Dom,
"But yet I still don't understand what you are suggesting I do. I love her so much but it just seems to me that she doesn't love me, just keeps me around for what I can do for her.
She has had a huge problem with being dishonest with me in the past. I guess that's why I judge based on her actions rather than "know" her for what she says. I hope you can understand what I am saying.
I am willing to do anything I can do to make this work but I cannot bear living apart from her and my kids. It is driving me absolutely crazy.
Please tell me what I need to do to fix myself."
It's the last sentence which comes first...Dom, you aren't broken. You don't need to be fixed...first step is awareness...last step is acceptance. You can learn all the steps in between.
First you have to know you aren't broken.
Your wife isn't broken, either.
You are both whole, complete, marvelously made human beings...before a word was spoken or an action taken.
Your essence. Her essence.
First we recognize wholeness and then we learn halves.
You are half of every relationship you have. All humans can only be half...that's our limit. We cannot be a whole relationship. Not designed that way.
Our half is our stuff...our perception is half of communication and experience...she can be loving your brains out and you may not feel loved. Comes from your own filter and what's in the way...
Our beliefs are what we live and choose our lives from...you may have been reacting to your feelings instead of living directly from your beliefs...now, you get to choose. Actually, you always chose...now you're aware you do. So by knowing your half...what's in your perception, how you're hearing something said...instead of taking as stating The Truth...you get to know you're receiving it through your own truth...good to be aware of.
Trust is also two halves...one half to earn and the other to bestow...both are by choice. You can't make someone trust you...nor can you be made trustworthy. Half and half.
There really is balance in the universe, once you realize, it's isn't all your spouse (can't be, can it? You're half, they are half)...and not all you.
Begin there.
Next, eliminate blame from your belief system. It isn't real to begin with. Reality is that humans do and don't do. They are solely responsible for themselves...their stuff, their choices and actions...because that's all we really can control.
I didn't make up these rules...they are the laws of human dynamics...God's design for us to choose to believe or not.
Total respect for our choices. No blame.
Humans do, and there are consequences; humans don't do, and there are consequences. Don't think of consequences as good or bad...that's linked to blame...think of them as motion within the world...because they are...there are natural and logical consequences. Natural is when you are angry and yell, the sounds waves lengthen, increase and move...they ripple...humans feel diminished, fear increases and we go to our inner child when we are yelled at. Those are the natural consequences...does damage. We may feel at the time we are entitled to do damage, because we feel damaged...forcing balance. Hurt and you hurt back. Give to get. Tit for tat.
That's not balance...that's reactivity, as I've said.
Logical consequences are those we impose...you yell at me and my first imposed consequence (which is in addition to the natural ones) is to state my truth..."I hear you yelling at me. That's abusive. Stop. I want to hear you and I am reactive to yelling."
This isn't the best example because yelling isn't what you think it is...to some people, they hear tone of voice, not volume, as yelling...others hear volume only...even loud laughter affects them like yelling...still others perceive violent body language (even if self-directed) with terse words as yelling. Some experience all of these as yelling...it varies. See the half that is perception? You don't have any control over what is perceived as yelling...'cuz it's perceived. You know what it is to you so you can revoke your own permission to yell (volume), and insert harsh inflections (like punctuating audibly), and regulate your body movements (relaxing your arms and shoulders from choice). All of these are abusive because they are demonstrating...acting out...anger, frustration...rather than stating them.
That's a logical consequence...first one. If you continue to permit yourself to abuse, next step is, "I'm feeling flooded. I continue to hear you attacking me, yelling specifically. I need ten minutes alone to calm down so I can hear you." And I remove myself for ten minutes and return.
This isn't controlling, manipulating or refuting. It's informing...and enforcing. Doing what I need to hear, to understand...to acknowledge what you're communicating. I'm doing my half. I can't control yours. Only you can.
And you can flip this over with yourself or your wife in either role. Until you actually state calmly, confidingly, "Wow, I am shaking from anger. I don't know where it's coming from. I feel like yelling. I think I don't feel heard or understood", you won't know that when you share like this, within minutes, your anger drops dramatically (or frustration). And it does. Your head clears, and usually, you can hear what triggered the signal...breathing deeply helps. "Okay, now I remember. You were stating your opinion about our marital history as fact...and I took it as fact instead of your opinion. I heard you felt that I failed you at every turn in our marriage, is that correct?"
Sounds robotic, inhuman, not in our experience. I can tell you, it's definitely human...we are capable of so much more than we've ever been shown. To do this, on faith, is to experience deep self-respect and respect of your partner. I can't describe what bloomed in my chest when I did this...heard my DH...his words, repeated for confirmation or clarification...and did not react to them. Talk about brave, true, strong and real. Wowsers. And when he did the same for me, I melted. I really did. Inside, the hot stinky air inside my resentment balloon deflated greatly...my pain halved itself and my anger disappeared. From being heard.
Not fixed.
He didn't make me feel this way...I felt...in response from being heard and understood.
90% of all marital problems aren't to be solved...they are to be understood. Acknowledged. Heard. Validated.
Ohmygosh, Dom...all that conflict wasn't real.
Think about it. We shut out pain...which means if we believe our partners cause us pain, we shut them out...make them the enemy.
And they're not. They're our partners. That's our half. We can't control their half. Yet when we change ours, everything changes.
In the book I highly recommended...you will find many forms of verbal abuse...one which struck me dumb (okay, no wisecracks) was withdrawing is abusive. My DH wouldn't speak due to his fear of conflict...escalation...he'd retaliate through the silent treatment...and that's abusive. Why? Because it's dishonest. Lying by omission, not sharing your stuff, is like wiping someone out...again, makes our partner into our enemy...and you know what else it does? It annihilates the partner who withdraws.
Because when we believe our pain comes from our partner...not to us as a signal for us and about us, then we are telling ourselves we are nothing. Literally nothing. We are telling ourselves all our happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, joy and contentment comes from others...that we are empty and have to be filled up from the outside.
OUCH!
How abusive is that? We are not defective, broken or partial...we are whole...our authentic selves aren't bad or wrong...God didn't make no junk, ever. So to tell ourselves others cause, control and cure us...gives us a ton of pain and anger signals because that's a horrid way to live.
Signals to notice if you're living this way: You feel empty (because that's what you're telling yourself you are through your actions and beliefs, your perceptions)...feeling out of control (because we aren't acknowledging our real responsibility...we're shoving it down our partner's throat), powerless (we aren't aware we are CHOOSING to believe this, therefore feel it), taking all the blame (feels defective and bad), drained of energy (resistance self-consumes energy and your innocent self resists mightily to lies), used up (because we are using others up) and invisible (we've wiped ourselves out of existence).
These are all signals, not conditions...not diseases or sentences. They are signals and signals are temporary. And we've been taught others make us feel this way.
When you hear, "I feel angry, robbed" and you KNOW that's a signal to the speaker about the speaker...you won't feel reactive...so you really can calmly, from respect, answer, "I hear you feel angry right now, as if you've been robbed of something."
I know you can hear the difference...you aren't owning that you made her angry or robbed her...you're respecting her perception and feeling...you're there in presence, interested to understand, not to judge or cure...and THAT is partnering.
We've been taught predominantly (our parents, the media), how to parent, not partner.
Every time you've aimed to please, you've aimed to cheer someone up, change their feelings, thoughts, beliefs...to help them...you've disrespected them and the backside of that message is "You're incapable, defective and wrong."
It's even poor parenting, to be honest. Pleasing is abusive...you may feel kind, generous, happy to change someone's mind, their perception or perspective...inside them, you're reinforcing a dark, terrible voice they hear all the time.
When you listen and repeat, you live in reality. Their stuff is theirs...yours is yours...and it's all we can reasonably handle, let alone, be responsible for. Which is why us putting our feelings...like you not choosing to believe she loves you anymore...onto her is unreasonable and wrong. If you put it on her, then her stuff is on you...each responsible for what the other is experiencing.
And you have no control. When we feel attacked, threatened, our brain hands us pain and fear cumulatively from the first time we felt threatened, all the way through to the present. Which is why over something small, you may have reacted volcanically, out of proportion...and your brain isn't against you...it doesn't know time. It increases the signal because it perceives the same event is happening again from the same source...your enemy...includes when your best friend when you were four punched your lights out...when your mother told you she was sick with disappointment over something you did...when your 13-year-old girlfriend told you she was dumping you after going out a week...and when that teacher ignored your question...and your first boss told you that you were worthless...
And this is your partner, the woman you chose to love, for life...saying she feels suckered, wrong, unhappy...and you hear it's your fault, you're to blame, you're broken...and your brain hands you all that other stuff from years and years at once...as a signal. You are used to reacting as if it's truth, fact...and it isn't. It's what she feels. A great place to start.
No wonder we feel flooded...why the past overlaps, why we reason if she lied before (by omission or directly) she may be lying now...when it may have been years since she really did lie...feels like now...and it isn't. You don't know. You can't know. Your half is to choose to believe her truth is her truth and respect her and that you don't know.
It's okay not to know. Our whole lives are to learn how to be okay with what we don't really know until we're shared with.
We're taught we're safer if we assume, get the jump on possibilities, mindread...that's love. That's knowing and being known.
Nope. It's assuming and being assumed. Terribly painful. All fantasy. Harley calls them DJs...Disrespectful Judgments. Clearing those out...seeing what is the truth (actions) from our own truth and others' truth...we can judge the truth, not personal truth. Not within our domain.
God's put some really cool tools in our design...to guide us. One is the ability to project...when we shun ourselves and live through others, how do we signal us about our stuff? How do we even connect to ourselves, get our attention? Well, you don't feel loved by her...probably comes and goes, sometimes, intensely...you could be projecting to get your own attention...because you aren't loving yourself...you've abandoned yourself. When our focus is on others, swallowing them, every word, nuance, gesture, action...then we have abandoned ourselves...we are living where we have no control, no existence.
Huge Ouch! (Btw, saying "ouch" is an awesome way to communicate you're feeling something, like a smack, and trying to sort it out...doesn't say where the pain is coming from...doesn't say the other person hurt you...just when they made a statement, much like the one your wife did, it hurt...doesn't mean she's hurting you...could be your own taking it as you're a failure, a loser, a nothing...HUGE PAIN in that. Big OUCH. Learning to say it out loud and work through makes you both a team, caring for one another, not enemies, attacking.)
What we do to ourselves (abandon, reject) we will do to others. God's design is unyielding, no shortcuts or go-arounds...and what you won't do to yourself, you WON'T do to others.
If you yell inside yourself, tear yourself down, punish and make yourself earn love...then you'll do that to others. You really will. That's not in your control...that two-way street. You can learn a lot about how you're really treating others by discovering and understanding what you do inside you.
Bet you were taught to be harder on yourself than anyone could be, eh? I was. I can relate. So if you listen and repeat to understand your wife...guess what? You'll be safe to listen to yourself, clarify and confirm yourself...and then you'll feel loved...immensely...because you already are. You really are.
You'll feel loved by her...your kids, your family, your coworkers...it's amazing. You can live in abundance and plentitude...overflow with love...no filling up from the outside (where you have no control)...and your life changes drastically.
Freedom rocks. Real responsibility IS joy. Loving consciously, acting from choice and awareness you're choosing (not earning) fills you up, stuff you, spills over and floods your life.
You both are capable human beings. You're not broken. You've been misinformed. Choose to make your intent pure...not to get love...but to understand, really hear, know and acknowledge...not judge. Decide to live from respect, which is truth...your highest, most cherished goal to know and be known.
And you'll find you are lovable (you always were 'cuz you are made from pure love), acceptable, whole and marvelous.
And so is your wife.
Nine years together...going from Phase I of marriage where we are in love with each other's presented selves...putting out our best images for each other...partners, equals, completing one another...like coming home for the first time. It's not. It's actually fantasy.
<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Phase II...the best comes off...and real selves get revealed...we feel comfortable enough (not fearful of abandonment) to show anger, depression, frustration...and this in itself is an act of intimacy...only it feels like betrayal. You aren't who she thought you were...and she isn't who you thought she was...(not true, btw...just fantasy breaking time...birthing into real)...and it's hard, and tumultuous...and has a lot of triggers to mothers and fathers and FOO (family of origin)...which is why you were attracted to each other so strongly...and you feel great, hurtful betrayal...hey, I thought you were gonna help me work through all that early stuff...not RELIVE it!!!
So we see each other as enemies...and still, we do love...long for our partnering, fall into parenting (which is heightened when we HAVE children, also...difficult for humans to switch instanteously between roles)...which triggers even more FOO stuff, enemy stuff from old pain feeling new again...and old at the same time, wearing us down, losing our way...because we lost our perspective.
Know she is your partner and KNOW you are hers...not enemies. You are not out to destroy one another...you are to understand each other...know what each of you believes and respect different beliefs, feelings, thoughts...they won't kill you...may feel like it...and learn to heal your own wounds, issues, stuff...side by side. That's true partnering. Equal and capable...separate, whole humans.
You are.
Just as we chose to disconnect from each other...a million different ways...so are there a million ways to reconnect. God's design...his grace...learn your tools, how you really come together to find your own lost and disowned parts...and know for real, you really were whole all the time.
Steps continue with radical honesty, ownership, acting on your love to meet needs...listening is a huge one, btw, for everyone...to know each others' stuff...especially fears...so we can remember we are not to be feared...we face them together. We are not each others mirror, definers, diviners...we are partners. Not for me to tell you who you really are...that's for you to tell me...share with me. Not for you to say "this is the way it is" when that's your valid, real perception...and tear my own down.
We are partners.
Repeat this phrase...it's truth...and you choose it.
Every act your wife has done has been her choice, for her reasons...and I believe...from her love, at times, and from her fear and pain at others. So have you chosen to act, speak, not speak, not act...neither is the victim nor the monster...you're both humans trying to figure this whole life thing out...you vowed to do so together, for great reasons...remember those reasons. They are true ones. You made them. You chose...each other.
No one out there will be better for either of you...you guys will just repeat these patterns until you get them...and most go through a lot of relationships, using up people like tissue...and it adds to grief and chaos, does not bring peace.
This enmeshment...where you're responsible for her feelings, happiness, stuff...and she's responsible for yours...is normal and common. What we've been modeled as love...and it breaks down...because we don't have that power to make anyone anything but a sandwich. We truly are gifts to each other...our presence, our time, our intent...not ourselves. We remain separate, equal and whole human beings in a human marriage.
To believe or not believe your wife is judgment...lose the judgment. It's a blade you hold in your hand without a handle...when you wield it, you cut yourself as much as you cut others. Lay it down.
Begin again...real selves to real selves...share what you discover in you and be open and safe to be shared with by her.
You're both worth it. Valuable people. I believe in you.
One more step inbetween awareness and acceptance...(there's a bunch)...choose to act from your valid, adult beliefs...not your resulting feelings. Feelings are signals to us from our beliefs...to choose to not act loving because you don't feel loving is like living backwards. You're reacting to a signal...not from your belief. Gets messy, reactive...and you experience life like that, from a messy, reactive perception.
Beautiful part is...when you choose to act from your belief you love her, and your acts of love, meeting her ENs in creative (self-affirming) ways...and you own your choice, even when you don't feel loving...when you do these things, share your stuff...you will be signalled heavily you love...you will feeling loving. Upward spirals are real...we only tend to know downward ones and call the upward ones luck.
No luck. It's getting your stuff into clear lines...through awareness and desire...living to your own code, not basing your choices on possible response. Together, you can spiral upward and thrive. So can your children.
Your choice.
LA
P.S. This is why marital counseling helps so much (good ones do) because they provide a neutral ground where you can reset yourselves to be partners, not enemies...they act as guides...you do the work, get to see each other as clean slates, new humans...they don't cure, either. Counseling is worth a ton. I didn't believe that until it helped save my marriage. I've never made an investment more productive or beneficial. And I was committed to it because it cost me...and to divorce costs a lot more.
