Acting Without the Drama

Hidden Disconnect

October 20, 2009. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been more disconnected from my business partner than normal. I felt like we weren’t on the same side of the table a lot of times, I felt scrutinized and judged, I found myself backing her off on a regular basis. She just wasn’t helping!

Ahem.

Sound a little bit like someone was pointing across the street? Why, yes, thank you. I believe I was.

A couple of weeks ago we were approached about a project that sent up a lot of red flags for me. It was something I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be involved in. But I wanted to be fair-minded about it. I didn’t want to make the decision for my business partner.

So I took my instincts and shoved them into some dark little corner of my soul.

In the meanwhile, my partner was looking for some input, because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do either. Since I had chosen to cram all of my concerns into the nether regions of my psyche, they weren’t at all present for that conversation. Basically, she left feeling like I had talked her into the project.

Now I’ve got all of the splintered kids inside me feeling completely betrayed, both by me and by her. You can see that this would not be conducive to an open, connected, loving environment.

Luckily, my business partner is very sensitive to disconnect. She stuck with her feeling that there was something up, even when I was trying to back her off by telling her how I felt like I was under a magnifying glass. Also luckily, I don’t like to be disconnected either. Once I realized that I had hurt her feelings quite a bit, and that it seemed to be continuing even after “figuring things out,” I knew that her instincts were on to something.

The original disconnect was small. It was a misunderstanding. Even the topic of the disconnect, while profound, certainly didn’t have to be epic. My business partner and I share morals that are very similar, despite the big differences in how we were raised.

And, we always end up figuring it out.

Now the only thing is how not to take that freaking long next time. Two weeks (while significantly down from the two months that it might have been at one point) is way too much disconnect for me.

I’d rather be connected any day!