I know what you may be thinking. You may think I have a magically pill that will make your husband stop doing whatever he is doing to get you pissed off in the first place. Well my friend, I do not. This requires you to do a bit more work.
What I would like to offer you is my experience, and how I have handled my personal situation.
Anytime we blame others, we lose our power to do anything about it. When we point the finger at someone else, our brain immediately starts going to work to find more and more things to blame for. You see, our primitive brain is naturally very negative. Negativity is what it thrives on. (Hello headline news always delivering something negative). Our brain likes to ruminate on the negative and come up with more negative filled reasons. It really thinks it’s keeping you safe by keeping you in this negative loop.
Well, I am here to offer you another perspective. Maybe one that may rave you feeling better. Because who wouldn’t want more of that?
What if I told you, your husband is behaving exactly how he is supposed to behave? No matter how “wrong” you think that is, or how badly you want him to change. He is doing exactly what he needs to.
Your job as his partner is to love him….no matter what! I know that may sound like a stretch, especially while in the heat of a disagreement. But if you are able to take a pause and not try to change how he is behaving, it may be easier to come to a middle ground.
Rather than fighting with reality in trying to change someone else’s behavior, what if you worked on the behavior you could change: YOURS. When we try to get someone else to change the way they are behaving, it is only because we want to feel better about it. We think, if they behave in the way we expect them to, we will feel better. But really what is happening is we want them to “do the work” of changing instead of us adjusting our behavior to accept what they have done.
And the truth is, there is no “right” and “wrong” way, just a difference in opinion. We have all been brought up differently and have had different experiences, so naturally we will have a different way of handling situations.
So next time you are in the middle of a disagreement, try and take a pause, and think about it a bit differently. You may be surprised at what a difference it can make in how you feel about the situation. Because, what’s the alternative?
