Cold person in cold relationship.

The winter has definitely arrived here in the Southern Hemisphere and I am doing everything I can to keep warm.
However how to deal with the cold, miserable and uncomfortable feelings within ourselves that makes for a cold relationship is not so obvious.
Thanks goodness I am learning to get warm there as well.

As you guess that wasn’t always the case.
For years I was well on the way of becoming a stingy, cold, cynical b*, of course with a relationship that didn’t last.
I am getting that out of my system, but what made me like that?

One incident this week lifted the veil and I got thinking;

When things happen everybody tells a totally different story about it, coming from a totally different reality!
And the accusations that come up; astounding.

That happens big time in relationships.
It is actually quite a miracle we don’t kill each other more often or that we can live together at all with this weird phenomenon of having different realities.

So as I said, what got me going about all this, is this;

John and I work and live together; lots of possibilities for different realities.

John is very anal with detail and I am a bit looser with facts and information.
Great stuff to give us grief, if we let it.
I send and write the content for everything and John edits and checks it…..on details of course.

To give time for editing and checking I recently had some emails ready three weeks in advance.
I was PROUD of myself to be so quick AND to have included the details which I had neatly and informally woven into the text.
John reads them and gives his okay, so I forget about them till the due date.

On the due date, daughter needs to talk so while I talk JOHN thinks to HELP or whatever he thought he was doing with MY task.
He starts to do MY job and begins to prepare the email for sending AND adds details that are already woven into the text, proudly done by me AND agreed by him.

He feels good as he HELPS me, making me feel I was slack with the detail, again.
His deeds though threw my system completely and I got annoyed as HIS unnecessary help made my life hard and I didn’t like his motives either.

So we end up being annoyed with each other and both of us are stewing, silently making up our own reality which is of course totally different from each other.
But as talkers, we talk and while John is sharing his reality I have trouble coming to grips with his.
Didn’t I have the emails checked three weeks ago and weren’t they alright then?
Why is he doing my job anyway? Without asking!

While he raves on, I sit there thinking; “something is not jelling here”, but how do you interrupt with your version when somebody is so staunchly venting his?

But one thing is clear, I won’t meekly accept his version as given, never, through a hole in my head I will and nowadays that is a good thing.
In my previous relationship I would have just let it all wash over me, inwardly fuming.
That eventually made me resigned and cynical and caring less and less about anything.
It felt I didn’t have a say anymore or if I did want to have a say I had to fight for it.
The tragedy was that I lost interest in making myself heard and I even started to feel that my reality was invalid.
In the end the cost was my relationship as grievances were building up and over the years the quality of our communication went down spectacularly.

So I stayed calm, fought the urge to defend myself when there was no listening and of course felt very saintly.
In this relationship I won’t let my reality be made invalid, I am going to be heard without fighting.
It is not a matter of getting even or of being right, we both know there is no right or wrong – just another perspective.

The next day when things had quieted down, I share my reality and my take on what happened, making sure we both know it is not about getting even or being right, which shows in my tone of voice and body language.

I did not find it easy, to learn to communicate like that.
First I had to learnt how to listen to the other one’s reality, without getting defensive or shouting back that it is all unfair.
And vice versa, I also had to learn to share my version, without launching straight into attacks or accusations.

But once you think about it, you can see the importance of sharing without judging and with the acceptance there are always different realities.

I am no longer afraid to deal with the different realities, I am able to listen to John’s without feeling that he is making me wrong or whatever other feelings can come up.
I feel safe enough to share mine without emotional outbursts to dominate John.
I find it fascinating to learn about his reality and it so helps to understand where each is coming from and to get alignment.
I find it really amazing how all this keeps the show on the road and I have experienced it differently enough in my former relationship to be amazed about the power of hearing each other’s reality without judgement.

Sharing my reality and my take on what happened makes me feel good and loving and warm again.
Of course it was a piece of cake to better our systems after that.
Instead of having a meltdown, a grudge against each other and an ever lasting nasty feeling, we’ve moved on.
We kept our good feelings for each other alive and have a more productive and better system to put the details into my writing as well .

It sure keeps me warm on the in and outside, it sure keeps our relationship warm and loving AND is good for the business too.