Rod Smith, MSMFT
Probably not. Until you change your behavior and refuse victimhood matters will deteriorate. You desire relief from pain without spending the necessary “clean” pain to get there. Insight is useless when people are unwilling to change and, something in this sad scenario works for you – or you would have moved on years ago.
Yes. You are uncomfortable, but apparently not sufficiently uncomfortable to plan a major move. About losing him? That’s already occurred.
Rod Smith, MSMFT
“I am a high maintenance or attention seeking person. Having looked over the relationships that I have had, especially with women, I have found that I crave attention. If I do not get it to my seeming satisfaction, I get resentful or am smugly superior to the people. Sometimes this is very subtle. It can stem from being turned down for a date or not having Lower your expectations of others....a call returned. In relationships I am jealous if I am not the center of activity. I seem to be never satisfied or trusting. I seem to be always afraid I will not get the attention that I crave. I fully agree with the need to grow up and not be so sensitive, so here’s the question: coming to the realization is great, but what actions can I take to help me become less needy of the affirmation of others?” (Edited)
Change is initially internal, beginning with awareness. The nature of your issue makes it a private journey – if you ask your friends for help, in a weak moment you are likely to blame others when you fail. Read every available book available on personal boundaries. Keep on reading, journaling, and lowering your expectations of others.
Jean Hatton
Toxic levels will strangle you....
Toxic anxiety will make you partially deaf to what others are saying and you will only hear what you want to hear. It will make you partially blind to what is going on around you and will see what you want to see. It will make you hyper-sensitive to the actions of others and less aware of your own behavior.
Your anxiety levels will reduce if you….
1. “De-triangle” yourself by getting out of the middle of relationships that do not directly involve you.
2. Re-connect (appropriately) with people to whom you are related – especially when it is by “blood” (it is virtually impossible to be enduringly emotionally well if you have cut off “blood” relationships).
3. Step out of the role of being a peacekeeper (one who avoids and helps others avoid necessary and helpful conflict) and step into the role of being a peacemaker (one who welcomes and facilitating necessary and helpful conflict).
Love her mother....
1. Dedicate yourself to your daughter to the same degree you enjoyed the dedication of your own mother and father. You could not have had better parents.
2. Love, serve, and honor your partner. Loving your child’s mother is the single most powerful way you can love your daughter.
3. Be as committed to honesty with your child as you were with others when you were a boy.
4. Don’t let the mundane, but necessary, tasks wear the joy out of you. Babies need fun more than they need clean nappies.
5. Go away for an overnight and a full day often with your daughter – just the two of you. Get no help packing or planning from anyone.
6. Finally, leave the teaching to your daughter. She will teach you how to be her dad more effectively anything you will ever teach her.
(Name used with permission)
I am Muslim and my husband (5 years) is Christian. Initially I was crying all the time – about why my family don’t they accept my husband –feeling guilty about how I made others feel and hurting my family in the process. Recently I planned a party for our child and wondered if my family would come. Days before I got messages from cousins declining. It really hurt us. My husband called the party off and in the tenth hour I managed to secure some family and friends to save the day. One cousin said I put the family in an awkward position by inviting them. My own mum won’t come to my house but is all nice when my husband gets to her home. Her not coming to my home annoys me. I cannot have that hard conversation with her because I’m afraid of where it will land up. Since last year I decided to make my own nuclear family work for me and I haven’t missed the extended family too much. Should I write them off? Should I invest more heartache or must I continue with my husband and two kids? (Letter shortened)
Jean Hatton
I would suggest that you not ‘write your extended family off’ but look at their struggle realistically and accept them in the battles that they are going through. Don’t stop inviting them to important family gatherings and celebrations, but always give them a choice about attending, and then accept their decisions…drop your expectations on their seeing and accepting you and your family like you want them to.
It is far from easy for them. Heartache and energy have to do with expectations which will set you up for more and more disappointments.
You won’t be able to change them.
It might be a good idea if you asked your family if you they would like to continue receiving invitations – perhaps they would welcome the response of you knowing how difficult it must be for them and be released from ‘having to attend’.
A Muslim man writes: When I read your letter, I felt great disheartenment, I have neither met you nor do I know you from a bar of soap, I felt the way I did simply because you are a Muslim and I am striving to be a Muslim. We have no other connection. From your family’s point of view they must feel a hundred times more sadness than me.
I don’t think you should ignore your family and “carry on”. There is a problem, you have sought help, follow through and resolve the issue. There is an ideological disagreement between Islam and Christianity, without going into great comparison between the 2 systems of belief…the 2 cannot co-exist in a single family unit. I think that you might not be “living” Islam, you might acknowledge it’s teachings but have not fully implemented it in your daily life…this is why you have been able to remain married for 5 years.
The solution is to engage your husband in what he believes, he must do the same with you, until the 2 of you come to an agreement on which is the best path. Ask questions of each other and if you do not know, seek out the answer from people who have knowledge. You haven’t said anything about your children, what do you want them to believe in? The path they choose is up to them, but certainly you want them to believe in 1 system of belief or the other. I must state that you should take my advise with a pinch of salt, as I want to be a Muslim, I am prejudiced in favour of Islam.
A Muslim woman writes: My sister who is a muslim has a Christian boyfriend. She wants to marry him, but not in a church. Islam will not recognise their union whether in a court of law or in the church, neither will it sanction a marriage between a christian man & the muslim lady. The Muslim lady who “married” the Christian man knows this. She was already ready to accept this when she married the man.Why does she want approval from her muslim mother who understands the law of Islam.She made a decision which had nothing to do with religion but a love for a man.Why does she frustrates herself in wanting to force her mother to go against her Islamic beliefs.
Religion is one of the biggest conntributors of quarrels. However for most of us who are staunch in our beliefs, we are not going to go against it. My advise to the Muslim lady, is live your life however you want with your set of values, but do not infringe your so called values on others and expect them to shun the teachings of the Quran for your happiness.You know better.
“I have had numerous chances to cheat in my marriage but did not allow myself to do so, and I would avoid putting myself in difficult situations. Why? Because I love the person I am with too much and did not want to hurt or be untrustworthy to my loved ones. I have never cheated in my 28 years of marriage. I admit that much of my strong beliefs would have to do with my upbringing. My parents gave us values, moral, ethics, and discipline which have made me the strong person I am today. I’ve never even gone through any drugs,drinking, or smoking periods that some youths go through. I know not all children are fortunate enough as I’ve been to stay strong with ‘life’s sins.’ I suppose it may sound like I’m judging, but I’m not. It just seems to me if you really love the person you are with, you won’t hurt them, but some people fall out of love and may see things differently than I do.” (Letter – posted as a comment – minimally edited)
I see the writer’s choice to be committed to his or her spouse, a determination to maintain integrity, and a deep sense of gratitude to his or her fortunate history – a recipe for success and fulfillment.
In the light of the up-and-coming Soccer World Cup in South Africa (where this column published daily in hard-copy) and, in the wake of the Indianapolis Colt’s sad loss in the Super Bowl (I live in Indianapolis), I thought I’d throw this together for athletes, both amateur and professional.
Handling defeat.....
1. Look your opponents in the eyes and acknowledge their momentary superiority.
2. Pick up, as soon as possible, where you were in the moments before your loss.
3. Nurse your wounds but do not allow them to cripple you.
4. Speak well of the opponents, referees, the opposition fans, the conditions, the shape of the contest or game – anything else makes you sound like a bitter, poor loser.
5. Avoid “if we,” “when we,” “you should have” kind of talk – nothing can turn back the clock.
6. Constant replays of your errors will poison your preparation for the future – focus on what you or the team did well.
7. Live, and talk, as if your immediate loss is preparation for future victory.
8. Get up, look up, and get going. Loss of one event or season does not have to translate into further failure.
9. Embrace the world beyond your sports, victories and losses – there is more to life than winning and losing.
ACT, Australia
I (we) have come to 42 years of marriage years because:
1. I took responsibility for my own life and own happiness and stopped depending on my husband to make me happy.
2. I began to discover who I was in the relationship…and stopped becoming what my husband wanted me to be.
3. I gave myself permission to have a ‘voice’ – and listened to the person inside me – the one who had never been listened to before – and in that way, I began to discover my value as an individual. I wasn’t just a wife and mother but a unique individual with gifts and talents, strengths and weaknesses.
4. I also sought help from a professional because the things that I just described to you, I couldn’t do on my own. I needed help. The person I saw gave me another perspective of my life that I had never seen before. It was in that place that I found hope and a new beginning as a new world opened up before me.
Marriage is still work for us but I discovered that the relationship, no matter how difficult, can also be a way to grow and learn more about myself as well as give to my spouse what he needs in our relationship. Both of us by the way came from dysfunctional homes where we hadn’t learned how to relate in a healthy way.
Rudi Lack is one of my heroes...
YWAM’s Rudi Lack (who died this past week) arrived and his faith, determination, charisma, good-humor, and desire to know and love the nations of the world, hit me like a ton of bricks. He was my very first YWAMMER.
Rudi:
1. Watched himself on our TV (very new to South Africa at that time) being interviewed on a show I seem to remember was called Crossroads. This was much to the amusement of our maid who had hardly ever seen TV let alone had she been in the same room as someone who was “on” it.
2. Having just completed a tour from an Asian country, he was lugging the largest “portable” radio/tape/speaker system I had ever seen and gave me the freedom to use it. When the batteries (eight of them) ran down I replaced them. I recall bagging them in a little brown paper sack and putting them in the trash. Then I retrieved them from the trash – and then, I questioned the wisdom of saving old and used and already-replaced batteries and placed them once again in the trash. That night when Rudi returned from his day of activities and the trash was already gone, Rudi asked where the “used” batteries were. Rudi announced that I’d disposed of his 8 rechargeable-cell batteries. “Did God not give you a ‘check’ in your spirit? Did you not hesitate and wonder why?” Rudi asked. I recounted what had occurred and he playfully scolded me for not listening. It took days (and a great deal of my cash) to find replacement rechargeable batteries – the existence of which, prior to Rudi’s visit, I was unaware. I am still trying to hear the “check” in my spirit (about much more than re-chargeable batteries) and think of Rudi every time.
3. While visiting, Rudi wanted prayer cards made for every country in the world. He knew exactly what he wanted and how much God had told him to spend. I drove him all over Durban from printer to printer for at least three days until we found a man who knew exactly what Rudi wanted and quoted the price that was exactly what Rudi had heard from God. I recall my annoynace hearing Rudi reject a printer who wanted to do the same job for less money.
4. Seated for our first breakfast in my home, I decided that since this man of God was at my table, I’d better pray over our meal. Closing my eyes, I invited Rudi to join me: “For what we are about to receive, may The Lord ….” I nervously began, only to feel Rudi looking at me and not participating in my great act of faith. “Brother,” he said interrupting me, “Do you want to pray or not?” Rudi proceeded to take a folded map of the world from his shirt pocket, laid it out on the table, and “prayed up a storm” for the World God so loved. I think this was my first ever occasion to hear someone pray for anything or anyone other than his or her own needs.
5. When Rudi preached at my church I responded to the prayer for my “tent pegs to be enlarged” (whatever that meant to me at the time) for my “boundaries to be enlarged” (again, whatever that meant) – and, when I saw Rudi, when I ran into him quite by chance, several times in subsequent years in Kona, Hawaii and in Mangere, New Zealand, when I myself was on teaching and preaching trips, I’d remind him of those days at my home and how indeed I believed our prayers had been answered.
“Keep telling me about it,” he’d say, “Of course, I remember it all……”
Rest in peace Rudi, or shall I say, do whatever you want in heaven, just allow others to rest, if you can! Thanks for those few treasured days in my boyhood home, where you showed up and showed me what passion for people and for the world really looks like.
difficultrelationships.com 