the .: fyr :. light

Odd how I find myself giving relationship advice these days. Why odd? Simply because I traditionally have been TERRIBLE at relationships … well, until now.  Actually, everybody has the same thing to say once they are in a “working relationship” – right? “I was awful at relationships until I met Tony/Vera/John/Mary”.  And maybe that is exactly who I am at the moment – just someone who is lucky enough at this moment to be in a “working relationship”.

The problem with that concept is that no relationship can be declared working and left to it’s own devices. All relationships continually need work and effort to maintain the “working” status.  If it’s working, great – keep working at it so that it stays that way.

If I may go off on a techi-tangent here for a moment: it’s good practice to check on the “health” of your machine (PC or Apple or whatever) often – most suggest weekly maintenance. I ran a check on my iMac yesterday and found that there were disk issues that needed to be attended to. This is equivalent to your Windows chkdsk activity that ensures that all the relevant file references are intact and all disk sectors are healthy. This is a tactic that I employ in my relationship as well. I “check in” to make sure that things are still good and running smooth and there are no issues that need dealing with that are likely to explode into full-blown problems at some point down the line.

It’s a ploy that won’t always work since it takes 2 to recognize when this happening and to ensure that all issues are being “checked into”.  Sometimes people just aren’t aware that an issue is a potential problem and so there are some issues that get past the checkpoints. However, the idea is to try to address the issues before they become problems. When inevitably some of those issues become problems, it is just as important to deal with them in emotionally mature ways.

One of the things my husband taught me in this relationship is that anger should never last long enough to make the resolution of a problem impossible to deal with without lasting effects. His words “promise me we will never go to bed angry” have become a kind of mantra for our relationship.

Let me tell you there have been many nights when sleep is only ok after hours and hours of talking and I have found myself getting as little as 2 hours sleep as a result of this philosophy. Eventually, what I learned is that it’s not important to belabour my point over and over. Not important to hold on to my anger. Not important to flog the dead horse that is the offending issue.  What is important is to ensure the other person knows (1) what caused the offense in the first place (2) and that you still love them anyway. After that, the rest is easy. The “I’m sorry” comes easy, the “I was thinking …” comes easier and the “Let’s go to sleep now” easiest.

I’ve always thought that anger is a useless emotion. At different points in my life, anger has caused me to lash out at those whom I cared about most, caused me to lose what I wanted the most, caused me to hurt myself or someone else, caused me grief upon grief.  And while I don’t think I have full “control” of my anger at this moment (and I don’t think I ever will), I am able to see, for the most part, when anger is about to become counter-productive and stop it in it’s tracks.  You don’t stop feeling angry, but you stop the anger from becoming destructive. One strategy I have used is to simply say “Look, I’m really angry right now. Give me some time to stop feeling angry then we can talk about it, ok?”

At the end of the day, I ask myself this “If so-and-so REALLY cared about me, would they deliberately hurt me? And if they wouldn’t, why be so angry at something unintended? Just deal with it and move on.” It sounds SO easy, I know. I also know it’s actually hard as all hell. Like everything else in life, however, it is worth it to practice over and over because the rewards are beyond blissful.

Trust me, I know.

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