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drowning in anxiety...?
Note:
Though most people who find themselves feeling like they are drowning their love life in anxiety - worrying about the fidelity and behavior of their partners - are typically looking in all the wrong places for solutions, it does happen that people without personal ethics can get into relationships in which they assure their partner of their trustworthiness while taking all sorts of liberties with the truth and with their body parts and affections.
I will say that again in English: Lots of people make themselves crazy with worry about their lovers being unfaithful. They want to control their lover but they should be looking for control over themselves. BUT - just because it does happen a lot that people are worried without cause, it also does happen that an individual can find him- or herself attached to a lying, insensitive jerk.
If you are in a relationship with someone you don't trust, either get out of the relationship or decide to trust.
Trust is a troublesome little critter. Lots of people think trust should be when they can assume that their partner will never make a mistake, always be on the ball, always be reliable.
The best way to trust is to trust people to be who they prove themselves to be. This means that someone who has lied to you a few times is someone you can truat to lie to you. Someone who puts other people before you in their thinking and allegeances, is someone who can be trusted to do so again. Someone who has seldom made a mistake can be trusted to seldom make a mistake. Someone who you find to be very ethical in his or her behavior towards others - even when mad at them - is someone you can trust to be ethical to you. Someone who has not really shown you anything is someone you can't trust in any respect because you don't know who he or she is.
Don't trust anyone to be perfect. When you think of trusting someone, the best way to think about it is to think of trusting that person to be who he or she has shown you that he or she is. And you can trust yourself to have figured that much out at least to an extent that you can trust yourself to survive being mistaken about.
If you are going to trust a loved one, trust him or her to make choices that you are going to stand behind and that you are going to trust yourself to survive. If you have millions of dollars and decide you are going to trust someone to be in a relationship with then you are going to trust that if he or she decides to steal your money, you can survive it. If you are going to trust a lover not to cheat, then you are going to trust him or her not to cheat and - if she does slip and make a mistake - you are going to view it as such and trust yourself to survive that. If it turns out that he or she keeps making that mistake and you don't think you want to live like that, then trust that you can break up and survive the break up.
Why live with someone who hurts you? In a relationship - any kind of relationship - if someone has taught you that you can trust him or her to cheat, lie and do things that hurt you, get out of the relationship. Why stay in such a relationship? Why not trust yourself to survive better without that person?
If you decide to live with someone who insists on his or her right to hurt you, cheat, lie or whatever might not be in your best interests, then decide to live with it without yelling and pushing and trying to make things change. It is silly to get into a habit of pretending that yelling and confronting that has not worked in the past will somehow someday work in the future.
If you decide to give someone another chance - someone who has hurt you - do so with the understanding that the way the human mind works, you will find yourself again and again concerned that previous behavior has recurred. All it takes is one incident of cheating, for example, to convince any normal human mind that it might happen again. And it could take several years for such concerns to fade. If you decide to forgive someone and give him or her another chance, assume that you will be very worried that you might uncover negative behavior again. Both parties should understand and accept this. A relationship can work after a misstep but the concern about future missteps will happen over and over, over several years. This doesn't mean a relationship cannot survive but it does mean that a relationship needs to have both parties accepting of the recurring concern.
When you worry about your lover's fidelity...
When there hasn't been enough time to really know who your partner truly is... When there hasn't really been enough time to really know who your partner really is you are foolish to be pretending that you have a real relationship. In such a situation you are simply dreaming - dreaming that you know who you are with, dreaming who that person might be, dreaming that you might put together a dream relationship. Yes, your dream might come true. But what usually happens to dreams is we wake up - dream over.
If you are in a relationship with someone and he or she seems to be your dream come true, then keep in mind that IF things fall apart, WHEN things fall apart, you aren't losing a lover, you are losing a dream. It doesn't mean that your dream person is now rejecting you. It means that this person is not your dream person. (Really - in your dream you do NOT get rejected, right? Your dream partner is trustworthy and wants to be in a relationship with you.)
When there is good reason to suspect your partner's infidelity... If you have reason to believe that your partner might cheat on you and lie, then it should not be a surprise if he or she does so. There are a lot of reasons why someone might want to give someone another chance. Keep in mind that words do not make things happen - promised words are just promised words.
If you decide to give your partner another chance after a big mistake or hurt, then work on giving him or her another chance. Work on controlling your inner self - the part of you that will be so very worried about further hurts. Keep telling that part of you that you did survive the hurt that already happened. Your inner voice will say - "ouch, we can't handle that again," but that is ridiculous. The fact is that anything you can handle once, you can probably handle again even better. That doesn't mean you will want to. Risking going through something again is a choice you can make, knowing how it hurts and knowing you did survive it already once.
It can help a great deal to focus on the idea of trusting yourself to be able to survive if the hurt comes up again. Trust often boils down to whether you can trust yourself to deal with what might happen. Trust. And beware a lot of helpful voices trying to get you to take vengeance on your partner. It is amazing how often people seem to want vengeance above all other considerations. They want you to get even or hurt back and even the most supportive supporters might suddenly seem to want you to do something hurtful. Make your own choices. Listen to others but make your own choices.
When there is no good reason to suspect your partner's infidelity... When you find yourself obsessed with fears about your partner's fidelity it is going to be because of some combination of the following:
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1) Something is going on that you sort of see but not quite - so your unconscious thinking processes are telling you something is there even though you don't readily see it;
2) You don't trust yourself to have the worth necessary for someone to want to stay in a relationship with you; and/or
3) You don't trust yourself to be able to handle the breakup of your relationship;
4) You've found in the past that if you got nervous about your partner's behavior and got yourself worked up, it turned out that your partner did not stray and all was well (at least for awhile).
With that latter point, you see the effects of superstitious thinking. This occurs at a very deep, primative level of thinking and can, in many individuals, end up becoming a stupendously self-sabotaging issue. Since it seemed that getting very upset in the past was accompanied with things turning out well, those inner, primative parts of the brain believe that getting upset is the key to success - even if it becomes obvious that this then destroys a relationship.
The bottom line to trusting and loving
The bottom line to trusting and loving is to have a reasonable expectation that you are worth being in a solid relationship with AND that you can survive it if the relationship does end. The bottom line is that you need to allow yourself to trust in life and enjoy a relationship for what it is worth for as long as it is worth it.
Life is hard enough without making it more complex and confusing by asking for assurances that a partner cannot give. And relationships are hard enough without demanding constant control - OWNERSHIP - of a partner. Slavery and ownership are not the same as having a good reciprocal relationship.
The primary keys to good relationships are attentiveness, good sense, trust in your worth, trust in your resiliency, trust in life.
Hypnosis CD/Tape Recommendations
- hypnosis for self esteem and an optimal relationship with one's self
- hypnosis that fosters a sense of hope and resiliency
- hypnosis for fostering emotional growth, wisdom, coping
First of all, Self to Self Partnering is a must for anyone struggling with any of the wide range of challenges of life. It is designed to help an individual who is facing tough, complex challenges - especially challenges that shake or threaten the foundations of self-esteem, self-worth, self-image and faith in one's self and one's life. It is designed to foster the listener's ability to be as supportive as possible to him- or herself. It is designed to optimize the listener's ability to make the most of every opportunity and aid that he or she comes across.
Healing Tree 2 is designed to help the listener recognize and trust that every struggle and upset actually results in increased wisdom and increased resiliency - even though it may have seemed that helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety and upset were the primary features of the experience.
Letting Love Go To Dizzying Heights is designed to help the listener feel an increased emotional connectedness and trust in his or her relationship with a lover. If focuses on reducing paranoid, negative, unfounded relationship fears. It is designed to be listened to individually or with one's partner.
Performance Perfected is designed to help the listener reduce or eliminate critical thinking and intrusive, unwanted thoughts during any kind of performance situation. It includes suggestions that make lovemaking much easier and free of intrusive thoughts that get in the way of relaxing, focusing on one's partner and feeling completely "in the zone" during intimacy.
To Be Comfortably Confident is designed to foster a general sense of confidence - faith in yourself and faith in your life. Now To How To Soothe Out Angst is also designed to foster a general sense of confidence that you can trust things to go okay - with a bit more emphasis on being able to trust that life will work out (while Confident focuses a bit more on faith in self). Who and How You Hope To Be focuses on increasing positive, helpful thoughts and on decreasing negative, unhelpful thoughts.
Allowing One's Self To Get Past It focuses on allowing one's self to let go of feelings and thoughts of self-directed recriminations or guilt that seem to linger on after some sort of negative experience.
There are discounts for multiple purchases and all are guaranteed to help or you get your money back. You will find that if you like one recording, you will like them all and you will find them very helpful if you like them. If you don't, you have 30 days to get them back to me for a full refund. Orders are put into the mail within a few hours.
Life can be quite complex and challenging. I strongly recommend turning this all into an opportunity for personal development and enhancement. Get into a mind set where you assume there is a purpose for life and for your challenges. There is as much evidence that there is as there is evidence that there isn't (e.g., zero). Life is way more fun approached as an adventure with "cosmic" or spiritual overtones than it is as a helpless, hopeless victim of random, senseless forces. Really. It can be more than just a job - it can be an adventure. Get some of my CDs and read some of my articles - especially some of the articles on coping.
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