Many of us struggle in our intimate relationships. Working through conflict is always hard, but some of us have a harder time than others. Some of us grew up in homes where conflict was either (a) pushed underground and not dealt with, or (b) was unsafe, sometimes involving verbal or physical violence.
For some people, these kinds of dysfunction in their upbringing leads them to be aggressive -- even abusive -- when difficulties, disappointments, or conflicts arise.
But for many others, there's a different pattern. They shut down. Avoiding conflict and/or difficult subjects, they just grow distant. They struggle to know how to
relate honestly when they are in conflict. We might think of these relationships being characterized by some form of codependence.
Codependence is a word with many different definitions, but generally it refers to an over-dependence on maintaining a relationship, or keeping someone happy, even at the expense of our own well-being.
If we want to develop and maintain healthy relationships, we need to live in truth.
We need to stop doing things just to please someone else. We need to let ourselves know what we really know, say what we need to say, and do what we need to do. If we aren’t willing to live in truth in this way, our emotional and
spiritual well-being is compromised.
But how do we live in truth? Here is a list of principles and practices:
1. To live in truth, listen to your heart as well as others’
If we were insecure as
kids, if we were told we were dumb, if our opinion or input never seemed to matter, chances are we developed a mindset of not valuing what we think, feel, and know. We grow to distrust ourselves, and look to someone else to validate us. We deny what we think, what we see, and what we experience, if it contradicts what other people tell us.
To overcome this, we need to remember that we may not always be
right, but neither are we always wrong. We need to remember that no one else knows exactly all that we know, and our insights are important. We need to start recognizing – and valuing – ourselves and our opinions.
To do this we take time out periodically to stop, slow ourselves down, and ask ourselves some questions:
- What do I feel?
- What do I know?
- What do I
want?
Obviously, there are times in everyone’s life when the answers to these questions are not clear. Sometimes we’re not sure. But if we rarely know the answers to these questions, or if we never even stop to consider them, it means that we are out of touch with ourselves. In that state, it’s hard to relate in a meaningful way to others, because we aren’t bringing a perspective of our own to share.
2. To live in truth, stop giving advice
For many of us, our sense of well-being is tied to, even dependent upon, another person. We care so much for that person -- and so little for ourselves -- that we over-focus on them. Our mind is constantly humming with plans to help that
person, plans to change that person, thoughts about how that person’s life could be better. The natural consequence is that we want to offer suggestions to that person about how they could improve.
Resist this urge.
Advice – particularly unsolicited advice – is rarely well received, and hardly ever acted upon. Before we give
someone else advice, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, we should ask ourselves:
- “What do I need to do for me?”
- “What do I want them to do that I really need to do for myself?”
It’s hard for advice-giving and real intimacy to coexist. Advice-giving puts one person in the position of authority. “This is how things really are, and this is what you need to do.” Instead of being in it
together, one person is knowledgeable and dominant, the other is ignorant and subservient.
3. To live in truth, stop asking for advice
One of the ways codependent people keep themselves small and others big is to ask for advice. It’s one thing to talk about questions and
decisions with friends, in an effort to get a broader perspective. But by asking people what they think we should do changes the dynamic in an unhealthy way.
Is this true even when talking with a professional? Yes ... even then. It’s one thing to seek out a professional or expert in a given area, again as a way of gathering helpful information. But stop short of asking “What should I do?”
Good therapists, pastors, and life coaches will not take that bait. If you ask “what should I do?” and the therapist or pastor tells you, now you are no longer responsible. If you proceed with their recommendation, you’re just doing what you’re told. If it doesn’t work out well, then you can blame the therapist or pastor for giving you bad advice.
That’s not helpful! It’s your life, and you are responsible to live it and choose wisely.
The next time you are tempted to ask someone for advice, stop yourself. Pray about the decision. Look within, asking questions like: “What do I really know to be true?” “What do I really want?”
As Christians we believe that
the Holy Spirit dwells within us. When we are spiritually mature and emotionally congruent, we are in touch with Divine guidance in such as way as to experience something as a deep, inner knowing. We can’t always explain it, but “we know that we know” it. Having this inner knowing is very empowering.
But what if we pray and search within for a sense of knowing what we need or what to do … and nothing comes to
mind? Then what? Go for a walk, go to bed and sleep on it. Trust that the answer — or at least as much as we need to know of the answer — will become clear.
This can be hard for some of us who feel the need for certainty and clarity in all situations. But life is not like that. There are times things are not clear, and we simply must take the step we believe is wisest … the one that is the
“next right thing.” Don’t be tempted at this point to seek the false sense of certainty that comes from trading your sense of self for the advice of others.
4. To live in truth, don’t try to "fix" or change other peoples’ feelings
Colossians 3:13 tells us to “bear with
one another,” and this can be really hard to do. “Bearing with one another” means that we care for and support one another in the good and bad times. It can be hard to bear with someone when they are dealing with intense emotions.
I work with a lot of men who really struggle to do this with their wives. When their wife is really angry -- or really sad -- they don’t know how to handle it. (I suspect that this is also hard
for many wives to do too. I'm just more familiar with how it works for men. I also know that it’s hard as a parent to do this with our kids.)
What do you do when someone you love – spouse, friend, child – is upset? I mean really upset. Really angry, or really sad?
Many of us get very uncomfortable in that situation. And for many of
us, this lack of comfort is exacerbated by our own lack of inner peace.
Think about the logic of this progression: If we don’t feel okay and secure about ourselves, then we will tend to over-rely on some other person(s) to help us feel okay about ourselves and about life. So then, if that person who is our rock and source of security is really struggling, if that person is really sad, or (God forbid) if that person
is mad at us … we have a really hard time dealing with it.
If we’re not in touch with our emotions, chances are we’re afraid of them. And if we’re afraid of our emotions, we’ll be afraid of other peoples’ emotions too. So what we often do -- instead of listening to them, instead of just being with them in their sorrow –- is this: We try to get them to "snap out of it." We try to smooth things over.
As author and therapist Charlotte Kasl says, we “quash other peoples’ anger and expressions of strong feelings because we are afraid of our own.”
There’s an important line between comforting someone, and trying to shut them down. We cross that line when we are uncomfortable with their sadness and we just try to get them to stop emoting. We cross that line when we try to tell people not to feel something,
by saying things like:
“It’s not that bad”
“Stop crying”
“You should be happy”
The core of how we bear with one another when someone is really distressed and upset is this: We let them be upset. We don’t try to get them to calm down, we don’t try to “fix it,” or get defensive.
Learning this was a turning point in my relationship with my wife Charlene. For a long time in our marriage, if she was upset, I would want to fix it right away. Often her being upset would make me sad and stressed out. I often assumed that if she was sad or angry, it was because of something I had done, or hadn’t done.
You’ve probably heard that saying, “If momma ain’t
happy, ain’t nobody happy.” That speaks to a way of living where the husband and kids are like a thermometers … they just reflect emotionally whatever the mom is feeling. If she's up, they’re up. If she's down, they’re down. And that’s how Charlene and I related together.
At some point in in our marriage, I started learning to separate myself. If she was sad or angry, I realized that it might not be
about me. If it was about me, and it was something I could do something about … obviously then it was my job to do that.
But if it was not about me, if was not something I could fix … then the most important thing I could do would be to just listen and be there. I didn’t have to solve it. I didn’t have to get all bent out of shape, and try to help her “snap out of it.” I could just be there
for her. And frankly, sometimes it has been helpful to just give her space to work things out, either by herself, or with some of her female friends.
5. To live in truth, learn to gripe at the right time
Some of us grew up in homes where we weren't heard. If things were
bothering us – making us sad or angry – and we tried to give voice to them, we got shut down. Maybe we grew up in a home where only one parent could be angry. Or maybe it was a super-Christian home, and if we were sad we got a Bible verse and sermon thrown at us. Or maybe our parents were caught up in their own problems, and therefore not available to us. Or maybe just literally absent, gone all the time to work and other activities.
And so we grew up having to fend for ourselves. Often when little kids are left to fend for themselves, they don't know how to do that, so they just shut down. They find things to distract themselves and compartmentalize their sadness or distress.
Growing up in those kinds of situations, we don’t learn how to deal with the things that bother us. Now as adults, when something ticks us off, or
makes us sad, or fearful — we haven’t learned how to deal with it in a healthy way. So we go back to the old patterns. We try to suppress those feelings. We minimize how bad something is, or we deny that something bothers us in the first place (when it really does).
But of course the anger, hurt, or fear doesn’t go away … and eventually it comes out in some dysfunctional way. Often the way it works is that we find
someone else to gripe to. So something – or someone – is bothering us and making us angry, but we aren’t able to admit to ourselves that it bothers us. Or maybe we do know that it bothers us, but we don’t dare say anything.
Then we have a chance when we’re talking to someone else … and we then have our BMW sessions. You know what BMW sessions are? It’s an acronym I learned in coaching
school. It stands for “bitch, moan, and whine.” It’s a gripe session.
Healthy people gripe just like everyone else. Everybody gripes. The only people who don’t need to gripe are people who have perfect lives -- which is no one. So if there are things going on that make you mad, sad, or stressed, you’ve got to find a way to deal with that.
So here’s the question: when is the right time to gripe?
The answer is (almost always) NOW ... in the moment.
Codependent people are always telling you what they were feeling -- or how they were hurt -- yesterday. How they were mad yesterday – usually at someone else – and instead of dealing with it then, with
that person … they are now sharing it with you. The difference between healthy and unhealthy is a matter of when and where.
It’s okay to let someone see your anger. And the best way to do this is to name it, to be honest about it: “I’m angry that you are late again to our meeting.” or “It makes me angry that when we talk, we seem to spend most of the time talking about your kids. It makes me feel jealous and bad about my
own family.” You don’t have to go on and on … just be open, and then you can move on.
One qualification: Sometimes it may be necessary to hold on to gripes for a short time, and not deal directly with the person who is frustrating us. This is the case if it’s not a safe person, or if it’s a relationship where you have a pattern of fighting a lot. It may not be a safe or wise thing to deal with it in that moment … but the
general principle still applies:
As soon as you can … as close to “in the moment” as you can … get the gripe out of your system.
Think of it like food that you eat. If you have some food that is bad, and hard to digest … imagine that it doesn’t get digested in your stomach … and it goes to your intestine and stays there. It’s too big to go through your system, but you haven’t digested it
yet, so it just stays stuck in your intestine.
That undigested material is going to be toxic to your system. It’s going to mess you up in all kinds of ways. You’ve got to find a way to get that back into your stomach and digest it … then you can move on.
That’s how it is with having things that bother us. We’ve got to digest those things. We’ve got to find ways of processing them so that
we let them go. If we don’t, they’ll stay within, and become more and more toxic.
6. To live in truth, stop telling stories that could be titled: “What he/she did to me.”
Telling these kinds of stories keeps us in the victim role. And when we stay in the victim role, then
it’s also easy for the person who is the perpetrator to stay in that role.
When we tell stories to other people about what this or that person did to us, instead of focusing on what we did, and what we allowed, and what choices we made — it just reinforces our powerlessness and dysfunction.
Let’s be honest: when someone tells the “What he did to me
story” — what’s the goal? The goal is to get the hearer to say “Wow he’s really a jerk!” Isn’t that right? It’s a way to get validation for yourself … get some sympathy, some recognition, some reinforcement.
Rather than create the energy for change – and solutions for change -you’re just reinforcing the dysfunction of the relationship. You can repeat this pattern of feeling superior because of how bad he treats you, and
then you might even talk to other people about it, and feel even better.
Notice the difference between these two statements:
- Did you hear what he did to me again? Let me tell you all about it ...
- I feel angry with him for criticizing me in front of our friends at the party last night. I need help deciding what I need to say to him about this.
We need
to set limits or understandings with our friends about this, and we also need to set limits about this in the support groups that we’re in. When we allow people to tell “what she did to me” stories, we become partners with them in their dysfunction. It’s like with addiction, we become enablers … it’s like we’re buying the drugs for them.
“Oh really? Tell me about it. Oh it must be so hard for you. Oh man, what a jerk … I
don’t know how you do it.”
We’re not being helpful when we let people go on with those kind of stories … we’re reinforcing the victim and martyr mindset.
How about this as a guideline. The next time someone comes to you with another “what he/she did to me” story, you can say this:
“I’m
willing to support you if you are working to find solutions. However ... I’m not willing to hear you repeatedly talk about how bad it is.”
What do you think about these principles for living in truth?
Do you identify with these? Would you like to get help to work on them? Let me know if you'd like to work together on these
issues.
