1. Be aware of the unique, honored position I have in your life, and regard it with the respect it deserves.
2. Hear you, even if you are telling me things I’d rather you not say.
3. Be willing to disagree with you, when, in my estimation, you are wrong, off target, or unfair in your actions or thinking.
4. Forgive you when you hurt me, even though I will sometimes make it very clear to you how the hurt occurred.
5. Expect the very best of you and applaud your use of all of your skills and talents.
6. Tell you the truth as I see it, as kindly, efficiently, and succinctly as possible.
7. Live my life as purposefully as possible in my daily journey toward fulfilling the deepest, most powerful yearnings of my head and heart.
8. Be generous to you (without giving you money) and be kind to you (without trying to solve your problems).
9. Not inflict my anxiety upon you.
10. Stand on my own two feet without pushing you over.
11. Engage you in necessary conflict that I may love you more powerfully.
12. Speak well of you in every circumstance.
Because I am your friend I will…
Our daughter (26) constantly asks for money
“My daughter (26) constantly asks for money. She gets dead-end jobs and we have to pay her accounts (bills). We go without while she has everything. She has to have a car (to get to her job) and a cell phone (in case she gets the offer of a better job) and new clothes (to dress for an interview) and in the meantime her dad and I are forking out every month! Please help.” (Letter consolidated)
While you “fork out” your daughter has no motivation to change! Your niceness assists your mutual destruction. Stop. Today! Stop paying a cent toward anything for her. Turn off the source. I know I’ll be flooded with Emails suggesting I am hard, unkind, and don’t understand. I’ll be told it is clear that I am not a mother! Others will tell me things are different in South Africa and because I live in the USA I am out of touch with what it is like to be young in South Africa. Gosh, your daughter is 26! How much longer will you allow her to live like a dependent child. She is an adult.
Spoilt young adults (believe me America is full of them) are spoilt young adults no matter where they live. While you persist in bailing your daughter out, she will persist in giving you a hole into which you can throw your money. Stop. This is YOUR problem, not hers.
Emotionally exhausted? Here are some ways to find restoration…
Take up your life....
1. Speak up where you might previously have remained silent.
2. Realize that not everything you think and feel has to be said or reported.
3. Focus on your own behavior and not the behavior of others. (This might be the most difficult of the 11 suggestions).
4. Rid your life of all blame.
5. Realize you are where you are as a result of your own choices.
6. Set small, secret goals involving no one but you.
7. Refuse to compromise when it comes to telling the truth no matter how much love may be involved.
8. Forgive where you might have previously have been resentful.
9. Do not function in roles not legally yours (don’t play wife if your are not, or dad if you are not).
10. Grasp the fact that emotional health is an individual journey and no one can be held responsible for your journey toward greater emotional health but you.
11. Clarify, for yourself, where you end and others begin. (This IS me, my issue, my responsibility: this is NOT me, my issue, my responsibility).
Please say something about addictions. I think I see one occurring in our family..
Three questions to ask to establish the presence of an addiction:
1. Are there physical symptoms related to the behavior or to the absence of the behavior (cravings, ideation, longing, preoccupation)?
2. Is there loss, or threatened loss, of close relationships (breakups of marriage or friendships) as a direct result of the behavior?
3. Has there been a loss of face or position in a community (job loss, police intervention, credit issues, repossession of a car) as a result of the behavior?
While the three as above are a guide, there are other symptoms?
1. Lying (covering) about the behavior through excuses or downright lies.
2. Expecting others to lie and cover the behavior (for instance a spouse and children are drawn into the behavior and the behavior becomes a family secret – even if “don’t tell” is not used).
3. Expecting others to show their love by expressing understanding and tolerance for the behavior.
It is important to see the subtle pull the (growing) addiction has on ALL of the members of the family or community. People assume roles according to the call of the addiction (gambling, alcohol, sex, drugs, porn) and non-addicts start (often unaware of their behavior) to align themselves with the addict in ways that perpetrate the behavior. For instance, a wife who rejects the abuse of alcohol, and who is generally a truthful person, will call the husband in sick and say he has a fever when in fact he is too drunk to work.
Addictions are often family issues revealed in the person who is “acting out.”
Fixing others, in the hope of finding happiness….
I got a visit from Jill today. She spent an hour telling me all the things wrong with her boyfriend, Jack. Word, words, words, details and more details filled the room. I decided there is no human, no matter how loving, kind and patient, who could fill the hole of dissatisfaction in Jill’s life. She is so convinced that if she can just “fix” Jack and make him the “right” kind of person, all her unhappiness will cease.
Jill demonstrated again that unhappy people have an uncontrollable urge to meddle in the lives of others. This is most evident with “loved” ones. To try to fix, coerce, push, and make others into what we think they should be, is not the fruit of love. Love doesn’t do any of these things. It offers support and encouragement when someone wants to change but it resists the temptation to try and change others.
Oh, dear Jill, get your eyes off all that is “wrong” with Jack, and see that your misery continues because you refuse to accept others as they are. Focus on what you can improve about who you are. Give Jack, and the imperfect world around you, a break!
Attraction to a co-worker: should I tell him….?
READER: I am feeling very attracted to a co-worker. This attraction has not gone anywhere yet. I do not want to ruin my marriage. In the interests of honesty should I tell this man about my feelings to deflate the attraction?
ROD: Absolutely not – your feelings of attraction to this man are not about this man, in fact, (unless he is encouraging you) your feelings have nothing to do with him!
Here’s the axiom: You have the feeling – you have the problem.
If you are going to express this to anyone, in an attempt to “deflate the attraction,” it ought to be your husband. Such a conversation, were it to occur, must be handled with great care. Tread carefully. It takes great maturity for a couple to discuss matters that appear to be undermining their primary relationship.
Dealing with abusive behavior from someone who as quickly will say they love you…
A few thoughts on dealing with inappropriate or threatening behavior like shouting, swearing, pushing, restricting movement, drunkenness, withholding keys, wallet, or personal items from someone, who will also then will claim, usually within a very short time, to love you:
1. If your most intimate relationship has degenerated to any one of the mentioned behaviors, ask yourself if this is the kind of relationship you really want. Is this how you want to spend your most intimate emotional energy?
2. Remind yourself that relationship pathology (unwanted and unhealthy patterns) will not subside or decline without some radical shift within the dynamic of one of the participants. On the contrary, without some change, unwanted behaviors will only grow. It takes ONE person to shift (usually the victim) before some change occurs.
3. Remember that the perpetrator usually of does not want to be exposed for the behavior, and somehow will achieve the remarkable position where the victim (or victims) somehow agrees to maintaining the secret. Victims, if any change can occur, must find the courage to let someone from the “outside” in on the secret of what is really occurring, in order to get the help required to get out of such a position. Remember victims distort reality as much as perpetrators. This is the reason “outsiders” can see what you might fail to see.
4. Try to resist using reason with the perpetrator of such behavior – you will not, using reason, convince a perpetrator to stop abusive behavior. The only way to stop it is to radically shift your response to it. While you cooperate with what you do not want the behavior will not cease.
He wants “space” and I don’t get it…..
Please, pass this on...
I’d suggest that when the relationship began it got too hot (too close, too intense, too everything) too soon. Once a little dust settled, what was intense and powerful feels just as powerfully suffocating.
When you want to know where he is, what he’s thinking, who he’s with and what he’s doing, all of the time, your best intentions of wanting to “be together even while we are apart” feel like suspicion, even if you are not the “suspicious type” and there is nothing to suspect.
Even if he is not phoning anyone you don’t know, or if he is not sending text messages to women he hardly knows, he still doesn’t want you to check his phone or phone bill. Some things are simply none of your business even if you are in a “committed” relationship.
Wanting, occasionally, to be with his friends and family without you is not a sign of his disrespecting you or of hiding anything, it is simply a natural desire people have to sometimes be in social and family settings where they can relax and not have to attempt to take care of the overwhelming needs of a high-maintenance girlfriend.
After 30 years of marriage and several affairs on her part, now all the sex has dried up…..
READER QUESTION: Mine is an action-packed story of a marriage of 30 years. It has yielded wonderful children and grand children. Outwardly we are a normal, peaceful family. However, unnoticed by all, was an unfortunate and stressful issue of a wife, who experienced a hormone imbalance issue, which culminated her entertaining several extra marital affairs. Fortunately, or unfortunately, these actions were more an issue of once-off gratification.The mental trauma was indeed very difficult to bear, but some how, for the sake of family unity, all was put to rest and never discussed. I’m finding this whole issue extremely stressful and uncomfortable thoughts of the past flash through my mind. I am finding that my thoughts appear to be sparked off by the lack of an active sex life. At this stage in life, these pleasures of life have dried up for me. Was it my fault? Is it too late for me to get this relationship back on the high road?
ROD’S REPLY: Your moving letter suggests there is much hope for you. In the same manner as I have recruited local experts in areas of teen-suicide, drug addiction and other human maladies, I hereby request a local sex therapist to contact me, that I might put the reader in touch with face-to-face professional help.
For further and excellent reading on love and marriage and relationships in general go to www.lovehonoranddismay.blogspot.com
Her son is oppositional and ruining our relationship…
“My partner and I live in a home we bought together in July 05, with her little girl of 9 at the time. A year later her 13 year old son, now 14 who has been living with his father for the last five years, asked if he could move in with us because he was failing school and wanted our help. What a mistake. He ADHD with what I would consider oppositional defiant behaviors. He passive aggressively challenges me when I call him on his nonsense. He stares at me as if I’m supposed to back down. This little terrorist has taken over home, is still failing at school and his mother has told me that she would move out instead of have him move back to his dad’s house. I asked her specifically before we moved if she would ever let him move in. She was adamant she would not. I should have never agreed to let this him move in. Kids like this will ruin a relationship in a heartbeat.”
Sir, you might have a whole lot more room to exercise your wishes if you were married to the child’s mother. Until then, the boy will have more say than you do. He needs help from you – not your defiant attitude.
difficultrelationships.com 