By nature we are driven toward relationships. It is not healthy to live in isolation. We’re built to transmit ideas and feelings like no other beings in the world. And yet, because there is so much room for misunderstanding, we still have serious problems communicating and resolving issues. That’s when anger enters as nature’s warning. Not dealt with, anger wears away at the bonds of a union.
Acknowledging that a relationship is going wrong is one of the most difficult and important realizations we can have. Anger threatens our relationships – and unresolved anger or resentment leads to generalized irritation, which lays the groundwork for a negative environment where arguments are bound to happen. Confronting our anger might be uncomfortable, but without doing anything our thoughts can put our relationship in peril.
But for most of us, the need to connect and the need to get satisfaction out of our relationship encourages the motivation to change - and that’s where bravery begins. It begins with loosening the grip on who is right and who is wrong, which is difficult if you’ve been defending your position for a long time.
How do we get back on the same team, when one or many or these issues threatens the state of your relationship:
- We argue differently. We don’t know how to read each other’s moods. We can’t calm each other down.
- We disappoint each other. We handle finances differently. We don’t share a similar meaning of the same occasion. We have different ways of handling the children.
- We have lost hope. Sex isn’t soothing. The relationship is no longer equal – one of us has most of the power.
We begin by not looking at our partner as the problem, but the problem as the problem. The important question to ask is “How can we combine forces to beat this thing? How can we solve the problem together creatively, without blaming each other?”
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