How Do I Fix Things I Don't Realize I Do Until They are Told to Me Later?
A well-intentioned, fair-minded husband asked me that, and he's one of thousands over the years who have asked that same type of question
This conversation drives a lot of people crazy.
Some people—women, usually—think it’s insane that their husbands/partners can really be so dense or callous or unreliable that it’s fair to call their painful behavior “accidental.” I’ve gotten a lot of pushback on the idea over the years, but I stand by it.
(Honestly, if you’re with someone who hurts you on purpose, what are you doing? And why waste time on the conversation? I can’t help an abuser who doesn’t want to love and care for and protect their spouse and children from harm. I can only root for and support the mistreated person the best I know how. But also, that’s not what my work is about. I don’t know how to help abusers not abuse. I know how to help a well-intentioned person recognize some of their behavior as just as painful as abuse.)
And other people—men, usually—get stuck on the words “painful behavior.”
What do you mean PAINFUL behavior? 1. I know the difference between right and wrong, pain and pleasure. 2. I've never tried to hurt my wife/partner in my life. 3. Someone deciding something is “bad” doesn’t necessarily make it bad. 4. If my wife did to me the things she’s complaining to me about, I wouldn’t feel hurt because of those things, so none of this makes sense.
This whole diversity thing—the idea that other people sometimes experience life and situations differently than you or I continues to stymie a lot of people. And a lot of those people choose to not give a shit. Those are other people who are different than me, and I’m not going to worry about them, they might think.
Fine. I don’t think it’s particularly kind or charitable or honorable to be that way, but at the end of the day someone’s internal callousness or indifference to others isn’t something we can police or legislate.
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More to the point though, is that the callousness and indifference is unlikely to create any negative consequences for them. And that’s fine too. Thought-policing strikes me as dangerous.
But where shit tends to hit the fan is when this dynamic is playing out domestically in our homes with our spouses/partners/children, and to a lesser extent with our extended families, friends, and neighbors.
There ARE negative consequences to being indifferent to other people’s needs and wants when they’re counting on us to love and support them, as spouses/romantic partners/children do. Because, as it were, indifference is love’s opposite. Hate at least involves caring about some value and some type of outcome. Indifference is the total absence of care or concern.
How I talk about it in my coaching work is sharing how I changed this same type of behavior in my own life. You must learn how to see the pain and take it seriously.
It can be difficult. But as author and podcaster Glennon Doyle says: We can do hard things.
And my go-to analogy for discussing this is almost always the case of a severe allergy.
Peanuts and peanut butter, for example.
I think they're delicious, and I don't think of them as poisonous or dangerous. My brain doesn't "notice" peanuts and register danger like I might with a loaded gun or a wild animal baring its teeth.
That's because peanuts have never hurt me. But it's not hard for me to imagine having a child or friend with a severe—potentially fatal—peanut allergy.
And so the work begins. I OBVIOUSLY would never try to poison my child or my friend. But would I do it by accident? Because I couldn't be trusted to pay attention and protect them from peanuts?
I don't want to believe so.
I don't think it's possible that I'd occasionally forget that a peanut butter cookie, or a Snickers bar, or some Thai food with peanut sauce could potentially kill my child or friend if I was informed that they had a severe nut allergy.
That describes a scenario where I would accept responsibility for changing how my mind works, and apply an appropriate amount of care around something simply because it affects someone else I love differently than it does me. I would do that to “protect” them from getting sick or dying from peanuts.
Shouldn't our spouses/partners/loved ones be able to trust us to do that with things that hurt them even when those same things don't hurt us? Even when it’s not potentially fatal?
…
How do we fix things we don’t realize are hurting someone else?
Well, step 1 is LISTENING to someone else with a completely different experience/worldview than you explain how they’re having a negative outcome because of something that doesn’t affect you the same way, and then YOU responding in a way that demonstrates some give-a-shitness.
Most of us get stuck right there. If something sounds bullshitty to us, we tend to invalidate others’ experiences, and THAT’s the relationship for the next 10-30 years until the other person can’t or won’t take it anymore.
But if we can get the validation part right with some mindful, habitual practice, and have successful conversations with the people we profess to love and care about, we can LEARN that the other person experiences something differently than you do.
And that’s where you, I, we get to make a decision. That’s where everything hinges.
Will you take this new information, and then speak and act and make decisions moving forward in a way that honors the totally different way the other person experiences a peanut, or a toilet seat, or how loudly you and your friends are speaking after she went to bed, or how our own betrayal trauma from a past relationship might make us seem more paranoid or sensitive or accusatory to a new relationship partner even if they don’t deserve that?
Can we collectively accept responsibility for and demonstrate consistent reliability around showing love and care for our partner by treating THEIR things with a high level of respect, even when it might seem a little small or petty to us in the moments we’re in?
It’s truly the difference between happily ever after, and all of the other inferior or totally shit outcomes we might have.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF