Posts Tagged ‘emotions’
On the nature of relationships
I have a friend who is going through some tough times at the moment and, during the course of some email tennis, there are a few paragraphs that I think bare repeating.
Would you change him, so that you could keep him? If you were to forgive what seems unforgivable (and believe me, it is forgivable, but maybe not just yet) and continue from roughly where you left off, what would you have to change, in your deeply held beliefs about relationships, so that you could REALLY be back in the relationship?
A lot huh?
About the same amount of things you’ll have to change to have your next serious relationship with whomever comes along.
Coupled with…
Know that when you are in a relationship, you choose to be in it and there will always be unexpected stuff coming at you. It is the nature of a relationship between two (or more) people that things will not go “as planned” and so, as you get more experienced with being in relationships, you stop making plans and stick to a generally agreed upon “basic outline” that can be reviewed at any time all members are together.
It has taken me, personally, ~15 years to figure this out and, while I think I’ve got it mostly worked out, I know that I could also have it completely wrong. While I am not exactly “fine” with that, I am okay with the idea that it doesn’t matter so much, as long as I am willing to throw out my old ideas and learn something new when the situation requires it.
I don’t really have much to add, outside of the context of the situation, other than: Relationships are curious things, the more I have the more I realise how much more there is to learn about them.
The simple steps to happiness:
- Feel.
- Simplify.
- Repeat.
The fine print:
Feel – We’re incredibly complex. No one is ever 100% happy or sad; or angry; or anything. How you feel right now is a mix of various emotions, in different amounts, that is constantly changing. This is the human condition. Be Human: dive in to these feelings and see them for what they are.
Simplify – What is causing each of these emotions? Where does the anger come from? The happiness? The fear? Allocate feelings to causes. Give them a weighting. Eliminate those that you no longer require or that, upon inspection, are not relevant. Focus on what IS relevant. Focus on what you want to be important.
Repeat – When you are able to simplify as quickly as you can feel; when you can focus on the feelings you have decided are important AS YOU HAVE THEM; then you will be content. Until then practise feeling and simplifying, feeling and simplifying. See? Your life is changing already!
The hidden (zeroth) step is: Exist – You are here. You are now. Without you none of this is possible. As far as you are concerned, nothing exists if you don’t either. Alternatively, a rock does not know it is a rock and therefore, to the rock, it does not exist.
Sometimes, a person you care deeply about will ask you a question.
It may be a simple question, it might even be a statement with an expected response; It doesn’t matter – it’s one of THOSE questions; the ones you have already talked about or that you don’t WANT to talk about. It’s a loaded gun with a hair-trigger pointing at a barrel of TNT.
And you would like to say, “Look; can’t we just move on from this? I understand that you are scared/worried/annoyed/embittered/angry/afraid/negative about this but I thought we resolve this last time and wouldn’t it be nicer if we could spend our time together enjoying ourselves and looking at the good things we have going here; especially since we only have a short amount of time together.”
But you’re running late/in a hurry/a little tired/not paying attention and you say something like;
- “Sure…” or
- “Uh huh…” or
- “Do we really need to do this now?” or
- “Whatever you want.” or SOMETHING…
And then it hits you. Both. The Emotional Tsunami smashes into you and sweeps the relationship over all the old rocks you carefully avoided/re-arranged on the way to where you were and BLAM! You’re having an argument. Possibly The Same Argument you have had before.
Wonderful.
So, how can you avoid this?
Every. Single. Time. You are asked a question; tell yourself this;
This is going to take about 30 minutes. Do I have 30 minutes to spend cleaning up whatever happens so that I can continue as if it hadn’t – because THIS IS GOING TO TAKE ABOUT 30 MINUTES TO CLEAN UP.
Then answer the question the person you care deeply about asked you. If you spend less than 30 minutes dealing with whatever happens after that. You are ahead. You have SAVED yourself time.
If you expect it to take 30 minutes you will change the tone of your voice; you will change the attitude you bring to the answer; you will craft your answer more elegantly, with more care and attention than if you approach it from the “I’m in a hurry” mentality.
It will not take 30 minutes when you spend the time, up front, making an effort to care about the two of you, rather than having to bring yourself to that point AFTER you have had a disaster. Both of you will feel better and you might, just might, have answered That Question for the last time.
Don’t count on it though :)
Image by aeshaw90.
During the course of dealing with the emotional nuke of losing an unborn baby I have had to help Emma with her internal struggle to come to (good) terms with what happened. it has not been an easy trip, nor do I think that it is over yet. We are helping each other as best we can. Sometimes there are moments that might be useful to share:
Emma went to do some shopping for groceries and it was finally her turn at the checkout when the checkout person ignored her completely. This caused too much emotional pain for Emma and she dropped the shopping, burst in to tears and ran out of the shop.
(Please be aware that this is only what I think she said happened, as when Emma was telling me what had happened she was crying and very upset, so it could very well be that some guy had tried to hold-up the shop and Emma beat him to death with a can of Baked Beans – her favourite)
The point being, Emma is really upset for no apparent reason – for no reasonable reason that she understands – and this is also upsetting her.
During the calming down and “We can cope with this” conversation we had over the phone (which is great because Emma rang me when she was overwhelmed) I came across this picture of severe emotional damage and what it’s like:
Imagine that we have both been hit with this huge water bomb full of emotional goo. We got soaked, we didn’t see it coming and don’t know who threw it. We started to clean up the big splash of goo around us; we’ve had a shower and got clean clothes and now we are working at cleaning away a slightly bigger circle around us.
During the process of cleaning up we get covered in the goo again, it’s almost as bad a being hit the first time, but there is less goo and so there is less emotion. Cleaning up is dirty work, more showers and fresh clothes are constantly required. It’s a long and draining process, but we’ve almost cleaned the room now. Now that we have the room and most everything that we can see all clean, it looks like things are fine.
What we haven’t realised is that the goo-bomb was HUGE and globs have gone in to all kinds of places that aren’t even in view. Like Coles; there was a bit of goo over there and Emma just stepped in it when she was ignored by the checkout person. She got covered because she wasn’t expecting it – emotional goo doesn’t have an “Emotional goo on isle 4″ sign.
So we have two options; go hunting all the goo; or accept that we got gooed and that there is probably left over bits around the place that we’ll run into every now and again.
Getting clean again is a metaphor for us “feeling like normal”.
It is impossible to tell if we have removed all the goo unless we do nothing but look for goo – Don Quixote style. A far better approach is to accept that there might be goo out there (from this and other goo-bombs) and that we are capable of dealing with a little goo from time to time. After a long enough period of time, the first one solution looks identical to the second one but we haven’t spent anywhere near as much time doing the other things we want to do in life.
And I wouldn’t want to miss that, especially with a wonderful girl like Emma.
Image by jontintinjordan (Flickr).
How am I feeling?
I have been asked this question so much in my life and answered it without really giving it much thought, and let’s be honest, most of the time the person asking this question doesn’t really care how you feel they are just being polite or asking out of habit. Lately though I have had to ask myself how I am feeling and actually take the time to listen to what my mind, body and heart is telling me.
Ben and I have been through a lot in the past few days. There have been times where minutes seemed to span into decades where nothing seemed to ease the pain, where all I wanted was to open the door and run away until this situation we are in was a million miles away. There have also been times of happiness as we dream about the future and hope for a day when the pain will no longer be our defining feature. We have spent time together and time apart to come to terms with how ourselves and each other is dealing with the news that we won’t be parents just yet.
Today was a turning point. We attended the hospital again for confirmation that I had miscarried and were able to talk over the situation with a doctor and actually start on some sort of recovery. It was hard to be told once again that the pregnancy wasn’t viable but having had four days to come to terms with the news was actually starting to look like a blessing. I was still sad but no so overwhelmed that doctors and nurses voices were a blank murmur to the pain swelling up inside of me.
We are at home now. Ben is resting and I am slightly drugged up while waiting for the misoprostol to start to take effect. It is a strange sensation but no worse than bad period pain. I’m still waiting and not entirely sure how I will react once it starts to work and my uterus empties. It is a sad thought but then I am looking at the positive, that we can try again.
It is all hard but easy, sad but happy, draining but invigorating, and the end but also a new beginning. We have become a lot closer out of this situation and much more capable of coping through difficult situations together. We are recovering.
How am I feeling?
I’m not entirely sure yet but holding out for a future where I can answer quite confidently “good”.
Image by Dave77549 (Flickr)
