HOW COUPLES PROCESS CHANGE IS WHAT MATTERS


As long as we live, we are immersed in a social network that is continually evolving. If you don’t want to live like a hermit in the forest, completely severing all ties with the outside world; if you don’t want to play dead, doing whatever you can to avoid conflict, then you constructively and fearlessly have to deal with conflict in one way or another.

Even when it is not we who change, but someone else, it affects us, because we are interdependent people. Each person’s choices affect another person in some way. So it can be taken as a given that if one person changes especially someone near and dear, then someone else— most likely you—is going to have to accept that change, to go along with it, like it or not.

At times, out of fear and resistance, we decided that, no matter what, we would stick to the old rules of engagement. We would continue to think and see things in the same way, because they fit within the limits of our comfort zone. The perceived need, sometimes desperate, to avoid change invited and welcomed in us the belief that everything was status quo. And then, disaster struck! Those around us, continuing with their personal growth, either changed mindsets and perspectives, becoming totally different people, or left us, or are just now voicing strong rejection of our ideas. Nobody shares any longer the views that we have.

At the end, if we remain adamant in keeping the old ways of thinking, the others will leave us alone. The price of resisting change is, in the end, being left alone in our bubble, by a world that has moved on and left us behind…. as hidden dinosaurs, survivors in a different world. Everybody is changing continuously, and they help us to go along with theirs and our change by confronting us.


WOULD YOU LIKE TO THINK ABOUT THIS STORY?

Alice was getting more and more efficient in her job. It was as she was made for that position: intelligent, dedicated, and always coming up with creative ways of solving problems. Finally, a big promotion was offered to her, which entailed changing cities and a whole new life style.

Her husband, totally confused about this unexpected turn of events, refused to consider any of the possibilities for the new situation. Upset and resentful, he tried to get her to either refuse the promotion or give up the job altogether. She began to see his attitude as selfish and destructive, and suddenly was confronted with a major crisis in her life.

Only after so much patient talk she was able to focus him on the real reasons for his hard attitude, and pleading for his support allowed him to feel a little better (not left behind), move on and realize how damaging acting out his fear could be for the marriage….

NOW, do you see the connection between change and conflict? Are you ready to move along the lines that life is giving you now, and leave the old certainties behind? Learning this skills is perhaps the most vital learning of our lifes: to move along change is to follow the nature of our lives, always changing and developing....old things are abandoned and left behind and we are forced? invited? to think in a different way almost every day!

Wishing you courage to shift when needed....and grow along the process, till next time!