The Actions Are His, But The Reaction Is Yours

     I fill myself with love, and I send that love out into the world. How others treat me is their path; how I react is mine. W. Dyer

Over the years I've become a real expert of living with my husband. Dodging his verbal attacks, withstanding silent treatment tactics, adjusting to his mood changes. I became so good at practicing non-reaction, that I stayed alert even when nothing was wrong. You never know when a switch happens, right? You gotta stayed prepared. Until the moment I noticed that I got so good at living with his darker side, that I don't know how to be around him when he is his normal self - kind, humorous, caring - which he is most of the time.

It's certainly a sign of spiritual growth when you learn not to react when provoked by others, not necessarily your spouse. Your parents criticize your way of living, your friends annoy you with their complains, your boss has a resolve to destroy your self-esteem. It's natural to get defensive and all emotional; refraining from reacting requires a higher level of consciousness and practice. But what's the point of withholding reaction, if the negativity and judgment keep boiling inside your head to the point of explosion?

So now I'm learning a new way, a way of love and compassion. If my husband says something mean just to hurt me, not only I don't respond verbally, I actually try to send a blessing his way. I feel truly sorry for him, that life doesn't treat him right bringing out the worst in him, that he is probably stuck living with his demons forever since he is not even aware of them, that his moments of remorse are as powerful as his moments of uncontrolled anger.

So in the moment when we are about to have a confrontation, I don't try to prove him wrong or change his opinion, I work on changing myself instead. I think to myself, "he is trying to shatter my peace because his has been shattered long ago hence all his suffering. The best I can do for him, for both of us is to maintain that inner peace, let its healing power quiet his hurting self". Then I take a really deep breath, then another one, and one more till I have no reaction to his words other than genuine compassion. The results are amazing, if not miraculous. His fire is suddenly put down and he is changing the subject to something more positive. And I respond in the most friendly manner, as if his outburst minutes ago didn't happen. And we are back to being two normal, sensible adults sharing a life together, not two lost immature kids controlled by their emotions and fighting over small things.

Nothing he does or says these days can hurt me because I no longer identify with his feelings or thoughts about me. Especially since they tend to change by the hour. It's almost funny to observe his attempts to pull me into a fight, to get me to react and then stop mid-track because he encounters no resistance. He suddenly doesn't know what to do next and ... just calms down. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Don't underestimate the power of your love, compassion and peace to override any negativity, to spread and touch another person in a new way. And then just watch your life begin to change.

Why Did You Choose Your Husband?

You ever thought why of all the candidates we end up marrying this particular person? Is it the law of attraction at work? Or the punishing power of karma? If I look 10 years back, I see what I was when I met my future husband. Scared, insecure, weak, needy and worst of all absolutely  unbearably lonely. It couldn't have gone any other way. He came - strong, manly, fearless - scooped me up, took me under his wing and shielded me from the world. Even with some obvious incompatibilities  and many differences - cultural, behavioral, intellectual - I was willing to move ahead with his strong current, the voice of reasoning too weak against my desperate desire to be protected.

 

Little did I know that his powerful, dominating personality will imprison me in a narrow cell of his limitations. That before I met him it was me against the world, and now it's me against him AND the world.  That when I was by myself I was surviving, but with him I started disappearing.

So the bitter battle began to preserve my identity and free will. To fight his every "no",  his irrational control and jealousy, his pull-push attitude where one day he would be all loving and needy, and the next - distant and despising. But worst of all was his impact on my emotional state: all the doubts and insecurities that emerged within me due to a randomly thrown comment or a straightforward insult. When I think about our first few years together, I feel utterly sorry for myself: he kept bending me in every way he wished and all I could do was cry helplessly and wait for a change in his mood to give me a break.

 

But this is not a story about my husband, he is not a bad man and he has to deal with his own demons. This is my story. Without summoning my own inner strength and cultivating self-love and self-respect, I would always be at someone's mercy - striving to please in return for approval, love, protection. If I don't know my worth and who I am, everyone will mold me to their liking. I realized that it was not about changing my husband, or finding ways to peacefully co-exist with him, or proving him the point. It was about instilling into my every cell the notion that I AM ENOUGH, that I'm everything I'm meant to be.

The past few years I worked hard to fix what was broken. But not in our relationship - inside of me. It was a slow process and I would rebound to my old ways of thinking now and then, but I was definitely changing. It started one day when I decided not to be mad at him when he deliberately tried to hurt me. I kept saying, "that's his problems and they have nothing to do with me, I know my worth". Soon enough his words or actions barely bothered me, I was ready to forget and move on within minutes. In the evening he would act all guilty, studying my reaction and then I would remember we had a fight in the morning. But being upset with him seemed too insignificant to concern myself with it.

 

Today I'm strong enough to say that the only person I will entrust with my happiness is me. I allow him to add to that happiness if he wishes, but not to subtract. Back in my single days there were other men, possibly better men, more compatible with my personality and expectations. But they scared me so much because I thought in panic - how could I ever stand up to their amasingness? I picked who I thought I deserved, who was my match at that point. Today it would have been a different story.

If you are struggling in your relationship, rather than digging up all the things that are wrong with your partner, look for answers within and see what brought this person to your life in the first place. What gaps were you trying to close? What insecurities to cover up? We often think that we need another person to feel whole, to supplement what we are lacking but we forget that we possess everything we need to navigate through life with or without a partner. I stopped asking myself - why him? Through my husband I've learned many lessons about myself and uncovered many of my own limitations.  These days I only allow him to love me. The minute he tries to control, upset or frighten me, I lose interest and retreat into my own happy world. When he opts for his mean ways, he is not compatible with me  so I simply shut him out. These days he has to play by my rules, which is really just one rule called LOVE.

 

Is Your Husband an Energy Vampire?

Winter is never a good time for us. Apart from the cold weather, lack of sunshine, and uneventful days we have to deal with a major downer - decline in my husband's business activity and a negative shift in his income. In other words, it's cold, depressing and financially-challenging.

Unlike me, who is trying to find a shade of light and hope in any desperate situation, my husband likes to SUFFER. I mean he just succumbs to his misery and begins to radiate negativity, making the air around him gloomy and toxic. He whines, and complains, and criticizes everyone and everything from the government with their "stupid laws" to the customers who refuse to give him business. And at the end of his daily rant he pretty much declares that life sucks and he'd rather be a shepherd in some remote Montana area than live like that.

On days like these being around him is like going through purgatory. He pulls me into his drama and sucks all life and soul out of me . And the more I try to give him reasons why there's hope, and we'll pull through, and it's temporary, and we should enjoy what we have, the more drained and angry I feel myself. Talking for 10 minutes with him this morning left me shaken, and it took one hour of listening to relaxation music and reading "self-empowerment" book to feel better. But it used to take days for me to overcome this "emotional violence", when I didn't know that I needed to block his energetic vampirism and not let him drag me down.

We all occasionally deal with energy drainers. My best friend is my husband's double: on her good days she is fun to chat with, on bad - I dread picking up the phone. What I didn't know before is that I don't need to absorb their negativity. I can put up the glass wall, acknowledge to myself that someone is trying to raise their level of energy by taking some of mine, and then step away to recharge. These days, when I sense my husband's gloomy mood , I catch on faster to his maneuvers to pull me into an argument and keep my distance. I busy myself with housework when he tries to "talk". I think about something else if listening to him is unavoidable, mostly about what he is trying to do to me and how I should be resisting. I remind myself that the biggest antidote for his unhappiness is my happiness and don't let myself get angry or upset. I rush to recharge immediately after the conversation is over: read some uplifting blog or listen to my favorite music or go for a walk. By raising my awareness I learned to shorten the brooding phase and can go back to my optimistic, content self faster. His bad days are no longer my bad days.

Energy shifts are directly related to our emotions. Positive increase our amount of energy, negative - reduce it. So every time your husband does something that makes you feel bad, you are losing your energy. Every time he evokes anger, resentment, frustration, jealousy or sadness, he dims your light. The question is how much of your happy self you are willing to give away. I'm not saying it's easy to control emotions when they are under attack - I still get provoked and lose control easily. But you choose how long to stay that way. I rush to restore my energy as soon as I acknowledge the damage. I know that I can't just snap out of it or command myself to feel good, I need help. Sometimes reading a spiritual book for 15 minutes is all it takes, other times I need to speak to someone who will help me get out of the darkness, so I call my sister.

I don't know what works for you, but if your husband tends to turn into an energy vampire now and then, make sure to have an action plan that will help you minimize the impact.  Being around an energy drainer even for a shord period of time means giving him a piece of you and in order to fill up the void you need to bring your focus back to yourself as soon as possible and do the much needed healing.

Happy Love Day to You!

I asked my husband: "Are we going out on Valentine's Day?" He responded abruptly: "no". Honestly, I didn't expect a different answer. His business has been really slow lately and with me still unemployed after being laid off 8 months ago, money is an issue. In fact dinner at the restaurant is a rather terrifying expense right now and it would shadow any joy we would derive from it. I still fear he will get me the flowers because he does so every year no matter what, now THAT would be a total waste of money. But then I start thinking that if he really wanted to do something nice for me, he would find a way. He would borrow the money to take me out. He would buy me a small inexpensive gift to show that he was thinking about me. Even some kind of a sweet gesture, a compliment, extra attention are still better than nothing. Yet it seems like nothing is all I get today.

But I'm not going this route of self-pity. Valentine's Day is when we celebrate love because we feel and want it, not out of obligation. I've seen enough men rushing to buy last minute flowers after work, their faces devoid of any emotion. Obligation, checking it off the list, living up to social expectations - but not exactly the feeling itself.

This is the day to give love and that's what it is going to be for me. Forget the restaurant, I'm going to make a nice dinner to express my love and gratitude to my family, because I'm not alone that day, I have someone to take care of. I will call all my single friends and wish them a Happy Valentine's Day and say something nice, because to them it's the hardest holiday of the year. I will call my mom and dad and wish them many more years of love, because they take so much pride in being together for more than 35 years and still going strong. Last night I helped my son design handmade Valentine cards to give to his classmates - it was a surprisingly enjoyable process! Today I will find more ways to give love by doing small acts of kindness for anyone I can. Writing this post is one of those little things and who knows, maybe someone who's feeling blue this day will read it and feel less alone and more hopeful. Maybe they will look at the "dreadful holiday" from my angle and see that there's place for them too in the pandemic celebration. Because we all can do it: create and expand this presence of love in our life and lives of others.

Valentine's Day divides people into those who feel excited and anticipate great things and those who are bitter-sad and expect nothing. I want to be among the excited folks. I don't want to sit and wait for the "love package" express delivery and brood over not getting one. I have too much love to give and that's what I'm going to busy myself with today. Happy Love Day, people, I'm thinking of you all and wishing you to receive love in many different forms but also find the way to release some of your love into the universe.