My Family Programmed Me to Get My Identity From Others

It took me decades to realize how weird my upbringing was. The amazing thing is that growing up, I thought my family was the absolute best. Except for the sister I had who was closest in age to me and dedicated herself to making my life miserable, I really thought I had hit the family jackpot. That’s the thing with kids; they tend to idealize their parents and family and see them through rose-colored glasses. Some people grow up and still do. My dad was a lawyer, my mom stayed at home, and their five children ranged in age from 17 to 1 — I was the baby. We went to the Methodist church on Sunday, attended public schools, and played for hours with the kids in the neighborhood, always with a pack of neighborhood dogs joining in the fun.

Where and how I learned to sell myself out.

I grew up in a small southern Arkansas town, the population was around 10,000. In 1964, when I started public school, the town was segregated. It was a city of haves and have-nots divided into several categories: billionaires … Murphy Oil Company was headquartered there, and the Murphys and their many cousins and extended family went to the same public schools we did, though they were delivered by chauffeurs, the middle class, rednecks — we called them hicks back then, and the “colored” people. Yes, that’s what we called the African American population in the 1960s in our town. Even as a child, I was aware of the caste system that existed. Somehow, my family passed on the message of who I was supposed to be friends with and who to avoid, but I don’t remember being told that outright. It was just understood.

Because the different groups in town were so delineated, anyone in the Murphy family was the most acceptable group to be friends with. If someone in the family palled around with a Murphy family member or anyone who was wealthy from oil money, and there were many, they would get a standing ovation from the others. If someone brought home a middle-class friend like we were, my parents wouldn’t be against it but would show no interest in them. If we brought home a prominent friend, my parents would pull out all the stops. I still remember my mom rushing me to the department store to buy a new nightgown when one of the wealthy kids invited me to spend the night. If it had been anyone else, my old gown covered in pills and breakfast stains would have sufficed.

I learned early on to play the family game. Up your station in life by hanging with wealthy or powerful people. All five children in my family learned this pattern of behavior, and most of us played it very well. Just like most children, we did the things that pleased our parents. My parents didn’t press us for good grades, to be athletes, religious, or beauty queens. Instead, they pressed us to make a better life for ourselves by attaching ourselves like sycophantic leeches to those who had more power or money than we did. This pattern of behavior nearly destroyed me in the end, but in my 40s, as I was recovering from my third divorce, and had an epiphany that told me that if I kept choosing mates who were prominent or powerful, who were not good mates, it would eventually kill me. As it was, my third divorce from a United States Congressman had me on my knees. I was so beat-up, broken-hearted, and crushed from the end of that marriage, from how my children and I were treated in the marriage itself, and the cruel way in which he dispensed of us, that it took me five years to feel like myself again. I knew I could never go through another situation like that, and if I exposed my children to something like that again, I would have only myself to blame.

A clear message: Change or die.

One day, I sat down and pressed myself, “Becky, you are a good person. You are smart. You have to get brutally honest about how you have married men who were not good marital partners and plug that leak; otherwise, it will be your destruction.” I knew that voice was right. I pondered it. What were the common denominators — 1. successful, prominent men who I thought were better than I was. 2. In the background of my mind, I told myself could have a better, more interesting life financially, experience-wise, and be accepted by others by being the partner of these men. 3. Since I perceived I couldn’t attain money or prominence on my own, I had to follow the family plan, attain respect and even awe from others, by who I partnered with. The family edict was killing me. I was mortified with the egomania and lack of belief in myself when I realized the ugly truth about what I was doing. I had loved all three men I married dearly, don’t get me wrong. But they could not love in return. They were self or ambition-obsessed and not into or capable of equal partnerships. They were not safe harbors for my heart.

I was determined to change everything, so one of the many books I explored was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He described how the ego would destroy us if we let it take over our lives, and I had plenty of evidence that this was happening to me. When I read the book, I was attempting to claw my way back into prominence again. Without a man’s coattails to ride on, I tried to get old media jobs back, wrote a book about being married to the Congressman, tried unsuccessfully to sell it, and created a website called “The Congressman’s Wife” that called him out for all his abusive and cruel behavior during our marriage and divorce, but no one gave a damn.

Not hearing the messages the universe was sending me to stop clawing and learn to be happy in the now with what is, I overruled reason and eventually filed to run against him. I had had no success in attaining the jobs or notoriety I sought following the divorce; decision-makers blew me off. So, running against my ex was sure to get the attention I needed and, hopefully, opportunities to get a paid media position, and boy, did it. I got zero paid media opportunities but received notoriety in spades. I was inundated with national media attention as soon as word got out that I had filed my intention to run. I was on every major network, interviewed by Diane Sawyer (she and ABC were awful to me), a Dateline segment and interview with Hoda Kotb (super kind and fair reporting), CNN, Joe Scarborough (understanding and respectful), and many more. I was featured in People Magazine (I will never forget the awful way they told my story), the Washington Post, the Chicago Times, the Los Angeles Times, and more, and in all but a few, I was depicted as the stereotypical crazy, vengeful ex. It broke me. I became a pariah. Most of my family turned their back on me; I lost all my friends, found out some of my friends had betrayed my trust and allowed themselves to be interviewed by reporters so long as their names weren’t identified, and in the end, sat alone asking myself, “What the hell just happened?” That is when I got real, explored the brutal truth about me, and concluded I had to kill my ego, and so I did. When the Texas Secretary of State called me to say that I was 47 signatures short of getting on the ballot after an audit, I was curled up in a ball in my bed, wallowing in my misery. She told me it was over; I put the phone down and was thankful the negative attention would soon end.

Turning life around.

There isn’t a day that I am not thankful for realizing what I was doing to myself to guarantee self-destruction. The people who truly loved me stuck around; the rest did not. I saw it as a long overdue weeding of people who used me like I had been using others. The people who don’t have your best interest at heart will run for the hills when you hit rock bottom, and that’s not a bad thing. I stopped clawing for prominence, learned to be still and let the universe take me toward my purpose. Instead of fighting against the current of life toward things that wouldn’t serve me well, I turned around and went with the flow. I was in graduate school learning to be a therapist. I spent five years soaking up every piece of information I could to become a deeper and more authentic person. I went to therapy and numerous meetings and workshops designed to get my self-esteem and confidence where they needed to be. I have studied research and read endless books (and still do) to prepare myself for life as a healthy adult. It has been an incredible journey all the way around.

Do I beat the Becky up who did all those crazy things? No. I send her love and compassion. She learned what she did from her family and tried to win their approval, but it didn’t work, and I learned that lesson. I must love and accept all the versions of Becky I have been, as she was my most excellent teacher. Thankfully, egomaniac Becky is dead and buried, and Becky, who loves the simple life, the real me, has at long last arrived. Actually, she was there, waiting underneath the ego all along. My life’s work today is to help others who were lost like I was and show them a way to peace and contentment.

Accepting that some never learn the lessons life presents.

Sadly, three of my older siblings, two much older than I am and one now deceased, never did stop the coattails approach we were so deftly programmed to follow. My oldest sister, who passed away years ago, married a successful and controlling multimillionaire, but she had a waterfront house in Florida and everything her material heart could desire. She hung out with the super-rich, one her husband described as the “Meanest woman in town.” I met the woman, and to this day, she is the most openly racist, horrible, and boundary-less person I have ever encountered, and we almost came to blows. Seriously. My sister valued being with these people over those who sincerely cared about her. It was sad to see, but I understood it. When she was dying, I asked her if she had experienced any revelations about her life, and she said no, she lived her life exactly the way she had wanted, so that’s where she was on this lifetime’s journey.

The sister who bullied me as a child is a 70-year-old groupie and “friend” to world-known celebrities in California and the USA, name-dropping every person who comes into her proximity and posting photographs of herself with them on social media and all over her house. These relationships become her obsession, and if they beckon, she will drop anyone and everything to run to their aid. In college, she was a cling-on to our state’s sports heroes. After college, she nannied for one of the most famous families in America. She later moved to California, got involved in organizations that attracted the powerful and famous, and quickly befriended these people. What did she have to offer? She asks nothing of them, fawns to show them her best self, and gives everything she has to them 100 percent of her time, something she would do for no one else. When her children were small, she left them with their dad for months at a time while she trekked around on tour with one of her idol’s organizations. Interestingly, my 81-year-old brother does the same in Arkansas. Are they groupies? I don’t know, but the culture of our small town in Arkansas taught my parents that if we couldn’t rise to the top on our own, we would divert to Plan B and do it through others. It was a losing plan for us all, but those who aren’t self-reflective will never see the futility of it or how pathetic and desperate it is.

Getting it right.

There is nothing wrong with having prominent friends and marrying successful people. But when these relationships mean casting your true self aside, are one-sided, mostly give and little received, you bend for them and they rarely or never bend for you, you’re in a deal with the devil, and you will suffer. The wise are unwilling to sell themselves out or become sycophants so they can have things or opportunities they can’t get on their own.

If your sense of self and identity comes through others, and you lose those relationships, where does that leave you? I can tell you — when I lost it all after my ridiculous and failed attempt to run against my ex-husband for Congress, I lost who I thought was myself. But it wasn’t myself; it was an opportunity to finally see what my ego was doing to take me down and to learn to stop feeding it once and for all. The only way to attain true peace is to find out who you are authentically and create a life for yourself that fits that. When you fall into that flow, things happen for you rather than to you.

Becky Whetstone, Ph.D., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Arkansas and Texas* and is known as America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®. She is a former features writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and has worked with thousands of couples to save their marriages. She can work with you, too, as a life coach if you’re not in Texas or Arkansas. She is also co-host of the Call Your Mother Relationship Show on YouTube and has a telehealth private practice as a therapist and life coach via Zoom. To contact her, check out www.DoctorBecky.com and www.MarriageCrisisManager.com. Also, here is how to find her work on Huffington Post. Don’t forget to follow her on Medium so you don’t miss a thing!

For licensure verification, find Becky Whetstone Cheairs.