14 Collusion

“So far,” Bud said, “we’ve been examining the internal experience of someone who’s in the box. But as you can imagine, my box can have quite an impact on others.

“Think about it,” he said, walking to the board. “Suppose this is me — in my box,” he said, drawing a box with a stick figure in it.

“If I am here in my box, what am I communicating to others?”

“What are you communicating?”

“Yes.”

“Well … you’re blaming them, I guess.”

“Exactly. And do you suppose other people are generally walking around saying to themselves, ‘Gee, I really feel blameworthy today; I need someone to blame me’?”

I laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Bud said. “Most people are generally walking around thinking something like, ‘Look, I’m not perfect, but doggone it, I’m doing just about as well as you could expect under the circumstances.’ And since most of us have self-justifying images we’re carrying around with us, most people are already in a defensive posture, always ready to defend their self-justifying images against attack. So if I’m in the box, blaming others, my blame invites them to do — what?”

“I guess your blame would invite them to be in the box.”

“That’s right,” he said, drawing a second person in a box. “By blaming, I invite others to get in the box, and they then blame me for blaming them unjustly. But because I feel justified in blaming them while I’m in the box, I feel that their blame is unjust and blame them even more. Of course, while they’re in the box, they feel justified in blaming me and feel that my further blame is unjust. So they blame me even more. And so on. So, by being in the box, I invite others to be in the box in response,” he said, adding arrows pointing in both directions between the boxes. “And others, by being in the box in response, invite me to stay in the box, like this.”

Then Bud added a sixth sentence to the principles he was writing about self-betrayal:

“Self-betrayal”

1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.”

2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.

3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted.

4. So — when I betray myself, I enter the box.

5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.

6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box.

“You can put any flesh on these bones that you’d like,” Kate said, pointing to the diagram, “and you’ll see that when someone’s in the box, the same pattern of mutual provocation and justification always emerges. Let me give you an example.

“I have an 18-year-old son named Bryan. And to be frank, he’s been a struggle. One of the things that really bugs me is that he frequently gets home late.”

I’d been so caught up in thinking about Laura that I’d nearly forgotten my troubles with Todd. The mere thought of him now, in response to Kate’s comment about her boy, darkened my mood.

“Now imagine that I’m in the box toward Bryan. If I am, how do you suppose I’d likely see him and his getting home late?”

“Well,” I said, “you’d see him as irresponsible.”

“Okay, good,” said Kate. “How else?”

“You’d think he’s a troublemaker.”

“And disrespectful,” added Bud.

“Yes,” agreed Kate. Then, pointing to the board, she asked, “Is it okay if I erase this blame diagram, Bud?”

“Sure.”

Bud sat down and Kate walked to the board. She drew a summary of what we’d said. “Okay,” she said, putting some finishing touches on the drawing. “So here we have it.”

“Now if I’m in the box and see Bryan as an irresponsible and disrespectful troublemaker, what sorts of things do you suppose I might do in this situation?”

“Well … ” I said, thinking.

“You’d probably discipline him pretty severely,” Bud interjected.

“And you might start criticizing him a lot,” I said.

“Okay, good,” Kate said, adding to the drawing. “Anything else?”

“You’d probably start hovering over his shoulder to make sure he was staying out of trouble,” I said.

She added that to the drawing and stepped to the side. “Now let’s suppose Bryan betrays himself — that he’s in the box toward me. If he’s in the box toward me, how do you suppose he might see me and my disciplining, criticizing, and hovering over his shoulder?”

“He’d probably see you as dictatorial,” I said. “Or maybe unloving.”

“And nosey,” Bud added.

“Okay, ‘dictatorial,’ ‘unloving,’ and ‘nosey,’ ” she repeated as she added to the drawing. “Good,” she said. “Now look what we have.”

“If Bryan’s in the box and seeing me as an unloving, nosey dictator, do you suppose he’ll want to be home earlier or later?”

“Oh, later,” I said. “Far later.”

“In fact,” Bud offered, “he’ll be less likely to do anything the way you’d like him to do it.”

“Yes,” Kate agreed, drawing another arrow from Bryan’s box to her own. “So around and around we go,” she said, adding still more arrows between the boxes. “Think of it: We provoke each other to do more of what we say we don’t like about the other!”

“Yeah, think about it, Tom,” said Bud. “If you were to ask Kate in this situation what she wanted more than anything else in the whole world, what do you suppose she would tell you?”

“That she wanted Bryan to be more responsible, less trouble, and so on.”

“Precisely. But what’s the effect of what Kate does in the box? Does she invite more of what she says she wants?”

I looked at the diagram. “No. In fact, it looks like she invites more of what she says she doesn’t want.”

“That’s right,” Bud agreed. “She invites Bryan to do more of the very behavior that she says she hates.”

This comment got me thinking about Todd, who frequently did things I didn’t want him to do. I looked at the diagram again. On the one hand, Kate’s role in this seemed crazy, as it looked like she was actually inciting more of the very behavior that she was complaining about. But on the other hand, what was she supposed to do? Just let her son get home late?

“But isn’t Kate just doing what any parent would do in this situation?” I asked. “Sometimes you have to correct or punish children to get them to do what they need to do, don’t you?”

“And do you suppose my being in the box invited Bryan to get home earlier?” Kate responded.

“Well, no,” I said, “but —”

“Criticism is hard enough to receive even from someone who is out of the box, isn’t it?” Kate interjected. “But from someone who’s in the box — what are the chances of receiving that well?”

“I see. Probably not too good.”

“And when do you think my discipline would be more appropriate to the circumstances and therefore more effective?” she asked. “When I’m in the box, inflating others’ faults, or when I’m out of the box and seeing them clearly?”

I nodded. “When you’re out.”

“So you see, Tom, from within the box I end up undermining the effectiveness of everything I do — even if discipline in this case, for example, is exactly what Bryan needs. My box makes it nearly certain that I won’t be able to invite in Bryan the changes I would like to see in him. And the problem isn’t merely that the box makes me ineffective, it’s that it makes me destructive. Because from within the box, I end up inviting more of the very thing that I’m complaining about, as well as other behaviors, as Bud pointed out, that I will hate just as much, if not more.”

“But that’s crazy,” I said, after a moment’s reflection. “Why would you — or anyone else, for that matter — ever do that? Why would we keep such a destructive cycle going?”

Kate paused for a moment, apparently collecting her thoughts. “I believe the answer to that, Tom, is that my box needs for it to continue.”

“What?” I said reflexively. The answer didn’t make any sense to me.

Kate smiled. “I know, it sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Who would ever get themselves into a position where they actively invited others to continue treating them poorly, even miserably? Who would do that?”

“Exactly,” I echoed, “who would do that?”

“And the answer, Tom, is that I would. And you would. And Bud would. And everyone else here at Zagrum would. Whenever we are in the box, we have a need that is met by others’ poor behavior. And so our boxes encourage more poor behavior in others, even if that behavior makes our lives more difficult.”

“How? Why?” I asked.

“Let me answer those questions by telling you something that happened about a year ago in this situation with Bryan. On a particular Friday night, Bryan asked if he could use the car. I didn’t want him to use it, so I gave him an unreasonably early curfew time as a condition — a time I didn’t think he could accept. ‘Okay, you can use it,’ I said smugly, ‘but only if you’re back by 10:30.’ ‘Okay, Mom,’ he said, as he whisked the keys off the key rack. ‘Sure.’ The door banged behind him.

“I plopped myself down on the couch, feeling very burdened and vowing that I’d never let him use the car again. The whole evening went that way. The more I thought about it, the madder I got at my irresponsible kid.

“I remember watching the 10 o’clock news, stewing over Bryan the whole time. My husband, Steve, was home, too. We were both complaining about Bryan when we heard the squeal of tires in the driveway. I looked at my watch. It was 10:29. And you know what?”

I was all ears.

“In that moment, when I saw the time, I felt a keen pang of disappointment.

“Now think about that for a minute,” she continued after a short pause. “That night, I would have told you that the thing I wanted most was for Bryan to be responsible, to keep his word, to be trustworthy. But when he actually was responsible, when he did what he said he’d do, when he proved himself trustworthy, was I happy?”

“No.” I shook my head in wonder at the thought. “You probably still would have been irritated, huh? You might have even gotten after him for squealing the tires.”

“I’m ashamed to admit that I did something just as perverse,” Kate replied. “After he came in the door — having made it in time, mind you — rather than thanking him, or congratulating him, or acknowledging him, I welcomed him with a curt, ‘You sure cut it close, didn’t you?’ ”

Kate sat down. “Notice — even when he was responsible, I couldn’t let him be responsible.” She paused. “I still needed him to be wrong.”

I fidgeted as I thought of my own son.

“I would have told you at the time that I wanted a responsible son, but is that really what I wanted most, Tom?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t sound like it.”

“That’s right,” she said. “When I’m in the box, there’s something I need more than what I think I want most. And what do you think that is? What do I need most when I’m in the box?”

I repeated the question to myself. What do I need most when I’m in the box? What do I need? I wasn’t sure.

Kate leaned toward me. “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive. And if I’d spent my whole night, and really a lot longer even than that, blaming my son, what did I need from my son in order to feel ‘justified,’ to feel ‘right’?”

“You needed him to be wrong,” I said slowly, a knot forming in my stomach. “In order to be justified in blaming him, you needed him to be blame worthy.”

In that moment, I was transported back some 16 years. I was handed a little bundle by the nurse, and from that bundle, two cloudy eyes looked up toward my face. I was completely unprepared for what he would look like at birth. Bruised, misshapen, and grayish, he was a funny-looking kid, and I was his daddy.

I had been blaming Todd almost from that day. He was never smart enough, never coordinated enough. And he was always in the way. Since he started school, he had been in constant trouble. I didn’t remember ever feeling proud when anyone realized he was my son. He’d never been good enough.

Kate’s story scared me to death. I asked myself, What must it be like to be the son of someone for whom you can never be good enough? And if Kate’s right, then there’s a sense in which I can’t let him be good enough. I need him to be a problem in order to feel justified in always seeing him as a problem. I felt sick, and I tried to push Todd out of my mind.

“That’s exactly right,” I heard Kate say. “Having spent the evening accusing Bryan of being a disappointment, I needed him to be a disappointment so that I would be justified in accusing him.”

We sat for a moment in thought.

Finally, Bud broke the silence. “Kate’s story raises for me an astonishing point, Tom. And that is, when I’m in the box, I need people to cause trouble for me — I actually need problems.”

As incredible as that sounded, it rang true.

Bud rose from his chair. “Remember when you asked me this morning whether you can actually run a business being out of the box all the time? You said it seemed like you’d get run over if you were out of the box all the time, seeing people as people.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“And then we talked about how that question is misguided, because you can do almost any behavior — ‘soft,’ ‘hard,’ whatever — either in the box or out of the box. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now we can say more about your question. It’s an important question. Let’s consider it in light of what Kate has just taught us. Think of it this way: Who needs to be run over—the person who is in the box or the person who is out?”

“The person in the box,” I said, amazed by the implication.

“That’s right. Out of the box I get no mileage whatsoever in being run over. I don’t need it. And what’s more, I’m usually not doing anyone a favor by letting them run over me. In the box, on the other hand, I get what I most need when I’m run over: I get my justification. I get my proof that the person running over me is just as bad as I’ve been accusing him or her of being.”

“But in the box, you don’t really want to be run over, do you?” I asked. “I mean, that’s kind of strange. Kate’s story got me thinking about my son, Todd. Laura and I feel like we get run over sometimes, but I don’t think either of us really wants that.”

“That’s true,” Bud responded. “We’re not saying that in the box we enjoy problems. Far from it; we hate them. In the box, it seems like there’s nothing we would want more than to be out from under them. But remember, when we’re in the box, we’re self-deceived — we’re blind to the truth about others and ourselves. And one of the things we’re blind to is how the box itself undercuts our every effort to obtain the outcomes we think we want.”

Bud walked over to the board. “Think about Kate’s story again for a moment.” He pointed at the diagram. “Notice how her blaming from within the box provokes Bryan to be irresponsible, and then, when he is irresponsible, she takes that as justification for having blamed him in the first place for being irresponsible! Likewise, Bryan’s blaming provokes Kate to be on his case, and then, when she is on his case, he takes that as justification for having blamed her in the first place for being on his case! By the simple fact of being in the box, each helps to create the very problems he or she blames the other for.”

“In fact, Tom,” Kate added, “Bryan and I provide each other with such perfect justification, it’s almost as if we colluded to do so. It’s as if we said to each other, ‘Look, I’ll mistreat you so that you can blame your bad behavior on me if you’ll mistreat me so that I can blame my bad behavior on you.’ Of course, we didn’t ever say that to each other, or even think it, for that matter. But our mutual provocation and justification seem so perfectly coordinated, it looks like we did. For this reason, when two or more people are in their boxes toward each other, mutually betraying themselves, we often call it ‘collusion.’ And when we’re in collusion, we actually collude in condemning ourselves to ongoing mutual mistreatment!”

“And we do this,” Bud jumped back in, “not because we like being mistreated but because we’re in the box, and the box lives on the justification it gets from our being mistreated. So there’s a peculiar irony to being in the box: However bitterly I complain about someone’s poor behavior toward me and about the trouble it causes me, I also find it strangely delicious. It’s my proof that others are as blameworthy as I’ve claimed them to be — and that I’m as innocent as I claim myself to be. The behavior I complain about is the very behavior that justifies me.”

Bud placed both hands on the table and leaned toward me. “So simply by being in the box,” he said slowly and earnestly, “I provoke in others the very behavior I say I hate in them. And they then provoke in me the very behavior they say they hate in me.”

Bud turned and added another sentence to the principles about self-betrayal:

“Self-betrayal”

1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.”

2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.

3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted.

4. So—when I betray myself, I enter the box.

5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.

6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box.

7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

“Once in the box,” Bud said, backing away from the board, “we give each other reason to stay in the box. We do this not only by mistreating the other person directly, by the way, but also by how we might begin to talk about or gossip about that person with others. The more people we can find to agree with our side of the story, the more justified we will feel in believing that side of the story. I might recruit my spouse to join with me in blaming my son, for example, or I might gossip about others in order to gather allies at work in my collusion against another person or department. And so on. Whether at home or at work, boxes want to spread in order to gather additional justification. And with every mistreatment — direct and indirect — we give each other further justification for staying in the box. That’s the grim reality.”

I slumped in my chair, suddenly aching for my boy.

“Now look, Tom,” Bud said, sitting back down. “Think about how self-betrayal, and everything we’ve been talking about, explains the self-deception problem — the problem of being unable to see that I have a problem. To begin with, when I’m in the box, whom do I think has the problem?”

“Others.”

“But when I’m in the box, who, in fact, has the problem?”

“You do,” I answered.

“But what does my box provoke in others?” he asked.

“It provokes them to behave badly toward you.”

“Yes. In other words, my box provokes problems in others. It provokes what I take as proof that I’m not the one with the problem.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I agreed.

“So what will I do if anyone tries to correct the problem they see in me?”

“You’ll resist them.”

“Exactly,” he said. “When having a problem, I don’t think I have one. I think other people are responsible.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “Here’s the question: So what?”

So what? I repeated to myself. “What do you mean, ‘So what?’ ”

“I mean just that,” Bud answered. “Why should we care about any of this at Zagrum? What does it have to do with work?”