How to love: Vol 2 (When to Shut Up)

While I'm on the topic of building better relationships with the people we love, let's discuss another important feature in maintaining/improving those relationships. Some call it "picking your battles," I prefer to call it "knowing when to shut up."

I guess we all have those little things about our relationship partners that irk us. Perhaps some of those "little things" feel like very large annoying things. Whatever your situation is, you can always benefit from knowing when to discuss and when to stay silent.

I'm sure we've all seen and heard the clique old married couple, bickering over everything and anything from who was supposed to pick up the dry cleaning to who forgot to send in the electric bill on time. We're also probably watched some of these scenarios unfolding, wondering why on earth two otherwise happy people would succumb to such petty arguments. Perhaps part of it comes with the territory of knowing someone so well that you've become so accustomed to their "flaws" that you feel appropriate commenting on them. Maybe you've reached a point where you're literally so pissed off that your partner can't seem to ever remember to do a simple task you've asked of them, that you're ready for war. Either way, you should reconsider the value starting a fight over nothing.

If it's a legitimate problem (your husband continually leaves your child at school on his day for carpool pick up because he loses track of the time while out gambling with his buddies), then I would encourage a candid discussion. If it's a petty concern (as annoying as it may be to remind someone of the same thing a hundred times and still have them forget to do it), stop before you bite. Is this situation significantly affecting any part of your life or relationship? Is it endangering either of you? Is there anything truly horrific that will likely result from neglecting it? If the answer is 'no' then let it go. We will never have everything completely within our control, no matter how much we remind someone or nag them. If it really isn't significant, than you're doing your relationship a huge service by just letting it go.

It seems silly at first, but over time these are the exact types of things that lead people who were once happy, to arrive at a point where they feel so much is going wrong with their relationship it is beyond repair. It may have started with the little things, the nagging to do this or that, followed by the argument over how they forgot AGAIN to do it, but somehow enough little things all become part of one BIG thing in the end. Suddenly everything is a fight over absolutely nothing, and the good parts that should be mentioned (about what someone DID do), become neglected. This type of communication becomes a pattern, and once you're in a pattern you feel it's always been a pattern. Or at the very least you don't remember how things were before you fell into that pattern, and it seems like the best thing to do is give up and find someone else to fall into a new pattern with.

This may sound fatalistic, but it's the day-to-day things that keep us happy and content in our lives. When you have a bad day at work you may hate your job and want to leave, but you don't because you realize it's just a bad day in a series of other days ahead that are likely to be better. When you have a lot of bad days at work, you forget why you ever liked working there in the first place, and actively search for a way out. Your current dismay with the situation colors future interactions at work negatively, and before long all you notice are the annoying parts of your job that make you hate it. Any type of personal relationship can take the same course if we're not careful to choose our complaints wisely. Ever had a friend you kept hanging out with, even though every time you spent time with them you came home feeling depressed and miserable? I'm guessing it didn't take long for you to completely forget why you'd made friends with that person in the first place. And I'm certain it took even less time to stop making plans with that friend altogether.

Relationships with a significant other can sadly go the same way. It may take more time, because we're invested in the long-term thing, be it a marriage or monogamous relationship, but if the pattern endures it too will lead us to conclude we need a way out. If you think back to the interactions you had with your partner this week and find that a lot of little fights come to mind, try to think about what caused them. Were they important? Was the fight productive in the end? Did anything change or did you continue to fight about the same things over and over again? If you're not careful, you'll start to associate the partner you once loved with someone who brings you stress and annoyance. And our minds like to be comfortable. We won't stick around a bad situation for long, if we're healthy. As much as we'd like to say "no, that won't happen to me," our brains are wired to associate repetition with reality. And unless you're mentally sick yourself, we're also wired to seek out optimal happiness for ourselves. So instead of building up that pattern of negative interactions that spiral out of control, focus on what is being done RIGHT, what that person is doing that makes you consistently HAPPY. But don't keep it to yourself, share it with them! And if you practice enough, learning when to shut up and when to share may just keep you that way.