How To Survive When Everything Is Difficult In A Relationship

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

After all, people are very strange.

Even as we grow up, we continue to live with illusions and have magical thinking. Especially women. Especially in love. In love ESPECIALLY.

What does it look like?

In the tendency to blame ourselves for everything, the desire to control the relationship and believe that we have an amazing gift to know how to "help" a partner.

Not because he broke down and is not functional, but because life has treated him unfairly and he urgently needs to be saved. To act, insist, overcome, look for reasons - whatever, just to provide happiness to the only one. The woman is convinced that she knows how to do it. And if a man resists and rebelles, then the reason will immediately be found within the woman herself.

The tendency to blame yourself for failure is undoubtedly an advantage. The illusion of their omnipotence is created: the ability to change the course of events, if you calculate the risks in advance, change behavior, and improve conditions. We stubbornly believe that it cost us to be better, to rein in our ego, to bend over and accept, then everything would be different. We blame ourselves for not being humble enough, which in turn creates a redemptive impulse, the need to suffer and suffer deprivation as retribution. This leads to a state close to masochism.

And most importantly: victory. To win, to overcome all the circumstances, to remake, adjust, match so that there is a perfect picture of how it should be. The goal of the relationship becomes a person as an object. At any cost. Because without the dear, I am emotionally empty, I do not know what to do with myself and how to apply it in life.

This is more often the case with those of us who grew up in families whose parents were irresponsible, weak. We quickly grew up and turned into “pseudo-adults” long before we were ready for the burden of responsibility that adult life imposes. As adults, we believe that responsibility for the relationship is entirely ours. Therefore, we often choose irresponsible and weak partners, reinforcing in us the feeling that everything depends only on us. We are becoming the heavy lifting specialist. Plus, inspired by the newfangled tendencies, the doctrine of "femininity" reinforces the belief that responsibility for relationships is the task of a woman.

If we take too much blame on ourselves, then in a relationship we are not concerned with how we feel in them, but how our partner feels around us. Not knowing how to feel, we will always try to find a reflection of our feelings in a partner. He gives us feedback on who we are. We think very badly of ourselves, or we do not understand at all who we are.

It is enough to make a small experiment. Try to write 10 sentences about yourself within 10 minutes, make a mini presentation of yourself. As a rule, the experiment ends with the fact that we describe who we are as mothers, wives, employees, daughters. We describe our Person without hearing our Self.

Who am I as a person, what are my values and desires, what do I feel and what do I want? Feelings of good and bad mixed together, becoming one whole. The bad has become good, but we do not know the good. Anything that deprives a partner's attention is bad. A lifeguard complex is being formed. The burden that we put on ourselves helps to avoid unbearable suffering. After all, we no longer have the strength to cry and feel sorry for ourselves, but reactivity in solving difficulties absorbs personal experiences.

It is difficult for meek women to accept their desires, especially when they go against the desires of others. Selfishness is considered an insult and the cause of relationship problems.

Where is the exit? In the same place as the entrance.

When “everything is complicated”, in my opinion, you should focus on 3 important points.

1. Share responsibility

We cannot be responsible for everything and for everyone. We must be responsible for our feelings, thoughts, actions, states. But we cannot be responsible for how the other person acts. We are with our own process, and there is another. He is living his experience, his process and delving into the motives of his behavior is a thankless thing. To be engaged in justifying the actions of another person is a mind game, self-deception. If most of the time we are engaged in conjecturing the processes taking place in the head of another person, we are not doing our own thing, trying to control what is beyond control. It is necessary to stop contact with a person who violates our boundaries, to decide whether to continue the contact. True love is not blind - it sees mistakes, mistakes, inattention, neglect. In a relationship, it is possible to experience a huge range of feelings: from love to hate, from tenderness to cruelty, from the desire to be around and send everything to hell. But there is no love where we feel like a rag doll: shapeless, empty and bloodless. Where our feelings do not count, and the feelings of another - on a pedestal. If we hear complaints in our address, this is not a problem. The problem is if, apart from claims, we hear nothing else. In a relationship, one should not run after another, but run towards each other. To be happy, you need to put yourself first, ask what I want, what I love, and most importantly, is it comfortable for me to be around my partner. First, "is it good for me to be near him", and then "is it good for him to be near me." Our relationship is the answer to the question of how we feel about ourselves.

2. Get rid of the thought of omnipotence.

Accept the idea that not everything in our life is subject to control. Stop coaching reality to fit the circumstances, admit to yourself that reality is always stronger than us. Give up hope that a man will change. Take into account his right to independently make decisions, respect his boundaries. Perhaps he has reasons to be emotionally closed, and we will not be able to heal his mental wounds. We often endure disrespect and lack of attention, we are silent and hopeful. We are categorical and think in terms of "forever". It's time to part with the illusions of tomorrow and forever. You do not need to rationalize what is happening, convincing yourself that everyone is imperfect and you cannot find a better one. This is the problem: instead of thinking, we hope. But with all this, it is worth remembering one thing: people rarely change. It makes no sense to fit a person to the size we need. Most likely, the person is not our size.

Accept that the person we saw our happiness in is actually the source of our frustration. This is possible only when we begin to listen to our feelings, and not hide them, pretending to be. Accept as a basis that everything around calls us to develop. Get rid of the thought of omnipotence that damages our mental health. Connect your mind and your heart, and this union will give birth to wisdom. The wisdom to understand and accept that it is a waste of time to impose your wants and needs on others. The wisdom is to understand and accept that it is better to be alone than to be alone in a couple. Understanding what to ignore is just as important as understanding what to focus on.

And then we end the war with reality. We admit we are defeated and humility comes. Humility - in peace, without resistance. We are left with nothing, here and now, but “something” is formed inside. It is an internal framework that is stronger than its own bone and stronger than circumstances.

Suffering will never make us stronger; it simply forms the surviving parts of the personality within us, which will divide the whole into shards. The surviving part taught us to adjust, adapt, but it also separated us from the living, clean, feeling part that just wants to LIVE.

The surviving part is at war with those parts of our personality that are about LIFE. This part resists, adjusts, tries to change circumstances, feels guilty. Once she helped us to survive, but then she forever separated from the resource, living, natural part. She rejected it and took as a basis the patterns of behavior that helped to digest the experience. “Life has taught,” we say. When we find ourselves in similar situations, we know how to act, how to fight, to remake reality, we believe in our omnipotence. And it is not surprising why life is like déjà vu: we strive to recreate with our partners those emotions that have already been in our experience, meeting with which we no longer fear. In another way, we simply do not know how. There is no experience of a relationship in which there is no need to save, in which there is no need to sacrifice. We have acquired a shell to protect ourselves from the outside world, which simultaneously protects from everything that gives meaning to life - the meeting of an open heart with an open heart, spiritual closeness, the need for individuation and belonging at the same time.

We will never be the same. But we can stop the internal struggle. And take as a basis that they have become DIFFERENT. And there is a long way ahead of finding one's own integrity, a way from surviving strategies to strategies of Life. A path with deep diving and subsequent tranquility.

3. Learn new patterns of behavior

A person gets used to a lot. And even patience and suffering can get used to. When feelings become too much and there is no strength to endure it, you can pretend to be insensitive. “It doesn't hurt at all. Things are good. It should have been.”We get used to devaluation and suffering so that the mask of insensibility grows to the skin. There are no exceptions, no matter how unpleasant and frightening this mask is. We pretended to be insensitive and became so. Nothing concretes our soul like The Mask of Lying to Ourselves We have learned to lie to ourselves and have become damn convincing about it.

Everything temporary very quickly becomes permanent. We say "everything is fine", but the cats scratch their souls. We drink coffee with friends, but thoughts are deep in ourselves. We endure a lot of our own pain, but we cry because of someone's sad stories. We specialize, and that says a lot about ourselves.

It's not sweet behind the mask of insensitivity, but everything is clear. Here we know how to behave, how to feel, what to broadcast to others. Here we have everything and nothing at the same time. Without a mask, there is no understanding of how to live on. There is a great fear of facing your feelings, and they burn.

New patterns of behavior are not about suffering and patience. They are about LIFE.

About love for life in all its manifestations. About expanding your knowledge and skills. About love for yourself and the world. About the built-in self-esteem option. To be not for everyone, but for yourself.

The road to life is dangerous, unfamiliar and lies through fear. It's scary to make decisions, subtract, if it doesn't work out. It's time to change your old skin to a new one, and actually tear off a part of your life and put the inscription “past” on it, turn away and stop the line.

The decision to change the course of life is the very first and most difficult step. After it, we risk stumbling again and again, regretting the choice we made, or even returning to our old life altogether, putting on a comfortable mask of insensitivity.

It is important here not to rush and decisively go in the chosen direction, towards Life.

The most intolerable that arises on the way is a huge emptiness inside. The old strategies of behavior have already outlived theirs, and the new ones have not yet formed. And there is a state of suspension and uncertainty. This is fine. It is important to learn to deal with these difficult feelings. Accept a state of depression, do not push yourself and do not accelerate. Do not hide behind front relations, do not "kill" emptiness, do not cut from the shoulder.

Track small achievements. To rejoice in everything that we managed to do differently from before. Own your own successes and efforts. Physically distance yourself from people who are being pulled back into destructive relationships, become aware of your feelings and make decisions about what to do about it. See what resources we already have and what we lack. Ask for help and support of loved ones. You will need someone who will say that being angry is not a shame, to be tired and want to rest is not ashamed, to refuse uninvited counselors is not ashamed. And also it is not a shame to be happy, to love and hate. We are not perfect, we are just people. This can be the basis for a new life.

Just refuse to demand the impossible from ourselves. Over time, it becomes noticeable that many things can be agreed upon by listening to each other. Some may find us proud. But they just don't want to see the real us. What they want to see is what they see.

Life cannot be postponed, because later there may be no strength for it, no place, no reason, no years …

And no one is obliged to change just to make it more comfortable for us. Whoever wants to destroy his life - let him destroy, has the right. We made a choice for ourselves.

Tolerate? No, this is no longer possible, first of all, we ourselves will not allow it.

To take the risk of being different from others, in order to later allow others to be different.

Have your own "cockroaches" in your head, be a little capricious, quick-tempered, sometimes too active, and sometimes lazy and dreamy. But always real and alive.

And a little crazy.

“There are no normal ones. After all, everyone is so different and unlike. And this, in my opinion, is normal. (C)