Making Repairs

I really liked Ben Affleck's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony this February. In accepting the Oscar for best picture, he acknowledged and thanked his wife, actress Jennifer Garner. He told her that while their relationship has taken a lot of hard work, there is no one he'd rather work with. Truly great, committed relationships do take continued awareness about yourself, the other person, how you treat each other, and how you can repair things if they go off track.

Great relationships are a little like great houses. You can't buy a beautiful house with a terrific yard, move in, and not repair or fix anything for 5, 10, 20 or more years and expect to have anything of value. Both houses and relationships take regular attention, care, and repairs when things aren't working.

All couples are going to disagree at times. What matters most is being able to repair the problem. It helps to stay solution-focused. Avoid blame. Describe what you observed, as neutrally as possible, and explain what would work better for you next time. Apologize for any ways in which your behavior, thoughtlessness, or reaction made the situation worse. Ask what you could do differently when a similar situation arises again. (It probably will; most couples have patterns). This should help your partner be less defensive with you, too.

Both people in a relationship need to share responsibility for making repairs. I don't like to see the responsibility always resting with one partner, while the other one stubbornly refuses to ever take initiative for a repair. That's not fair, and it will eventually burn out your partner and breed resentment.

I also consider it a danger sign when couples don't speak to each other for days when they have had a fight. This 'deep freeze' is often very painful for one or both partners, and is actually a very wounding and passive-aggressive behavior. It's perfectly okay to cool down when angry, decide you will meet up and talk it through a bit later, but a day or more of not speaking is a really bad idea.

Try to avoid black and white or extreme thinking when there is conflict between you and the other person. While it is sometimes necessary to cut-off or end a relationship that is toxic or dangerous to you, most healthy relationships do have conflicts from time to time. It's not generally helpful to threaten to leave or end the relationship every time you hit a speed bump. The conflicts, if worked through in a respectful way, can actually deepen your connection and understanding of each other.

Choosing a wonderful house to live in, or a terrific partner to share your life with, is a great start. The happily ever after part often depends on different skills, which definitely include attention, care, maintenance, and regular repairs as needed. Think of it as protecting your investment.

Letting Go and Moving On

Holding onto perceived hurts, grudges, and resentment is bad for us. It can ruin your sleep; make you anxious or depressed. It can cause physical health problems-- elevate your blood pressure and heart rate, cause you digestive problems, or give you headaches. It can keep you from being present for the loving relationships in your life, and the beauty of things around you. Holding onto the bad stuff keeps us from experiencing the goodness available to each of us.

Sometimes you don't have a choice in an emotional cut-off of a relationship, where a family member or friend abruptly stops all communication with you. Emotional cut-offs actually take a great deal of emotional energy to maintain. You may have to stay angry to feel justified in your position. Both loving and hating someone else take far more psychic energy than being in a neutral position towards another person.When someone does an emotional cut-off with you, it may be important to release them with love. Send them off with evisioning white, healing light around them. Try to forgive yourself, and forgive them as well.

Not all the relationships in your life can go the distance with you across the rest of your life. If a relationship has become toxic, where the other person is critical, judgmental of you and others, destructive to themselves and others, abusing alcohol and/or drugs, blaming, and attacking, you may NEED to let go. There is no way you can safely stand by. You may want to be emotioanlly brave and explain briefly and honestly why you are letting go.

One of my favorite writers/speakers is Gerald Jampolsky, MD, who wrote the classics Love Is Letting Go of Fear and Goodbye to Guilt: Releasing Fear Through Forgiveness. Jampolsky is a psychiatrist, and also a deeply spiritual man. He writes in a beautifully simple style. He teaches us that people come from one of only two places: love and fear. If you are not coming from love in your relationships with other people, then you are coming from a place of fear.

People who are coming from a loving place don't need to compete with others. They don't need to feel bad when something good happens for someone else they know. They don't need to sit in judgement of others, or criticize and speak poorly of others behind their backs. In contrast, when you are coming from love as your emotional point of reference, you can be supportive of others and not feel threatened or diminished by it. You can forgive others and yourself for NOT being perfect. You can see the best in others. You build others up through authentic encouragement of other people's strengths, progress, and good efforts. You see yourself as you are, imperfect, and in this journey of life to learn things, and to change and grow.

Letting go of things? It's not only good for our closets and homes, it's also good for our personal growth to let some things go and move along our path.