do it to yourself
I like what David Schnarch writes about.
See: David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love & Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
He puts stuff back in our faces.
You know those exercises. They go like this: “When you said blah blah blah, I felt blah.”
And then the other person mirrors back, “I heard you say that when I said blah blah blah, you felt blah.”
And then you felt heard. And you loved your partner again.
All that communication stuff is well and good, but it doesn’t take reality into account.
For at least half of the population (for example: men) reactions are concomitant with the start of any discussion (i.e., “can we talk?”).
In the end, it’s each man and/or woman for him or herself.
This is what Schnarch (p. 334) says you gotta do:
You stop trying to make your partner listen, validate, or accept you; you listen to yourself.
David Levingston
Like everyone, I have different sides. Counselor, photographer, writer, cooker of food – both spicy and plain, and seeker of truth and happiness. I have always taken an interest in the unassuming things that pass us by – both heard and seen, both ordinary and not so ordinary. They are all sacred and beautiful in some way.