In a relationship, letting go of grudges is something you do for
yourself, not just to make your partner feel better. It is done by making
simple statements of facts, not statements of blame. "You took me to your
office party and you got so busy with everyone else you didn't introduce
me to anyone to talk to me all night. You acted like I didn't matter and
that your boss was the most important man in your life."
In the beginning, the course works best in the safety of a group,
which prevents the isolation of couples and keeps partners from getting
defensive and negative. But once they've practiced this, and it's a
simple act of confiding, couples continue it on their own far more
easily.
This is not just an exercise of the emotions. There is a cognitive
restructuring taking place during these exercises. What is really going
on is that one partner is, probably for the first time, learning the
meaning of another's experience. That by itself enhances their closeness.
All it requires is listening with empathy, and the experience becomes a
source of pleasure for both of them. At the same time, there is
conceptual understanding of what each is doing that deprives the
relationship of pleasure and what they need to do to make it
better.
Because the past continually asserts itself in present experience,
both partners in a relationship are obligated to explore themselves,
their beliefs, needs, and hopes, and even uniqueness of personality
through their family's emotional history. Most people operate in the
present, using messages and beliefs silently transmitted to them in their
family of origin. Or they may be living out invisible loyalties, making
decisions based not on the needs of their partner or present
relationship, or even their own needs, but on some indebtedness that was
incurred sometime in the past.
Particularly at issue are messages we acquire about ourselves,
about life and love, trust, confiding, and closeness. Those things we
take as truths about love, life, and trust are beliefs we had the chance
to learn from specific people and situations in the past. It is on this
information that we make the private decision to ourselves: "Nobody
cares. It doesn't matter what I think or say, you're not interested in
me." If, for example, you grew up in a family where your mother or father
drank or was depressed, or was otherwise emotionally unavailable, you may
have drawn the conclusion that no one was really interested in
you.
It is vital to know the lineage of our beliefs because we transfer
onto our partners what we were dealt in the past. One of the decisions
often made unwittingly is, "I don't trust that anybody is really going to
be any better to me." It can become a way of saying, "I'm going to get
even for the way I was treated." You wind up punishing your partner for
what someone else actually did.
When you displace the blame for past hurts onto you present
partner, you are activating a dynamic that psychiatrist Ivan
Boszormenyi-Nagy, M.D., describes as "the revolving ledger." At certain
periods in your life, important people, or even life itself, through
events that affected you, ran up a series of debits or credits in terms
of what you needed. Time passed. You walked through life's revolving
door. And now you hand me the bill. And you hold two hidden expectations.
"Prove to me you are not the person who hurt me." In other words, "make
up to me for the past." "Pay me back." And, "if you don't, if you do one
thing that reminds me of that, I will punish you." The emotional transfer
is accomplished.
Freud described this as transference and identified it as a crucial
part of the therapeutic relationship. In fact, it is part of our everyday
transactions in relationships. It is crucial to understand that this
emotional transfer often does not take place early in a relationship. It
sets in after a couple has been married for some time--when you are
disappointed and discover what you expected or hoped to happen isn't
happening.
That is the point when we transfer the hidden expectations,
especially the negative ones, from our history, from any or all of our
previous close relationships, whether to parents, siblings, former
spouses, lovers, or friends. It is one of the core emotional transactions
of marriage. And making it explicit is one of the psychological tasks of
achieving intimacy.
The problem is, the person to whom you hand the bill is unaware of
the account books in your head. The result is endless misunderstanding
and disturbance. In fact, the attitudes you hold tend to be outside of
your own, awareness. I believe that they can be found through personal
exploration.
Otherwise, you find yourself thinking of your partner as the enemy,
someone to hurt, someone to get even with, to punish. And because you
don't recognize the ledger as the motivating power behind your behavior,
you rationalize. You seek reasons to treat your partner as the enemy. You
are really just evening up the balance on someone else's account.
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