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…
Here I stand: help for those estranged in a family…
Are you estranged from a family member? Here, modified according to your needs* and circumstances, and expressed in your own words and style, is the gist of offering a “Here I Stand” challenge:
“Here I stand, my son, despite our painful history, desiring to be a loving parent and grandparent to you and to your children. Given the opportunity of inclusion, I will work hard at correcting my past ills. If you choose to see me I will not:
- Speak ill of anyone, not immediate or distant family, not of people from past relationships, or anyone newly incorporated into your life.
- Be shaming, demanding, or accusatory.
- Make unreasonable requests of you, or want anything from you that you are not willing to offer.
- Be impatient with you, but will rather seek to be affirming, kind, and light-hearted. I will regard a relationship with you and your children as a treasured gift.
“My continued desire to be included in your life and family is not an attempt to manipulate you, but rather to minimize future regret. You, an adult, get to choose the level of my involvement with you, and, while I am powerless over your decisions, I hope you will decide in favor of gradual, and then complete, reconciliation with me.”
* This letter is geared for a parent estranged from an adult son and grandchildren
Best things you can do if your husband says he doesn’t love you…. a woman (Ann) writes…!
I thank Ann for this comment...
“Starting today, start taking care of yourself, pamper yourself, love yourself the way you want to be loved, throw your energy into your kids and yourself. Any contact with your husband or boyfriend be nothing but pleasant and nice: no fighting, no blaming. If he brings up divorce, breaking up tell him you don’t want that but YOU’LL SUPPORT HIM IN HIS DECISION. And leave it at that.
“Get your hair done, nails done (if you can afford to do so) give yourself facials, make yourself feel good about yourself and it will shine through.
“Remember, no yelling, no begging him, no freaking out on him, that will only push him further away.
“And don’t keep bringing up the past of hurtful things he has said and did, that just creates more drama.”
It was a turning point for me! Thank you……
1/4/08
Rod,
I just wanted to thank you for everything you did for me during my crossroads time spent with you last week. It was such a memorable marker for my life…. a sure turning point for me! I knew that I needed a turning point and you helped facilitate that for me. It was exactly what I needed!
I am very aware that I needed to grieve the loss that I have had and that was a necessary season for me. You helped me to make sense of what could be and accept what could not be reasoned out.
Thank you for helping me see how to put closure to that part of my life. I appreciate so many words of wisdom that I was able to take with me.
But it didn’t end there, your blessing to my life will ripple further: you encouraged me to seriously think about, embrace, and step into the dreams and goals that have been laying dormant within me…to embrace my life…abundant life.
I have already started working towards some of the “heart-storm” ideas (I love that word, by the way). It is life giving and exciting to step into those areas of me. I had hope for my future, but now I also have excitement about my future. Thank you for helping me to see this.
I truly see that you have a gift and talent for facilitating healing wings and encouraging embracing abundant life. I truly wanted to do that!
During my time there, your way of working through life issues was very transforming at just the right time and season of my life. Thank you for investing into my healing and growth. Thank you for encouraging me in practical ways of “how to” pursue and embrace my life and goals.
Also, I really appreciate you transporting me from and to the airport and working out accommodations while I was there. That was very helpful! I know that you made a sacrifice with your boys to help me in this season.
Thank you so very much! Blessings to you and your sons!
Kathryn
Comments pour in from women hurt in deceitful relationships…
….. please continue to provide each other with helpful and supportive comments. New visitors are encouraged to search this site for related articles on affairs, abusive systems, and difficult relationships.
I respond (via the web) to as many readers as possible but I need your help (through your comments) to reach more and more hurting women with a message of hope and triumph.
What would be a “radical” shift?
“Regarding abusive behavior you write: ‘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.’ So how is one supposed to ‘radically shift’ their response to an abuser? The abuser in my household is my youngest son (21). He often treats both my husband and me very badly, he shouts and snaps at us, or does not speak to us. I don’t know how to deal with it. I’m going through menopause right now and often I’m very emotional. His behavior can put me in tears. It’s all weighing heavily on me.”
Now that he is an adult, perhaps it is time for him to move out. He can then continue his unpleasant behavior with whomever he chooses to live. I wonder how long other people will tolerate his behavior? You, having completed his parenting, are not compelled to accommodate someone who treats you poorly. Many 21-year-olds live independently of their parents’ home and do so with great success. This, dear reader, would constitute a “radical shift” on your part.
Single-, or solo-parenting will probably improve if…
1. Your courage, determination and your willingness to fully live; your ability and willingness to employ all of your skills and expedite your wildest ambitions – will go a long way toward compensating for the absence of the other parent.
2. Being debilitated by the absence of a partner and living as if a successful life is impossible to lead without a partner will stand to hinder your child and your relationship with your child almost as significantly the absence of the other parent.
3. Having your own life, pursuing interests and dreams that do not involve your child, is good for you and for your child. The laser focus that often comes with solo parenting is hardly helpful to the parent or child.
4. Try to get the focus off your child and how your child is doing in the wake of finding yourself single. Single parents have reared many very successful persons and, believing your child will be successful, despite the absence of the other parent, will set a healthy tone for your family. Besides, as stated by family expert, Rabbi Edwin Friedman, when studied under a microscope even an ant (a small issue) can look like a monster (a significant problem).
He needs sex to maintain any kind of decent mood…
“I love my husband but he is sending me into an abyss. He’s become more and more jealous, insecure, and needy. He requires sex to maintain any sort of decent mood. I pay the emotional price if I don’t have sex every two or three days. He never admits to being controlling and I don’t think he believes he is. I have lost most of my sex drive. I am constantly fearful of crossing his moods. He says his mood cannot improve without sex. I feel it’s abusive to submit to something sexual when I am feeling hurt, sad, and exhausted. Are we in a catch-22? Is it unusual to have one’s libido destroyed by a requirement to provide sex?” (Edited)
Until you, not your husband, govern your internal (emotional, sexual, spiritual) life, things won’t improve. Control and love cannot co-exist within the same relationship.
Your husband’s belief that he needs sex (from you), more than you need kindness (from him), demonstrates his distorted, immature understanding of sex. It is this very misunderstanding which reduces sex into something cruel, divorcing the act from anything resembling love.
Of course your libido is diminished: you’re in an abusive cycle that won’t improve until you find and use your voice. I don’t doubt you THINK you love him (you believe you love him and cannot, at this point, conceive of NOT loving him) – but can you love him enough to stand up to him? His controlling behavior (and your submission to it) does neither of you any good.
More sex will not “solve” matters in an already toxic relationship…
“My husband tries to keep me happy by buying me stuffed animals. If we had sex for every stuffed animal he’s given me then we’d never have gotten out of bed. I don’t have enough room for all these stupid things. It’s clear he’s not interested in me physically and he says I’m wrong. I feel a divorce would probably be better for me emotionally and physically at this stage since the stress is getting to be too much. My biggest anger with this is that we never had children because he’s the one who can’t, and I’ve missed out on a major part of life. I’m in my late 40’s and I want to run out and get pregnant before it’s too late. I want to have a family. I feel like he’s keeping me from that by not being honest with me.” (Edited from a much longer letter)
More sex will be as effective as getting more stuffed animals – if you want marital integrity. Then, to “run out and get pregnant” will bring added complications. Until each party is willing to address, and face your mutual and underlying alienation, you will think you need more sex, and he will think you need more stuffed animals. Sex, like gifts, will not solve an already toxic relationship.
I was just saying to Corrine Edwards
Dear Corrine:
You write about the crowded room of blogging and so I wanted to tell you how I got started. I never set out to blog. In fact I’d never read one until it was my own.
Here’s the brief story: I was writing a weekly editorial column for The Indianapolis Star but REALLY wanted to be in The Natal Mercury, the paper I read as a boy. It is a South African newspaper with a wonderful and long history. The Idler, a man named John Vigor, was really my first real reading and his very funny insights were always on the back page of the paper when I was a young boy.
On a visit home to South Africa (in 1999) I stopped in at the paper’s head-office (“The Idler ” at the time – the humor writer whose column now appears somewhere in the middle of the paper – had done some groundwork for me) and announced an American editorial writer would like to see the editor. Believe it or not I was ushered into his office and, during the course of our conversation, I told him my boyhood in Durban included the reading of his paper, and that my early desires to be in his paper had not left me. I informed him that I was in his office to ask for a weekly spot on the editorial page of his esteemed paper.
He asked, “Well, can you write?”
From my bag I pulled about 80 laminated 700-word editorials and plonked them on his desk.
Dennis Pather (now editor of The Daily News) told me to contact him in a few days.
About three days later he called me into his study at the paper and said he was very disturbed about some of my writing. I asked him what in particular had disturbed him and he said, “In this column here, you say, ‘if all you have is money, then you are truly poor’, Mr. Smith this is a very disturbing thing to say.”
I had him. I knew it.
Then he told me that in South Africa newspapers don’t make their columnists into celebrities as is done in the USA. So he informed me he had no place for me as a weekly columnist.
“But, how about daily?” he said. “We’ll call it ‘YOU AND ME’ and since you are a family therapist we’ll make it into a ‘help column’ where you can tell people to seek more than wealth!”
The man was animated. He’d been thinking.I put out my hand and asked, “When do we start?”
In no time at all he was on the phone and called a quick meeting of the editorial page staff and while a few men and women entered his office a photographer appeared and took about 10 head-shots of me – and the 200 word column began to run the next week.
Reader requests for back issues sparked the need for the blog and so that ……. (I have told you much more than I initially intended)…. is how I got into blogging.
For me, blogging has never been about money even though the book sales and the personal sessions that it has generated have have been helpful.
Have a wonderful day and I am inspired by your tenacity and desire to speak to a hurting world.
Your friend,
Rod E. Smith
difficultrelationships.com 