I would suggest that if you are a living breathing person you will be challenged with all of the following at least a few times every 24 hours. 

I hope you meet the challenges and come out on top. 

In the event you do not come out on top, well, as I tell myself, life has a way of giving people fresh opportunities.

One can always try again tomorrow:

The temptations: 

• To compromise your integrity for popularity, profit, or the semblance of peace.
• To spend more money than you can afford on things you do not need.
• To be quiet when it is time to speak and to speak when it is time to be quiet..
• To appear to be listening when someone is talking.
• To ask questions without listening to the answers.
• To eat more than you need and waste food a hungry person would crave to enjoy.
• To speak ill of another and say things about the person you would probably not say were you face-to-face.
• To nurse relationships bruises and wounds and damages you thought you had already forgiven.
• To waste time and opportunity and resources without giving it too much thought.

Causes of joy…..

1. Generosity – giving more than you can afford.

2. Faith – in God and in the humanity of others.

3. Forgiveness – absolute, and especially when undeserved.

4. Transparency – living without deceit or hidden agenda.

5. Openness – willingness to try new things and new adventures.

6. Awareness – of the impact left on others and on the environment.

7. Kindness – treating others in a manner that fosters their highest good.

8. Assertiveness – finding your way without impeding the growth of others.

9. Usefulness – finding a meaningful place in a community.

10. Love – deciding to love without expecting recognition or reward.

High maintenance people require constant attention and seek constant approval. They crave to be the center of almost every conversation and will often become moody, resentful, loud, threatening when they are not. 

They analyze every move, thought, word and action of others, and then read more meaning into statements, looks, sighs, attitudes than was ever intended. 

They are easily hurt, quickly offended, quick to rebuke when they do not get the kind of attention they think they deserve. 

Threats of withdrawal or desertion become a way of life. 

High maintenance people are difficult, sometimes impossible, even in the most relaxed of circumstances. They pick fights, find fault, and personalize almost everything. They argue with people who are closest to them for no apparent reason. They often pick on strangers (waiters, helpers). They often live in a world of cut-off relationships where others are idiots and no one understands.

What can you do if you are in a relationship with a high maintenance person? 

You can do very little that will not hurt, offend, or get a reaction – but you must make a stand. 

High maintenance people seldom benefit from pity or patience or empathy. 

They will only benefit from being constantly challenged to grow up.

(Please do not use this post to “assess” others…… look only at your own behavior).

It may be comforting to know….

People are often stronger than they realize or know. Put to the test, people can accomplish amazing things and overcome huge hurdles. You can read such stories in the press most days — where “ordinary” people accomplish amazing things. Your inner-resources are probably largely untapped in the rhythms of day living. They will rush to the fore when you are under inordinate pressure. 

The inner-person within each of us has a vested interest in being well and in thriving. A lot depends on it. Do the right thing as you know it to be, and your inner-person will feel better, become an ally and will assist you in your search for greater emotional health. The smallest steps routinely employed toward greater emotional health will immediately begin to pay off and make a huge difference to your life. 

Your inner-being has a natural urge to connect, to make a difference in the lives of others, to create and then leave a legacy (large or small) and so it should not take a person by surprise if isolation from others is painful to the extreme. We were created for strong and lasting relationships and when we are deprived of them we feel it within our whole beings.

“I am in a cross-cultural and cross-religion marriage. Neither of us is active in our religions. He is, in his mind, the ‘master of the house.’ I am here, in his mind, to serve him and meet his needs. This attitude has come to the fore over the two years of our marriage. This is not the issue. I can handle this attitude and I can handle him. There are even times we can laugh about it and he is very nice. What is an issue is how he treats my family. He treats my parents and brothers and sisters as if they are second class citizens. He is rude and expects to be served. He’s better with the men in my family (my dad and brothers) but he is arrogant with the women. Please help.”

I am not sure culture or religion has anything to do with the predicament you describe. The manner in which your husband treats women reflects his character, not his faith or culture. There are men of diverse faiths and cultures who are paragons of virtue when it comes to respecting and treasuring women. Your husband is apparently a complicated man in need of help, face-to-face professional help.

“My boyfriend tells me what I can and cannot wear and gets all crazy and moody if I don’t agree or obey. What should I do?”

Buy him a mannequin and flee! He can dress the dummy in whatever clothes he deems suitable as often as he pleases. The mannequin will give him the total control he wants over you, and, since dummies are brainless, he will be able to win all arguments and keep “her” in total submission. 

That you ask the question suggests you are putting up a fight and resisting his advances on your brain. Small-minded men (any who dictate what “their” women wear, to whom they talk, how they spend and arrange their time) usually flee any sign of independent thinking on a woman’s part if, at first, they cannot kill it. Strong women frighten them since they confuse control and “love.” 

Don’t fall for it. Love and control are not even in the same family. A man who wants to dictate how you dress will also want to tell you how to think, feel, and see before long. Men who want to control “their” women do so because they are rarely capable of feeling in control of anything else. A healthy man will leave your clothing choices up to you unless you specifically elicit his opinion or unless he’s praising how you make an outfit come alive!

Have you been a caregiver?

If you have been a caregiver to your spouse, a parent, friend, for any length of time and now that person has died, you may expect:

• To feel that part of you is lost or gone because it is. Caring (end of life health care) requires love and deep unique bonding, a bonding other than how you are already bonded as spouse or son, daughter, parent or friend. In the separation, in your own way, you yourself are or probably wounded. Not damaged, wounded. Know the difference.
• To feel you are rattling in a cage of caring habits — no more required — and not quite sure of what to do or where to be. You feel pulled between responsibilities that no longer exist and feel irresponsible for not being present where you once were. In short, you don’t know where to be or what to do. It’s dizzying.
• To experience some guilt about the way things turned out, developed or did not develop. You flood with questions: was there more you could have done to ease pain, prolong life, usher healing? Was something crucial missed, forgotten?
• To feel guilty – at least momentarily – if you have fun.

Take heart. Like a child, who, arms outstretched, turns and turns until dizzy, falls to the ground, then rises to walk and appears to have had too much to drink, in the act of walking, balance and order gradually returns.

You will reorient after your double loss: a loved one and an integral role and find your feet.

May your heart be renewed and be full of warmth for others and full of great expectations. May you be sufficiently resilient to be able to embrace those who are unfamiliar with a warm welcome and are therefore prone to regard it and you with suspicion.

May you know and see and experience the goodness of which you are capable and the courage to let it have its full way with you.

May you have childlike eyes. May they be filled with joy and wonder as you allow yourself to see familiar things in new ways with “new” eyes.

May your thoughts dwell on the goodness around you. May you spread the goodness you enjoy and focus on your great and healthy future. 

May your words be soft and sweet and encouraging, while, at the same time, you remain unafraid to speak your mind with courage and conviction.  

May your hands be open to give and to receive. May your touch be gentle and comforting on the lonely and those who are afraid. May your touch bring comfort,  healing, kindness, and relief to those who most need it and who may least expect it.

May your friendships deepen and expand.

May malice and contempt from you, and for you, cease that you return to no person evil for evil.

“My daughter was previously married and has two children from that marriage. Her two boys are five and eight. My daughter married again, a man with twin sons (9). Together, in the new marriage, they have a girl. My daughter has an ex-husband (who loves his children). Her new husband has an ex-wife (who loves her twins). There are periods when this ‘blended’ family seems to work, but it seems things are unraveling and the marriage will soon end. My daughter is asking for help.”

My heart goes out to all the participants in this difficult circumstance. 

Blending families is among the hardest challenges any couple in second and third marriages will ever face. 

There are always multiple levels of loyalties and commitments, pushes and pulls, recognized and unrecognized. 

There will be times when everybody will feel “in the middle” and “left out” and “picked on” purely as a result of the number of relationships in the family and the busyness of daily living.

I trust your daughter and her husband both know that ending the marriage will only multiply complexities.

While your daughter may not have the time or desire to read I’d strongly suggest “Extraordinary Relationships” by Roberta Gilbert. It’s quick, it pulls no punches, and it empowers the willing reader to make healthy shifts in the most difficult and complicated families.

Closeness, vulnerability, illness,  can evoke common fears: 

• The fear of exposure, of being discovered as a fraud, fake, failure, someone  who has been able to masquerade successes.
• The fear of abandonment, of discovering no one stayed or remained faithful to friendships, even to the continued enjoyment of familial connections.
• The fear of aloneness, of discovering there is no-one in your circle, your corner, there is no-one on your team. 
• The fear of total dependence, of discovering you are in the hands of strangers, helpers or nurses who talk loudly, speak in commands, regard you as overly needy, a person without a story and without a rich history. 
• The fear of having unfinished business, of having no time or opportunity to find or establish completion, to close the circle, to express regrets, to ask for forgiveness. 
• The fear of being surrounded by people for whom being right, being correct trumps and semblance of mercy. 

Love drives fear. Fear drives out love. May you and I, by grace alone, be the antidote to men and women who harbor such fears.