TOLERATING DISAPPOINTMENT

Many couples have difficulty experiencing disappointment in their relationships. This can become a major source of conflict in a marriage. Many people enter marriage with the unstated expectation that they should not disappoint their partner and that their partner should not disappoint them. There is the idea that it is mean to disappoint someone you love so people often feel guilty and self-critical when they are told they have disappointed their partner. On the other hand people often feel that if their partner disappoints them it is a sign that their feelings are not really important or worse that their partner does not love them enough.

These expectations become a burden that creates stress, frustration, and resentment. Disappointments are inevitable in a relationship for several reasons. We all have our limitations as people and can not be sources of unconditional support, understanding, and nurturance. We are all separate individuals which means that when two people are living together there are going to be times they are in different moods and have different needs which leads to a certain amount of conflict and tension. There are other times when partners realize that they simply see some situations differently and disagree with one another. It is important that you feel you have the option to disagree with your spouse even when you know this will disappoint him or her. If you can not say no to a request of your partner, then saying yes is not really a choice, but is more of an obligation.

Paradoxically, acknowledging and accepting that you are going to feel disappointed at times, and that you are entitled to disappoint your partner, can free you up to be more genuine and spontaneous in your relationship. It will decrease the pressure to please your partner that for many people creates a great amount of stress and anxiety. When you can be open with your partner that you are disappointing him or her in the moment, and not act defensively about it, this normalizes disappointment as part of the relationship. When disappointment can be accepted as a normal occurrence it becomes much less of a trigger for feelings of anger and mutual criticism.

THE LIMITS OF OUR INFLUENCE

So many arguments stem from people repeating themselves over and over which only escalates the tension and conflict. Spouses repeat their positions because they are convinced that their partners must not understand them clearly, otherwise why wouldn’t they agree? It is difficult to consider that your husband or wife understands you well enough, but he or she disagrees with you because they have a different point of view.

What gets  lost in the insistence on trying to change the other person’s mind is the recognition that your ability to influence someone else is limited. Your partner is a separate person who has the right to think and feel in her or his own way. You can not get inside her or his mind to change how they see things. Nor should you want to. There needs to be a mutual respect in a relationship in which each person has the right to their point of view. In the actual day to day experience of living in a relationship this means that you can express yourself two or three times on an issue and then stop. That is enough to get across what you think and feel. More than two or three times is trying to force your partner to agree with you.

Instead of trying to get your partner to give in, you will be better off reminding yourself that you can try to persuade your partner, but you can’t make him or her do what you want. You can influence, but not control. An important question to ask yourself is what is the underlying motivation you have to try to control your spouse? Do you tend to feel that either you are in control of a situation or are powerless? Does the fear of being powerless have any connection to what you witnessed as a child in your parents’ marriage or in the emotional atmosphere of your family?

People who grew up with a parent who was frequently out of control can be very sensitive to feeling emotionally threatened by a lack of control. Other people need to push for agreement from their partner because their ability to validate their own thoughts and feelings is not strong and they need the reassurance of their partner’s agreement in order to feel secure. Asking yourself what is the emotional need to get your spouse to agree with you will help you to decrease the urge to force your wife or husband to give in to you. When you push your partner you only distance him or her and make them more reluctant to consider your point of view. When you give your partner the space to think about what you are saying and to really make a choice, he or she will feel more  open to responding positively.

CHANGING NEGATIVE CYCLES INTO POSITIVE CYCLES

In the last several posts I have focused on skills couples can use to develop a more constructive decision making process. In the next several posts I will discuss some of the individual issues that each members of a couple needs to work on in order to resolve impasses and conflicts. There needs to be a balance in which you and your partner realize that you both contribute to certain patterns in the relationship that cause problems, and that you also each have individual sensitive issues that you need to focus on managing.

For instance, there is only so far you can try to be supportive towards your partner’s feelings if you tend to view thing as being either right or wrong. To a great extent trying to find a way to reach a consensus or a compromise with your wife or husband will require many of us to work on being less judgmental and rigid in our thinking. This is only one example of the link between external behavior and internal thoughts and feelings. We all have conversations with ourselves after an argument with our partner that reinforce attitudes and expectations about how other people operate. Some of these ideas are often true, but do not fit all situations,such as my wife or husband is very controlling and needs to have things his or her way. Other thoughts are mostly exaggerated and dysfunctional assumptions that stem from our fears of being hurt or attacked, such as my partner thinks I am stupid and has no respect for anything I say. Identifying these different attitudes, then deciding which need to be modified and which need to be challenged leads to being less defensive and reactive.

When you are open and honest with yourself in acknowledging what are the emotionally sensitive issues for you in your life and how you typically react, you will find that what your partner says becomes less of a threat to you. In upcoming posts I will outline some of the major emotional issues I have found that many of us struggle with, which often form the motivations that intensify the conflicts we have with our partners.

BEING GENEROUS

The wife of a couple that I used to see would say at times that she wished that her husband and she could be more generous toward each other. I always thought that this was a very tangible and evocative way to describe an emotionally powerful need in any relationship. I bring it up now because recently I have been writing about ways to reach mutually constructive decisions in a relationship. I have discussed how being able to form a consensus, reaching a compromise, and accommodating to one another at different times, are approaches that can work in different situations. I think that using all three of these decision making processes gives a couple a range of options which can help to resolve impasses that arise.

The ability to be generous toward your partner is a kind of x factor in working out decisions in a positive way. Generosity includes several  qualities. The first is being able to feel empathy toward your partner, not just in theory or about a situation that does not involve you, but when you have your own feelings that conflict, or at least are competing for attention, with your partner’s needs. To be able to put your own needs aside for a moment and to focus on trying to appreciate or understand what makes something important to your spouse is a way of demonstrating with your behavior that your partner’s happiness and  well being is important to you. Generosity also shows the ability to be patient and self-reflective. When you can realize that what is at stake with your partner when you have a disagreement is usually not that earth shattering or important, it is easier to be patient with your partner and yourself. Usually your standing in the relationship is not threatened by any one decision. The respect you are given, the amount of control or impact you have, the amount of love you get, all of these do not depend on how any one argument turns out. This perspective helps you take a step back, which helps you then be more patient and willing to give to your  partner.

When you are emotionally generous toward your partner this makes a significant impact on him or her. You and your partner will both feel less defensive and tense with each other. You will also find that when you are generous toward your husband or wife you feel more grounded and flexible which actually helps you feel in control. It’s a feeling of being in control of yourself instead of the situation or the other person.

ADMITTING OUR MISTAKES

In recent posts I have been focusing on outlining essential skills and guidelines that help in discussing and resolving impasses in relationships. As in developing any new skill they require practice. It is likely that you may experience obstacles in using these skills that stem from years of ingrained behavior patterns. If you think about the kinds of problems you experience with your partner, you will probably realize that similar types of problems have gone on in previous intimate relationships, or with family members.

Attempting to create more positive and effective ways of interacting with your partner requires the two of you to work as a couple in recognizing how you each contribute  and feed into dysfunctional  patterns that end in impasses. It will also take you and your partner working on your own individual issues in order to change defensive, overreactive behaviors. This means being open and honest with yourself in acknowledging when you respond in a negative way. We all have some behaviors, character traits, and emotionally sensitive issues that get in the way of communicating clearly and effectively.

We need to acknowledge the blocks we bring to our relationships in order to improve them. This means being more open to admitting when you make a mistake. We are all human and it is common, maybe even inevitable, that we are going to misunderstand, jump to an assumption, let down, disappoint, and be out of touch with our partners at times. Being able to admit to your husband or wife that you just shut them up by yelling, or cut them off by interrupting, or you assumed what they were going to say and weren’t really listening, is actually a great relief. Usually when you acknowledge and apologize for making a mistake your partner will forgive you and the tension becomes defused.

It is just as important that you recognize for yourself when your own fears, defensive reactions, and impulsive behaviors are getting triggered. It is always easier to say to yourself that when your wife gets stubborn it makes talking with her futile and that is why you walk away from her. It is more difficult, but much more empowering, to recognize that you can be impatient when other people disagree with you, and that you have difficulty tolerating your feelings of frustration during a discussion. When you acknowledge your own issues, your partner’s behavior gets less irritating. All of a sudden your wife doesn’t seem so stubborn as much as she is sticking up for herself, just as you stick up for yourself. And maybe she is a little stubborn, but so are you, and you can cut her a break. Maybe you won’t judge her so much from now on because you realize she is entitled to make mistakes, just as you are.

ACCOMMODATION

There are points when a couple comes to an impasse on an issue that is important to each of them. They have to live through the process of feeling stuck, give things time, and use the skills involved in reaching a consensus or a compromise. However, there are some situations in which there is an impasse and the issue at hand is more important to one person than it is to the other. At these times it is helpful to have the option of saying to yourself “this means more to my wife/husband than it does to me, so I will let go and give her/him what they want”.

Accommodating to the things that you know mean a lot to your partner is a way of being considerate towards her or him. It is giving to, rather than giving in to, your partner. This is usually appreciated and leads to your partner wanting to reciprocate by accommodating to your needs. It may sound like a simple idea, but when there has been ongoing tension in a relationship people can become reflexive in saying no to each other. They are used to seeing the relationship as a power struggle and justify being oppositional by reminding themselves how often their spouses have withheld, blocked, and deprived them. This pattern of mutually not giving to each other creates more tension and distance.

In this context accommodating to your partner’s wishes and needs can be a small, but significant step toward decreasing the level of tension and conflict in the relationship. When accommodating occurs soon after an argument it can signal an attempt to reach out and re-connect. When it happens after a few hours or a few days, accommodating can help both your partner and yourself get unstuck from a position you never wanted to be in. How many times have you felt angry and distant toward your partner, hardly speaking to one another, and asked yourself “how did I get here”? We have all had the somewhat irrational experience of feeling angry and withholding about something that is not really that important to us. You have a choice at this point of holding on to being stubborn and not give in, or being flexible and showing you can put your partner’s needs ahead of your own at certain times.

COMPROMISE (part two)

Being open to compromise is a strength in a relationship because is indicates an ability to be flexible in your thinking and a capacity for empathy or consideration of your partner’s feelings and emotional needs. These qualities are very important in preventing disagreements from developing into impasses. In developing a genuine openness to compromise it is useful to start with the idea that your partner’s feelings are as important as your own. Part of the commitment of a long term relationship or marriage is  to establish a sense of trust and a feeling of safety in the relationship. On a day to day level trust is created by both people respecting and responding to each other’s feelings and needs. Just as your opinion or point of view is not more objectively true than your partner’s (it is after all only an opinion), your emotional need for a certain outcome in a disagreement is not more important than your partner’s.

Realizing this perspective can motivate you to work out a compromise that meets your partner’s needs, as well as your own. When concern and consideration for your partner’s feelings are important to you, then  reaching a compromise feels like an active choice you are making for yourself, rather than a feeling that you are being coerced to give in.

Another factor that makes reaching a compromise essential, is recognizing that you and your partner need to feel satisfied and comfortable with decisions that  you make as a couple. Either you both win or nobody wins. It is possible to wear your partner down through being stubborn and relentlessly debating  an issue, going into a rage, or becoming silent, withholding, and pouting. However, if your partner gives into you to avoid dealing with how difficult you can be, then you end up finding that what your have “won” really is not worth it. Your have distanced your partner, he or she is unhappy and probably resentful. It is very hard to be happy in a marriage  by yourself. Happiness and a sense of well being is really a mutual experience in terms of how stable a relationship feels.

More importantly, if you develop a pattern of getting your way most of the time through being too difficult to deal with then you are sowing the seeds for major problems in the future. No one wants to feel like an unequal partner in a couple, and over a period of time resentment and frustration grows and your partner can drift away. In developing compromises that genuinely work for both people, a good place to start is to acknowledge the positive and valid points in what your partner is expressing. He or she will reciprocate and do the same for you. This then provides the beginning of a compromise when you can combine what are reasonable and constructive points on both sides.

COMPROMISE

The ability to compromise is one of the most important skills  a couple can develop in order to have a happier marriage. This usually involves working on changing patterns of interaction as a couple, as well as each partner working on his or her individual issues.  Many people  approach a discussion with an attitude of either winning or losing. This kind of mind set blocks a constructive discussion in two ways. If you feel you have to win you are going to pressure you partner to agree with you. You will be so focused on getting your way and making the best arguments you can that you will not be open to listening to your partner’s suggestions or ideas, much less his or her feelings.

The idea of losing a discussion may be so intolerable that it makes you feel very angry or insecure in anticipating that possibility. In this case you are going to be so worried and defensive about being controlled by your partner that you are not going to be able to listen in an open or reasonable way to what she or he is saying. In addition, when people feel very anxious they often can’t think clearly, and this can get in the way of you expressing your thoughts effectively.

Developing a frame of mind that is open to compromise involves acknowledging several factors. Perhaps the most difficult is really recognizing that you are not always right. We all know intellectually that we are not right all of the time. Emotionally, however many of us are fueled by the feeling during an argument that we are right and it is not fair for the other person to her his or her way. Giving up the conviction  that you are right can feel scary if you think it represents a loss of strength and protection. What you get in return greatly outweighs any sense of strength you may get be believing you are right. Realizing that you have a point of view which needs to be taken seriously, but that it is only one of several possible perspectives, gives you a much greater ability to be flexible in discussions. You can listen to your partner and change your opinion without feeling anxious about losing control or being powerless. It is a relief to realize your partner has valuable ideas to contribute in dealing with different situations. It actually makes you feel more secure to realize you are not alone in handling decisions in your life, but you have someone to rely on and help you.

Being open to changing your mind is not a weakness, it is a strength when you are more flexible, realistic, and mature.

FROM DISCUSSION TO DECISION

In previous posts I have explained the importance of a couple giving itself the time and space to discuss an issue before making a decision. All too often couples put pressure on themselves to reach a decision in one conversation. This usually results in both people feeling they have to convince their partner to agree with what they want. It also makes each partner defensive because they don’t want to feel controlled or pushed into something they do not want to do. This type of pressure and anxiety blocks open listening and communicating. When a couple can have a mutual understanding that they are going to discuss an issue and they do not have to make a decision, then people can speak more openly about their thoughts and feelings. This is very valuable in clarifying what is important to each person.

However, there does come a time when a decision has to be reached in a relationship. I will focus on some approaches that help to make the shift from a discussion phase to a decision making process. There are three general types of decision making patterns; consensus, compromising, and accomodating.

Consensus

A decision that is a mutual agreement which arises from a give and take discussion that combines both partner’s ideas is going to be the strongest kind of decision. This is because both people feel they have contributed to a plan and so they can support the decision, and each other, more easily. What is essential for  developing a consensus is an open dialogue in which both people feel heard and understood by having their feelings and ideas respected. In order for this to occur both partners need to use the listening skills discussed in the first post of this blog. Using active listening is particularly important because this communicates a sense of giving attention to your partner which is a key for him or her to feel understood. Focused listening can also lead to asking useful questions that help develop a clearer, mutual understanding. You may need to ask a question when you realize you do not really get the point your partner is trying to make or how he or she is using a certain word. This is one those points in a conversation in which a give and take that starts out clarifying what your partner means, leads to you adding a suggestion or idea, and then this develops into a real collaboration on how to deal with a problem, challenge, or new situation facing your relationship.

It is important that after listening and validating what your partner feels about an issue that you are clear in expressing what is important to you and what you want. When you listen openly and respectfully to your partner he or she will reciprocate this to you. Sometimes in order to avoid a conflict people are not clear either about what they really want and expect in a situation or about what they feel strongly against. It is important to express what is important to you and what would really be difficult to live with in order to arrive at a genuine consensus.

ASSERTING YOUR NEEDS

It is important in a relationship to be able to balance understanding and validating your partner’s feelings and thoughts with being able to assert your own emotional needs. Asserting yourself encompasses a range of behaviors that include: expressing what you want or expect from your partner in a clear, direct and matter of fact way; being able to be firm when necessary to indicate that something is important to you even when you know your partner disagrees; expressing your annoyance when you feel your partner is doing something unfair or repeatedly does not take your feelings into consideration; showing your anger at those times when you feel your partner has intentionally hurt you or has let you down in an important way.

Having a range of options in using your assertiveness gives you a flexibility for dealing with different issues that have different levels of meaning or importance to you. There is not one ideal or optimal way to be assertive. It is necessary to give yourself room to make mistakes in order to learn through trial and error. This will eventually help you to find a way of being assertive that feels both reasonable and genuine for you.

Most of the time it is more effective to express what you want and need from your partner in a low key, direct way. This usually comes across as a combination of expecting to be taken seriously and being non-threatening at the same time. Asserting yourself clearly and calmly is much easier to do earlier in any given discussion than later on before anxiety and tension builds up on both sides. Many people worry that expressing what they want or feel will lead to a conflict so they hold back and restrain their thoughts and feelings. What often happens though is that they get increasingly frustrated and this leads to the very thing they were trying to avoid. Anger comes out in a way that is usually critical, aggressive, and blaming. This makes your partner defensive and much less likely to be able to listen openly to what you are saying or wanting to respond positively.

The more you practice being assertive the more comfortable you will be doing it and the more spontaneous and effective you will be. There is a big difference in being assertive and being aggressive. Assertiveness comes from being able to validate yourself. Aggressiveness is often impulsive and reactive and reflects an insecurity that is expressed in overcompensating. Instead of increasing conflict in a relationship, assertiveness can resolve misunderstandings or tensions before they escalate to conflicts.