Change Your Perspective & Marriage (Along With Other Relationships) Parts 1,2 & 3 by Rabbi shmuel gluck:
part 1 - scroll down for part 2 & 3
This is an e-mail response to someone with whom I’m in touch:
“As we continue to speak to each other, I’m finding that the gap between your clarity, which is growing exponentially, and your personal behavior, is widening. Your personal behavior is changing at a very slow pace, if at all. Initially this seemed to be strange to me but, after thinking about it, I think I understand it, and have some thoughts to share with you.
You should keep in mind that what you’re experiencing isn’t strange, it’s typical, should be expected, and is nothing more than another threshold for you to pass through.
Clarity often “sits” in the logical part of the mind. Logic tells us what we should do, but it has a difficult time telling us why we should want to do it. Therefore, as your clarity grows, the internal conflict will grow proportionally, as I’ll describe. Until now you may not have done what you were supposed to do, because you believed that what you were doing was right. Now that you know that it was wrong, you’re experiencing feelings of guilt, failure and, possibly most of all, resentment, towards the person that’s causing you to experience all of these feelings. This resentment cultivates stubbornness and, in the heat of the moment, the clarity in your mind is stuffed into some deep, dark, crevice of your mind.
Nevertheless, your sincerity has partially helped, and when you’ve acted consistently, by using your clarity, you’ve had some success, such as when you responded in a nice manner, even though you believe s/he didn’t deserve it. However, during your next interaction with him/her, you reverted back to your old habits.
Let me offer you a theory as to why you find it difficult to sustain positive change. Whenever people do something that’s right, but is contrary to their nature, it leads to some serious internal fighting, and wears them down. Every success wears people down, and makes it easier to fail the next time. Our resistance sabotages our sincere intentions. Therefore, it’s important to remember that whatever we do, we should do in a manner that doesn’t create resistance. I’ll discuss this a little later.
Besides the difficulty in acting contrary to nature which creates resistance, there’s another reason that people’s clarity may grow, although their behavior may stagnate. It’s very difficult to change one’s nature. You’ve been acting in the same way for as many years as you’re married, and have only recently made a serious commitment to change.
My three reasons as to why it’s so difficult to change behavior are intended to comfort you. You’re on schedule, and should be proud of your previous efforts, as long as you continue to take the next step.
The Pele Yoetz observed (we talked about this previously), that people will “gladly” accept a significant financial loss resulting from a Psak involving a Kashrus or Shabbos related law. However, those same people will become irate about an insignificant financial loss through a Din Torah. Why? The significant loss is the result of a relationship between a person, and Hashem, and people are happy to give Hashem money. The insignificant loss is perceived to be caused by a relationship between two people. Few people want to give something to other people, when they don’t believe that they deserve it.
Sholom Bayis issues are difficult because, consciously, or subconsciously, people “know” that if they “give in”, it means one of two things. Either the other people are right, which would make them wrong. Or, the other people are getting something from them that they don’t deserve. These frustrating thoughts create resentment which, in turn, creates resistance. People can’t sustain positive behavior when they resist doing what’s right.
Removing resistance requires people to change their perspectives. If they succeed, the behavioral change will come naturally. Most people are aware that changing people’s perspectives is more difficult than changing their behavior but, without it, any behavioral change will be short lived.
Most situations that people face can be seen from different angles. All those angles are often legitimate, but should be seen as having different “values”.
For example, imagine that someone is faced with Sholom Bayis challenges. There’s the angle that: 1) One spouse is unfair to the other, and s/he won’t tolerate it; 2) It’s really about the spouse having to change; 3) S/he should focus on his/her personal responsibility for self-growth; 4) It’s between the spouses and Hashem. There are also “distanced” angles, such as: 5) How it’ll affect their children; and 6) The probability that their quarreling will affect his/her health, and career.
Each of the six angles mentioned should be seen as a percent of the whole challenge, based on its order of importance. The angle which represents the highest percentage would be the most compelling reason for the person to change. If, for example, from these six challenges, someone is most obsessed with (#1) the injustice of being mistreated by a spouse, then there’s no “room” in his/her heart for personal change. If, on the other hand, the most important angle is any of the other five possibilities, than the reaction isn’t to “fight” the spouse, but to focus on personal growth, protect the children, etc. Focusing on anything other than resentment will result in positive change, instead of the ongoing fighting between the spouses.
In real life, it’s never simple to teach people how they should think. People may acknowledge that their most important angle is either, personal growth, Hashem, and/or the children, but still, the next morning, they’ll be unable to muster the emotional strength to act nicely to their spouse. How should people understand this, and “work” around it? If we can figure out how to act as we know we should act, our change will be quick and easy.
I don’t have an easy solution for the above. I can “break down” what goes on in people’s minds, and by doing it, you’ll see how the mind diverts from the logical to illogical. Since you’re a sincere, decent, person, when you see where your thoughts divert from logic, you should be able to redirect them back to a logical place.”
“As we continue to speak to each other, I’m finding that the gap between your clarity, which is growing exponentially, and your personal behavior, is widening. Your personal behavior is changing at a very slow pace, if at all. Initially this seemed to be strange to me but, after thinking about it, I think I understand it, and have some thoughts to share with you.
You should keep in mind that what you’re experiencing isn’t strange, it’s typical, should be expected, and is nothing more than another threshold for you to pass through.
Clarity often “sits” in the logical part of the mind. Logic tells us what we should do, but it has a difficult time telling us why we should want to do it. Therefore, as your clarity grows, the internal conflict will grow proportionally, as I’ll describe. Until now you may not have done what you were supposed to do, because you believed that what you were doing was right. Now that you know that it was wrong, you’re experiencing feelings of guilt, failure and, possibly most of all, resentment, towards the person that’s causing you to experience all of these feelings. This resentment cultivates stubbornness and, in the heat of the moment, the clarity in your mind is stuffed into some deep, dark, crevice of your mind.
Nevertheless, your sincerity has partially helped, and when you’ve acted consistently, by using your clarity, you’ve had some success, such as when you responded in a nice manner, even though you believe s/he didn’t deserve it. However, during your next interaction with him/her, you reverted back to your old habits.
Let me offer you a theory as to why you find it difficult to sustain positive change. Whenever people do something that’s right, but is contrary to their nature, it leads to some serious internal fighting, and wears them down. Every success wears people down, and makes it easier to fail the next time. Our resistance sabotages our sincere intentions. Therefore, it’s important to remember that whatever we do, we should do in a manner that doesn’t create resistance. I’ll discuss this a little later.
Besides the difficulty in acting contrary to nature which creates resistance, there’s another reason that people’s clarity may grow, although their behavior may stagnate. It’s very difficult to change one’s nature. You’ve been acting in the same way for as many years as you’re married, and have only recently made a serious commitment to change.
My three reasons as to why it’s so difficult to change behavior are intended to comfort you. You’re on schedule, and should be proud of your previous efforts, as long as you continue to take the next step.
The Pele Yoetz observed (we talked about this previously), that people will “gladly” accept a significant financial loss resulting from a Psak involving a Kashrus or Shabbos related law. However, those same people will become irate about an insignificant financial loss through a Din Torah. Why? The significant loss is the result of a relationship between a person, and Hashem, and people are happy to give Hashem money. The insignificant loss is perceived to be caused by a relationship between two people. Few people want to give something to other people, when they don’t believe that they deserve it.
Sholom Bayis issues are difficult because, consciously, or subconsciously, people “know” that if they “give in”, it means one of two things. Either the other people are right, which would make them wrong. Or, the other people are getting something from them that they don’t deserve. These frustrating thoughts create resentment which, in turn, creates resistance. People can’t sustain positive behavior when they resist doing what’s right.
Removing resistance requires people to change their perspectives. If they succeed, the behavioral change will come naturally. Most people are aware that changing people’s perspectives is more difficult than changing their behavior but, without it, any behavioral change will be short lived.
Most situations that people face can be seen from different angles. All those angles are often legitimate, but should be seen as having different “values”.
For example, imagine that someone is faced with Sholom Bayis challenges. There’s the angle that: 1) One spouse is unfair to the other, and s/he won’t tolerate it; 2) It’s really about the spouse having to change; 3) S/he should focus on his/her personal responsibility for self-growth; 4) It’s between the spouses and Hashem. There are also “distanced” angles, such as: 5) How it’ll affect their children; and 6) The probability that their quarreling will affect his/her health, and career.
Each of the six angles mentioned should be seen as a percent of the whole challenge, based on its order of importance. The angle which represents the highest percentage would be the most compelling reason for the person to change. If, for example, from these six challenges, someone is most obsessed with (#1) the injustice of being mistreated by a spouse, then there’s no “room” in his/her heart for personal change. If, on the other hand, the most important angle is any of the other five possibilities, than the reaction isn’t to “fight” the spouse, but to focus on personal growth, protect the children, etc. Focusing on anything other than resentment will result in positive change, instead of the ongoing fighting between the spouses.
In real life, it’s never simple to teach people how they should think. People may acknowledge that their most important angle is either, personal growth, Hashem, and/or the children, but still, the next morning, they’ll be unable to muster the emotional strength to act nicely to their spouse. How should people understand this, and “work” around it? If we can figure out how to act as we know we should act, our change will be quick and easy.
I don’t have an easy solution for the above. I can “break down” what goes on in people’s minds, and by doing it, you’ll see how the mind diverts from the logical to illogical. Since you’re a sincere, decent, person, when you see where your thoughts divert from logic, you should be able to redirect them back to a logical place.”
part 2 - scroll up for part 1
“Many people are insecure, and become insulted too quickly. They also worry too much about what others think of them. As a result, they become defensive too quickly. Feeling a need to defend themselves when there really was no need to (because no insult was intended, or the incident was far more trivial than the way in which the person interpreted it), has hurt many people and relationships.
When people are insecure, they’re often self-absorbed, even if they seem to be emotionally healthy. Nevertheless, when they interpret every incident by what it means to them, and how it makes them feel, they’re ignoring the more important concern of what it means to others.
The damage caused by people’s insecure, and self-absorbed, behaviors, is always significant, but it’s even more significant when it interferes in marriages. The relationship between husband and wife is the most intense relationship that exists and, therefore, it magnifies both spouses’ insecurities. It’s said that marriage brings out the best, and also the worst, in people.
The collective conclusion from the above is that, although people want to believe that they always act sensibly, they frequently act based on their emotion, and this is usually anything but sensible. While one spouse may be more balanced, and logical, than the other spouse (assuming that their version of events is correct), you, like many people, aren’t acting logical.
If you accept this lengthy introduction to my advice, these are the steps that you need to take in order to improve your marriage and life:
1) You must approach your spouse with humility. Not the false, arrogant, type in which you smugly talk about how you’re trying to accept the Nisoyon that Hashem has arbitrarily chosen for you, and/or His decision to make you suffer. I’m referring to real humility, in which you realize that while it’s possible that no one else would stay married to your spouse, in truth, you’re just as difficult as your spouse. The humility in which you don’t grade yourself relative to your spouse. Like almost everyone else, you’re insecure, and self-absorbed, and those faults become magnified when you interact with your spouse. It took me a while to realize that it’s also not easy for my wife to be married to me.
Recognizing the responsibility to be humble will require you to adopt a mantra which you’ll have to repeat to yourself multiple times a day. The mantra should be something like this: My spouse may be difficult, but it’s also not easy to get along with me.
Before I get to the next step, it’s important to keep in mind that if this, and future, steps don’t create the anticipated change for you, it means you didn’t successfully adopt these thoughts into your life. The failure will not be in the ability of these steps to improve the quality of your marriage, but in your ability to properly apply them.
2) There are multiple reasons that you should treat your spouse with the respect that you don’t believe s/he deserves, including the fact that you have fine Middos, Hashem wants it, your children deserve it, etc. Nevertheless, these won’t change your behavior unless you constantly remind yourself of them. I suggest the following mantra. This isn’t about me and my spouse. It’s much bigger than us.
3) You have to be patient with yourself. Reversing 15 years of behavior will require, for arguments sake, six months. If you don’t recognize that sheer will, and determination, isn’t enough to create immediate change, you may give up, believing “I’ll never change”, or that, “my spouse is impossible”. Recognizing that it may take several months, or longer, will help you have the patience necessary to change your previous behavioral patterns.
Allowing yourself the patience, and tenacity, needed to succeed will require another mantra, although it doesn’t deal directly with the issue I presented. It’s a general, motivational, one. I suggest you say to yourself, “To the best of my ability, I won’t tolerate unhealthy children” or, “To the best of my ability, I won’t accept personal failure for myself”.
4) You’ll need a strong knowledge of human nature, and specifically the dynamics between husband and wife. You’ll have to learn multiple skills, and techniques, to succeed, and we’ll have to do them together. However, you can remind yourself of their importance with the following mantra. “If this didn’t work, I must’ve done something wrong.”
This mantra makes the assumption that with the proper skills people can make almost any potential argument into a conciliatory conversation. Proper skills can make an unhappy person happy, and an angry person into a loving one. Therefore, if you tried your best and it “blew up” in your face, your assumption should be that you overlooked some basic aspect of human nature. However, this isn’t a problem. All you have to do is to go back to the “drawing board” one more time.
5) You need to remember as often as possible, that your life, your marriage, and everything else about you, is more important than you are. Your need to have Sholom Bayis is for a legitimate, personal, reason, but it’s much, more than that. You have a responsibility to your children. You have a responsibility to your spouse. You have a responsibility to Hashem.
Your decisions will make a footprint on future generations, on your Olam Habo, and on the level of Sholom in the entire world. In other words, your marriage is big, much bigger than what you’re seeing. Open your eyes and, when you interact with your spouse, keep this in mind. It’s humbling, should allow you to become humble, and transform you into a forgiving, and accommodating, person, beyond what you’ve been until now.
There’s a mantra for this too. It’s not about me. It’s about what I can achieve.
I’m sorry that I’m sending you so much information. I spent the time on this because I know that you’d pay anything to find a pill to make your marriage better. Sadly, a pill doesn’t exist, but there’s a prescription. Please let me know if my thoughts were helpful, and if you think we can continue using these thoughts as a framework for growth.
When people are insecure, they’re often self-absorbed, even if they seem to be emotionally healthy. Nevertheless, when they interpret every incident by what it means to them, and how it makes them feel, they’re ignoring the more important concern of what it means to others.
The damage caused by people’s insecure, and self-absorbed, behaviors, is always significant, but it’s even more significant when it interferes in marriages. The relationship between husband and wife is the most intense relationship that exists and, therefore, it magnifies both spouses’ insecurities. It’s said that marriage brings out the best, and also the worst, in people.
The collective conclusion from the above is that, although people want to believe that they always act sensibly, they frequently act based on their emotion, and this is usually anything but sensible. While one spouse may be more balanced, and logical, than the other spouse (assuming that their version of events is correct), you, like many people, aren’t acting logical.
If you accept this lengthy introduction to my advice, these are the steps that you need to take in order to improve your marriage and life:
1) You must approach your spouse with humility. Not the false, arrogant, type in which you smugly talk about how you’re trying to accept the Nisoyon that Hashem has arbitrarily chosen for you, and/or His decision to make you suffer. I’m referring to real humility, in which you realize that while it’s possible that no one else would stay married to your spouse, in truth, you’re just as difficult as your spouse. The humility in which you don’t grade yourself relative to your spouse. Like almost everyone else, you’re insecure, and self-absorbed, and those faults become magnified when you interact with your spouse. It took me a while to realize that it’s also not easy for my wife to be married to me.
Recognizing the responsibility to be humble will require you to adopt a mantra which you’ll have to repeat to yourself multiple times a day. The mantra should be something like this: My spouse may be difficult, but it’s also not easy to get along with me.
Before I get to the next step, it’s important to keep in mind that if this, and future, steps don’t create the anticipated change for you, it means you didn’t successfully adopt these thoughts into your life. The failure will not be in the ability of these steps to improve the quality of your marriage, but in your ability to properly apply them.
2) There are multiple reasons that you should treat your spouse with the respect that you don’t believe s/he deserves, including the fact that you have fine Middos, Hashem wants it, your children deserve it, etc. Nevertheless, these won’t change your behavior unless you constantly remind yourself of them. I suggest the following mantra. This isn’t about me and my spouse. It’s much bigger than us.
3) You have to be patient with yourself. Reversing 15 years of behavior will require, for arguments sake, six months. If you don’t recognize that sheer will, and determination, isn’t enough to create immediate change, you may give up, believing “I’ll never change”, or that, “my spouse is impossible”. Recognizing that it may take several months, or longer, will help you have the patience necessary to change your previous behavioral patterns.
Allowing yourself the patience, and tenacity, needed to succeed will require another mantra, although it doesn’t deal directly with the issue I presented. It’s a general, motivational, one. I suggest you say to yourself, “To the best of my ability, I won’t tolerate unhealthy children” or, “To the best of my ability, I won’t accept personal failure for myself”.
4) You’ll need a strong knowledge of human nature, and specifically the dynamics between husband and wife. You’ll have to learn multiple skills, and techniques, to succeed, and we’ll have to do them together. However, you can remind yourself of their importance with the following mantra. “If this didn’t work, I must’ve done something wrong.”
This mantra makes the assumption that with the proper skills people can make almost any potential argument into a conciliatory conversation. Proper skills can make an unhappy person happy, and an angry person into a loving one. Therefore, if you tried your best and it “blew up” in your face, your assumption should be that you overlooked some basic aspect of human nature. However, this isn’t a problem. All you have to do is to go back to the “drawing board” one more time.
5) You need to remember as often as possible, that your life, your marriage, and everything else about you, is more important than you are. Your need to have Sholom Bayis is for a legitimate, personal, reason, but it’s much, more than that. You have a responsibility to your children. You have a responsibility to your spouse. You have a responsibility to Hashem.
Your decisions will make a footprint on future generations, on your Olam Habo, and on the level of Sholom in the entire world. In other words, your marriage is big, much bigger than what you’re seeing. Open your eyes and, when you interact with your spouse, keep this in mind. It’s humbling, should allow you to become humble, and transform you into a forgiving, and accommodating, person, beyond what you’ve been until now.
There’s a mantra for this too. It’s not about me. It’s about what I can achieve.
I’m sorry that I’m sending you so much information. I spent the time on this because I know that you’d pay anything to find a pill to make your marriage better. Sadly, a pill doesn’t exist, but there’s a prescription. Please let me know if my thoughts were helpful, and if you think we can continue using these thoughts as a framework for growth.
part 3 - scroll up for parts 1 & 2
Several weeks ago I wrote a two part article on the above topic. This article continues the discussion to help people in their marriages and personal growth.
I often speak to people who ask me to help them improve. Their request includes an acknowledgement that some of their shortcomings are “off limits”, expecting me to accept those faults, and not attempt to change them. They insist that I accept those shortcomings even though, I’m certain, they’ll sabotage their chances for success. They persistently ask me to help them “anyway”, even telling me that they want me to perform magic, something that I can’t do.
For example, they’ll ask, and expect me, to help them lose weight, but tell me that they’ve no discipline, and that they can’t change. They’re asking me to help them lose weight, while consuming twice the recommended amount of calories. They’ll ask me to help their children stop violent fits of anger, without medication, which is what the professionals advised.
I sense that their request is partly out of desperation, partly out of an unwillingness to recognize that it’s their problem, and not mine, to solve, and partly as a manipulative attempt to appeal to my pride and, possibly, my arrogance. They hope that these reasons will be enough to motivate me to perform magic.
Sometimes I’ll accept the challenge, not because I can perform magic, but because I hope that I’ll eventually convince the people to go out of their comfort zones, and do what they thought would be impossible for them to do, until now. Once I realize that they’re unable to “let go” of their “off limits” shortcomings (which’ll make it impossible to succeed), I’ll stop trying to help them. Instead, I’ll dedicate my time, and energies, to other people who’ve reasonable requests.
The difference between logical, and emotional, thought, is that emotional thought starts from the end, and works its way to the beginning. It begins with a desired result, such as, “My spouse hurt my feelings, and it must be acknowledged”. The next step, the choice of action, is only concerned with achieving the desired result, and that’s to have your feelings “unhurt”. You’re only considering your hurt feelings. You don’t consider how you contributed towards having your feelings hurt, because those thoughts won’t help you reach your desired goal, which is to receive an apology for your hurt feelings.
Logical thinking works in the proper order. “I think that I may have done something wrong to cause him/her to hurt my feelings. This (whatever advice is suggested as being the solution for the problem) is what my end goal should be.” Logical thinking considers what should happen, and allows the result to be “open-ended”, and “fall where it may”. Logical thinking knows that your feelings were hurt, but it also knows what should happen next, what the effective move is, and what are your responsibilities.
I’ve found that some conversations with you also expect me to accept that you won’t change some of your faults. The gap between what is expected of you and what you want me to expect can’t be compensated for by a Gemoro, or a smart piece of advice. Thinking emotionally to the extent that you do, won’t let you succeed. I won’t continue to try and help you if will insist on keeping your “right” to think emotionally because I can’t help you.
This is another example. You’ve concluded that your spouse is a Nebech, and that you’ll have to be the Baal Midos. That conclusion is only possible if you work backwards. The end result “must be” that you aren’t the one to blame. You’ve devised a plan that allows you to consider yourself Frum, and therefore, the “good” person, who’s a Baal Midos.
Logical thought would have you consider what it was that made your spouse act as a non-Baal Midos. Were your lack of Midos a trigger? Is it logical to “pluck” your spouse’s lack of Midos from among your own, within the same incident?
You’ve repeatedly said that you can’t get the hurt, or mistreatment, out of your mind. You’re asking me to help you but, at the same time, acknowledge that you won’t change. My response to you is that I can’t help you.
Where do we go from here? I’ve no choice but to respond in a manner that many advisors/mentors are afraid to respond. I’m returning the burden to change onto its rightful owner, and that’s you. I’m willing to admit that I’m not all-knowing, and am asking you to figure out the solution to your problem. Initially, you may feel overwhelmed, abandoned and, possibly, that I’m “siding” with your spouse.
Many advisors/mentors forget that within their abilities, the most that they should expect is to become is a great number two, for the person trying to change. The number one person will always be the person in need of the change, and that’s you.
It’s difficult to describe how much more you‘ll be able to achieve once you realize that it’s up to you, and no one else. This realization will allow you to pass thresholds that you considered impossible, when you relied on someone else to help you. Relying on others allowed you to believe that if you rejected one of their solutions they’d come up with another.
This is one reason that I can’t be your number two person. There are certain “truths” by which you live. Some of those I’ve mentioned. Your conclusions were drawn because you’re working backwards. They’re not really true, but you’ve decided that they’re true. Since the decision wasn’t borne out of logic, logic won’t convince you differently. You have to realize, on your own, that those truths are false truths. You have to begin to think logically.
My wish is that from your feelings of hopelessness will emerge the attitude that “anything is better than where I’m right now”. Then we’ll be able to change, not a specific behavior, but how you draw your conclusions. Please let me know what you’d like the next step to be.
I often speak to people who ask me to help them improve. Their request includes an acknowledgement that some of their shortcomings are “off limits”, expecting me to accept those faults, and not attempt to change them. They insist that I accept those shortcomings even though, I’m certain, they’ll sabotage their chances for success. They persistently ask me to help them “anyway”, even telling me that they want me to perform magic, something that I can’t do.
For example, they’ll ask, and expect me, to help them lose weight, but tell me that they’ve no discipline, and that they can’t change. They’re asking me to help them lose weight, while consuming twice the recommended amount of calories. They’ll ask me to help their children stop violent fits of anger, without medication, which is what the professionals advised.
I sense that their request is partly out of desperation, partly out of an unwillingness to recognize that it’s their problem, and not mine, to solve, and partly as a manipulative attempt to appeal to my pride and, possibly, my arrogance. They hope that these reasons will be enough to motivate me to perform magic.
Sometimes I’ll accept the challenge, not because I can perform magic, but because I hope that I’ll eventually convince the people to go out of their comfort zones, and do what they thought would be impossible for them to do, until now. Once I realize that they’re unable to “let go” of their “off limits” shortcomings (which’ll make it impossible to succeed), I’ll stop trying to help them. Instead, I’ll dedicate my time, and energies, to other people who’ve reasonable requests.
The difference between logical, and emotional, thought, is that emotional thought starts from the end, and works its way to the beginning. It begins with a desired result, such as, “My spouse hurt my feelings, and it must be acknowledged”. The next step, the choice of action, is only concerned with achieving the desired result, and that’s to have your feelings “unhurt”. You’re only considering your hurt feelings. You don’t consider how you contributed towards having your feelings hurt, because those thoughts won’t help you reach your desired goal, which is to receive an apology for your hurt feelings.
Logical thinking works in the proper order. “I think that I may have done something wrong to cause him/her to hurt my feelings. This (whatever advice is suggested as being the solution for the problem) is what my end goal should be.” Logical thinking considers what should happen, and allows the result to be “open-ended”, and “fall where it may”. Logical thinking knows that your feelings were hurt, but it also knows what should happen next, what the effective move is, and what are your responsibilities.
I’ve found that some conversations with you also expect me to accept that you won’t change some of your faults. The gap between what is expected of you and what you want me to expect can’t be compensated for by a Gemoro, or a smart piece of advice. Thinking emotionally to the extent that you do, won’t let you succeed. I won’t continue to try and help you if will insist on keeping your “right” to think emotionally because I can’t help you.
This is another example. You’ve concluded that your spouse is a Nebech, and that you’ll have to be the Baal Midos. That conclusion is only possible if you work backwards. The end result “must be” that you aren’t the one to blame. You’ve devised a plan that allows you to consider yourself Frum, and therefore, the “good” person, who’s a Baal Midos.
Logical thought would have you consider what it was that made your spouse act as a non-Baal Midos. Were your lack of Midos a trigger? Is it logical to “pluck” your spouse’s lack of Midos from among your own, within the same incident?
You’ve repeatedly said that you can’t get the hurt, or mistreatment, out of your mind. You’re asking me to help you but, at the same time, acknowledge that you won’t change. My response to you is that I can’t help you.
Where do we go from here? I’ve no choice but to respond in a manner that many advisors/mentors are afraid to respond. I’m returning the burden to change onto its rightful owner, and that’s you. I’m willing to admit that I’m not all-knowing, and am asking you to figure out the solution to your problem. Initially, you may feel overwhelmed, abandoned and, possibly, that I’m “siding” with your spouse.
Many advisors/mentors forget that within their abilities, the most that they should expect is to become is a great number two, for the person trying to change. The number one person will always be the person in need of the change, and that’s you.
It’s difficult to describe how much more you‘ll be able to achieve once you realize that it’s up to you, and no one else. This realization will allow you to pass thresholds that you considered impossible, when you relied on someone else to help you. Relying on others allowed you to believe that if you rejected one of their solutions they’d come up with another.
This is one reason that I can’t be your number two person. There are certain “truths” by which you live. Some of those I’ve mentioned. Your conclusions were drawn because you’re working backwards. They’re not really true, but you’ve decided that they’re true. Since the decision wasn’t borne out of logic, logic won’t convince you differently. You have to realize, on your own, that those truths are false truths. You have to begin to think logically.
My wish is that from your feelings of hopelessness will emerge the attitude that “anything is better than where I’m right now”. Then we’ll be able to change, not a specific behavior, but how you draw your conclusions. Please let me know what you’d like the next step to be.
The author can be contacted at shmuelgluck@areivim.com
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