happy forever second chapter: how to change the spouse if you really want
part number fifteen
Perhaps the spouse feels convinced that he must follow the path of acceptance. he feels embarrassed because of his past attitudes and actions, but he wonders if his spouse will make an effort to improve if he practices full acceptance. The thought of having to face the future when your spouse makes no effort to improve is unbearable.
Dr. Murray Bowen, Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Georgetown University, Washington, and a pioneer in the investigation of questions related to family science, stated: The family is a system. A change occurred in one part of the system. It is always followed by a compensatory change in other parts. According to Dr. Bowen, who has studied for 20 years, a problem never has to do with just one person. If a husband is a compulsive worker, perhaps there is something in his wife that leads him to work tirelessly. If a wife is very spending, there may be something in her husband that stimulates that extravagance. Certainly it is not easy to see ourselves as part of a family problem. and it is very human to blame others for our own weaknesses. that leads to the habit of blaming the other spouse.
also often fall into the habit of giving automatic responses, for example, Juan arrives late at home without telling Maria, his wife. When she arrives, Maria receives him in silence, refuses to talk and goes to bed early to teach her a lesson and avoid having sex with him. Juan gets angry and feels upset to read a book.
If you want to make a change in this routine of automatic responses, Juan or Maria must stop reacting on a purely emotional level and learn to act with the discipline that mature thinking gives. When one of them is satisfied with what the other is doing, instead of complaining, criticizing or lecturing, he should change that automatic or habitual response and act in a different way. let's see again the previous situation, but with a variant. Juan is late for dinner without telling Maria, his wife. but this time Maria changes her strategy. he feeds the children and then sends them to bed. When Juan arrives at the home, Maria heats the food and both eat cheerfully while having an animated conversation. Maria has broken the cycle. Juan apologizes for arriving late without warning instead of getting angry.
this will also produce good results in the case of the reader.
The three axioms that follow can help us to have a new attitude of acceptance: (1) we can not change anyone through an action.
(2) We can only change ourselves.
and (3) when we change ourselves, the rest has to change as responses to our own change.