IS YOUR SPOUSE DRIVING YOU CRAZY? But if you want to stay in a relationship, something needs to change. In all likelihood, it is you. Every annoyance in a relationship is really a two-way street. Partners focus on what they are getting, not on what they’re giving. But no matter how frustrating a partner’s behaviour, your interpretation is the greater part of it. What matters is the meaning you attach to it. The ability to eliminate relationship irritants lies within each of us. They may sabotage good relationships or not. It all depends on how you interpret the problem. 1. “It’s deliberate” Diane Sollee recalls growing up with a father who used to snore so loudly she could hear him mid-block. “when I asked my mom how she could stand it, she said, ‘when I hear his snoring, I know he’s home safe, alive and well.’” “It’s the reaction of the host, not the strength of the pathogen,” says rabbi and marriage educator Edwin Friedman. Snoring isn’t the problem; it’s the meaning you give it. We take every irritant personally. We treat every action, deliberate or accidental, conscious or subconscious, as a personal slight—a sign the other doesn’t care about us or isn’t prioritising us. When we don’t get what we want, we interpret it as, “You don’t love me enough.” We think, “If you really cared about me, you’d stop driving me crazy with all your irritating habits.” Unfortunately, much behaviour is mindless; we do many things without thinking. “It would be ideal to focus on the other person’s reaction all the time,” says psychologist Michael Cunningham of the University of Louisville. “But the simple fact is that people engage in automatic behaviours that are habitual or self-focused without taking the other person into account.” If your partner has a habit that he or she is not aware of but that drives you up a wall—keeping the bathroom door open, leaving bread crumbs in the butter dish, walking around in underwear—bring it up in a loving way. Maybe it simply never occurred to your partner that it bothers you. Then there are the behaviours you have talked about ad nauseam but persist. If it seems like your partner just can’t change this aspect of himself, it is time to take stock. Try reminding yourself what you have—and what you stand to lose. John Buri, a psychologist at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, cites a colleague whose wife had a shrill, grating laugh. “He was always afraid she’d let loose with her ridiculous laugh, which was like fingernails on a blackboard for him,” recalls Buri. Though the couple had a great deal in common, their connection slowly eroded because of this quirk. After 15 years of marriage, however, the wife developed cancer and died. “Now he yearns to hear that laugh just one more time,” says Buri. 2. Messiness In virtually every relationship, one partner is messier than the other. Eighty per-cent of couples living together say differences over mess and disorganisation cause tension in their relationship, report Columbia University management professor Eric Abrahamson and Massachusetts journalist David H. Freedman, authors of A Perfect Mess. If your partner can’t seem to change sloppy ways, reframe the issue in your own mind. Instead of focusing on how inadequately he cleans, remind yourself how much you appreciate his contribution to household chores. Changing your perspective can not only resolve the irritating issue, it can mend the dynamic of the whole relationship. 3: Feeling unloved Motivational guru Tony Robbins, developer of the Ultimate Relationship programme with Therapist Madanes, grew up in a family in which everyone was encouraged to say whatever they felt whenever they felt it. “Our approach was, you can say it with all the intensity you want and we’re going to resolve it right there,” says Robbins. “If you got up and left the room or said, ‘Screw it, I’m done, I’m not putting up with this,’ my mom’s rule for that was, ‘This relationship is over.’” Growing up, Robbins absorbed those rules unconsciously. Then he fell in love with a woman whose father never raised his voice, a man who left a room whenever he felt upset. “My rule was you stay and work it out; hers was you don’t raise your voice.” The culture clash led to heartache. When Robbins got excited and raised his voice, his girlfriend felt hurt. She’d leave the room to avoid conflict, which to Robbins meant she didn’t care about him. Both felt unloved. So they made a pact: He wouldn’t raise his voice, and she wouldn’t leave the room. It worked perfectly—until the day they were both stressed out. Robbins raised his voice, and she walked out of the room. “You promised you wouldn’t leave!” said Robbins. “You said you weren’t going to yell!” said his girlfriend, who stormed off. Furious, Robbins stalked after her. All of a sudden she jumped out from behind a door and said, “Boo!” They both laughed so hard they forgot their fight. Her playfulness jarred him out of his negative state and reminded them how important they were to each other. She’d performed what Madanes calls a “pattern interrupt,” shifting the frame of interaction so drastically that the hurtful behaviour halts instantly. Another way to stop a pattern of yelling is to offer constant love. “A yell is a cry for help,” contends Robbins. “What someone is really saying is, ‘I have no way to meet my needs, I’m freaked out, I’m out of control.’ Getting into a warm, loving state no matter how crazy the other person is, being completely present—focused, attentive, connected—breaks such patterns.” When a partner is attacking you or making you feel unloved, a pattern interrupt is needed to shift the tenor of the interaction so completely that the viciousness vanishes. Instead of responding defensively by yelling back, recognise that no matter how badly your feelings are hurt, your partner is unable to support you at that moment and doesn’t mean what he or she is saying. Soothe yourself and give your partner the calm needed. “Say, ‘you can yell, you can scream, you can do whatever you want, but I love you and you can’t get rid of me,’” advises Robbins. “We need that connection, that praise, the understanding; we need to have somebody who is going to be there and not run. That’s how you break somebody’s pattern.” 4: Feeling unappreciated An attitude of goodwill is essential to all relationships; it makes us eager to do things to please our partners, especially if our efforts are acknowledged and appreciated. But if we feel our efforts are not being noticed—or, worse, that our partner notices only what we’re not doing—we lose interest in performing those generous acts that further the relationship. We get irritable instead, and at the very least feel taken for granted. “It’s up to each of us to communicate what it takes to make us feel appreciated,” says Sollee. “You can’t assume your partner knows what to do.” You might also try breaking your partner out of his or her daze by turning the situation into a game, as Madanes does when her partner fails to appreciate her efforts in the kitchen. “I refuse to have my feelings hurt that easily by anybody,” says Madanes. So she has a dialogue with herself. “I’ll say, ‘Cloe, that was wonderful!’ ‘Thank you, it was nothing.’ ‘No, this really tastes good, thank you.’” Doing this in front of your partner may be big enough hint to get him or her to chime in. Even if it doesn’t, at least you’re taking control of your own emotions and hauling yourself out of a reactive state. There’s little room for feeling like a helpless victim of a partner’s obtuseness; you’ve gained control over the problem. But don’t break out the champagne just yet; you have your own pattern to fix. We notice things that confirm our biases and ignore what doesn’t, which means you’re probably focusing on what your partner isn’t giving you. And you’ll find ample evidence of ingratitude. But recall that your partner’s behaviour has no inherent meaning; it’s the meaning you attach to the behaviour that pains you. So when your mate asks you to take out the trash and you feel like responding, “What am I, your slave?”—Remember the goodwill you deployed at the relationship’s start and focus less on receiving, more on giving. 5: Feeling controlled A young couple decided to try living together and bought a house. One day, early in the relationship, he perched on the sofa to read the newspaper after work while she went to the sink to prepare dinner. “Hey, could you get me a glass of water?” he said.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:45:07 +0000
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