How to Deal with Misunderstandings in Relationships

I know this couple who are good friends. They have been together a long time and are good together in a lot of ways. But the other day the wife was telling me about something that was bothering her about her man. She told me that when she just tries to help him, he becomes irritated and then gets upset with her.

This has been happening a lot lately, and she says and she feels bad about it. The situation makes her frustrated. And as I listened to her, I realized that these two are such beautiful people; they are just having an innocent misunderstanding. This is what my mind saw: he wants to be independent, and she wants to be helpful.

Most of us are pretty easy going. We have lives that we manage. We might go to work or school and we make out there OK too. So why is it that when we have a disagreement with our partner, the one we love the most, we see RED and want to take their head off?

I know when I feel misunderstood or dismissed by my husband it is a terrible pain. It feels as if he is doing it on purpose. I know logically that is not true. He loves me and does not want to see me upset. In fact, I bet if he knew every pitfall he was about to step into that would make me unhappy, he’d get out a roadmap and avoid them. He doesn’t want to make me upset. I believe your partner feels the same way.

I had some relatives visit recently, among them a 5-year-old boy who loves “Frosted Mini-Wheats.” For those of you that don’t know, this is shredded wheat with sugar pasted on one side. When I was a little girl I used to live on sweet cereal. So when the relatives left and the box of cereal remained, I claimed it as my own.

For a couple of days I had this lovely cereal for breakfast, feeling like a child again. But on the third day when I went to grab the milk I knew there wasn’t enough for my husband’s coffee the next morning. There was a little left, but not enough for the two cups he drinks daily…

I was thinking about a couple I have the opportunity to help. They love something they created at one time. They both want to get back to feeling what they used to feel from the other person. They are desperate to feel this again. But it’s been a long time and now they are both in pain.

Pain can turn us into bitter creatures. It makes us get mad at the person we love, or freeze them out because they have hurt us. Pain turns us into the worst versions of what we once were; loving people.

I worked with a couple recently. The man was very angry at his wife. The man wanted his wife to end a work situation that he resented. He resented this work situation very much and considered this to be the problem, the only problem in the marriage.

The marriage was suffering. The wife was unhappy. The husband was unhappy. He believed that if she left her work situation the marriage and their happiness level would improve. The wife however, LOVED her work and derived a lot of joy from it.

She felt empowered by it and carried a great sense of pride over what she had accomplished. These feelings were discounted by the husband as proof that he had been left. His anger prevented him from feeling anything except her not valuing him.

I was at a dinner party recently, sitting next to a lovely couple. The wife told me about her life and her love of her husband. She talked about how they enjoy travelling and some of the places they have visited. She also talked about how she was pretty sure they weren’t going to be able to travel anytime soon, because her husband just took a new job. The husband and I traded glances and he said to me, “Yeah, she keeps saying that. I guess we won’t be travelling this year.”

When I heard him say this about his wife, I could feel the wife’s suffering and I immediately felt my mind convert those words into another meaning for her. I was compelled to tell him privately what I felt she was really trying to say. I got him alone for a moment and asked him to repeat what his wife had been telling him about travelling. Again he said her words, “She says, I guess we won’t be travelling this year.” He mimicked her with a kind of whiney voice, but my insides knew what she was really trying to say to her husband.

When we find our special person and we feel connected to them in ways that seem magical, we begin to believe, in parts of our body, that this is what we have been looking for all our life. This feeling we have with our person is the real thing. We want it to last. We all want our relationships to go on and be this way forever.

All relationships begin this way. Then other things start to happen and people wonder where that beautiful, wonderful feeling went to. Couples still say they love each other, but sometimes they don’t feel loved by one another. Sometimes, people wonder if their partner—the one who loves them—really loves them.

Every one of us does something when we are angry. All of us have some kind of behavior that accompanies feelings of being wronged. It’s just how humans are wired.

I was thinking about this after reading a story about a married couple. They love each other. He is deaf and nearly blind. They communicate through sign language where the husband places his hands on the wife’s. That’s how they talk. It was a beautiful story. It told how they fell in love, through communicating with holding each others hands.

The story gave rich details about their lives. It even mentioned something everyone goes through, which some people did not expect. This couple gets mad at each other too. Only when the feelings are big, they still have to connect their hands in order to tell each other what is wrong…

Many times when I work with couples I hear them wishing they felt better. I feel their discomfort when they tell me about their partner and how they don’t feel loved. I empathize with the individuals who tell me how unhappy they are about feeling distant in their relationship.

These feelings are pretty common. And there are reasons why. When we fall in love with our special person everything feels better than it’s ever felt. We fall in love with that feeling and we hunger for it when it goes away.

Most of us can relate to feeling some sort of irritation with our mate. I know we try and love them, but we all know we don’t love everything they do. In fact we might even become annoyed or irritated by some of their behaviors.

Some of us even get so frustrated when this happens that we can’t deal with those behaviors anymore so we leave the relationship and look for another partner, less annoying and irritating. But this article is about you staying in the relationship you are in and learning how to deal with your discomfort.

I'm retired.

Couples/Relationships Articles

How to Deal with Misunderstandings in Relationships

Coping with Anger: Why We Rage and How to Heal

Do Something Nice for the One You Love

Dealing with Conflict and Pain in Relationships

Love and Anger: The Wedge Between Our Hearts

Why Expressing Feelings in Relationships is Hard

Why Can’t We Always Feel the Love?

How Anger Cuts Us Off From Our Loved Ones

Feeling Distant in a Relationship? Love Comes from Within

How to Deal with an Irritating Girlfriend, Boyfriend, or Spouse