A couple spends 50 minutes working on their relationship, then wipes out the result with one question. If you don't believe your partner can change, at least don't say it in front of them.
How do people hurt themselves in their relationships?
Sometimes this happens to me:
A couple comes in for a consultation. We talk for 50 minutes. We take turns listening to each other; I translate for the woman from “male” into her language, and for the man from “female” into his.
As far as I can tell, the conversation goes well. I can read in both their eyes that today they understood something about their partner’s psychology.
And then the woman or the man comes out with: “Dima, but what do I do if he (she) still didn’t get anything today and nothing is going to change?”
In moments like that I want to ask the person who said it: “Are you your own enemy or not?!”
You’ve already spent the money and the time, you somehow talked the other person into discussing your problems with a third party. Why devalue the results of that work yourself with such devastatingly dumb questions? How is the person you love going to react when they hear a “conclusion” like that from you?
Will they be glad? Will they want to change even more? Or will they shut down and feel about an inch tall? With a question like that, did you hint that they’re smart or that they’re stupid?
It genuinely puzzles me sometimes: why do people dig a hole with one hand and try to fill it in with the other? Either we finish the relationship off and go our separate ways, or we try to save it. Why do both at the same time?
If you don’t believe the person you love can become different, then at least don’t say it out loud in front of them. Your disbelief will settle like a glass lid over the growth of your relationship.
If you decide from the start that someone is a scoundrel, you’ll find bad intent even in their good actions. Because you’re already biased.
It’s not in our interest to think that the person we love won’t understand us, won’t hear us and won’t choose to change. We only make things worse for ourselves that way.
So before our relationship changes, the beliefs in our own head have to change first.
“According to your faith be it unto you,” says one very wise book.
Articles do not fix relationships
Texts give you understanding, but your situation is always more specific than any text. Fifty minutes is usually enough to see where the problem actually starts.
Talk through your situation
