For future references
The following excerpts pertain to my previous post, I am housing them here for future reference.All relationships resolve in contradiction. Why then is it so difficult for us to accept contradictory feelings inside ourselves? Unfortunately, we are trained to believe that consistency is the basic nature of all things, that there is an answer to all questions. One answer. �Is it good or bad?� �Is it true or false?� �Is it right or wrong?� We like simple, clean, straightforward answers. If it�s both, simultaneously, then we are in for a more complicated consideration, a more unsettling resolution.People use two primary strategies to eradicate internal inconsistency in relationship. Either we make the other all good or we make him/her all bad. Both paths are attempts to right the inconsistency, to manipulate the experience in order to feel just one way.
To make our experience consistently positive, we disconnect from and deny our negative feelings, the parts of the relationship where we are not getting what we want. Having successfully removed the negative, we can remain in the relationship �pain-free.� Ironically, internal criticism can serve as a way of denying negative feelings. Telling ourselves that we are �ungrateful,� �overly demanding,� �impossible to please,� and thus somehow to blame for the deprivation that we are experiencing, is a strategy to reject our pain and thus eradicate the anxiety that contradiction arouses.
Making the experience consistently negative, on the other hand, requires rejecting the parts of the relationship that bring us joy. The �He�s a louse and I don�t know what I�m doing with him� brand of thinking. In this approach we focus only on the problems, not allowing ourselves to acknowledge or appreciate the reasons we are actually in the relationship.
Source: Psychology today
written on 08/21/2014 at 8:32 A.M.
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