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Seeking to "get your needs met" in a relationship will not improve it. Neither will just solving problems. Besides the fact that these are often veiled attempts at manipulating your partner into doing what you want, they are likely to increase the emotional reactivity at the heart of your discord. To improve your relationship, you have to change your emotional reality. Read More
Failed at creating emotional reality?
When we fail with relationships, it can be really hard on us. One thing that really helps is to be able to vent out our anger, frustration and confusion. But what do you do when you don't have friends or family willing to listen to you whine and wallow in pity? I've found that there are places online you can vent things out anonymously and still have people listen and even give advice. On of my favorites is http://www.ventpark.com/parks/relationships/
The best way to repeat the same mistakes
Catharsis doesn't work
The catharsis hypothesis was debunked ages ago. "Catharsis" makes things worse, not better.
I find this a fascinating
I find this a fascinating approach, and I think there's a lot of wisdom in it. However, it's also very idealistic (in the philosophical sense), that is, it seems to presuppose that reality is in our head more than actually out there in the world. In this sense, it has a lot in common with stoicism.
The hazard of this as I see it is willful blindness to what's actually going on. Why be concerned about a partner's profligate spending or even infidelity if you can just create your own emotional reality? Heck, why even bother so much with finding a suitable partner to begin with? Anyone will more or less serve, so long as you will yourself to be a loving partner. This is extreme devil's advocacy I know, but it seems to be implied in the point of view.
Where are your emotions?
What if your partner is one who crosses that line into abuse?
Generally your advice makes sense to me for most marriages. It is a confusing, and difficult line to walk, when your partner is abusive at times. Is your advice different for those situations?
I am reading your book "Love without Hurt" and my husband started doing the bootcamp section but he isn't really following through on it. I really like the book and your approach.
Abuse differences
Thank you for clarifying, & a question
I appreciate the clarification. It is true. I felt myself becoming so resentful and cold and trying to be selfish as a way of protecting myself & it just made me feel worse. Reclaiming my compassion feels much better regardless of what he does.
I have a question about your book. I hope it is okay to ask here. If not, just let me know.
I noticed that in "Love without Hurt" there are core value exercises about comforting a child in both the section for wives, and the bootcamp section for husbands. The scenario for wives involves sharing scarce water while lost in the desert with a child who would die without it, even though sharing also puts you at greater risk of dying in the desert.
The scenario in the bootcamp is about providing emotional comfort to a child who had just been in an auto accident. In that scenario, providing the comfort is probably only a minor time inconvenience.
I was wondering if there is a reason that you made the stakes so much higher in the wives section versus the bootcamp instead of using the desert scenario in both.
Metaphorical vs. instrumental
No, it has more to do with the fact that men tend to be more instrumental about emotional experience and are more likely to be thinking of how to get out of the desert with the child. When help is on the way, as in the accident, they can focus more on increasing value for the child. But that's minor - I have interchanged them with men and women.
As I review the last
As I review the last comment, it occurs to me that your approach relies on the famous blindness of love in the first place, a blindness that notoriously fades after a year or so but which you propose to maintain over time. It's worth a try...
From the above
Your mother does not work here anymore
This article really spoke to me. If our need for love and support is not being met by our partner, becoming bitchy and horrible to them is certainly not going to fix the problem. I love the quote by Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world". It's about leading by example. And sure it's no fun to be an adult sometimes, but we can't all be kids forever either. I think that's what too many people expect in their adult relationships. This article to me is about being emotionally mature, giving love in order to receive it, and not attacking your spouse for failing to please you. I like that you said compassion is contagious. It IS and not just within the home. Thanks, Steven, for your insight.
problem is confusion
Dear Dr. Stosny- I find your blog to be insightful and I also appreciated your book. I agree with much of what you write, but for me the problem is questioning my sense of reality after an interaction with my partner which leaves me doubting myself. For example, she'll say something about what I did or didn't do, and for months I would literally doubt my own sanity because I really didn't think I did X or Y.
I'd love to be better at reaching my core value and being more compassionate but I find it's so hard when I can't even figure out what actually happened in an interaction, and I find myself internalizing messages from her about all sort of things which I think are projections onto me but I'm no longer sure. (She had a terrible childhood and has some great sensitivities.)
I'm neither Attila nor Theresa, and therein is the stumbling block- when one feels accused it's hard to do an accurate self-assessment.
Choose value
Hi again. Thank you for your
Hi again. Thank you for your thoughtful and caring reply, with which I agree in principle.
In practice, however, where things get very stuck is a pattern where it's not so much a struggle about who is "right" over subjective things but over basic facts: "you didn't do X," "you did X", when I know what I didn't or didn't do. Again- not something subjective like "you used a tone in your voice" but something hard and fast, like "you didn't feed the dogs."
Then the struggle is: "admit you're lying," and here's where your model breaks down: my values say, admit it, and the conflict will go away, but then I feel like I'm giving my soul away. When our conflicts get to the point where I can't say, "I care about your hurt" because the response will be "then admit you're wrong and you lied about feeding the dogs" (or whatever the issue is) then I have no idea what the core value response is. Is it to reduce conflict in the moment by admitting something I know isn't true?
Is it to just walk away? Is it to stand my ground?
That's where all the confusion comes it.
all the best,
j
It's not "Just the facts, Ma'm"
The problem is never just the facts. Your wife is reacting to a pattern of perceived betrayal or, at least, unreliability. You have to address her expectation that you let her down, which will probably require intensive therapy.
Unless she is psychotic, which I doubt, I'm sure she would give a very different description of your disputes. She would probably say that you don't see her or hear her or make any attempt to get her. In other words, an isolation terror makes her rigid about the facts and her expectation that you will let her down.
If you can be up front about the perceived pattern of betrayal in your relationship, you will stop seeing it as a struggle over facts and respond to her accusations without defensiveness: "I will try harder to show you I care for you and to restore trust to our relationship." But if you see her as psychotic or see yourself as a victim, you have no chance of improving. Compassion is not agreeing with facts; it is caring about someone’s pain, even if, after careful soul-searching, you truly think it is self-inflicted.
Does the codependent spouse
Does the codependent spouse operate out of compassion, pity, or fear? Especially when their partner is abusive in all respects, physically, verbally, and psychologically?
Compassion
Compassion will make her realize that staying in the abusive situation is endangering her, her partner, and their children. Pity and fear will keep her stuck and inevitably give way to contempt, which will probably cause more abuse.
I have a friend who is stuck
I have a friend who is stuck in this cycle right now. In her codependency, she feels it's her responsibility to "fix" and "help" her abuser. I've tried to tell her that only HE can "fix" and "help" himself, and since he apparently does not want to, she needs to look to her own safety first.
However, all the relationships she's known (including those of her alcoholic parents) have been one in which she's been the supportive codependent. I cannot see a way to help her out of this cycle of bad-relationship-decisions she makes -- and I have no intention of making myself HER codependent (how messed up would THAT be???!)
It reminds me of an old joke: making the same bad decision over and over again is like taking the milk out of the refrigerator, realizing that it's spoiled, but saying to yourself: "I'll put it back and try tasting it again later -- maybe THEN it'll be good!" The ability to change responses to situations when a first response does not work seems to me to be an INTEGRAL life-skill we just aren't taught.
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