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Happiness depends on your making an informed choice and accepting the responsibilities for that choice. That one step, recognizing who manages your course, is the beginning of learning to be happy — inside, regardless of the outside circumstances. Staying in a relationship — unhappy and bitter — or leaving and clinging to the injustices are both poor course management.
Sometimes the choice about your relationship is made for you by death, divorce, or physical abuse. But you still have a choice: Will you be happy inside, regardless of the outside circumstances? You can be if you find ways to appreciate what you have rather than wishing for what you don’t have…
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The ultimate measure of a man or woman is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands at times of challenge and controversy…
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Work with your emotions, as opposed to for your emotions. When emotions are given free rein, they
- are nearsighted and childish
- demand our attention
- make us think only feelings count
- convince us that life is not fair
- decry injustice
- support pity parties
- point fingers at others
- defend our actions, right or wrong
- want instant gratification
- make us self-centered — my needs, my wants, my feelings
Reason encourages emotions to slow down when they begin to become overbearing. Reason talks realistically to you about the trade-off of long-term happiness for feel-good now. Your emotions, on the other hand, plead for instant gratification, even if it will be harmful in the long term. Reason points out that life never has been fair — so what? Reason asks: Is your plan to deal with that reality going to resolve the problem or just make it worse? Reason points out that feelings can paralyze unless you make the concerted effort to harness their power…
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To stop the longing for what does not exist in screwed-up relationships, or to heal relationships that are beginning to skew, one must untangle from the emotions that swirl around or off a particular relationship. That process is called detachment. It basically means that you separate emotionally from the person around which your emotions swirl, in order to work on yourself, live your own life, feel your own feelings, and solve your own problems…
Frequently when I suggest to people that they detach from a person or problem, they recoil in horror, “Oh, no! I could never do that! I love him too much.” Or they express their fears, “If I back off, he will not make it. He needs me. I must stay involved.”
My response is, “But if detachment is the only way to bring stability and health to your relationship, do you still have to keep on the same course?”
Maybe understanding what detachment is not will take away some of your anxiety. Detachment is not:
- a cold, heartless, and hostile withdrawal
- a resignation, a despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way
- being blase, naive, or blind to the problems
- being Pollyannaish, ignorantly blissful
- shirking true responsibilities
- necessarily a severing of the relationship
Detachment is releasing someone to be responsible for himself and to bear the responsibility of his own actions. Detachment gives us the objectivity necessary to look at our situation and glean from it the possible good, the lesson that can make the next steps in our walk more steady and focused, and can move us toward our goal. Detachment is ceasing to worry and changing our focus, perhaps heroically, from the other person to what is good for us in our life…
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Marriage partners so often want to become one, one mind, one heart, one path. Sounds good, but it is really tragic. When two become one, one is lost. The goal in any relationship should be for the two to be two, as they walk together. That’s growth! Appreciating the differences in people around us expands and enlarges our world…
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Elizabeth B. Brown
Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People
