The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins.
Pages 85 to 90
The author uses her own mother as an example. When she got engaged to Chris, who was from the East Coast, her mother wasn't excited. Her mother had left a family farm in upstate New York at 17, married young, and never moved back near her parents. She raised her own children far from family, in a little family of four. So when her daughter met a man from the East Coast and looked likely to settle far from the Midwest, her mother was watching her own story happen again. She was scared of losing her daughter, not trying to ruin their relationship. At the time Mel was angry, felt unsupported, and did not want to understand that. Thirty years later, she can. She still would not have picked someone else. She also would not choose a partner who takes her own children far away. Both of them were right because they were looking through different lenses/viewpoints.
That is the idea she calls a Frame of Reference. Each person judges from the life they have already lived. Her mother saw distance and loss. She saw love and a life she wanted. Once she stopped fighting her mother's opinion and tried to stand in her mother's shoes, the power struggle eased.
“But now I am grateful for the Let Them Theory because I also deeply understand my mom and why she felt reluctant 30 years ago. It wasn’t judgment; it was grief. She wasn’t wrong. She was right. But I wasn’t wrong either. In fact, we were both right. Because we have different frames of reference.”
There was room for both opinions to be true. She says the same thing about her own daughters. She would not want one marrying someone in Europe and moving to Paris, or the other settling in California and raising children far from the East Coast. She is allowed to feel that. They are allowed to do it anyway. An opinion can be loving and still hurt. Seeing that takes maturity.
She then turns it outward. You cannot control a parent's opinion, a sibling, an in-law, or adult children. You can decide how you respond. Let them keep their view. Put your energy into showing up as yourself, calmly, over time. She has found that when you stop arguing and stay steady, people often change their minds on their own. Understanding where they come from may not change the opinion. It deepens the relationship, because two things can be true at once, and that is where love sits. One person changing how they show up can shift a whole family. She stopped getting pulled into the drama. What used to bother her no longer does. Time spent trying to control what you cannot control is wasted, and time and effort that would rather be shared with loved ones is wasted.
The hard part is accepting that most people, including parents, have never fully faced themselves. People can only meet you as deeply as they have met themselves. They are doing the best they can with the life they had. That is not an excuse for bad treatment, and you still deserve to be seen and supported. It is a reason to stop waiting for them to become different people. Your dad is not changing. Your mother is not changing. Your siblings and in-laws are not changing. You are the one who can change. Saying let them means seeing the family as they actually are, maybe for the first time, and taking back the power to shape what you do next. Accepting the reality of your situation doesn’t mean you’re surrendering to it. Instead it’s about reclaiming your power to shape your future. It is deciding how to make the best of it. From there, the family usually gets easier, and you can see yourself as your own person, with your own path.
That leads to the second tool, let me. Let me decide the relationship I want, based on the person I want to be. That might mean spending time with family because it matters to you, not from guilt. It might mean your own traditions, being the one who says I love you even when it is not returned, or saying I understand or I forgive you first. It might mean the hard conversations, dropping the judgment, accepting less than you deserve while you still have time, or stepping back because you no longer fear their opinion. Fear of what people think is what currently lets their opinions run your life. Let them think what they want, and let you live in a way you are proud of.
She closes the section in three lines. The problem is giving other people's opinions too much power, so fear makes you hesitate, doubt yourself, and give up on what you want. The truth is that people will think badly of you no matter what you do, and you cannot stop that. Letting it eat your time is a waste. The solution is to let them think what they think, line your actions up with your values, and care most about your own opinion. You get one life. Live it in a way that makes you proud.