Taking radical personal responsibility is hard. Its particularly hard when you’re in a routine of off loading your problems onto other people. Expecting people to act a certain way, is a sure fire way to become livid.
I find my self often resorting to getting angry at my SO for character traits she doesn’t possess. I cannot continue succumbing to these emotions. It far too easy to blame, belittle, and anger someone who is simply not able to connect with you.
We not only subscribe but openly celebrate the notion of “being yourself”, and yet I’ve found that “being yourself ” has brought me major problems with many of my relationships. Perhaps this is a sign that those relationships should be relaxed, and are not in fact the “right” relationships in the first place. In that case you must divest your expectations of the relationship, and cease projecting your “ideal” state”.
There’s a habit I have of unconsciously projecting qualities I’d like to see in a person, without first taking the time to understand the person in their current state. I believe that investing the time to understand a person in earnest will yield profound results in your relationships.
The desire to mold someone into an “ideal” state is strong, but it is seldom a good idea. Unless the person has traits that are well suited for the molding you’re trying to achieve, there is a very small chance that the person will self teach themselves something they have no interest in.
Its akin to modifying a sports car to be an efficient rock crawler. Some things are just not worth pursuing. And so its important to spend time understanding people, being curious about them, that way you will see who you have chemistry with.
Not all relationships are created equal. When someone says they have “chemistry” with someone I naively thought it was a binary, you either have it or don’t. Now I’ve come to realize that, just as in actual chemistry, there are varying degrees of reactivity. Some relationships are stable and you can spend a lot of time together, while others are more reactive but last shorter times. Some people you can spend days with, others only a few minutes.
This gradient of relationships is fascinating, because it allows you to plan activities that will be most successful with each relationship. Some people you can do extended vacations with, others you can bear for a coffee, and nothing more.
This dovetails back into taking radical personal responsibility. Accept people for who they are, and stop getting mad at them for not meeting your projection of them. This is counterproductive, and toxic behavior, that causes you and your partner pain. Look to yourself, first, as the cause of your unhappiness, there you will usually find an answer.
