Dear TTK:

You want “to get help with learning to be a more sensitive, considerate, caring, compassionate person”- but you have not been those things to him, and so, aiming to be more of what you are not is unrealistic.

My suggestion is that your aim be at stopping certain behaviors that are disrespectful, abusive and aggressive to  him. You don’t have to feel any which way to stop those behaviors. You don’t have to feel sensitive, considerate, etc., before you stop these behaviors.

You can stop them now regardless of how you feel. Abuse really needs to be stopped immediately and it can be done. I have done it myself, so I know.

Make a list of those abusive behaviors and have this list handy with you at all times. Notice when you feel like doing any of those behaviors (including saying certain words), and make sure you don’t do those behaviors, practicing self control.

No matter how much you feel like being mean to him, don’t. It will be difficult but over a long period of time, with practice, it will get easier for you. And the greatest benefit to you is that you will feel  good about yourself, you will feel a sense of power, that you are able to control your behavior. This will  be a huge step forward toward a better mental health for you.

What do you think?

anita

One of the purposes of relationships is to heal our past so we tend to be attracted to partners that will trigger our “past” hurts hoping that because the love us they will be able to react/respond in such away to change our expectation of being hurt.  This more often then not happens subconsciously. The goal then is to make the process as conscious as possible

For example, if you have abandonment and trust issues because your father left you or some such and subconsciously you blame yourself for it you will ‘test’ your partner in that regard. Creating scenes to push your partner away with the subconscious expectation that he will leave you, (like everyone leaves you because your such a bad person…) but hope that your partner won’t leave and in this way heal your past. Unfortunately, we tend to replay the scene until we either we get it or our partner, for there own health leaves. Of course, you might pick a partner who issue is sticking around in unhealthy relationships so leaving would be the healing thing to do… but more likely you would be stuck in a codependent relationship where you are always pushing your partner away and your partner staying no matter what, and no one is happy or learns anything.

The way out of these tangled webs is ‘To know thy Self”, “Master your stories”, “Wake to your authentic self”….. Pick any wisdom tradition and the words and practices they suggest may be different but point to the same thing. Only by noticing when your setting up a scene in your story to play out and understanding why your doing it will you stop.