Tag Archives: Habits

May 25 2021
72 Comments
Divorce, Life, Marriage, Parenting

What it Means When Your Partner Says You Always Make Everything About You

(Image/Big Think)

I always made things about me in my marriage, even though I would have told you I thought of myself as an unselfish person and valued the idea of selfless love.

Back then, my wife would say things like: “It’s always about what Matt wants,” and I’d think she was being an asshole. Then I’d defend myself, obtusely proving her right.

If you’re someone like me who is accused of “making everything about you,” please consider that you may also have the same blind spots that I had. It doesn’t make you a bad person. You literally don’t know, and I don’t think you should be judged or made to feel awful about it. I just think if you value your romantic partner and aspire to have a non-shitty relationship with her or him, that it’s important to understand that they often experience you differently than you believe they should.

I understand that you feel like a well-intentioned person who has demonstrated sufficient evidence that you love your partner and have made many personal sacrifices on their behalf. So, it feels particularly unfair and gutting to hear suggestions to the contrary from the person you’ve given the most to.

That’s how it felt when I was married and pissed at my ‘unfair’ wife whenever she had the audacity to suggest I wasn’t the world’s greatest husband.

Now I think I get it.

In my coaching work, we hyperfocus on habits. I can’t help anyone with a character defect that I don’t even believe is there. I’m not a doctor and I’m not that smart. I can’t help a bad person become good. That work is well above my pay grade. But also, I reject the notion that I’m working with bad people. (If you’re married to a “bad person,” please consider leaving. There is no compelling argument for subjecting ourselves or our children to the abuses of bad people.)

I don’t think bad people doing bad things is what ends most relationships. I think good people unaware of how much pain their partner might sometimes feel (thereby demonstrating little respect, compassion, or empathy for the hurt they’re experiencing) is the problem.

Let’s talk about the two primary ways that we sometimes “make everything about us” which our partners experience as neglect and abandonment for several years before they stop wanting to be with us.

Making Everything About You, Part I

The first way we make everything about us takes place during our conversations.

Something happens, resulting in our partner experiencing pain somehow. Sadness. Anger. Fear. Embarrassment. Anxiety.

Everything feels wrong, and when things hurt and feel wrong, our top objective is to get back to normal. To stop the pain.

When the pain is emotional, and stemming from a relationship, it makes sense for one partner to say something to the other partner. Unless you’re both psychic telepaths, or prefer written correspondence, actually speaking to one another is the preferred way of sharing what’s happening.

“Hey Matt. That thing that happened earlier? I feel hurt by it,” my wife might have said.

When I wasn’t invalidating my wife by telling her she was incorrect about what happened, or invalidating her by telling her the thing wasn’t as big of a deal as she’s making it out to be and therefore should not be feeling so hurt by it, then I was invalidating her by defending my actions or good intentions.

One of the most common ways we make it about us, is by responding to our partners as if THEY’RE hurting us by informing us that they’ve been hurt.

When my wife would say: “Hey Matt. I’m hurt. Please help me not hurt,” I would reply in ways that eroded her trust in me. In ways that resulted in her hurting even more than before she said anything.

Even though I would never want my wife to feel pain, I did not respond to my wife out of concern that she was hurt.

Even though it would have been useful to understand WHY something was hurting my wife so that I could cooperatively participate moving forward in her NOT feeling hurt by that same thing, I didn’t invest any energy in trying to understand what had happened.

What I did was put my energy into defending myself.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, so you shouldn’t be upset with me. I’m not at fault here.

Or.

Hey. It makes sense if you think about it the way I think about it. Let me explain why this happened because I don’t want you to be mad at me anymore.

  1. Our partner is hurt.
  2. Our partner attempts to let us know.
  3. Our energy immediately funnels NOT toward alleviating their pain, or expressing concern that something is wrong, or demonstrating that we’re willing to understand why this hurts so that we can be trusted to not do this same thing again (because pain is most often caused not by harmful intentions, but by things we never even realized were happening).
  4. Our energy immediately funnels instead to defending our character, justifying our actions, explaining our thoughts and feelings as a means of alleviating ourselves of responsibility for any harm caused.

This is what it looks and feels like when someone experiences pain, and then when trying to recruit their partner to help them not feel hurt anymore, the partner makes the situation about themselves.

That’s what I most often did in these moments. My default setting was to prioritize defending my character or “well-intentioned” actions at the expense of whatever pain my wife might have been feeling.

When someone is hurt, and every time they tell you that they’re hurt and ask for help, you tell them that they should magically stop feeling hurt instead of helping them, or say that even if they are hurt, it’s not your fault or problem, they will always hurt a little bit more and trust you less afterward.

They can’t trust us to not make THEIR pain about US. We rob them of their opportunity to appeal for help. We steal it from them. We tell hurt people to stop being weak, and then we tell them to stop making US feel inconvenienced by their pain.

This is a major reason why—even though you’re pretty awesome most of the time, and everyone seems to like you—your partner sometimes thinks you’re a selfish asshole.

….

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….

Making Everything About You, Part II

The second way we commonly make everything about us in relationships is not about what we do, but what we DON’T do.

It lives under the umbrella of the No. 2 habit I ask my coaching clients to work on: Consideration.

Marriage and romantic relationships often suffer from one person investing infinitely more energy into the relationship than their partner, and if we’re being honest about it, it is—far and away—most common for women to suffer from this condition in male-female relationships.

What I often hear from female clients is that they’re married to, or dating someone, who doesn’t consider them when they make decisions. That might seem petty-ish on the surface. I thought so during my marriage. Imagine complaining because I didn’t bring a coffee home to you, as if I would ever be that petty to you!

This is a big deal. People don’t see it. Particularly men. Husbands. Fathers.

What often happens is that one partner (usually the wife or girlfriend) wakes up every day and throughout each day, all of their decisions about how they spend their time is filtered through the prism of “How will my husband be affected by this?” and “How will my children be affected by this?”

If you think of the decision-making process as a math equation, wives and mothers (often just women, in general) rarely fail to consider how their actions might impact their partners or anyone they care about.

Me + Making a Hair Appointment at 4 p.m. Tuesday = I won’t be able to drive my daughter to basketball practice, and it will prevent me from preparing the family meal, which will require my husband to manage dinner if we’re going to keep our normal schedule.

Someone who thinks like this mindfully communicates these logistical dilemmas to everyone involved. Maybe the daughter gets a ride to practice from a teammate’s parent, and maybe her husband prepares the meal, or orders takeout, or whatever.

Often, a wife/mother in this situation won’t do what she wants to do (go to her hair appointment at 4 p.m. Tuesday), and instead schedule it at some super-inconvenient time for her that won’t adversely affect her husband or children.

This is how she lives her life every day. Constantly—all the time—having her Awareness switch flipped to the “On” position. Never making decisions—large or small—without running those decisions through the filter of how the people she loves might be affected by them.

And then there’s us.

You know who you are because you’re just like me. Hi. Sorry. I know it sucks. You’re not trying to make anyone else’s life harder. You don’t FEEL like a selfish, shitty person. You don’t intend to be. You’re just living your life, getting up in the morning, going to work, and trying generally to be cool the rest of the time. You want to do fun, relaxing things whenever you’re not doing what you HAVE to do (going to work and house/family-related chores).

And then you’re hearing about how selfish and inconsiderate you are because you’re playing a video game, or because you forgot to empty the dishwasher, or because she’s acting hurt or angry that you planned to go hunting with your dad and brothers, and waited until afterward to tell her about it. Now, she’ll spend that weekend caring for the kids and pets alone regardless of her plans, and if she dares to object, then she’s the bad guy because she’s “trying to keep you from doing things with your family.”

What a drag and ungrateful nag, my wife is. I never complain to her about stuff like this.

But the truth is, every day of your lives, your partner is perpetually mindful of how their actions impact you. And because you’re loved and respected and cared for, they constantly modify their behavior to account for you and the other people they love.

But, nearly every day, there’s evidence that you don’t do that same thing for them.

It’s not that you’re a bad person. It’s not that you’re doing anything bad or harmful, and even if you did, it was 100-percent an accident. I get it.

The pain isn’t so much from the isolated incidents, or because of the notion that you’re a bad person who tries to hurt your loved ones.

The pain stems from the idea that your partner, and possibly your family, are not even part of your thoughts when you make decisions. No matter how insignificant that decision might seem.

“My partner doesn’t remember me when he makes decisions. I know he doesn’t hurt me on purpose. I know he’s a nice guy. What hurts is that I’m not important enough to remember. What kills me is how little I matter to him. The bad thing didn’t happen because he wanted it to. The bad thing happened because he totally forgot about me.”

Betrayal isn’t required to lose the trust of the people we love. Sometimes, it’s simply our blind spots that we’re not working to eliminate. Sometimes, it’s our habits.

The way we speak. The way we think.

I know you’re not a bad person. I don’t think I’m one either.

But things I did resulted in significant pain and broken trust with my wife, and that’s why we’re not married anymore. She didn’t leave because she’s mean or selfish or wanted to hurt me.

She left because SHE hurt, and every time she tried to recruit me to help stop the pain, I always made it about me.

Every day, she was reminded that the only person I always remembered to care about was myself.

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Feb 26 2020
9 Comments
Life, Marriage

Taking the Wheel Vs. Destroying Our Marriages on Autopilot

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(Image/Forbes)

The word ‘habits’—at least for me—conjures images of working out or smoking or biting my fingernails.

People talk about developing good study habits or good work habits as a means of succeeding in school or in their career pursuits.

I never thought about habits as having any bearing on my marriage or any of my interpersonal relationships.

But is has occurred to me recently—as I continue to work on myself, and as I continue to work with people trying to rebuild trust in their relationships and communicate more effectively with their partners—that habits more or less affect everything that I do. Everything that all of us do.

The word ‘habits’ isn’t reserved for the things I think about whenever I read or hear it being used.

Habits are simply everything that we do on autopilot.

Tying our shoes. Getting in and out of our vehicles. The way we squeeze toothpaste and brush our teeth.

We don’t notice our habits because they’re all of the things that happen while we’re not paying attention. They don’t require our focus or intentionality. They don’t require any extra-effort. They just happen.

“A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic,” writes author James Clear, in Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

Newsflash: If you’re in a relationship strained by conflict, mistrust, and what you perceive to be a lot of miscommunication or misunderstandings, then it’s a pretty safe bet that your habitual thoughts and actions—the ones you never think about or even notice—are the thoughts and actions fueling the relationship dysfunction.

The alternative is to believe that the two of you are intentionally sabotaging one another and the relationship.

And if you believe that either you or your partner is mindfully trying to destroy your relationship or cause suffering, then I’ll sleep okay at night encouraging you to GTFO ASAP.

Maybe Thinking About Habits Can Help Us Show Up More Effectively in Our Relationships

I love the way Clear explains habits, and I love the way he breaks down simply the science of behavior change—the science of turning behavior that we DO have to concentrate on and grind through into autopilot actions that we do without having to think about them.

What if we can identify beliefs and quick-trigger reactions we are having on autopilot that are harming our relationships, and what if we can replace them with new autopilot behaviors that actually do some good?

…

One of those habits, which helped destroy my marriage, and which is currently destroying others is a nasty little habit that seems particularly difficult for people to get a grip on, and that’s because it’s NOT a ‘bad’ habit in the vast majority of our human relationships. This isn’t a behavior that universally damages human relationships. It’s simply a behavior that commonly damages long-term monogamous relationships.

And that habit is:

When our partner shares their feelings with us, instead of responding in a way that acknowledges and respects their stated emotional experience, we dedicate our focus to evaluating whether we believe they SHOULD feel that way.

This is not a specifically male trait, but in my experience it most commonly shows up with the guys in heterosexual relationships, just as it did in mine.

Most guys admit to me that they don’t respond to their wife or girlfriend’s expressed feelings, but instead invest their energy in one of three invalidating ways that pretty much always destroy relationships:

  1. They dispute the facts of the story their partner just told, thus their partner’s feelings are invalid.
  2. They agree with the facts of the story, but believe their partner is overreacting or being too sensitive about it. Her feelings are wrong. Thus, invalid.
  3. If the thing that upset his partner was the result of something she says that he did, he defends his actions by explaining why he did it. He justifies what happened because he had good reason to do it, he says. Thus, his partner’s feelings are invalid.

No matter what, his partner’s feelings aren’t important. They never win. They never are treated with value or respect. They’re never factors for him in what he does next.

And THAT will end your relationship after it happens enough times.

But in our friendships and professional relationships no one else complains about us doing this.

So when we are called out for lack of respect or care from our significant other, we treat them as if they are the ones with the problem.

“Literally zero other people have a problem with who I am. Just you. Just the person I love and to whom I committed the rest of my life. Would you PLEASE chill the F out? You’d be doing us both a favor.”

…

I want people to notice themselves doing this.

I want people to notice how instead of someone we love saying “I’m hurt,” and then us reacting with the requisite amount of love, concern, and support one might expect when someone is injured or grieving or otherwise suffering, we instead prioritize EVALUATING whether their emotional response is, in our opinion, appropriate.

People get divorced.

People lose grandparents.

People’s pets die.

Maybe we show up for others when those things happen to them. Maybe we don’t.

People stress about an upcoming test at school or a pending job interview.

People feel hurt because they perceive their in-laws to mistreat them at family gatherings.

People are afraid of being diagnosed with an illness or disease.

Maybe we show up for others when those things happen to them. Maybe we don’t.

…

Who are you? Who am I?

In many ways, we’re the sum of our habits.

“Your identity emerges out of your habits,” Clear writes. “Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

It’s not so much about what we do as it is about who we are. Though, what we do defines who we are. And who we are will influence what we do.

We are good spouses—loving and supportive partners—when we behave as loving and supportive spouses do.

Each time we show up in a way that communicates: You matter. I love you. You, and our marriage, matter more than my opinions or my comfort at any given time, and now my actions demonstrate that I believe that… we are voting for the kind of person we want to be.

When we repeat the process of being the kind of person we want to be enough times, a ‘habit’ forms.

On autopilot, we are showing up for the people we love.

And then it’s no longer about trying to change or about trying to be someone or something we don’t currently believe that we are.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.

“The real reasons habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that),” Clear says, “but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.”

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Jul 12 2019
6 Comments
Divorce, Life, Marriage

Adding Spice to Your Love Life Through Routine and Predictability

“We almost died like 15 times throughout this movie, Sandra. We should totally go home and do it.” – Keanu Reeves (Image/whodatedwho.com)

Have you ever been an audience member during a speaking presentation or concert where the audience is asked to do something to participate—like share something to the group, or clap, or sing? You remember that feeling?

Yeah, you do.

I’ve always hated that shit. It triggers whatever big red Discomfort Button that lives in the invisible parts of me, and every time it gets pushed, the loudspeaker in my brain yells, “Everyone is looking at you and judging you and thinking that you’re a stupid asshole!”

It’s irrational. I know it’s silly and unnecessary to think and feel that way. I’m intellectually aware that it’s unhealthy, that hardly anyone is paying attention to me, ever, and if they are, they give zero effs what I’m doing, because they’re too busy worrying about themselves if they’re neurotic like me, or not having a care in the world if they’ve achieved a higher level of mental and emotional maturity than I have.

At 40, I get this in ways I did not in my teens and twenties. But lifelong habits are hard to break, so this is still the default mental and emotional experience whenever I’m in those situations.

…

Public displays of affection (unless I quiet that internal loudspeaker with the requisite amount of alcohol) trigger those same thoughts and feelings.

My ex-wife used to playfully make fun of me for it, but I think it also made her feel bad. If she grabbed my hand while we were walking together, I’d tense up a little, hold it for just a bit, give it a quick double-squeeze which was SUPPOSED to communicate: “I really do love you! I swear!” but which I’m pretty sure communicated: “It’s sweet that you want to hold my hand, but I care more about what OTHER people think of me/us than I care about you feeling connected and cared for in our relationship! So piss off with the hand-holding, babe!”

Can you imagine? Caring more about what strangers you’ve never met, and probably never will, might think about you for holding your wife’s hand or kissing her?

It’s some next-level dickbag stuff. Life tip: Care more about the emotional wellbeing of the people you love than you do about the neurotic stories you conjure up in your own brain regarding what strangers might think.

Simply, one of those things matters and has genuine relevance to your life, and the other does not.

Romantic Spontaneity vs. ‘Boring’ Routines

If you’re guessing that because I operated that way about hand-holding and any other form of public affection, that I also resisted forced romantic and/or intimate encounters because they didn’t seem ‘authentic’ due to their inherent lack of spontaneity, you’re a fabulous guesser.

Reminder: My wife totally divorced me six years ago, and in my estimation, made an appropriate choice to preserve what was left of her mental/emotional health.

This irrational thing I was doing inside my own head inevitably led to countless situations in which repeated attempts by my wife to connect with me were rejected. Several times per year for more than a dozen years.

Romance and sexual desire doesn’t always manifest in the daily hum-drum routines of the average married couple who spent a long day at work and are maybe caring for kids and pets throughout the mornings and evenings the way it does between two super-attractive Hollywood actors who just survived a dramatic near-death experience in the movies.

I guess I thought that’s what was supposed to happen.

Leveraging the Power of Habit to Increase Emotional Connection with our Partners

I was reminded of how egregiously I failed my wife while watching a recent Mindvalley video featuring Jon and Missy Butcher, called 9 Daily Habits That Will Help You Lead An Extraordinary Life.

Here’s a couple married 25 years, and instead of them complaining about one another to anyone who will listen like most of the 25-year couples I’ve encountered, these two take a walk together every single day, as a daily check-in.

While most of us are busy holding in our frustrations so they can spew out in an undisciplined way at what usually ends up being the most inopportune times, Jon and Missy plan a time each day to unload all of that crap to one another. A daily appointment with one another to listen to each other about the things they experienced earlier in the day, good and bad. This is what it looks like to intentionally move toward one another instead of allowing the natural drift-apart to occur by being too busy with everything else.

And then, once per week, the couple has an overnight date night. Maybe at home. Maybe somewhere else. But every single week, Friday night overnight, no matter where they are, belongs to them, and arrangements are made for everything else in their lives (children, pets, work) to be cared for.

This is their Connection Ritual.

This is what it means to water your own lawn so that your own grass ALWAYS looks greener and better than whatever is on the other side of the fence.

Having a good marriage or a quality, connected romantic relationship of any kind, I think, is a lot like getting in good physical shape. A select few don’t have to work very hard to look and feel great. But most of us do.

And despite the efforts of many magic diet and supplement salespeople, there are no shortcuts to being our best selves physically.

You just do the work. It’s really hard at the beginning. Inertia is always the greatest obstacle. Something new is always more difficult to accomplish than something routine. Our first week of work is always more challenging and intimidating than our 18th month on the job. We move every day. We are mindful about what we consume. The more healthy choices we make, the more our health and wellness benefits from those choices.

And so it is with our relationships. They are what the participants mindfully choose for them to be. When two people wake up every day making the choice to choose one another, and prioritizing one another over everything else, our connections grow. Our love flourishes. Our relationships thrive.

And when you derpy-derp around like I did with your fingers crossed that everything will work out without having to give anything or do anything uncomfortable to achieve it?

I think it’s telling that I don’t even have to say it.

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