Agreeing to Disagree

Is it just me, or is disagreeing with your parents one of the hardest things to do? (As an adult, of course. For some reason this was real easy when I was a teen).

Maybe my situation is a little different for two reasons- 1) My mom is my best friend and 2) My mom happens to be a fellow MPDG, which means our personalities work REALLY WELL together when we agree, but it's borderline NATIONAL DISASTER when we don't.

Wait a minute, I thought you said it was one of the hardest things to disagree with your parents. How do you know what it's like to not get along? Easy. We have tiffs. We argue and get mad at each other. Not a lot, but it happens, and it happens on a major scale. What I mean by disagreeing in THIS scenario- major situations. Like telling your father you want to move out, or telling your mother you want to study in Costa Rica, telling your father you're getting (read: got) a tattoo, or telling your mom that you disagree with her on a very specific (and equally big) decision/situation/event.

All of those are real scenarios for me, by the way. I survived them (all but the first- my mom did it for me. Hey, I was 16, give me a break), and I actually survived the last as well. Barely. Did I cry afterwards? No. Did I want to? Absolutely.

One of the unfortunate side effects (we really need to think more of the positive ones on this site, don't you think?) of being an MPDG is that you will have people in your life who disagree with you. You will have people in your life tell you that your ideas are unrealistic, unattainable, or just wrong. You're married now. You can't travel. or how about You can't quit your full time job to go back to school. How will you live?. I've heard both, although I have yet to do either, both are still on my list. Thankfully, however (here's the positive side!) as an MPDG we have some form of confidence, and therefore we can hopefully deal with these people without killing our dreams or ideas. It's just a matter of how to do it, and it is, unfortunately, rather frightening to do so at times.

So how do we do it, you ask? Depends on the situation. In my case, I just brought it up, mentioned that I had talked it over with someone whose opinion I knew she would consider, and told her that I was thinking ......... (enter completely specific decision here. I'd honestly explain it to you, but do you have a few hours? Because it would take that long.) Be gentle. It's almost always a good thing to have sources, have your reasons in order, and maybe even mention that you thought about certain points for the alternative and why they didn't sway your vote.

Life is tough, and this is not an advice collumn. This is just my brain thinking that maybe I'm not as alone in this as I think I am. Maybe someone who shares my pain doesn't know that they aren't alone. Does any of that make sense? I hope so.