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.

What To Do When Your Husband Doesn't Want You To Go Out

I've written before about living with a controlling husband, however a recent comment from one of the readers inspired me to look deeper into a specific problem: your husband is against your going out. So I put together sort of a "survival guide" with some steps you should take to mitigate the inevitable conflict.

Mind, I'm not going to address how unjustified his reactions are, we all get it. The way I look at it, living with a control freak is like living with a child with behavioral issues: he can't help it, every time you go out he has to throw a tantrum because he fears he is losing control. No need to get mad, judge or fight him. You can feel sorry for him but you gotta do what you gotta do. Unfortunately, you can't help him deal with his emotions, your main responsibility is to protect yourself, your life and your emotional well-being from the destructive influence of his manipulative ways. So here's what you can do to make it easier for YOURSELF:

BEFORE

Telling him you are going out requires certain wisdom. If you ask for his permission he is likely to say no. If you simply deliver the news as a statement, he will get mad you didn't ask for his permission. So what works for me is a combination of both. "Honey, I made plans to go out with my girlfriends this Saturday night (statement), I hope you don't mind (sort of asking for permission)". It's important to mention that you've already made the arrangements, so it's no longer between you and him (manipulators strive in one-on-one battles), but there are other people involved who already expect you to show up and not doing so will be suspicious or require an explanation.

If he strongly objects to it, you need to give him a valid reason why you are still going. Keep in mind that obvious reasons that work for normal people, won't work for him (you want to have some fun, you miss your family, you don't feel part of the team if you never go to a happy hour with co-workers, etc.) What he needs is a SUPER-reason, the one he won't be able to counter-argue with. For example, when he is against my girls-night-out, I say that I've been so stressed out lately, that if I don't go out and get some distraction, I will have a nervous breakdown and he will have to find me a psychiatrist/shrink/mental institution. Works every time! He doesn't want that kind of responsibility.

If he doesn't want you to go to a family gathering, tell him you already promised your mom and you can't stand to upset her. If it means that much to him, HE should then call your mom and explain why you are not going. The prospect of doing it will terrify him enough to back down. Manipulators prefer to stay on good terms with the rest of the world, it's only with you, desperate for control, they are not afraid to lose face. Besides, they usually use guilt to make you change your mind but in this case you throw the ball in his court and the decision is his to make.

DURING:

So you are going and he even gave his half-hearted yes to the outing. But now he wants you back home at 10pm even though the party starts at 9.... He will instruct you not to consume any alcohol and will find a million reasons why the outfit you're wearing is inappropriate. In other words agreeing to you going out doesn't mean he won't try to still ruin it for you. Like a kid who throws a tantrum when mom goes to work, even though he promised to be a good boy. So ideally, if you want to have a good time, you need to mentally "divorce" your husband as you close the door behind you, turn off your cell phone and enjoy the night. You will deal with the consequences later.

If you feel like this tough love is too tough for him, leave the phone on, but don't pick it up as he starts to frantically call you. Send him one vague text message "everything is fine, we'll be home soon" somewhere in the middle of the night, then bury the phone deep in your purse and give your full attention to the party.  If you go back and forth texting each other or fighting over the phone you might as well have stayed at home. Remember, you are "divorced" for the night, and don't let your "ex" ruin your evening. He's gonna give you a hard time the next day no matter what, so which one you pick - to enjoy the party and then have a fight or not to enjoy the party and still have a fight?  But to make it easier turning off your phone is highly recommended.

AFTER:

The key is to act as normal as possible, the minute he senses a hint of guilt you are doomed to lose in the upcoming argument. Don't try to be extra nice or appease him with a super-fancy breakfast. Remember, you did nothing wrong and it's him who is having a problem. (Ideally, he should be the one serving you breakfast in bed for making you deal with his problems.) The party was yesterday and you've already moved on to today, so busy yourself with the matters of today. I used to make a mistake of giving him the details of the event: who came, what and how much we drank, what time it ended. It gave him lots of reasons to blame me - for hanging out with the wrong people, drinking too much, staying out too late. Now I stay as evasive as possible, providing minimum information and emphasizing that I don't care about it as much as he does. How was the party? - it was ok. - Who was there? - a few people. - What were you doing? - eating. - How much you drank? - not much. - How late you got home? - not sure. He simply won't be able to build up a conversation based on your 2-word answers and the argument will extinguish itself as it barely starts.

These are some of my strategies, they might not work for you but I hope they will at least inspire you to look for your own solutions. Just remember, the key objective of any manipulator is to make you think about a situation, to put you in a state of introversion until you start feeling guilty however irrational it seems. He will blow it out of proportion and make it difficult for you, so that next time you think twice before going out again. He is trying to make it big - you  should make it smaller. "I went out last night, what's the problem again?" He wants you thinking about it, he wants you mad  because that's how he felt last night when you were gone. Show him you've already moved on and it's him who's still stuck. "I'm sorry I can't talk about it now, I have to do laundry and go food shopping". And most importantly, resist the temptation to think and worry about it before, during and after you went out. It's not him who is ruining your life because he has a control problem, it's you who let's him put you into this thinking mode. So get distracted, command yourself not to think about it, not to feel mad and eventually you will make the problem non-existent, just like it should be.

Top Reason for Divorce in 2011?

So according to this annual study in the UK, priorities have shifted. Being in love is now the #1 requirement for staying happily married. No feelings – no marriage. Just a few generations back it wasn’t that simple to walk away from one’s matrimony. Financial obligations, ‘raising good children’ concern and the reaction of the society were key factors that glued spouses together and made them if not deal, then at least adept to the marital issues, lack of passion being one of them. These days we have enough freedom and personal independence not to put up with things we no longer like or want.

I think the concept of a Better Alternative (I made that up) is to blame. We can have a better anything more and more easily and frequently. Better cell phones and laptops due to never-ending improvements and additional features, better, more reliable cars, home appliances that simplify our already simplified lives even more. You can get an upgrade in virtually every aspect of life, so why not apply it to your marriage. Yes, the union worked well before but now there are wears and tears: why settle for this diminishing value if it’s easier to shop for a new advanced version of Marriage 5.

Well, technology does progress at ridiculous speed: new improved features are added, flaws fixed… But we don’t change like that, we remain human and our flaws stay with us. So if you think that you are heading for a better deal because of all the excitement that a new relationship promises, you want to look back and see how it all started a number of years ago. And where you are now. Because chances are you will be at this point again. And again. As long as you stay on this roller-coaster: fall in love, get married, fall out of love, leave, fall in love again…

Not many people want to work on their marriage any more. We got lazy and spoiled. And discarding old things and replacing them with new, improved ones has never been easier. But in most cases a new relationship means old problems: misunderstanding, under-appreciation, little annoying things we inevitably have to put up with, possibly new bruises and scars in unexplored before areas… It’s impossible to stay madly in love for life, it’s been proven time and again. But working on your relationship is very doable, building it into a strong fort, a solid union which, though it demands certain sacrifices, never fails to give back – that should be the alternative to giving up and moving forward.

May your marriage flourish in 2012!

Ever After

"It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis."
Margaret Bonnano

So if the whole “happily ever after concept” is utopia, how can we keep on going once this huge disappointing discovery shows its face? The first months (for some even years) of marriage are all sunshine, and rainbow, and star shower; but as it progresses further, we get more and more cloudy days, with occasional storms that leave a lot of destruction and devastation behind. Some days are so foggy we can barely see what’s around and opt to hide inside till the surroundings clear up. And sometimes you are forced to live in the longest polar night and you forget how it feels to see the light…

I used to believe that strong beginnings provide you with extra strength in the rough times: you can lean on the best of your memories and persuade yourself that if happiness was possible back then, why not replicate it now with minor adjustments? What an erroneous notion: you can only ride shortly on the quickly evaporating fuel made of blissful memories. Very soon your matrimonial vehicle will need new gas, the fact that you filled up the tank years ago won’t be good enough.

Only today matters. And every day is a new today. You might still care about yesterday, you can go as far as the past week with your appreciation, but you are very unlikely to care what happened a month ago. You can’t feel the same way you felt back then, the past emotions get buried under an avalanche of all the new feelings you incurred since then.

It’s disastrous to think that you will give more effort to your relationship next month/year, or when you have more time, or when you are out of a major bout of depression, or when a daunting project is completed at work, or when the kids get a little older and don’t need as much of your attention, or when you are in a better financial state. Only today matters. You might not have the most advantageous conditions to patch things up but you need to make the best of what you’ve got today. Operating on limited resources is a challenge but it provokes enough efficiency and inventiveness to make that shift you’ve been hoping would happen on its own. You need to work on a daily dose of marital happiness: you are the writer, the producer and the actor of the script called “MY happily ever after”. It’s in the small things - in extra attention you’ve ignored to show before, in affection that ignites a sleeping heart, in words that express love, hope, happiness – all the good things that could be happening in your marriage if you pushed the disagreement and hurt feelings to the background and brought the positive to the front.

Can You Break the Cycle?

Many of us live with a preconceived notion that we need another person in life for it to be complete, for happiness to come knocking at the door. We believe wholeheartedly that when we meet our significant other the most important piece of the puzzle will be put into place, that only then we will feel whole. And there is nothing wrong about thinking that way, in fact I am frequently wary of the individuals declaring that they are self-sufficient and perfectly fine on their own. It’s almost against nature.

The biggest mistake we are prone to make is to place too much weight in the way of our expectations and demands on the chosen one. We wait for someone to come and fix us! We are too lazy to do the work that concerns us. I often hear wives complaining, “he doesn’t do this and that… he doesn’t love me like he used to… he doesn’t treat me right…” They seem to be producing a long list of unmet demands that’s only getting longer with each year of shared living. Their dissatisfaction takes up all the space, it seems to be the only thing they are capable of talking or thinking about. Wait a minute, if your husband is to disappear tomorrow, taking with him all of your unaddressed concerns, what will you have left of your life? Would you look around like you just woke up asking yourself , “uh… where was I?”

We all want happiness so badly yet we refuse to even try to be happy unless our spouse would spread happiness in abundance on every single day of our life. Otherwise we stay miserable. And give him the attitude he deserves for failing to be the light that never burns out.

At some point I thought: no matter how hard I tried it’s not easy to be happy with him. Too much work with dubious results at the end. That’s when I decided to be happy on my own, first in spite, then for the sake… My happiness was the best neutralizer of his moodiness, aggressiveness or indifference. I started looking for things that make me happy even when he is not around, soon I was too busy to notice his lack of attention and ignore his nagging. I was no fun to have a fight with, he was looking at me with different eyes, I sensed the renewal of his interest. I was so enthusiastic about all the things I was taking on, my enthusiasm got contagious. I lightened up the atmosphere in our house, I lifted up the burden I placed on his shoulders at the beginning of our marriage: to keep me happy all the time – something that would wear down any man sooner or later. A happy wife is easy to love. A loved wife is happy. Stop thinking that only once he treats you write you will finally be happy (because he will only treat you worse if you keep going that route). Be happy now, be that light, you have that in you!

Is Your Husband Happy?

Reading a blog about loneliness, I stumbled upon a comment from one frustrated husband. These are the words that somehow struck me the most and emerged me into a lengthy bout of pondering: “My wife does her best to null any joy or excitement”. Women are known to complain more about issues they have in their relationships: expressing feelings, untangling a twisted knot of emotional problems, self-digging to a point of losing touch with reality and then dumping the findings on whoever would listen – all of these are more typical of a feminine nature. I’m not trying to present men as some shallow species incapable of deep feelings, it’s just that those feelings are mostly hidden so well it’s easy to fall into fallacy of thinking that men can take up any emotional burden and still be okay. Is it really so?

I often get annoyed when Jonathan gets into this peculiar dreaming mood. He starts talking about all the things he would never do as if he is all ready to start execution of his grand plans tomorrow. It goes like “first we’ll travel to Europe, stop by in Italy, visit Scandinavian countries…” I can’t help it but put some cold water on his overheated dream button: I dismiss his dreams by strong reasoning and logic. In eight years we’ve been together we went traveling once and it took a lot of efforts on my side. As I follow my urge to bring him back to the real world, the light of joy fades away from his face: he is defeated, quiet and unhappy. He retreats into his inner world from which I am now banned. Once I heard him murmur: “ Let me dream, won’t you…”

That’s just one of the examples but I can think of many more when I was the one to “null his joy and excitement”. Yet he never complains and I proudly carry my rightness, convinced I did him lots of good. It daunted on me lately that I don’t want to be right any more, I want him to be happy. And even if I am not the source of his happiness all the time, at least I can try and give some space so that the springs of joys would emerge from underground. We may very conveniently think that they owe us happiness but we owe them nothing in return: we can do all the nagging and criticizing in the world and still be loved unconditionally. It doesn’t take much to be judgmental, it takes a lot of will to support something you don’t necessarily agree with. Unless you want to be that sort of wife, the one who is always right, the joy-killer.