30 MAY, 2024 – SHARLA BORROWMAN
Sometimes in a relationship it can feel like you and your partner have somehow become encamped on different sides of marital issues. When this happens it can feel really hard to shift the balance from negative interactions to positive ones. I have been there. It can feel like such a struggle when we have gotten into a relationship trench where negativity rules the day and it feels almost like you are under enemy fire. While it can sometimes be obvious when there is a lot of negativity in a relationship, the battle is also often internal. The struggle is not always visible from the outside because mindset and the way we have trained our brains to interpret interactions or experiences has a very large role to play.
Strategic Mindset
Sometimes we feel that we are the one who’s been wronged & the other person doesn’t seem very apologetic or repentant. Maybe your partner won’t even acknowledge that they have been hurtful to you. But often in order for things to improve and feel better, we have to wave the white flag and choose to forgive anyway and to show up with love in our own personal commitments and choices, our own actions and words, even when we don’t feel like we should have to. This can feel taxing and even unfair if we let it, depending on how we frame it internally. Most of us have heard the maxim “do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” It applies here. If we keep living with the mindset of “You hurt me, so I am going to hurt you back”, then we stay stuck in hurt in our relationships. We need to throw some deliberately magnanimous thinking in too, and treat others the way we want to be treated.
in order for things to improve and feel better, we have to wave the white flag and choose to forgive anyway and to show up with love
Loving Your Enemy
For some of us, it might even feel like we have to choose to love our enemies because let’s face it, when we feel we have been wronged and misunderstood, or not seen, validated, and loved well, we might start to think or act like our spouse & our family are our enemies. It’s almost never true, but the internal battle and external conflict is real enough, so we need to guard against allowing the mindset of being enemies to creep into our perspective. It will poison the well even further and create additional difficulty. It is helpful to remind yourself that you are on the same team and that despite your differences and struggles, you still love each other and are in the process of learning and practicing how to do that better on a daily basis. Unlearning and replacing bad interaction habits and negative automatic thoughts can be a slow process, so hang on to the truth that it is very much worth the extra effort and investment because it allows you to move away from feeling like your relationship is at war. The shift to choosing forgiveness & love over hanging on to anger and resentment will allow healing to begin happening and will also avoid much of the additional suffering & the collateral damage that comes with being stubborn about the wrong things. After all, we can choose to be stubbornly hopefully and dedicated to laying down our verbal or behavioral weapons of choice, in favor of moving to more neutral emotional ground, or even choosing to make peace offerings in the face of everything that’s happened. This takes mental fortitude and the good news is that it’s much like a muscle we can exercise that gets stronger with practice.
In all of this, we want to avoid the mindset of being the martyr and thinking “I always have to be the bigger person“. That’s a toxic thought that will undermine your efforts to cultivate love inside you & create an atmosphere of love outside of you. It is akin to self sabotage and will slowly eat away your happiness and prevent a healthy recovery in your relationship.
Calling off the War
So how do we call off the war? How do we lay down our weapons of choice? We make a deliberate decision to demonstrate love through acts of peace. This may look like choosing to not say something unkind when the urge strikes, or if our usual M.O. is the silent treatment, we choose to engage verbally with more kindness than we might think necessary. If an offense is dropped like a potential grenade in front of us, we can choose not to pick it up and be triggered by it, instead moving away and engaging in activities that will change the channel in our brain and allow us to regain emotional control. We intentionally plan or even impulsively do things that show unconditional love and continue to nurture the relationship. Those acts are empowering in their own way, and can be like waving a white flag, or become a healing balm to internal wounds if we let them.
-RESOURCES-
If one or both of you is walking around with open or half healed wounds from previous relationship battles, ask yourself if there is anything you can or should do to help yourself and your partner heal in a way that will bring you closer together. Sometimes the answers to that question are obvious, and other times we need a little extra help with either believing healing is possible or having the will power to follow through with actions that will help us fight on the same side. Consider talking to one of our well trained coaches to formulate a battle plan that will put you on the same side as your partner and loved ones. To get started, reach out to Dr Slade at http://you.drdenimslade.com/
*As a disclaimer, I want to make it clear that I am not talking about couples who are struggling with abuse. I want to be sure things are not taken out of context or applied to a relationship situation that is fraught with a lot more danger and challenge than the level of our usual clientelle, so bear that in mind as you continue to process the thoughts in this article.
