Relationships Need Checks and Balances on Selfish Behaviors
Know and Maintain Your Bottom Line
Author: Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
R. E. S. P. E. C. T. You teach people how to treat you by insisting they respect you or by allowing them to use hurtful and destructive behaviors. People will get away with what you let them get away with. When you allow negative behavior to go unchecked it increases, whether it comes from your child, partner, parent or friend, you teach others how to treat you. If you put up with emotional abuse and manipulation, that is what you will get. And not only that, you are encouraging someone you care about to do damage to their personal and spiritual growth. They become even more demanding and the balance of power gets even more out of whack.
Relationships need checks and balances just like our government. Healthy relationships allow healthy boundaries. Boundary violations happen when one partner does not accept responsibility for their own disparaging actions and blames the other person for their own problems. They happen when one partner allows behaviors that are not socially acceptable or emotionally healthy.
Much conflict in relationships is due to differing values which are learned from families. Respect of others or lack thereof is a major value difference that plays out in relationships. People who are confused about boundaries often had controlling parents who specialized in boundary violations. As children, they did not get to make decisions and learn from the consequences. They did not get practice in asking for what they wanted or in saying “no” and having their “no” be respected. They grew up learning to be “yes” people who gave in and allowed others to make decisions for them to keep the peace. If you have never had the opportunity to set boundaries or have been punished for speaking out as a child, boundaries can be very confusing indeed.
Assertiveness is finding the balance between the behaviors of aggression and submission. Elizabeth Kaspar gives a good explanation of how assertive behavior benefits a relationship: “Assertive behavior should be considered as the “golden mean” between aggressiveness at one extreme and passivity or submissiveness at the other. Assertive behavior is intended to communicate directly and firmly but politely. It should not be confused with mild aggressiveness. Assertive behavior allows you to stand up for your legitimate rights without violating the rights of others.”
There is a hierarchy of speaking up from mumbling and avoiding eye contact to screaming at the person. Know what level of firmness and directness the person you are addressing will respond to. Sensitive people can usually be addressed at the lower level of the hierarchy while some people do not hear you unless you hit them over the head with a loud voice and an action. Those people more entrenched in selfishness have a reason for not listening-they ignore and downplay problems raised by others as they want to continue getting their own way. One woman commented that her husband did not hear her unless she hit him over the head with a two by four!
Assertiveness, done correctly, is acting out of your core values and beliefs of respect, feeling and fairness for all concerned. You speak out directly telling it as you see the situation without selling yourself out nor anyone else. And you stand ready to compromise when necessary.
If you tend to be submissive and find yourself getting angry a lot, do an assertiveness check, “Am I angry because I haven’t been able to set boundaries (for this scenario, study assertiveness)? Or am I angry because I usually get things my way and now I’m not getting what I want (if this is the case, study selfishness and entitlement)?” When you say, “Well okay” to someone when you really mean “I’m afraid of what you will do if I say no,” you set yourself up for suppressing your anger and the dynamic of becoming an angry martyr/victim. By studying proper boundaries, you can develop an internal, automatic alarm that yells Boundary Violation! And then develop an internal resolve to speak up about it.
This internal uncomfortableness when someone trashes your values is your Crap Detector which I wrote about in my book, The Doormat Syndrome which deals with codependency and being walked on by others. Codependency behaviors are based on self-limiting beliefs of “My partner does not love me as much as I love him so I have to give myself away to keep him.” It is based on a mistaken belief that you would rather lose your sense of self as a healthy person than lose an unhealthy relationship. Some codependency is about fear and one’s courage evaporating when faced with the loud, confrontational anger of others. “Anger is determination in disguise,” said Phil Laut. Healthy anger is needed to set things right.
If you feel that you are being manipulated or abused, set your detector alarm to go off so your sense of self-respect does not become eroded. One fifty-two-year-old woman described the freedom she felt when she learned to listen to her gut and say assertively to her nit-picking husband, “Don’t go there. Just don’t go there.” She learned to gently deflect his critical comments that originated with his anxiety and need to control her to take down his anxious feelings. That’s right-sometimes the need to control others comes from the need to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Hardly seems fair does it?
A person whose behavior continually disturbs others needs feedback at a time when he is calm as to how he hurts others. Put reasonable checks and balances in the areas where your partner’s behavior gets out of control. This will work if your partner has some voice of reason within and is willing to be fair. Calling a person on the consequences of their behavior helps maintain the moral order of the relationship. Loving firmness is the best way to talk to a person about his unacceptable behavior. Remind him that fair is fair and you expect him to be reasonable with his anger. Remember that it’s okay to be angry, but be careful and respectful in how you express it.
There are unspoken boundaries between couples that are played out with nonverbal and verbal snippets of control behaviors. These are usually contracts that were set up to favor one partner during the early days of the relationship or during a time of stressors for the couple. One man said, “I can’t talk to her directly about her nagging as she blows up and she’s too sensitive to hear any criticism. So when it gets too bad, I glare and she backs off. We’ve got this ‘Glare and Back off Contract’ that she isn’t even aware of. It would be better if we put this out on the table and found better ways of working with each other.”
We were not able to choose the family of our childhood, and how they dealt with stressors. Now as adults, we can insist on open communication and treating everyone with respect in the family we have. One way to maintain fairness is to insist on having a correction technique for all members of the household. Correction is the rule of discipline that the person who messes up the environment is required to clean it up as an offer of restitution. Remember when your mother told you to clean up your mess-that is the correction method.
The correction procedure holds people responsible for their misbehavior by requiring them to undo the damage they have done, symbolically if necessary. With correction, the person who throws things must pick them up and return them to their proper place. If he breaks things, he must replace them. If he yells and screams, he must apologize to those he has disturbed. Sarcastic apologies do not count as the intention underneath them is to indicate displeasure rather than truly express remorse. Correction procedures can be agreed upon and installed with all members of the family; this teaches the children that we are all responsible for our behavior and how it affects others.
So many partners who give in to another’s anger stay and take verbal or physical abuse. Just like two-year olds, grownup temper tantrums last longer when a person has an audience. You need not stay in the same room with a raging person. Warn him that you will leave the room when he is yelling and go take care of yourself. Don’t stick around and take the barrage of ugly words and don’t fall for the manipulative statement of “Sure, you just run away from problems!” Take the children and go, quietly saying that you are giving him some space to cool off and you hope that the next time he will take his own time out. Go to another room or get in the car and leave for a while. If he gets angry because he is fearful of being abandoned, level with him to show that his anger will create his being left alone for awhile for both of you to cool off. You are not abandoning him but you are removing yourself from the destructive elements of his anger.
Watch how you enable your partner’s bad behavior. Do you make excuses for him? Do you tell the children that he can’t help it? It is not your job to try to get your partner to “diffuse” or “control” his anger. It is the job of each angry person to take care of his anger and find appropriate ways to express it. An angry person may not have the motivation to do so. If you excuse him repeatedly for his outbursts without any consequences, why should he be expected to change? When you feel the energy of intimidation, remind yourself, “Boundaries (insert your name here) boundaries” and stand up for yourself and for fairness and respect!