Thursday, March 9, 2006

Tagged

I was tagged twice with these two questions:

In one year, What would you most like to see changed or improved about yourself? 
This is a hard one, let me go to my next tag and come back to this one.
The second question:
If you could change ONE THING about your partner, what would it be?

 I have been thinking on this one.  Especially since I know Mike will be reading this.  I think of how much energy I've spent trying to get what  want from him.   It's really got me thinking- how much of my thinking time is spent on what to say to him to be the way I want him to be?

Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about how to get what we want from our partner - how to get our partner to open up, be more caring, see us, love us, pay attention to us, spend time with us, have sex with us, and so on. We spend at lot of energy trying to get what we want from our partner because we believe that if only we do it right - behave right or say the right thing - we can have control over getting our partner to change. This illusion of having control over getting another to change keeps us stuck in behavior that not only does not work to get us what we want, but drains us of the energy we could be using to learn to take loving care of ourselves.

It has been very hard for me to accept that I can't "get" others to do what I want them to do, even if it would be good for them and for the relationship.  So I'm going to take my eyes off of Mike and focus them on me. "What do I need to do for my own well-being if Mike doesn't change?  Derek is going to try and quit nagging and trying to control.  So in answering the question, I make no changes to him.  Now going back to Woe's question, in answering his, I can change or improve by figuring out ways  I need to be more loving, caring, understanding and attentive to myself  and my own feelings.

True to me, and let him be true to himself.   Will it be easy!  We'll see! Here he is in front of the stargate, he loves this show.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

very wise
~Julie

Anonymous said...

That sounds like very good advice to yourself.  You can do it.  :)
Tami

Anonymous said...

We are practicing the very same thing hon'...being more true to certain parts of ourselves.  Group huddle...;)  C.  http://journals.aol.com/gdireneoe/thedailies

Anonymous said...

Good answer's...always change the things in yourself that you can and never try to change another for the things you want in you.

Anonymous said...

you are so right you can't change others.  in a partner you just have to decide what you can live with and what you can't.

Kathy

Anonymous said...

great answers, you can't change people.