Speak Up For Yourself if you Want Healthy Relationships Speak up and risk being erased by her mother’s wrath, or go along with her mother in order to keep the relationship in tact – that was the constant dilemma for 47 year-old-Nina, divorced with 4 teenage children. All her life, Nina had stifled her thoughts, [...]
Is it Okay to Fight in Front of the Kids? How often have you heard the saying that you shouldn’t fight in front of the kids? You’ve probably said that you shouldn’t fight in front of the kids to your spouse when things have gotten heated up. Maybe you have read parenting books that tell [...]
Have you hit a really rough spot in your marriage making it feel as if it's once strong and reliable foundation is about to crumble? Then you must be feeling very insecure and stressed. Do you wonder why your tried and trusted ways of being together and talking about things is no longer working? Perhaps the old ways are exactly the problem! When you first met your needs were different and you set up a system that suited you at the time. But now you have matured, become smarter with more experience. You may want the same things, but not in quite the same way. How do you have a conversation about that without making your partner feel criticized? How do you navigate without having a conflict?
At the age of fifty three Simon dropped dead one evening while sitting on the settee with a drink to unwind after his long and tense day. His three teenage children didn’t notice as they ran around absorbed in their cell phones, while his fifty year old wife Renee busied herself in the kitchen preparing dinner. Success in his limousine business had been hard to come by, but for the last 5 years he grew his customer base and brought home more money. The family home was just the way he and Renee had planned and he had a good network of support in his family and community. He belonged to the local gym, and liked to watch NASCAR racing with his friends. But one thing never got any better – that is the demands made on him by his wife, children, extended family and business partner.
Driving home from his last landscape design consult, thirty-three year old Craig’s stomach was in knots wondering if Sophie would have gotten over the row she had with her mother the other day. He felt bad for his wife who had tried and failed to arrange a family dinner, taking out her frustration on him. His temples began throbbing and his breathing became quick and shallow as he felt the overbearing sense of heaviness that came over him when he approached his front door.
Do you feel that you can't speak your mind because it will end in a misunderstanding, fight and hurt feelings? Are you regretful after you speak your truth because a loved one got upset and froze you out? Family relationship problems usually revolve around the way you make up after a relationship issue has caused tension, hurt, pain and anger. Maybe you feel guilty when you do speak your mind and then rush to compensate by being extra attentive to the family member who felt hurt by your remarks. You give your power to the one who feels wronged and then resent it later when you feel diminished by your enslavement towards atoning for your daring move to speak out. The relationship feels burdensome and heavy making you want to exit. You may cut it off so give yourself some relief. But it's harder to make up later. The effort and work that is needed to bring the relationship back to life is enormous. So why not learn how to repair family problems by taking care of the hurt before it turns into a gaping and lethal wound.
When you have tried as hard as you can to get through to your partner without success you may feel unheard, unseen and misunderstood. You try even harder to make your point, to show where you are coming from and what upsets you so much in the relationship. Your partner may be feeling equally frustrated and exasperated with failed attempts to get through to you about what's going on for them. So you both escalate, get even more angry and disappointed and worst of all you both end up terrified that you are never going to be able to communicate in a way that allows you to feel understood and attended to. Your arguments and fights get increasingly bitter with accusations and blame used as cannons in an attempt to break down the barricades of your partner's apparent refusal to see it your way. At that point you may think that the only way you can salvage the relationship is to go to couples therapy. Maybe an outside person can be more objective and act as a referee or mediator. Before you go to couples therapy, there are some crucial things you should be aware of:
Do you feel like your family members don't care about you the way you care about them? Are you always wondering whether you matter to your spouse, your mother, your father or a sibling? Then you must be in a constant state of anger and sadness that you do everything you can to prove your love and commitment but are left hanging when it comes to getting the same back from them. Perhaps you hear complaints about the caring not being sufficient or good enough during family conflicts.
For the millionth time that day twenty-seven year old receptionist Camille yelled at sound engineer Mario, her boyfriend of eight months. He was never on time, drove carelessly and today he had forgotten the address for her urgent dental appointment after promising to get her there punctually. What made it worse was his utter calmness in the face of her escalating outrage. It was if she were a mere twig on the road that he could go around and continue on his merry way. Camille rejected his hug and concern for her when she came out of the dental office. She ignored his interest in what she could eat and drink after her tooth extraction. Camille avoided any eye contact and refused to talk to him on the way home.
Does the stress of fighting with your loved one linger for hours if not days? Does the discomfort of the conflict turn into uncertainty about the status of the relationship? Then you must be aware that all that stress and anxiety clogs up the communication channels preventing transparency about how the relationship is faring from moment to moment. It’s an awful place when neither of you know what the other is thinking or feeling and so you jump to the worst case scenario, adding even more stress to an already charged situation. You are left holding your breath with anxiety about how things will turn out and what the long term damage will be to the nature of your connection. Why wait helplessly to find out how long the crack in the relationship will last or who if anyone should make the move to repair it? There is a much easier way to reestablish the connection you had before the conflict that can make you feel calmer, closer and more secure in the blink of an eye as Bridget and Patrick’s experience shows.
