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Hard Times
- COMMUNICATION/MISCOMMUNICATION
- SPOUSE/PARTNER/SIGNIFICANT OTHER
- LIFE DIRECTION/PURPOSE
DearJames,
My husband and I have been having a lot of negative energy which has caused a lot of petty fights: sometimes out of control. This is my second marriage and his first. I have three girls, ages 20, 17 and 8, and a grandson aged 2. He has two kids, a son, and a daughter, but has not seen them since birth. We just can never come to a conclusion on how to end the negativity and we don’t want to lose each other as we love each other too much to give up.
Anonymous
Dear Hard Times,
A little love and tenderness will go a long way in curing what ails the two of you.
There’s an abundance of mistrust, mismanagement, and misaligned agendas going on here that all lead to a continuous cycle of negativity.
Break the cycle, by breaking the bad habits.
Ingrained in each of you is a need to not be blamed, to not be the bad guy, to not be held accountable.
You push each other’s buttons, almost willfully / intentionally and then credulously fain victimhood when the negativity bus rolls up on its regularly scheduled tour stop.
It’s not that you don’t love each other for that’s a given. However, this is far more than that, this has become a way of life, a way of being, a way of coping.
Buried deep within each of you are hidden remnants of past bad acts. How you came to be together, whom you hurt along the way to be together, etc.
Left unaddressed, unowned, unprocessed these emotional life elements have sat festering in the silence of your psyches and souls.
Your routine outbursts are a resulting effect of the amount of charged energy these challenging memories have created within each of you.
No one wants to be the BAD GUY and honestly no one needs to be. What you do need though is greater communication.
Talk WITH one another, not AT one another. Listen to your husband speak without interrupting him and then ask that he do the same.
LISTEN with an open non-judgmental heart, mind, and being, and then seek to process what was said before commenting.
Sit with it, feel it, question it, accept it, understand it, then address it.
The most challenging aspect of any relationship or marriage is communication.
We talk, but we don’t really listen / hear.
We’re too busy in our own heads thinking about what we are going to say in return that we fail to HEAR what our significant other is actually telling us.
If you want to stop this repetitive cycle of negativity, choose a different bus. You already know where the existing bus takes you and neither of you like the destination.
Going forward, might you consider The COMMUNICATION EXPRESS?