At some point in our lives, whether married, engaged or in a
relationship, our significant others have a way of driving us crazy.
This week, we are looking at some relationship problems and how to work
through them, courtesy of PhyscologyToday.
Without doubt, there are big problems that afflict relationships; infidelity, abuse, and addiction are not perishing from the earth.
A highly sexualised society delivers an alluring drumbeat of distractions. But it may be the petty problems that subvert love most surreptitiously.
The dirty socks on the floor. The way our partner chews so loudly. Like the relentless drip of a leaky faucet, they erode the goodwill that underlies all relationships.
Before you know it, you feel unloved, unheard, and underappreciated, if not criticised and controlled. Intimacy becomes a pale memory.
Yet irritations are inevitable in relationships. It’s just not possible to find another human being whose every quirk, habit, and preference aligns perfectly with yours.
The fundamental challenge in a relationship, contends New York psychiatrist John Jacobs, is “figuring out how to negotiate and live with your partner’s irritants in a way that doesn’t alienate them and keeps the two of you connected.”
When marriages don’t work, he adds, often the partners are fighting not over big issues but over petty differences in style.
We each have differing values and ways of looking at the world, and we want different things from each other. Such differences derive from our genetically influenced temperaments, our belief systems, and experiences growing up in our family of origin, explains Diane Sollee, family therapist and founder of SmartMarriages.
“We think, ‘my father knew how to put the toilet seat down, so why can’t you?’ Or ‘my father never put the toilet seat down, so I’m not going to, either.’”
Whatever the source, such patterns are deeply ingrained, difficult to dislodge.
Sometimes a sock on the floor is just a sock on the floor. But especially among longtime couples, little irritations may code for deeper problems. It’s as if ice cubes become an iceberg, says family therapist John Van Epp.
Think of ice cubes as free-floating irritants —bothersome but meaningless: You hate the way your partner puts his feet on the furniture or exaggerates. Such behaviours might drive you up the wall, but they are harmless.
But small problems coalesce into a vast, submerged force when they take on a different meaning in your mind—when you add them up as evidence of a character flaw or moral defect.
You are annoyed by the fact that your significant other hates sharing food from her plate.
And that she hates planning in advance. And that when you try to share important news, she gets excited and cuts you off to share something of her own.
When you consider them together, a picture emerges of your partner as selfish and self-absorbed, always putting her own needs first.
“You don’t really live with the partner in your home.
You live with the partner in your head,” explains Van Epp. Gradually, you begin looking for evidence that your partner is self-absorbed—and of course you find it. Your perceptions shift over time: The idealised partner you started out with becomes, well, less ideal.
But if you want to stay in a relationship, something needs to change. In all likelihood, it is you. Every annoyance in a relationship is really a two-way street.
Partners focus on what they are getting, not on what they’re giving. But no matter how frustrating a partner’s behaviour, your interpretation is the greater part of it. What matters is the meaning you attach to it.
The ability to eliminate relationship irritants lies within each of us. They may sabotage good relationships or not. It all depends on how you interpret the problem.
1. “It’s deliberate”
Diane Sollee recalls growing up with a father who used to snore so loudly she could hear him mid-block. “when I asked my mom how she could stand it, she said, ‘when I hear his snoring, I know he’s home safe, alive and well.’”
“It’s the reaction of the host, not the strength of the pathogen,” says rabbi and marriage educator Edwin Friedman. Snoring isn’t the problem; it’s the meaning you give it.
We take every irritant personally. We treat every action, deliberate or accidental, conscious or subconscious, as a personal slight—a sign the other doesn’t care about us or isn’t prioritising us.
When we don’t get what we want, we interpret it as, “You don’t love me enough.”
We think, “If you really cared about me, you’d stop driving me crazy with all your irritating habits.”
Unfortunately, much behaviour is mindless; we do many things without thinking. “It would be ideal to focus on the other person’s reaction all the time,” says psychologist Michael Cunningham of the University of Louisville.
“But the simple fact is that people engage in automatic behaviours that are habitual or self-focused without taking the other person into account.”
If your partner has a habit that he or she is not aware of but that drives you up a wall—keeping the bathroom door open, leaving bread crumbs in the butter dish, walking around in underwear—bring it up in a loving way. Maybe it simply never occurred to your partner that it bothers you.
Then there are the behaviours you have talked about ad nauseam but persist. If it seems like your partner just can’t change this aspect of himself, it is time to take stock. Try reminding yourself what you have—and what you stand to lose.
John Buri, a psychologist at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, cites a colleague whose wife had a shrill, grating laugh. “He was always afraid she’d let loose with her ridiculous laugh, which was like fingernails on a blackboard for him,” recalls Buri.
Though the couple had a great deal in common, their connection slowly eroded because of this quirk. After 15 years of marriage, however, the wife developed cancer and died. “Now he yearns to hear that laugh just one more time,” says Buri.
2. Messiness
In virtually every relationship, one partner is messier than the other. Eighty per-cent of couples living together say differences over mess and disorganisation cause tension in their relationship, report Columbia University management professor Eric Abrahamson and Massachusetts journalist David H. Freedman, authors of A Perfect Mess.
If your partner can’t seem to change sloppy ways, reframe the issue in your own mind. Instead of focusing on how inadequately he cleans, remind yourself how much you appreciate his contribution to household chores.
Changing your perspective can not only resolve the irritating issue, it can mend the dynamic of the whole relationship.
FOLLOW US:http://www.facebook.com/PlaneHealth https://twitter.com/PlaneHealth
Without doubt, there are big problems that afflict relationships; infidelity, abuse, and addiction are not perishing from the earth.
A highly sexualised society delivers an alluring drumbeat of distractions. But it may be the petty problems that subvert love most surreptitiously.
The dirty socks on the floor. The way our partner chews so loudly. Like the relentless drip of a leaky faucet, they erode the goodwill that underlies all relationships.
Before you know it, you feel unloved, unheard, and underappreciated, if not criticised and controlled. Intimacy becomes a pale memory.
Yet irritations are inevitable in relationships. It’s just not possible to find another human being whose every quirk, habit, and preference aligns perfectly with yours.
The fundamental challenge in a relationship, contends New York psychiatrist John Jacobs, is “figuring out how to negotiate and live with your partner’s irritants in a way that doesn’t alienate them and keeps the two of you connected.”
When marriages don’t work, he adds, often the partners are fighting not over big issues but over petty differences in style.
We each have differing values and ways of looking at the world, and we want different things from each other. Such differences derive from our genetically influenced temperaments, our belief systems, and experiences growing up in our family of origin, explains Diane Sollee, family therapist and founder of SmartMarriages.
“We think, ‘my father knew how to put the toilet seat down, so why can’t you?’ Or ‘my father never put the toilet seat down, so I’m not going to, either.’”
Whatever the source, such patterns are deeply ingrained, difficult to dislodge.
Sometimes a sock on the floor is just a sock on the floor. But especially among longtime couples, little irritations may code for deeper problems. It’s as if ice cubes become an iceberg, says family therapist John Van Epp.
Think of ice cubes as free-floating irritants —bothersome but meaningless: You hate the way your partner puts his feet on the furniture or exaggerates. Such behaviours might drive you up the wall, but they are harmless.
But small problems coalesce into a vast, submerged force when they take on a different meaning in your mind—when you add them up as evidence of a character flaw or moral defect.
You are annoyed by the fact that your significant other hates sharing food from her plate.
And that she hates planning in advance. And that when you try to share important news, she gets excited and cuts you off to share something of her own.
When you consider them together, a picture emerges of your partner as selfish and self-absorbed, always putting her own needs first.
“You don’t really live with the partner in your home.
You live with the partner in your head,” explains Van Epp. Gradually, you begin looking for evidence that your partner is self-absorbed—and of course you find it. Your perceptions shift over time: The idealised partner you started out with becomes, well, less ideal.
But if you want to stay in a relationship, something needs to change. In all likelihood, it is you. Every annoyance in a relationship is really a two-way street.
Partners focus on what they are getting, not on what they’re giving. But no matter how frustrating a partner’s behaviour, your interpretation is the greater part of it. What matters is the meaning you attach to it.
The ability to eliminate relationship irritants lies within each of us. They may sabotage good relationships or not. It all depends on how you interpret the problem.
1. “It’s deliberate”
Diane Sollee recalls growing up with a father who used to snore so loudly she could hear him mid-block. “when I asked my mom how she could stand it, she said, ‘when I hear his snoring, I know he’s home safe, alive and well.’”
“It’s the reaction of the host, not the strength of the pathogen,” says rabbi and marriage educator Edwin Friedman. Snoring isn’t the problem; it’s the meaning you give it.
We take every irritant personally. We treat every action, deliberate or accidental, conscious or subconscious, as a personal slight—a sign the other doesn’t care about us or isn’t prioritising us.
When we don’t get what we want, we interpret it as, “You don’t love me enough.”
We think, “If you really cared about me, you’d stop driving me crazy with all your irritating habits.”
Unfortunately, much behaviour is mindless; we do many things without thinking. “It would be ideal to focus on the other person’s reaction all the time,” says psychologist Michael Cunningham of the University of Louisville.
“But the simple fact is that people engage in automatic behaviours that are habitual or self-focused without taking the other person into account.”
If your partner has a habit that he or she is not aware of but that drives you up a wall—keeping the bathroom door open, leaving bread crumbs in the butter dish, walking around in underwear—bring it up in a loving way. Maybe it simply never occurred to your partner that it bothers you.
Then there are the behaviours you have talked about ad nauseam but persist. If it seems like your partner just can’t change this aspect of himself, it is time to take stock. Try reminding yourself what you have—and what you stand to lose.
John Buri, a psychologist at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, cites a colleague whose wife had a shrill, grating laugh. “He was always afraid she’d let loose with her ridiculous laugh, which was like fingernails on a blackboard for him,” recalls Buri.
Though the couple had a great deal in common, their connection slowly eroded because of this quirk. After 15 years of marriage, however, the wife developed cancer and died. “Now he yearns to hear that laugh just one more time,” says Buri.
2. Messiness
In virtually every relationship, one partner is messier than the other. Eighty per-cent of couples living together say differences over mess and disorganisation cause tension in their relationship, report Columbia University management professor Eric Abrahamson and Massachusetts journalist David H. Freedman, authors of A Perfect Mess.
If your partner can’t seem to change sloppy ways, reframe the issue in your own mind. Instead of focusing on how inadequately he cleans, remind yourself how much you appreciate his contribution to household chores.
Changing your perspective can not only resolve the irritating issue, it can mend the dynamic of the whole relationship.
FOLLOW US:http://www.facebook.com/PlaneHealth https://twitter.com/PlaneHealth
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