Institute of Step-Family Dynamics

Category: Self Care

  • One Life Enhancing Choice At A Time

    One Life Enhancing Choice At A Time

    Not going to lie, I have been feeling rough physically recently. I could say it’s from the pandemic stress, but that would be a lie. You don’t get a body like mine from a lifetime of healthy choices. It takes years and years of unhealthy choices, of ignoring pain and warning signs. It’s years of not so benign neglect that has me staring down the barrel of 53 with aching joints, a bloated stomach, and a general feeling of blerk.

    It should come to no surprise to anyone who knows me that I have attempted to address this at times, over the years, sporadically. I’m sure my long suffering children can remember the various lifestyle choices they’ve been subjected to. One of the worst was what my ex-husband called ‘Fit for Unhappiness’. I think the actual title was ‘Fit for Life’, but the unhappiness was more accurate.

    So while it may seem that I’m a slow learner, I’ve realised that I am not one to sustain drastic lifestyle changes. I gave up being buddhist in my 20s because I really didn’t believe God wanted us to live lives of deprivation. I am a hedonist at heart. I love indulgence.

    It has now got to the point that my body is craving a different kind of indulgence than I have previously been offering. It wants me to indulge its needs, rather than my wants. Sigh… Bigger Sigh… The body has tools at its disposal I can no longer ignore. The day of reckoning has come.

    This is not where I declare that I’ve joined the gym, even a virtual one, or signed up to some weight loss program. Nope, I know from past experience this wil result in me resenting spending money on something I didn’t really want to do in the first place.

    Instead I am declaring today a day of life enhancing choices. Tomorrow and the next day seem likely to head that way too, rinse and repeat till life consists mainly of life enhancing choices.

    Yep – Life Enhancing Choices.

    This is an addition to my life that I can get on board with, in fact it’s one I use already in many aspects of my life…just not for my poor long suffering body.

    So what do life enhancing choices look like?

    Some of them are small.

    This morning I had a choice of my favourite decadent chocolate bar for breakfast with a coffee, or banana on gluten free toast. Actually, I probably had many more choices, but those were the two that presented themselves most readily. I decided to compromise and have the toast with a chocolate bar chaser. Then I tuned in to my body, I asked myself – did I really want the chocolate bar or was it because it’s habit and a way I have framed as ‘treating myself’? Damnit! My body was not craving or needing the chocolate bar.

    So toast it was. It was delicious toast. I feel replete. Life enhancing choice #1 done.

    I was then sitting there engrossed on my phone and I needed to go to the bathroom,

    Hands up all the women who put off going to the bathroom.

    I see you there!

    It’s a chronic problem among women. We somehow put our basic bodily needs behind all of the other things we feel should do first.

    Go to the bathroom people!

    Life enhancing choice for my body #2.

    It’s not always the big things that matter. I have a very sore elbow at the moment. It’s easy to ignore it. Instead I will put some balm on it today before I start work in my office. It’s putting on the balm, drinking the water, not wearing the uncomfortable clothes, going to the bathroom the moment we realise we need to…those seemingly small things can have a massive impact on our general wellbeing.

    Sometimes it’s bigger, more uncomfortable things.

    Recently I have been cutting back my client hours on the weeks the children are here, so that I can help them with their schoolwork. After the last time they were here, one of them threw me under the bus spectacularly with their mother, after lying to me all week about their schoolwork. I decided that sacrificing my work to help someone who had no regard for the value of my time was not life enhancing for me. I made the decision that I would set aside two days to help, my mother is doing one day, and my husband is taking annual leave to cover the other, and the kids can cope while I work on the other. It seemed like the only option was for me to do it all, until I decided that wasn’t working.

    An even more uncomfortable choice I am facing is that I know I need to knock consuming dairy on the head. I’ve given up gluten and nightshades for my joints, booze for my mental health, but the dairy…*sobs* I LOVE dairy. Cheese, cheese, milky coffee…these are the highlights in a dreary day. These highlights also leave me feeling physically crap, bloated, and sore. The life enhancing choice is going to be saying good bye to cheese and milk for a while, to restore balance to my long suffering body.

    I’m going to need a warm up to that. It’s ok to need warm ups for big changes. For me  a warm up looks like this: acknowledging change is required. Sitting with the frustration, annoyance, and sometimes grief around letting go fo the thing I need to let go of. Then might come bargaining…this may take some time! Finally comes acceptance. The pain of the loss is outweighed by the pain of staying the same.

    Since the dairy is such a big one for me, I might decide to break this down into a series of life enhancing choices. It could be I have a black coffee in the morning, instead of a delicious frothy latte. I might use pecorino on my nachos, which is not cows milk, instead of tasty cheese. Big changes that we find overwhelming or are resistant to, might need a more gentle and gradual approach. I struggle with structured exercise regimes, but I can make the choice to stretch my body a couple of times a day.

    What life enhancing choices can you make today?

    These aren’t shoulds, oughts, or I’m going to do all of the things right now. These are single actions or decisions; I won’t reply to the toxic text, I’m going to assume good intention in this situation, I’m not going to beat myself up for not making the bed today…

    Just pick one thing. If you find yourself motivated, pick another. Life enhancing choices are only life enhancing if we do them willingly and feel good about them.

    I’m off to go cut some lemongrass for my tea for my next client session. Life enhancing choice #3.

  • The Ugly Truth About The Ex

    The Ugly Truth About The Ex

    When I came in to this stepmum gig, I thought I was pretty well prepared. I was a stepchild myself, had successfully navigated the relationship with my kids then stepmum…how hard could it be?

    Harder than I could ever have imagined.

    Like super hard.

    Like the hardest thing I’ve ever done, including pushing out 4 babies without pain relief!!

    Prior to all this happening I’d been following a spiritual path with the core values of gratitude, acceptance, and humility. I’d curated a life where it was relatively easy to practise those. I’d eliminated people I struggled with, kept my world small, and restricted to people with similar values. Well was I about to get my safe, secure world rocked to its very core!

    I did all of the things stepmums are often guilty of in the beginning. I went overboard to be super stepmum. I wanted to show I was a better mum; more competent, better organised etc etc. My darling was very proud of me, and was more than comfortable telling his ex what a great job I was doing.

    Daggers.to.her.heart.

    It’s hindsight, it’s hardly surprising her response was to shut down, and try and keep us out of her world. Her world revolved entirely round the children, so that meant she did her very best to ensure we never got to see them. There was court, breaching of court orders, weeks and months we never saw the kids. The toxicity ramped up. She thought we thought she was a terrible mother and an awful person, she did lots of things that made us think she was a terrible mother and an awful person.

    It was only recently, after nearly a decade of conflict and drama that I was able to ‘own my shit’ in this whole debacle.

    Yep – for all of the really awful things she did, and there were plenty…I also had a role to play in the dysfunction.

    I didn’t realise how deeply wounded she was when ‘her man’ decided to take up with me. I didn’t realise she still held hope that he would come back to her and they would be a family. I didn’t realise her life experiences that made that so important to her.

    I didn’t give her space to grieve her very, very deep loss.

    Instead, I expected her to behave like I would. I expected her to know that I would never replace her as a mother. I am very secure in my role as mother, I’d had a conversation about this with my own children – telling them it was ok to like their stepmother, that I wanted them to like her and her to like them.

    I wanted my kids to have a great time when they were with their dad, because what kind of parent wants their kids having an awful time somewhere?!?!

    I can tell you the answer to that now; a parent who is terrified her children will chose someone else, a parent who isn’t secure in her role or herself, a person who doesn’t feel like a person who people will chose, a person who is reeling from rejection from a person they loved.

    If I have one regret in all of this, and I’m a person who doesn’t do regret, it would be that I hadn’t understood the depth of her pain. I didn’t give her grace when she so desperately needed it. I didn’t understand her actions, that were so abhorrent to me, came from pain. She was incapable of separating her needs and her pain from the children. She saw her attempts to destroy their relationship with their father as her protecting them from him, and me.

    Looking back, if we had been less full of judgement, less cutting in our assessment of her shortcomings, I think she would have found peace much earlier. I think if we had allowed her space to find peace, we all would have had peace, instead we pushed and fought for custody of the children.

    Court is an ugly thing for step-family dynamics. There is no grace in court documents, instead every action and response is put under a microscope of fault finding and point scoring. Things that normally would be brushed off as ‘meh life’, instead become a stick to beat the other side with.

    One of our biggest complaints was her unwillingness to coparent and share information. Why would she when there was a high likelihood it would be turned against her down the track? Really there was no winning, we either came after her for being inadequate or came after her for not sharing information that could be seen as confirming or highlighting her inadequacies.

    All three children have been disadvantaged by us being unable to work together. My skill set when it comes to managing challenging behaviour and learning issues is pretty strong, unfortunately instead of it being a resource the professionals and both homes could utilise, it became a source of insecurity. I was shut out of everything, and so yet again this too was used against her.

    We finally have reached agreement, the kids spend week about at each house. We parallel parent. I’ve learned to parent with my husband and leave him to parent with his ex. There are still moments of frustration and things happen that both sides perceive negatively and as competitive or undermining behaviour, but it’s calmer.

    It’s calmer because the ex is no longer under constant attack. It’s calmer because the worst has happened and the kids still love and adore her. She hasn’t lost them, and has some space for her and a life beyond the children.

    The ugly truth about the ex is that I, albeit unwittingly, contributed to the dysfunction and conflict as much as she did. I have been able to frame myself as the long suffering victim for many years, and I have valid events and circumstances to prove that. She has done the same, and also has valid events and circumstances to prove that.

    I think in the end, we have all been victims. Victims to not understanding each other, victims to a highly adversarial and inadequate court system.

    Are you ready to face the ugly truth about how much you contribute to the current conflict with the ex?

    It’s not easy. It’s not pleasant. It is however freeing, to lift the shackle of victimhood, to recognise our role in creating and sustaining conflict…that’s where the healing begins.

  • Beyond Repair?

    Beyond Repair?

    We have some dining chairs that have seen better days. I’ve spent months trying to justify replacing them with something new and fancy. Between my scrooge-like and greenie tendencies, buying new chairs when we have perfectly serviceable ones is a hard sell. Too hard, it seems.

    So I decided that I would repair the 17 year old chairs. They are plywood and some of the laminate had begun to lift. Between that and the varnish that was very patchy, some wood putty and a paint job seemed like the solution. They may well last another 17 years and the trials of 7 children and associated family and friends.

    Yesterday I broke out the wood putty I’d purchased the day before. I didn’t get the tiny tin because I knew there were quite a few of the 6 chairs needing repairs. I puttied up the first chair. Easy! I then went looking for the next one.

    Nope, not that one. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Wait what? I went round again inspecting more slowly.

    Oh my goodness! The falling apart dining chairs was in fact a single chair. I have spent the last couple of years solid in the belief my set of dining room chairs were on their last legs. This was absolutely a false belief.

    One single chair had 2 areas of peeling laminate. A quick run over with wood putty sorted it out. I have put this off for so long because it seemed like such a daunting job! The sanding and painting will take some time, for sure. But the repairing of the broken chair…quite literally took a couple of minutes.

    It set me to musing.

    How often do we feel something is very broken, or will take a huge amount to repair, or needs replacing, when it is actually a simple fix. I was sorting clothes with one of my daughters, her favourite top had a pull in the fabric, she was about to get rid of it. I said I could fix it. I pulled the threads back through. It was fiddly. I swore a bit, but in the end, she had her top back. A top that previously she had thought was lost to her.

    These simple repair jobs remind me of my work, especially relationship work. People usually wait to seek help when the wheels are falling off. Things are so bad they have come to the realisation they need help. Often the first session is filled with expressions of hopelessness and fear the relationship can’t be repaired. There seems to be so much wrong.

    As we work together and unpack what the issues are, the number of chairs that are damaged lessens. We begin to see the problem is often the same issue, it just wears lots of outfits and manifests itself in different ways. Fixing it is not the huge job it seems, because it is a single problem, not a whole dining suite.

    Focusing on what is broken or what is wrong can lead us to believe things are hopeless or broken beyond repair. Someone with the ability to see the larger picture than the everyday disconnects can see a pattern and identify the common thread. They can see it can be a relatively simple fix. A relationship that seems broken can be mended with the right skills, knowledge, and tools.

    Relationships can be hard work, they can feel unfixable. Just like the top and the chair, very often they can be repaired. If you are wondering how you can repair your relationship, contact me on [email protected] and we can discuss a repair or maintenance plan for you and your partner.

  • Why Step-moms Get Jealous & Insecure In The Most Stable Relationships

    Why Step-moms Get Jealous & Insecure In The Most Stable Relationships

    One of the things I see step-moms struggle with over and over is feeling jealous and insecure when it comes to the ex. We know in our heads it doesn’t make sense. We know in our hearts our partners love us. We know that our partners chose us day after day, but still…the tiny voice in our heads whispers terribly painful things that make us feel crazy and insecure.

    It’s not attractive to feel insecure or jealous. We are ashamed for even having these feelings. Secure, confident women don’t feel like that! Women who are loved and secure in their relationships shouldn’t feel like that! I call bullsh*t. I have seen some of the most secure, confident, successful women I know brought to their knees by their feelings around not being enough in their step-mother roles.

    Being grossed out by the idea of our partner having sex or being intimate with their ex is a congruent response. It’s not about us being jealous or insecure, it’s just icky thinking about the person we have sex with doing that stuff with someone else. Only in a step-family are you expected to interact on a regular basis with someone your partner has been deeply intimate with. Not only are you expected to interact, you’re expected to feel ok about it, and ignore how uncomfortable it makes you feel. If you don’t – there is something wrong with you! You are jealous, or insecure, or lacking something in your relationship. Newsflash – almost no-one wants to be hanging out, making nice, and swapping recipes with the person your person used to love and want to make babies with.

    It’s also congruent to feel off balance when we are faced with or reminded of the experiences our partner and their ex share, experiences that we are not a part of. It’s hard to see there is a wealth of shared experiences, often involving the child we love, that exclude us. That doesn’t make us jealous or insecure, it just means we find reminders of the shared experience challenging and uncomfortable. These feelings will pass more and more as our wealth of shared experiences build.

    Sometimes our responses to situations are not congruent; things like feeling unloved or unworthy because of an event or conversation. If we unpack that experience, we see this single moment or incident does not invalidate the myriad of experiences we have that show us we are loved and valued. We can lose sight of that in moments of being off balance, so it’s our job to look at whether our feelings are congruent with what happened.

    We need to know we will be tipped off balance from time to time, it’s life. No matter how zen or woke we are, life will come along and tip us off balance, usually when we least expect it. Being off balance actually has a very important purpose, it is a learning opportunity. It’s an invitation to unpack more of our baggage, to examine our responses and insecurities.

    It’s ok to tell our partner we are not feeling solid. It’s ok to say – I’m feeling wobbly, I need you to take some time to connect with me to help me feel ok. Telling your partner you are feeling insecure and jealous can immediately put them on the defensive. They can feel as if they are doing something wrong, they are not making you feel loved enough or secure enough. Ironically, this feeling of being wrong can have the exact opposite effect of what we need. They retreat, not knowing how to make us feel better. We feel rejected, and even more insecure. We double down on our ‘I’m feeling insecure I need you to show me how much you love me…’ and round and round the merry go round goes. Except no-one is feeling very merry.

    Finding ways to let our partners know all is not right in our world, without them feeling shamed or blamed is key. Telling them we are feeling off balance or wobbly is a softer way to let them know we need connection. I tell my husband I need pats. It’s a running joke in our house, that started with one of his cats. He knows when I say I need pats, I’m feeling I need some coddling, I need to know he is there and he has my back. Creating a phrase that conveys this to our partner can be a great way to avoid falling down the neediness rabbit hole that ends up pushing our men away.

    You’re not weak or silly for feeling unsettled in your relationship when your partner’s past is so present in your home and family. It’s not weird to feel grossed out by anything that suggests previous intimacy. It’s not wrong to feel sad that our first experience of having a child with our partner is not their first experience. What is important to realise is that for them it is a first. It is their first with you. The experiences they had with their ex will fade, and their focus will increasingly become more about you and the family you are creating together, a family that will include their children from another person.

    So it’s ok to feel those feelings. Just don’t get stuck there, seek out connection in a way that your partner can respond positively to. Join a community of women who understand. I can highly recommend Stepfamily Circle. I see women come in to groups feeling so isolated and alone. The difference in their lives once they realise they are not alone and these feelings are pretty normal is almost miraculous.

    This step-mom gig is not an easy one. Hang in there and know you are not alone in feeling jealous and insecure from time to time.

  • Getting Lost In The Other

    Getting Lost In The Other

    For a long time, I felt I needed to launch this website with others. I needed the support and the validation. What I was really telling myself was that I was not enough alone to stand in this place. In placing myself at the whim and will of others, I felt powerless. I was in a place of constant lack, I needed this or that from someone else. Whether it was help from my husband, or more qualifications, or a business partner, or someone to provide a service…those barriers kept cropping up. They ‘cropped up’ for more than 10 years. In hindsight, it took me 10 years to come to place where I was enough. It took me 10 years to come to place where I felt I was worth spending $100, $1200 or $2,000 on, to launch my website and business.

    Getting lost in the other has been a long time ‘friend’. It was a pattern in my first marriage. I constantly talked about ‘we’ needed to do things, if ‘we’ are doing something there is no responsibility to take ownership. The thing gets lost in the ‘we’ and I get to sit there helplessly playing the victim, blaming the other for the lack of progress and letting myself off the hook completely. It takes time and some uncomfortable reflecting to shift that thinking, to find the strength and confidence to make the ‘we’ into me.

    We all need help and support, don’t get me wrong. I am not able to do everything I need to do to pull this project off alone. It’s finding the line between giving away our power and reaching out when we need to. I agonised over what the call the site, I asked different groups of people over and over. Nothing I got back felt right. It several incarnations till I settled on Step-Family Dynamics. This was something I had to do myself. It was not a group effort gig. There are other parts of this journey that are something that can be a group effort gig. I am incredibly blessed with those I have around me; writers to contribute their stories, a very supportive husband, who has vast knowledge I can tap into. The difference between tapping into his knowledge and expecting him to do this for me is the difference between accomplishing my goal and not. It’s not because he is unwilling to help, it’s because it’s not his dream. It’s not his priority and while he is more than willing to make time to help me, quite understandably, he is not willing to make my dream his.

    When we get lost in the ‘we’, often what we are asking of those we make part of the ‘we’ is to take on our dream, to live by our values, to share our priorities. We get disappointed when they don’t, we feel let down, unsupported, and abandoned. How about we let them, and ourselves, off the hook? What would that look like? How about instead of passively expecting others to come on board with our plans, we specifically asked for their help in areas they feel comfortable helping? Instead of looking for co-pilots, we take control of our own vehicle, steer our own course.

    When we take charge of our journey, we disentangle ourselves from the murky depths of the ‘we’. We stop getting lost in the other and return home to ourselves. We send ourselves the very clear message ‘you are enough, you have enough’. Independence is not about cutting ourselves off from others and becoming like the little red hen who does it all herself. It’s about taking responsibility for our journey, for the route, the provisioning, and the help we need to access along the way.

    What are you currently getting lost in the other with? Where is your ‘we’ crying out to become ‘me’?

    Recently I have come to a place where I am now able to bring others in to work with, not because I need them, but because I am solid enough in my own doing. I’m not looking for them to fill gaps or do things that scare, I have learned the value of trusting my own capabilities and utilising the skills of others.

    We need to get solid in our own sense of being enough. If we gift ourselves that, we are no longer willing to give away our potency to ‘the other’.

  • New Year’s Revolution – or how not to fail at doing all of the things

    New Year’s Revolution – or how not to fail at doing all of the things

    Years ago one of the kids asked about New Year’s Revolutions. I thought it was cute and kind of accurate. As I thought on it again this year, I realised just how accurate it is. So often our New Year’s resolution are like a revolution in our lives. Out with the old, in with the new, get rid of everything we don’t like and we will live happily ever after in the new republic.

    Except we don’t.

    And then we do it again. Year after year. Decade after decade.

    All we are doing is reinforcing a sense of failure and helplessness.

    I gave up New Year’s resolutions quite a few years ago. I just couldn’t stand setting myself up for failure any more. My theme song when I tell myself I am going to do something goes something like F*ck you I won’t do what you told me! Honestly, the best way to get me not to do something, is for me to tell myself I should or it’s good for me.

    So I had to get off that merry go round. I had to start tricking myself into doing life enhancing things. Obviously the life span of that was short – I’m pretty smart, and I know myself rather well!

    So I started thinking about who I wanted to be, and what resources and actions I might need in order to be that person. Notice I used the word BE rather than BECOME. It’s kind of key here.

    This morning is a great example. For nearly a year now, I have wanted to be a person who walked their dog when they got up in the morning. For nearly a year now, I have been a person who wanted to walk the dog in the morning. Today I am a person who walks the dog in the morning. What changed? What is my magic formula? Which affirmations did I use?

    The only thing that changed was that I got up and walked the dog this morning.

    That’s it. No magic, no preparations, or incantations. Today I got so sick of not being a person who walks their dog in the mornings, I decided to change it.

    I’m not going to pretend I am now a person who walks their dog every morning. I’m not that attached to setting myself up for failure any more. I am now a person who knows walking their dog in the morning is as easy as getting up and walking the dog. I am pretty sure I can do this again. If I don’t do it one day, it will be because my higher value is not being a person who walks the dog in the morning. It might be because my higher value is resting because I am unwell, or getting somewhere early in the morning, or a myriad of other reasons that take precedence over being a person who walks the dog in the morning.

    I have tried so many different ways to become a person who exercises regularly. I have had lots of pain and injury issues, so the process used to start with me being active. It would progress to me getting out of relationship with my body in the eagerness of being active, from there it would turn to injury. The final chapter would be me being too scared to return to that activity in case I injured myself.

    I decided I wanted to become a person who could stay in relationship with body and keep my activity levels in line with my current physical capacity. This capacity is not static, so it meant checking in with my body as I did things. It meant taking rests. It meant realising it’s ok not to finish something I start if I get too tired or my body gets sore.

    Living this way means I know that some days I will be a person who walks the dog in the morning, and some days I will be a person who knows today is not a dog walking day.

    When we start to ponder the coming year, as we inevitably do around this time, rather than making a laundry list of all the things you are going to not do/do, what about instead pondering what kind of person you want to be.

    If you want to be a person who eats healthily, that might mean first being a person who stops buying unhealthy food. You might also need to be a person who replaces the unhealthy snacks and foods with healthy ones. You might want to consider being a person who notices when they crave unhealthy foods or habits and figure out how to avoid those moments.

    I stopped drinking alcohol about 18 months ago. It had just become a habit that wasn’t working for me anymore. I was sick of feeling subpar and having our social life revolve around alcohol. It was interesting watching when I craved a drink. It became really clear it was when I was very depleted and had pushed myself beyond the point of exhaustion. I knew then I needed to be a person who was aware of her available energy and did her best to not reach that point of exhaustion. If I had told myself my resolution was to stop drinking, my inner rebel would have had a huge tantrum and sabotaged within days. I know this, I’ve done it before. Deciding to be a person who didn’t drink alcohol, rather than stopping drinking is such a subtle difference, but for me it made all the difference.

    The photo above is my breakfast this morning. Today I am a person who wanted to fuel her body well. Tomorrow, I may not be that person, but I know that I feel better when I do this, so I will be a person who fuels her body well more often than not.

    The bottom line is – trying to stop or start things doesn’t seem to be very effective, instead focus on who you want to be. Give yourself grace for the days when you don’t want to be that person. It’s ok, we aren’t machines. We ebb and flow, we have days of high function and lower function.

    There is no magic to making change – be the person who does the thing you want to do, then you will be the person doing the thing you want to do.

  • Is it time to leave?

    Is it time to leave?

    The holiday season can take a huge toll on relationships. It brings out emotions we have buried, and the end of the year is a time of natural reflection about what we want the new year to bring. This can lead to people questioning whether staying in their current relationship is what they want and need. It felt timely to write about the ending of relationships and the decision-making process around whether to stay or go.

    One of the things I tell my clients is that whatever happens with their relationship, I know they will be ok. I will hold the hope for them, while they figure it out. I honestly believe that the end of a relationship can be a positive thing. We have this idea that when a relationship ends, it is some kind of failure. We should have been able to make it work, we didn’t try hard enough, change enough, bend enough etc.

    How about the idea that sometimes we just grow in different directions and sometimes get to a point where we are no longer compatible? I don’t think it’s a question of outgrowing or putting a value judgement on things. I don’t think that’s helpful. I think it’s more accurate to say, we no longer want and need the same things.

    Sometimes this disconnect can be because the relationship was filling an unhealthy need, and as we deal with our challenges, we no longer want or need to fill that unhealthy need. It can be around entitlement. If we came in to the relationship expecting very little in terms of getting our needs met, and then do some work and figure out we are actually entitled to get those needs met, it can cause a disconnect. The person we are with may not be able to meet out newly discovered and defined needs, or they may not be aware our needs and wants have changed.

    It’s very easy at that time to start finger pointing and blaming. You should step up, you should do this or that or the next thing. What we need to remember is that we are the ones who have changed the rules. Our wants and needs have changed, often without consulting or considering our partner. We have contributed to the disconnect. Does this mean it’s our fault? Should we have not grown? Not discovered we want more out of life than we previously imagined we were entitled to?

    Not at all. We just need to be aware that this is not the fault of our partner. It’s not them failing us, it’s a shift in the dynamics of the relationship that is no longer sustainable.

    How do we elegantly manage the transition? How much should we try to bridge the gap? At what point do we accept the gap is too big and we need to leave the relationship?

    There is no singular answer to that, and I would strongly recommend getting some professional help to work through these questions. It’s some of the most rewarding work I do with clients. Sometimes the outcomes surprise us, the couple work on their own issues and find ways to reconnect. They come out the other side stronger as individuals and more united as a couple. Sometimes we work on an exit strategy, find ways to elegantly and kindly end the relationship.

    The question of ‘Is it time to leave?’ is a hard one. It’s not something I recommend deciding without talking it through with a professional. It’s not something to decide after a fight or betrayal. It’s a decision that needs to be carefully weighed, a strategy put in place to make a graceful exit.

    To make a time to talk through your relationship queries, you can email me on [email protected] or get in touch with a local therapist you feel comfortable with.

  • When Being Kind Ends Up Being Unkind

    When Being Kind Ends Up Being Unkind

    My darling and I are generally very easy-going people. Accommodating, understanding that sometimes life gets in the way and people make mistakes. Until we’re not. There is very little space between us being accommodating and then deciding the person we are dealing with is just taking the mickey.

    It’s been an on-going issue for years. When I look over my interactions with people, so often my response to them not following through or doing what they said they would is ‘No worries’. I mean it, I am not worried, I get life happens and things get challenging at times.

    I have also begun to realise this sets up a series of expectations around what I will accept. If I am not bothered by being let down once, I am then often relegated to the bottom of people’s priority list. When there are competing demands, my wants or needs will be pushed down the list for someone who is less kind, more vocal, and who makes disappointing them more unpleasant.

    My ‘no worries’ has a limited life span. This is something I fail to point out to people, when I generously throw around absolution for letting me down or not showing up. My ‘no worries’ sends a false message of accommodation that leads people to feel secure in my never-ending approbation and understanding.

    People are often shocked or hurt when I decide I have had enough and end the interaction, or stop being accommodating. They are surprised when I suddenly ‘am worried’ and hold them to account. They can often end up blaming me for this turn of events, and feel I am being unreasonable. Expecting them to follow through on what they have promised becomes something I have no right to expect, because I have taught them I will accept less than that.

    So, whose fault is that? Theirs for being flaky? Or mine for allowing them to believe I was going to accept flakiness forever?

    I have to believe it is mine. I set the tone, I lowered their expectations of what I would tolerate, my kindness was misinterpreted.

    Or does it go deeper than that? Are there some issues around entitlement that I need to unpack? Do I feel I deserve less than others?

    I think for a long time this was the case. I tolerated less, because I felt deserving of less. My sense of entitlement has shifted, but my go to responses to people who let me down have not. I am telling people it is ok to not perform, when actually I have an expectation they will, and it damages my regard of them when they don’t.

    My seeming kindness is actually unkind, to myself and to those around me. I short-change myself and set others up to damage their relationships with me, sometimes to the point of no return. I am unwittingly setting people up to fail. When I tell a client it’s fine they forgot to pay me, or tell the landlord it’s ok they haven’t done the repairs they said they would, I am telling people they can walk all over me. I am telling them, I don’t value me or my time, the implicit message in that is they shouldn’t value me or my time either.

    This can happen in our couple relationships. We let things go and let things go and then suddenly explode over a seemingly trivial matter. Keeping ourselves in balance sometimes means speaking up before we lose our shit! Being able to set a boundary when we are calm and centred is far more effective than losing it. The repair job takes up precious energy we could be spending on enjoying each other.

    What messages are you sending with your kindness and generosity?

    Is your kindness really kind? Or is it a fear of setting a much needed boundary?

  • When Their Story Doesn’t Match Ours

    When Their Story Doesn’t Match Ours

    There is a quote by Anne Lamott “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

    It’s never quite sat well with me. There has always been a sense of disquiet, because I know people can behave well and still have bad stories told about them. I know you can think you are behaving well, and someone still experiences your behaviour badly. It’s not as simple as behave well, not everyone’s stories are factually accurate.

    I have a very postmodern idea of truth, there is not one truth, there are many versions of the truth. We each interpret events, emotions, and interactions differently. Our truth of the situation can be very different to the truth experienced by someone else participating in the situation.

    What do we do when one person’s truth is so incredibly opposite to ours we think they are impaired  or delusional to see their actions as ok? What do we do when this person is so convicted of their truth, so skilled at manipulation, and so well versed in playing the victim, their truth negatively impacts our lives and the lives of our loved ones? How do we reconcile holding space for their truth, when it seeks to destroy our happiness?

    I think it’s easy to dismiss that truth as lies, delusions, and spite. When we do that, we dehumanise the person, we create a category for them, we designate them as a liar, a fraud. We dismiss their pain and struggles. We also cease to take responsibility for our part in the drama, because we have decided the other person is, quite frankly, full of shit.

    Does that serve us though? Or do we create a caricature of the person. No one is all bad, conversely, no one is all good; no matter how hard we try to behave that way. Long standing conflict is fuelled by these caricatures. We lose our compassion, we abdicate responsibility. We dismiss any kind gesture as manipulation. None of that serves us.

    I have a person in my life who is a huge source of conflict, drama, and unnecessary stress. She has done some terrible things; making numerous calls to get us evicted, making false complaints that resulted in an 18 month investigation and cost us tens of thousands of dollars. There is much, much more, but it serves no purpose to publish a laundry list of wrongdoing.

    It has been very easy to dismiss her story. We recently received a paperwork filled with ‘her story’ which bears very little resemblance to our truth. The people she tells her story to are almost always swayed into believing her story is ‘the truth’. I think a big reason for this is that she is so convinced it is THE truth. There is no room in her story for any wrong doing on her part.

    As I write this, I have to pause and reflect. Is there anyroom in MY story for any wrong doing on my part? Sure, I accept there are times I have overstepped, or said things that were hurtful or confronting. I don’t see those things are particularly bad behaviour, because I view them through the lens of what I perceive as her far worse behaviour.

    What if I stopped for a moment and stepped outside my story. What if I suspended my truth. What if I wondered about how my actions were perceived through her lens of my perceived awful behaviour?

    What if all of the positive, kind gestures I felt I had made were treated with the same level of suspicion and scepticism I treat hers? I think I can be fairly assured that they are. We are all on this merry go round, telling ourselves our stories, filtering events in a way to fit our truths. It doesn’t serve any of us.

    I’m not sure how to navigate our truths and stories more gracefully and graciously. I have learned from bitter experience that believing there has been a thawing in relationships or a positive change is all too quickly dissolved by founding out about things said behind my back, actions taken that show bad faith. I have been on this roller coaster far too many times to willingly re-embark.

    How do we hold a boundary, keeping ourselves safe, while accepting the terrible stories others tell about us are not only their truth, but perhaps contain kernels of a fact based truth. It would be easy to fallback on the Anne Lamott quote and say the other should have behaved better. I think in some ways that is a cop out. It’s an abdication of responsibility, it’s an invitation to victimhood.

    How do you hold your truth, while accepting the truth of another that is not flattering or kind may hold some factual truths?

  • When Will It Stop Hurting

    When Will It Stop Hurting

    Going through a separation and divorce can be one of the most painful experiences of our adult life. It can feel as if the world will never be ok again. The idea of recovery and even a life beyond divorce with a new relationship and joy can be almost inconceivable. People tell us it will end, life will get better, there is hope…

    Suddenly one day, there it is. A day where you didn’t cry. A day that wasn’t consumed by self-doubt, blame, shame, and grief. Those days become more frequent, until one day you realise you are laughing and looking at potential new partners with a gleam in your eye.

    Yass! I am over my divorce. Done with all of that, onwards and upwards.

    Until your ex gets engaged, or has a baby, or buys a house, or any of those other things that previously had been your domain. Those feelings of grief and inadequacy, betrayal etc come rushing back in. Except…we don’t feel as entitled to those feelings now. We are OVER the divorce. We are happy now. We have a life beyond the ex.

    ‘When will it stop hurting’ we rage!

    The answer to that is ‘sometimes’. It will stop hurting sometimes. There are always going to be moments of hurt. Those moments will become further apart. They won’t be triggered by the mundane of everyday like they used to be. They will be triggered by those big life events we thought we would be sharing with our ex for the rest of our life.

    Feeling that sense of hurt, loss, and pain is not silly, weak, stupid, or any of those other things we tell ourselves in the midst of our pain. Feeling those things is a part of dealing with a massive loss.

    When a loved one dies, we know there will be moments when we miss them more than others. We accept there will always be a hole where that loved one used to be. A divorce is the same. It’s a loss, a death of a dream. There will always be a hole where the marriage used to be.

    We can remarry, be ecstatically happy, and yet still have those moments of pain.

    When they inevitably hit, take a moment. Acknowledge the loss. Shed the tears. Honour the feelings. It will pass, the joy will return. Life will go on.

    And it will stop hurting, for most of the time.