Cut-offs

Cut-offs are sometimes what we call old jeans: cut off to use as capris or shorts. The kind of cut-off I am thinking of, is when one individual "cuts off" another. Someone close to me, does this frequently - and mysteriously, I might add - to the point where I no longer want to play the game of let's-get-back-together-again. Like crying wolf, there is an end to that kind of controlling behaviour and usually it backfires on the perp. Time for a fictional example. Let's call this person, Tom, just for the sake of utility. And let's call the intended "victim", Dave. Tom and Dave are brothers. Tom is a guy married to a difficult woman who is what we'll call controlling. They've had a long and hard marriage but they stuck together regardless. Tom's wife insists that their life be controlled under her firm schedules and needs. She wants meals and household routines to be exactly according to her dictates. Tom, over the years, bent to her controlling ways but is now behaving exactly like his wife. When he and his brother get together, Tom had better get home in time to sit down to dinner exactly at five. If he doesn't, the wife, removes his plate. There were battles over this addiction to scheduling early in their marriage, but Tom finally gave in and as his friends note, "Tom is becoming his wife". And Tom was. He announced to his brother, one day proudly, that he had learned to be assertive. Dave knew where he learned it. Unfortunately, Tom used it on everyone else and not on the wife. If Tom was not served in exactly the way he wanted to be in a store or other service, he had it out with the poor clerk or work person. Tom felt good, however, when he blasted off. He felt he was moving ahead. How wrong can one be? When Tom didn't like something about one of his friends, he said nothing, but eventually, letting his feelings build up, he told them they were cut off from his friendship. Once he packed up a cardboard box full of items one of his friends and he shared, and dropped them on the friend's doorstep. Years later he and the friend re-united. Tom was so pleased with his "victory", that he tried the same thing with his brother. Dave  tolerated Tom's moods, but would, after a few weeks or months, ask Tom for peace-making. But always, Dave would ask himself, "What brought that on?" Still, Dave didn't want to lose a brother over it. Thus he made peace. After about four of these little snits of Tom's, Dave gave up. He was tired of Tom's petulant behaviours that he knew were inspired by Tom's wife's influences. She had cut herself off so well, that she didn't have a friend or a relative left! Looking from the outside of this picture, it is easy to see that cutting people off is cutting yourself off. Other persons are not losing anything when someone "cuts them off". They are losing a problem they don't want to have again. Like Tom, who is really cutting himself off, the problem has only one solution. Wisely Dave walked away. And stayed away. He left his brother. And that is what happens. Tom, cut himself off and Dave knows that Tom is the one with a problem that only he can solve. Rather than "cutting off", Tom types of lonely folk, should latch onto learning some respectful communication skills and get back those they lost.