- Lower functioning people require more and more control.
- Higher functioning people want greater levels of freedom for all.
- Lower functioning people place obstacles (hurdles, doubts, misgivings) in the way of those who are higher functioning often without even knowing it.
- Higher functioning people know that self-definition and acts of strong leadership will face resistance in the form of doubts and misgivings from those who are less inclined to grow.
- High functioning people want mercy and justice and equity for all even if it means great personal cost.
- Lower functioning people operate out of a desire for revenge or to “teach them a lesson.”
- High functioning people do not regard themselves as victims while lower functioning people arrange their lives and often their livelihood around victimhood.
- The person who wants a relationship the most (any relationship) shifts the balance of power into the hands of he or she who wants it least.
- Every time a person wants to do something great or adventurous or thrilling someone will try to put a stop to it.
- Grace and forgiveness and generosity are among the most powerful forces of change in any family or community and the one who embraces them immediately increases his or her level of functioning.
March 29, 2017
High and low functioning
March 14, 2017
I ask a woman….
I ask a woman how her life is going and she tells me about her children. She’s very forthcoming. I hear about their failures and successes and their disappointments and their accomplishments in sports.
So I ask again how she is enjoying her life and she tells me about her children’s teachers and how dedicated they are and how they go the extra mile for her sons and how much she appreciates it and how happy her sons are at school.
I persist and ask her if she has any close friends and how much time she spends with her peers and she tells me how her sons’ friendships are a little disappointing to her and that sometimes they get left off birthday party lists and how much it hurts her when that happens and how she wishes adults were more sensitive to her children.
I ask the same woman who happens to also be a wife how she is enjoying her husband and she tells me they “work together” as parents and they are almost always on the “same page.”
I press in and ask the woman if she has a life outside of being a mom and she gives me that blank look as if I have no idea what I am talking about.
March 4, 2017
Do you love your life?
The Mercury / Monday (3-6-2017)
Do you love your life – or at least most of it?
I hope so. It must be terrible to wake up every day having to face a job you resist in order to provide for people who find you difficult and in whom you may find repeated displeasure. I feel ill thinking of it. It gives me a heavy feeling that I would hate to have to haul around all and every day.
Perhaps you have no job and that may be the source of at least some of your displeasure.
Perhaps you have no family or zero support from family you do have.
I am very aware of how much family and friends form the scaffolding of my life, making so much difference to me when things are tough.
No matter what your circumstance – and I declare this as loudly and forcefully to myself as I do to you: you are what you’ve got. You are your most powerful asset, and, you’d better make the most of it.
Someone wiser than I – and I’d give full credit if I knew the source – said, “we see the world, not as it is, but as we are.”
I’d suggest we also love others, not as they are, but as we are.
Peace. Have a fabulous, loving, and aware week.
July 20, 2012
Colorado Shooting Spree
Watch. In no time at all some will blame the parents of the infant who was shot. It’s common to blame victims in our culture.
This is a travesty. Everyone of us ought fall to the ground in grief that such a thing occur in a cinema anywhere, let alone in the USA.
July 17, 2012
The joy of our humanity
Is found in our connection with others (a connection sufficiently powerful so that we are not alone) and can therefore give and receive strength to and from each other. It is yet separate enough so that we not drain each other of the adventure of being unique and distinct beings. This is one of the greatest blessings accompanying our humanity and, when it fails, it becomes the source of exceedingly powerful pain.
June 30, 2011
How to make the (your) world a better place
It is within my power (albeit limited) to make this an extraordinary day, to be followed by an extraordinary weekend.
I have the ability required (albeit limited) to be a loving, kind, firm, and responsible member of my family, my neighborhood, and my city.
I know how to serve others – and I will do so with a thankful heart.
I know how to listen to others – and I will do so with an attentive ear.
I know how to live a generous life – and I will give and help relieve the suffering of others.
Today, and this weekend, all people in my circle of influence will be better off for knowing me.
Children will get my ear.
The elderly will get my time.
Persons within my most intimate circle will get both.
I will not complain about anything. I will not pick on people. I will not focus on what is wrong with the world, but will try to be part of the healing it so desperately needs. I will live today, and this weekend, with a deep sense of gratitude, paying careful attention to the beauty and the vibrancy of life everywhere.
June 28, 2011
My wife had an affair and I am finding it hard to trust her……
The following theme comes to my attention at least several times a month: My wife had an affair. I am finding it hard to trust. Please help.
I can't MAKE you trust me
Trusting a spouse has nothing to do with your spouse. It has everything to do with you.
Each person determines his or her levels of trust with all other people – spouse included. If you hadn’t noticed, you trust people in different ways all the time.
I am not suggesting a wayward partner be fully trusted. This is exactly the point. Trust according to your levels of ability to trust, given the history and the circumstances you face.
“Prove I can trust you,” is unfair. If you are one given to suspicion nothing anyone can do will meet your standards. It is likely you will find holes given the most innocent of scenarios. This is the very nature of suspicion. It eats into everything, nothing ultimately satisfies.
A couple shipwrecked by an affair can survive. I have seen it many times. But the couple will face many challenges while the offended partner constantly seeks assurance or repeatedly brings up the past or plays the hurt puppy.
It takes two to tangle – affairs occur in a context.
It takes ONE to be unfaithful – don’t blame your partner for your actions.
It takes two to find reconciliation.
Trust can be fully restored, little by little over an extended period of time.
May 20, 2011
“Death is easier than divorce – at least it’s final”…. a reader writes….
“How I agree with your column today – break-ups hurt. I have been divorced for four years, and it still hurts. The what ifs – what if I had been kinder, more understanding, what if he had treated me better so I could have been kinder. And so it goes on and on. If you got together again, you know, or think, it would all be different. If only. If only. If only. You drive yourself insane.
“I maintain death is easier than divorce. Death is final. Everyone rallies around to support you in your time of grief. They keep asking how you are, they include you in their lives, where possible, and check that you aren’t lonely. I know this doesn’t last forever – but I do know that it happens. Some groups make a roster and supply meals for a week or two. Then there’s the anniversary of the death – cards, phone calls, people letting you know they care. Maybe a notice in the Newspaper.
“Divorce, on the other hand, is never final. Friends are uncomfortable with you and most don’t support you in, yes, your time of grief. They don’t ask how you are coping and whether you are lonely. In fact, they almost pretend that nothing has happened and, due to embarrassment, some even avoid you. They don’t realise, unless they’ve been there, that what has happened is a huge emotional upheaval. There’s no anniversary – you remember the date of the final separation, but no one else does. No phone calls, no cards, no friends and relations letting you know they care.
“And, no one brings you a meal!”
May 1, 2011
Is it okay to hate my mother
Is it okay to hate my mother? She is loud, inappropriate, pushy, and demanding. I know I can’t change her but I must be able to change how guilty I feel about not being happy to see her. She barges into our house. She talks crudely to my children. She is mocking of any attempts to talk on any meaningful level. I am a single mother of two teenagers.
Hate is an emotional toxic spill
As long as you are able and willing to face the consequences, you can do anything you want.
Of course, not everything you are able to do is helpful, wise, or accompanied by helpful outcomes. This is something we are repeatedly told as children and sometimes fail to learn even as adults.
So – yes, you are free to hate your mother. The consequences of doing so are unlikely to be helpful to you. Hating anyone is usually harmful to the one who does the hating, but hating a parent, is especially personally damaging.
Hating a parent erodes essential, vital, invisible connections that help us all to remain somewhat sane.
Hating anyone allows the hate to do a number on our insides. It distorts our responses, reactions, perceptions, and attitudes to ALL other people, and not only our relationship with the person whom we have chosen to hate.
The hate may be targeted; the results are generic. Hate is an emotional toxic spill. It ruins the host more than the victim.
While your mother’s repertoire is jam packed with unattractive themes, hating her will ultimately destroy you, burn your house down (figuratively, of course) and alienate you from your own adult children.
You will move toward greater, and real love for her if you increase your capacity to be rejected by her and stand up to her and refuse to be her victim. Do not give your mother free passage to pollute your family yet, at the same time, offer her some manner in which to remain connected with you on terms that are acceptable to you.
Yes, hate is an option, but it is not an option that will result in the kind of growth (not all “growth” is helpful) within you that will be helpful.
Walking powerfully toward her (initiating, defining, declaring, welcoming, clarifying) will empower you with ALL other people.
You are no longer a child. Use your adult voice and do not allow her to manipulate, dominate, or intimidate you. Strive for an equal, mutual, respectful relationship with your mother so that she will learn how to behave herself when she is with you and your family.
I know this is a tall order, but the results, of even failed attempts on your terms, will result in the kind of empowering and growth you want, rather than lead you ever deeper into the shame you are already feeling.
Rejecting her will diminish you. It will rob you of your voice. It will enlarge her power to dominate and control you.
If you hate your mother she won’t have to barge into your house to upset you, she’ll be living in your head, even if you never see her or have nothing to do with her.
difficultrelationships.com 