Hi, this is Linda Nusbaum. It's been amazing being able to help everyone for so long, but it's time for me to retire. The site is up for archival purposes, but I've closed my practice.
Thank you.
A funny thing happens when we fall in love with our person. We begin to expect things we sometimes can’t even put into words. I see this occurring in many of the couples that I counsel. I have fallen victim to this as well.
When we trust another with our heart, the head thinks things about this union too. The heart feels safe and connected and the mind then follows with expecting certain things to happen, like for our partner to always understand us.
As humans it is very common to want something and then pursue it. We do this all the time. We are exceptional at setting goals and moving our lives toward them. This is how many of us are wired.
Even in relationships. But that can bring about its own set of challenges. I have worked with many couples who have been in a situation where one or both will push their mate to get what they want. And unfortunately, it doesn’t work.
All of us in relationships get our feelings hurt. I know I do. It happened again last night. I worked late and then came home. My husband had prepared dinner and had been waiting.
I felt the pressure but sometimes things can’t be helped. I had some details of my work to continue as I sat down at the table, texting and completing my duties. I was involved with tasks on my phone.
And while this was happening, something was also happening with my husband. He got very, very silent and stopped being there. He was of course sitting there eating, but I could not feel him anymore. I just left.
Most of us enter into a relationship trying to do the best job we can for our mate. We are pretty capable individuals and we often apply what we think they might need, enjoy, desire and want and try to anticipate what that might be, and then produce it.
Everyone does this in the beginning. But something happens after we try and try to make things good and right. We might get frustrated that our partner doesn’t understand all of our efforts and we might even get mad and feel unappreciated at them for not seeing what we are doing for them.
Does this sound familiar? I think all of us in a relationship have been here before. So, what do we do about it? This is where we learn to do what we can and not do more than we want to do, and reveal what may seem obvious.
All of us get our feelings hurt. It happens to everyone who interacts with other human beings. Someone will say something and we will feel a sting inside us. We all respond to this sting and some of us actually try and take the person’s head off because of it.
Some of us just steam inside and aren’t even able to let someone know we are suffering. Yes, all of us get our feelings hurt. But when we are in a relationship with another person and we want the relationship to last we have to find a way to get our hurt feelings across without making the other person the bad guy.
All couples have disagreements. This I know to be true. Some couples argue about their disagreements. Here is a recent story about me and my partner.
He was driving with me in my car. I usually drive with him in his. He likes to drive, and is more aggressive than me. When he is a passenger in my car, I can feel his tension. He is probably mentally driving while I am behind the wheel and wishing that I could go faster or something.
I always feel awkward. Well, recently, we were in this position. The more we drove, the more uncomfortable I became. Now, he didn’t say anything, but I could feel the tension. Maybe this was in my head, but I definitely felt like an inadequate driver and I also thought he was judging me.
You may wonder sometimes why your good ideas or intentions can be brushed aside by people who you believe with all your heart you can help. It is very frustrating to see an answer to someone’s problems and yet not be able to get through to them to relieve their suffering.
All of us suffer in our own way. We get frustrated when things don’t go as expected, or we get upset when things are interrupted by someone else. This is the great human condition that we all live with. But have you noticed that some people get less frustrated than others? Have you observed that some people are actually not perturbed by things the way you might be?
It is sometimes hard to believe that after finding the person of our dreams things can go so wrong and sometimes we can end up in the worst fights of our lives.
We know we love our person, so why do we fight-till-death about things? We should be loving each other instead of fighting, but we fight at just about every turn. Why is this?
Feeling unappreciated can happen in an instant. Let’s say you are the cook in your relationship. You plan a meal, make the food and expect that your partner will arrive so everything will come out exactly so. But then they don’t and the minutes go by and you start to worry that the food you prepared so well will be cold and not as good. This causes you stress and now you feel as if your partner doesn’t care and you are now feeling unappreciated.
I know how this can happen because my husband is the cook in my family. I have in the past taken longer at work than I told him and when I finally came home he said something like, “I thought you would be home sooner.” He just sounded so bummed and sad. Then he said, “I wish you would let me know when you are going to be later.”
Even though all of us are different, if we blame someone or something for our discomfort, then we have one thing in common: we’re internally wired the same. There are many of us in the world. And it’s my guess that if you blame or criticize when you are unhappy, you have heard about your behavior from others all your life.
I know I have. When I was little my older sister called me “the angry child,” because of my loud, blaming ways. I didn’t intentionally come into the world this way. I didn’t have a conversation with myself when I was learning how to express myself that said, “Start blaming. It’s a good system.”
No, that’s not what happened. I imagine it was my circumstances that encouraged me to use my voice to let my caregivers know I needed something. I just used my vocal cords to be heard. This habit just morphed over the years and I got better at leveling the criticism or blame when I got upset.