. Manipulating and influencing her decision troubled me. Being hijacked by the other well-meaning parent troubled me too but I know them well and I’m happy to please, even at the expense of others including my daughter it would appear. Interesting.

“Do you know the offside rule? Sorry, “John” is it?” It was the lady from before. Once again I assumed she was somebody of “importance” because she had taken it upon herself to coach from the sideline along with our actual coaches throughout the game. So instead of telling her to fuck right off, I had a really weird conversation with her that lasted all of thirty seconds. During that time, she asserted that I don’t know the rules of the game and that I need to watch out for “offside” infringements, suggesting that as an umpire I missed some. Taken aback and a little stunned, I simply (fawned again) agreed to watch out for it.

This hurt

It is just as well that I am agreeable. I could have picked up a baton and bashed her with it. How bloody dare she, she doesn’t know me, how on earth could somebody I never met before have treated me with such disdain? Communal narcissist? Not sure. How could I possibly ever know that? I’ll never know. I asked my coaching colleague about her as we were walking towards the storage shed with the flags. She rolled her eyes to heaven and gritted her teeth. Enough said. Coach? Nope. Holier than thou parent of one of the players? Yes. Encounters with coaches before? Many.

My injury

The moral of the story. Understanding myself as best I can cuts through all the soul searching of why narcissists behave why they do. I behave the way I do because of the way I am. All mental health issues skew our perceptions on reality. I was badly injured by that interaction. It troubled me deeply. I ruminated over it. I’m that insecure. From that, I can appreciate what a “narcissistic injury” feels like.

We are what we are. Some people are good. Some people are bad. When it comes to narcissism, the bad is characterized by the nine pillars from the DSM. Educating oneself in such matters allows the narcissism to be spotted. And in my case, I still agonized about my interaction with that bitch for days afterwards but at least I recognize that my perception of the reality was not correct. That helps.

Fawning

So back to the question. Has fawning served me well? Yes, I’ve always been a go-to person in work because I’m a helper, a fixer and I give my time and energy to others. My value finally got noticed. My career now pays me quite well. I hope it will last. I just have to manage burnout because being a helper can be exhausting. I’m under no illusions though. Fawning has not served me well when it comes to my marriage. I should have ended the relationship after six months when I realized that things were off. I didn’t. Seventeen years later, here I am. For my whole life people have walked all over me. My boundaries are weak. Many of my interactions with people bring me anxiety. If I had healthier boundaries and was more assured, more confident and believed in myself, the second interaction with that bitch wouldn’t have happened. She had me sussed from our earlier interaction. I demonstrated weak boundaries. I fawned. She later fought to assert her dominance and caused my silent rage. It may not be a stretch to say her predator instinct smelled blood and she went after it. She got her fix of power and control at my expense.

Why? I let her.