Christmas is a tough, tough time for the newly single. Ultimately, it’s a holiday that’s all about spending time with family and the people you love, which can feel like a slap in the face when your family unit is splintering or you’re slowly, painfully, falling out of love.
Everywhere you look, it seems the world is rubbing your nose in it. You’re surrounded by images of happy, loved-up couples, festive romantic comedies, adverts reminding you to buy a perfect present for that “special person” in your life. Not to mention the prospect of sitting through Christmas dinner with that emotionally defective great-aunt who can’t help asking intrusive questions about your divorce. What a minefield.
Faced with all of this, I can understand why part of you wants to tell your family you have the ‘flu, cancel your plans and curl up in a ball under a duvet for the whole of December, wallowing in your misery.
Don’t do that. Seriously: don’t. Self-pity is an indulgence all of its own – but not the Christmassy kind. You ARE going to get through this. Here’s how.
1) Force Yourself to Do Festive Things
Get into the Christmas spirit. Even if you don’t feel like it. Even though the niggling voice in your head is telling you it’s pointless and not to bother. Why let all your little Christmas traditions, the things you’ve always done and that make you happy at this time of year, disappear along with your relationship?
Buy a tree and decorate it, dammit. Put up those fairy lights or wreaths. Dig out the most ridiculous Christmas jumper you can find and get your festive playlist all cued up. Light the fire. If you’re lucky enough to get snow, rope in your friends or your kids (or your friends’ kids) to build a snowman. Laugh. Fill the house with Christmassy smells.
This is your home, it’s Christmas, and you’re free to make it as wonderful or beautiful or kitsch and cheesy as you like. Do it hope however you want to make a safe, cosy, joyful environment to be in.
2) Make Christmas All About Other People
Its super hard to drag yourself out of your own negative emotions, but one of the best ways to get out of your own head is not to let things become all about you.
Doing stuff for other people will make you happier. It will make you feel more useful, more valuable, more connected, more alive. And when better to do that than at Christmas, a time that’s made for giving and caring, being warm and generous and kind?
Take a minute to write a sincere, heartfelt note in the Christmas cards you send. Throw yourself into picking or making lovely presents and treats for your close family and friends.
That’s doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune: just think really carefully about what you can give them that has real meaning or would be special to them. Take pleasure in their pleasure.
Be social: invite your besties over for mulled wine and mince pies, turn on the cheesy Christmas music and have a good giggle. Browse Christmas markets with friends. Go see a play or a film with a mate. Ask your siblings how they are and really listen to the answers. Offer to babysit for a frazzled friend while s/he does their last minute shopping. Make an effort to turn up to the parties, dinners and drinks you’re invited to – even if it means bringing a friend in tow for moral support.
Even better, go a step further and volunteer.
Serve Christmas dinner at a homeless shelter. Send present parcels to Children in Need. Help out at a soup kitchen. Spreading some love and showing some solidarity with those who feel lonely and vulnerable – and who are in an even shittier situation than you – is good for the soul, good for your community, and good for you.
3) Practice Gratitude
You probably don’t feel like there’s much to be thankful for right now – but I promise that after you’ve started on steps 1 and 2, it will feel a lot easier!
Get into the habit of writing down at least one thing you feel grateful for at the end of every day. Make it something specific, like a kind word from a stranger, or how a friend went out of their way to make your afternoon fun, or the way your kids hugged you and said they loved you before they went to bed.
This help you to shift your mindset from focussing on the pain and negativity you’re feeling to the little nuggets of joy in your day. It helps you to remember the good stuff, and to look out for it.
Christmas makes this easier, not harder. It’s a time when everyone’s making an effort to meet up, when presents are exchanged, when you see people you’ve been meaning to call for ages. Everyone around you is in high spirits and willing to do nice things for each other. There are parties to go to where you can drink too much and perform ill-advised karaoke.
If you have kids, they’ll be making you presents and cards for you at school. You can get away with drinking Eggnog and Kir Royal and hot chocolate with booze in it. There’s yummy food everywhere to eat, guilt-free.
That’s a lot to be grateful for. Don’t let yourself forget it.
Okay, we’ve now talked about how your relationship dynamic affects your basic needs to feel safe and secure Part One and your psychological need to feel loved and valued Part Two. But what about the top of the pyramid: self-fulfilment?
Self-fulfilment
In the grand scheme of things, at least for people from most walks of life, the chance to feel ‘fulfilled’ is a pretty new idea. In the past, a lot of couples would largely have settled for security, fidelity and companionship.
But in the last 50 years or so, all that has gone out of the window. It’s just not enough anymore. We all want and expect to feel fulfilled: in our jobs, in our relationships, in our lives as a whole. We want to reach our full potential and to feel as if we’re achieving something genuinely meaningful.
Self-actualisation
Here’s the thing, though. Self-actualisation is hard.
It takes a lot of work to be the best you can be. A hell of a lot of work. Work that only you can do, by yourself.
It takes a lot of work to be the best you can be. A hell of a lot of work. Work that only you can do by yourself. And while it’s totally reasonable that you’d want your partner to be supportive, encouraging and willing to help you along the way, expecting too much from them can destroy a relationship.
Eli Finkel, the American psychologist, puts it pretty well when he says that modern couples increasingly expect each other to guide them their journey and “grow as individuals.”
“People are looking to their spouses to help them discover who they are, and to achieve the best version of themselves,” he says. “You are really hoping that your partner can help you on a voyage of discovery and personal growth, but your partner cannot do that unless he or she really knows who you are, and really understands your core essence. That requires much greater investment of time and psychological resources.”
Being someone’s on-call Jiminy Cricket is a full-time job, and no one has the boundless time, energy and insight to guide their partner through every step of the way.
In other words, being someone’s on-call Jiminy Cricket is a full-time job, and no one has the boundless time, energy and insight to guide their partner through every step of the way. Besides, that level of emotional investment would mean neglecting your own goals, dreams and journey towards being the best you can be.
Ruthlessly pursue your own path
Does that mean that you should ruthlessly pursue your own path and leave your partner to their own devices? Of course not.
But that doesn’t mean that they have the right to demand that they take priority all the time. Nor should you feel that your purpose is to elevate their needs above your own – that your role is to make sure they succeed at the expense of your own ambitions.
Your partner can help you stay on the right path, but they can’t carve it out or walk it for you.
Only you are in a position to do the things that will fulfil your potential. Before you ask anyone else to give you an extra push, you need to have the self-motivation, self-belief and the right attitude to push yourself – and you need an idea of what it is you want and how you’re going to achieve it. Your partner can help you stay on the right path, but they can’t carve it out or walk it for you.
Ask and expect
Trying to put all of that onto your other half is suffocating, and it’s unfair. By all means, ask and expect them to be in your corner, and don’t accept someone deliberately blocking the way of things that really matter to you. But don’t expect them to be your life coach – or your doormat.
Really listening to each other, giving encouragement, pep talks and constructive criticism, bouncing ideas around and suggesting solutions to problems, reassuring each other when you’re having a crisis of confidence, making sure you’re sharing the burden of day-to-day finances, household chores, childcare… all of these things help to create an environment that will facilitate fulfilling your potential.
Equally, giving each other space to pursue the things they want to succeed in, and trying not to become jealous or resentful when they (genuinely) need to put in the extra hours to make it a success, is vital.
How does your partner respond
One of the biggest indicators of whether a relationship will succeed, after all, is how they respond to each other’s positive news.
As UCLA researchers found in 2006: “When close relationship partners, specifically romantic partners, regularly respond to positive event disclosures in a supportive manner, disclosers report feeling closer, more intimate, and generally more satisfied with their relationships than those whose partners typically respond in a nonsupportive manner”
Being enthusiastic and excited about their achievement, promotion, great feedback from the boss etc. is absolutely essential – failure to be emotive in your response will undercut their good mood and make them feel hurt and rejected.
Even if do you have reservations, don’t make it all about you by leading with these. Save them until the initial buzz has worn off and you can talk them through together.
Congratulate first, talk second
If your spouse tells you they’ve just been given more responsibility at work, for example, don’t respond with “But you already work such long hours! When am I going to see you?” Congratulate them first – and mean it. After that, you can start to delve into the details of what the role involves and how you’re going to make sure you still spend quality time together. Otherwise, they will simply think you are shooting them down because you don’t really care about them reaching their potential – and they’re probably right.
Clinging on too hard too tightly to your other half makes it impossible for them to meet their needs on their own, or to be the best they can be, but being dismissive or indifferent to their efforts will kill your relationship, too.
Clinging on too hard too tightly to your other half makes it impossible for them to meet their needs on their own, or to be the best they can be, but being dismissive or indifferent to their efforts will kill your relationship, too.
The key
The key is to make sure that you are not demanding that the other ‘fixes’ you, making them choose between prioritising you and their goals, or turning your relationship into a competition – and that you are showing them that you believe in what they are doing and their ability to achieve it. It’s about both of you giving each other the support that will allow you to grow, and sharing in each other’s successes to bring you closer together.
Brad, Angelina and the Death of the “Perfect” Relationship
Ever been told “Oh my god, you guys are just SO GOOD together?” even as the doubts are starting to set in?
Or had friends roll their eyes when you mention issues that are starting to bother you because hey, your relationship is great – what are you whining about?
Or worse: broken up with your partner after much painful soul-searching, only to have your parents say: “Are you crazy? They were perfect for you!”
The perfect couple, or so many thought
Perfect
The problem with being the “perfect couple” is that you’re never allowed to break the illusion. The daily problems and struggles that every marriage experiences are glossed over, ignored, denied.
Sanitised for other people.
This puts insane, unrealistic pressure on your relationship. It makes you feel like every imperfection or tension is a personal failure. It prevents you approaching problems head on and working through them rationally. It speeds up the demise of your marriage when the cracks start to form.
And eventually, it deprives you of the support you desperately need right when you need it most: after your divorce.
Brangelina
Let’s take a look at the Brangelina breakup for a moment. These are two of the most beautiful, successful people in the world.
Two people that, on the face of it, seem to have the most picture perfect marriage.
They’re wealthy. They’re both top of their profession. They’ve worked together on a ton of successful projects, as well as pursuing independent goals. They’ve raised a beautiful family. They travel all over the world and own houses in far flung, exotic locations.
“It doesn’t matter how rich or beautiful you are, presenting a sanitised version of your relationship is exhausting.”
Performing
But you know what else?
They’re two people who spent their entire ten-year relationship in the public eye. Who have had to perform being happy in love for a press mob that picks apart every word and gesture for a decade.
They’ve had to put a flawless face forward even as they’ve negotiated some of the most stressful and emotionally exhausting events a couple can possibly experience together: the serious health problems and multiple, invasive surgeries, the death of parents, the high profile criticism of professional and personal choices, adopting and raising children, running their own businesses and managing their own creative projects.
Who had to cultivate a façade even for those people they see and speak to and confide in every day, in case their words are sold to a newspaper by a “source close to them”.
Brad and Angelina in happier times
Exhausting
It doesn’t matter how rich or beautiful you are, presenting a sanitised version of your relationship is exhausting. There’s only so long you can pretend that difficult, hurtful, stressful things aren’t taking their toll on your relationship. And when it falls apart, you absolutely need people who love you to step in, give you a hug, listen to you talk about what you’re going through and really listen.
Now, hopefully no one reading this will ever be in a position where the dirty laundry of their divorce is publicly strung up in the tabloid press, but I’m sure many can relate to the feeling that you’ve been horribly misrepresented by your partner, by your friends and family, by your social circle, or even (if, for example, you’re battling for custody) in a court of law.
If you’ve gone out of your way to present the happiest, shiniest, most perfect version of your marriage until now, it can be particularly hard to counter or handle this. Especially if everyone adores your ex and you’ve never attempted to disabuse them of the notion that this person is just as perfect as you’d always let them believe.
How do you backtrack?
How do you persuade them, after all this time, that actually things weren’t as wonderful as they seemed, behind the scenes? How do you trust someone to really listen and be supportive when you feel that they’re judging you harshly for “throwing it all away”?
Here’s the thing: you’re not going to be able to change a bunch of people’s minds when they’re dead set on siding with your ex. And do you really need to, anyway? What will you gain by it? Is it going to help you to move on?
Of course, if you’ve spent years putting on a show of being the perfect couple, it will most likely cut you deep that you’ve lost control of your “public image” now. You might panic that people no longer see in in the positive way they’ve always seen you in – or even as the cause of your relationship’s breakdown. At this point, it’s tempting to go on the offensive, painting yourself as the victim and telling everyone who will listen about your ex’s every fault.
Won’t help
But this will not help you heal and move on. In fact, it will do exactly the opposite.
Firstly, you will probably end up fighting a proxy war of he-did-this-she-did-this with your ex via your friendship group. That’s bound to get ugly, souring your relationship with your ex even more and leading to stuff coming out about you that you really didn’t want shared.
Secondly, you’ll find yourself becoming a person that you just don’t like. After all these years of fierce loyalty to your partner, striving to show both of you in your best light, here you are bad mouthing or exaggerating their faults to score points. That has to feel a bit grubby. It has to detract from whatever was actually beautiful about the time you shared together.
Will Brad and Angelina go into battle against each other?
Betray
If you go as far as betraying the trust of that person, unnecessarily disclosing intimate secrets or things that will really hurt or embarrass them, that’s even worse. Mutual friends will most likely think less of you for being so vindictive, your ex will (rightly) be appalled and you will have lost the moral high ground forever. From there, you can only keep clinging your ex’s wrongdoings and your victimhood in an attempt to justify yourself, admit guilt and grovel to your ex / your social circle for forgiveness, or continue along a path of petty revenge. None of these is exactly going to make you feel great about yourself.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you should lie, cover up your feelings or sugar coat anything your ex has done that led to this breakup. You’ve done enough of that already, and it probably contributed to your marriage’s demise.
“It’s tempting to go on the offensive, painting yourself as the victim and telling everyone who will listen about your ex’s every fault. But this will not help you to heal and move on. In fact, it will do exactly the opposite.”
Honest
Instead, it’s a case of being honest with a small circle of people you really trust, and being painfully diplomatic with everyone else.
Again, let’s go back to Brangelina. If, like them, you’re splitting up under the media glare, you have to be incredibly careful about what you say and who you tell. After all, they have six kids to protect as well as each other’s feelings, and they certainly don’t want to go feeding the sharks.
“I am very saddened by this, but what matters most now is the wellbeing of our kids… I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time.”
“I am very saddened by this, but what matters most now is the wellbeing of our kids… I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time.”
Okay, you might not have to worry about hacks quoting you out of context, but you can take a valuable lesson from this. People are people and they will gossip and twist your words. This is even more the case if your relationship always looked perfect from the outside and your breakup came as a shock.
Open and honest
Make sure you sit down the people closest to you and tell them, frankly, that while things weren’t as rosy as you perhaps made them out to be, you are trying hard to keep things civil. Be strong: don’t minimise the things that hurt you or allow them to make you feel these were nothing, but don’t exaggerate them either. Emphasise that you’ve already made your decision and now you need their support, not their judgement.
Ask them to keep what you tell them to yourself. Be open about what you need from them in terms of emotional support. Tell them you’re hurting. Tell them you’re scared.
“If you want to heal, you’ll have to focus on dealing with your own pain and the proactive steps you’re going to take to move on and get your life on track – on your own.”
Outside pressure is the last thing you need when going through a divorce
Trash talk…
But apart from the specific concerns and frustrations you need to get off your chest, don’t make it all about trash talking your ex. This will become exhausting very, very fast and will prevent you from moving on.
The same goes for people who will inevitably pry or try to goad you into saying things about your ex you wish you hadn’t. Be gracious about this. Say that you don’t want to speak ill of them or go into detail about what went wrong, but ultimately it didn’t work out and you wish them well. Then change the subject and don’t get drawn in: you will feel better about it, and you will come out looking like the better person.
You have to let them go
Ultimately, the important thing is that you don’t fixate on your ex. After all, you’ve broken up now. They should absolutely not be the central focus of your life. You have to let them go.
If you want to heal, you’ll have to focus on dealing with your own pain and the proactive steps you’re going to move on and get your life on track – on your own. You need to work on treating the wound, not keeping it visibly open to win the support of your friends.
If you’re lucky enough to avoid a divorce as public as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s, embrace the privacy that this gives you to heal. Don’t turn it into a min media circus of your own creation. At the end of the day, it’s you that will get hurt.
You have to accept what you can’t change… and change what you can’t accept
How much time did you waste in your last relationship, just hoping that your partner would change?
And how much time did you waste complaining about the situation – but doing nothing about it?
Perhaps you stayed with your ex for far longer than you should have done, just willing things to get better. Perhaps you’re angry with yourself, now, for the lost years you spent waiting around for the situation to improve.
Perhaps, deep down, you’re still waiting – and it’s stopping you from moving on.
Humans are irrational optimists. We tell ourselves all sorts of fairytales about the future. We desperately want to believe that things will fix themselves.
Take control
We’re really, really bad at realising that the only person we can rely on to make our lives better is ourselves.
And, ultimately, there are only two things we can do we can make a tough situation better.
We can learn to accept those things that we just can’t change – and stop trying to change them.
And we can change the things that are within our control.
Accepting what you can’t change doesn’t mean throwing in the towel and deciding that you’re doomed to a life of misery. It means being realistic about what you can live with, and what you can’t.
Case study
Take Jessica and Steve.
Jessica knows that Steve is the last person in the world to do something spontaneous. Left to his own devices, he’d happily while away every Sunday in the garden with a beer.
Jessica can’t understand it – when she makes plans on their behalf, he might grumble a bit, but they always have a great time. Yet despite her hints (and the fights), he never, ever, makes the effort to suggest something himself.
Frustrated and hurt, Jessica has decided to force him to change by not making plans and waiting around until he cracks and takes matters into his own hands. In the meantime, she bitterly complains to her friends, non-stop. All she wants him to do is to start taking the initiative. Why can’t he just try?
But of course, Steve is not going to change. He’s a passive guy. He probably won’t even notice what she’s doing and, if he does, he won’t respond in the way she hopes. It’s against his nature. She’ll wind up more and more bitter, and both of them will be miserable.
So what can Jessica do?
First, she has to admit to herself that Steve won’t change. She has to accept that this is who he is. If she wants to spend her weekends doing fun things together, she’ll have to organise them. Or she can leave him to his own device and spend her weekends with fun, spontaneous friends.If she can live with that, great: if she’s genuinely willing to end her struggle against the situation and stop complaining about it, she can start to feel content with how things are.
But what if this isn’t good enough for Jessica?
Unlike Steve’s personality, Jessica’s situation is within her control. She can end the relationship and try to find someone more spontaneous. She can end the relationship so she can be more spontaneous without a partner.
I know what you’re thinking: as if it just that easy.
Of course it’s not easy. It’s the hardest thing in the world. That’s why we ignore the problem and cling to the hope that our partner will magically become the person we want them to be, even though they are the one factor that we absolutely can’t change.
A partner who loves routine will never become adventurous. A partner who is a risk-taker will never become cautious. A partner who is cruel will never be kind.
And if we don’t come to terms with that, it haunts us even after we break up. It keeps us in the agonising purgatory of wondering: what if?
It keeps us going back to people who are wrong for us. It stops us moving on. It stops us healing.
And it means that, next time we find ourselves in the same situation, we repeat our mistakes over and over again.
I can’t tell you whether you should accept a relationship with unchangeable flaws, or change a situation that’s become unacceptable to you. But I can tell you: for your own sake, you have to choose.
Hi ho – off to Helsinki tomorrow to get some people on board with a 16-country project I am managing for a client.
I was in Copenhagen a week ago and that was a tough trip – people were very resistant to the change of the project and it made me think.
Managing change is a bit like boiling a frog.
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway gave a speech at the Harvard Law School in 1995. In this speech, Munger cited a small lesson from frogs. He said:
“If you throw a frog into very hot water, the frog will jump out, but if you put the frog in room temperature water and just slowly heat the water up, the frog will die there.”
This speech was given way back in 1995. So we can expect the current generation of frogs to have become intelligent enough to understand this mystery, but sadly this ‘frog in boiling water’ syndrome continues to play out for both frogs and change management.
Let me explain.
Most people dont do well by being thrown into a sudden change. It’s overwhelming and intimidating. They jump straight out of the pot, kicking and screaming. To allow people to adapt to the change, it helps to introduce it slowly – building up a great deal of context of why the change is happening and selling benefits and opportunities to them. As they get used to this change, they warm to the idea and relax a bit. Once they relax, they dont notice that the water around them is heating up and the reality of the change is coming closer and closer to them. Pretty soon they are right in the middle of the change and they totally accept it. Cooked. Dinner is served.
Change management
The job of a change management specialist is therefore to get people accustomed to the change happening around them by creating solid context and understanding prior to the change happening. Within my work, a combination of the context being built up with the rules and structures of the program creates a cocoon which enables them to be tough enough to handle the metamorphosis from the change.
So whilst I am in Helsinki, the game I am playing is to slowly but gently cook some frogs.
In the first part of this series, I talked about how all humans have a basic need to feel safe and secure, and how to make sure that you offer that to your partner in ways that are healthy and not controlling or counterproductive.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Or, in Maslovian terms, the base of the pyramid.
To recap, this is Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Okay, now let’s move on…
Psychological needs.
The moment we’re confident that we’re not going to starve and we’re safe from immediate harm, we start fixating on belonging and love. We need to feel part of something, that we’re understood and cared about, that we have mutual trust, affection and intimacy in our lives. And for that, we seek out companionship, friendship and romance.
But often, this is where the cracks start to form.
Especially when:
One of you believes this need should must be met solely by your partner
One of you underestimates how much the other is looking to you to fulfil this need
Let’s start with the first one: fighting too hard to make yourself the only person who meets this need.
At its core, this is jealousy and self-doubt. It’s the fear that if someone else can give your partner any part of the love or belonging that they need, you will become redundant.
Maybe your other half is excited about a big night out with their friends. Maybe they’re up all night chatting to a sibling after you’ve gone to bed. Maybe they never miss training, no matter what, even though you’d much rather spend Saturday morning together. Whatever it is, it’s something that makes them happy – but that doesn’t include you. And it feels like a threat.
Okay: getting this bit right is a delicate balancing act. It’s the hardest part of any relationship.
Everyone has that friend who disappears the minute they strike up a new romance, never to be seen again until it all goes tits up and they need a shoulder to cry on. Everyone’s had that awful sinking feeling when the first flush of love starts to die down and they realise they’ve let their friendships slide for months, even years.
That feeling of loss
Everyone’s had that feeling of loss when they realise an important bond has slipped through their fingers.
The thing is, being with our partner meets our need to belong in different ways to those of our friends/family/teammates/others we care about.
These bonds aren’t mutually exclusive. They complement one another.
And while couples generally look to each other for love and affection, trying to isolate your partner from the friendships they had before they knew you is hugely destructive. Eventually, they will resent you for it.
Trying to isolate your partner from the friendships they had before they knew you is hugely destructive. Eventually, they will resent you for it.
Hopefully you’ll get on well enough with your partner’s friends and family that you’re a big part of each other’s lives and extended groups. Belonging to each other also means belonging to each other’s worlds. But at the same time, you need to appreciate that their closest friendships and family relationships exist without you – and respect that, when they want to spend time with these people alone, this is a legitimate need and does not threaten your bond.
Don’t try and replace
The important thing is not to try and replace or limit your partner’s access to other sources of intimacy. It’s making sure that you both strive to assure the person that you love them, so that you are comfortable enough in your relationship to loosen your grip.
That’s where the second part of the equation comes in: underestimating how much the other person needs you to feel loved, and that they belong.
If your partner tells you they feel lonely and neglected when you’re out all the time without them, hear them out. You might not agree, but don’t get defensive or impatient. or try to invalidate their emotions.
Are you taking them for granted? Are they kind of low on your list of priorities? Do you treat them as a fall-back option when other plans fall through? Do you readily cancel on them, or switch work shifts to accommodate other people when you never seem to be able to do the same for them?
Because if, deep down, the answer is “yes”, you need to get real with yourself about why.
Perhaps you had become a bit wrapped up in yourself, in which case, strike compromises that mean you spend more quality time together. But if you no longer enjoy their company and are not willing to work through your problems, it may be time to re-evaluate your relationship. Either way, don’t act as if they are being unreasonable, because they have a right to expect love and companionship from their partner.
Even if the answer to these questions is “no”, berating your partner won’t make them feel more loved and less needy. You’ll wind up having the same fights, straining your relationship and exacerbating the problem.
Reassure them that you love them and love spending time with them. Make plans together and be enthusiastic about it. Look for ways to show them they’re on your mind when you’re apart, even if it’s just a text to see how they are. If they rely on you too much because they’ve let other relationships take a backseat, nudge them to spend time with the friends and family they’ve been neglecting.
And lastly, introduce them to your friends.
This isn’t just about making them feel included. It’s also about addressing psychological needs at the next level of the pyramid: Esteem.
Our esteem needs – the need to feel important, capable and valuable, to have a sense of accomplishment – are obviously met by many sources other than our partners; this comes from our careers, academic achievements, hobbies, passions and meeting important goals. But the dynamic we have with our partner can strengthen or undermine all that.
No matter how confident you are, no matter how talented or capable or good at your job, if your partner keeps you at arm’s length from their friends, family or colleagues, this hurts. You begin to think they’re ashamed of you in some way.
We all want to feel that our partner is proud of us
We all want to feel that our partner is proud of us, proud to be with us, proud to be seen with us.
It feels good to hear that they speak highly of us when we’re not there. It feels good when they want to show us off to other people in their lives.
The smallest gestures can communicate this. Making sure you let them know you’re impressed or proud of them for hitting that milestone they’ve been agonising about. Telling them they look hot when they’ve made an effort. Thanking them – sincerely – for something they’ve done for you. Complimenting them or bringing up something they’re proud of in front of other people.
You need to give each other space to breathe
You can’t do any of this when you’re consumed by jealousy and possessiveness. You need to give each other space to breathe and do your own thing so that you both have things you’re proud of, so that you can take pleasure in each other’s successes. It’s all about letting go, without pushing away.
That takes us up to Part 3, where I’ll talk about making the tough climb to the top of the pyramid together – and how to give each other the chance to feel happy in your own skin. Click here to read it once released.
Redundancy can be classed as a trauma regardless of how much notice one is given. If we consider the things that help us feel secure in life, our jobs/careers or vocations is certainly one of them.
Shock
Losing a job, for whatever reason, can come as a shock – even if you knew it was coming. It’s a massive change and as human beings, we don’t take changes very well. Yes, there are opportunities which arise out of the change but first you need to process the feelings of rejection, grief, anxiety, panic, worry, loss of self esteem (as sometimes the rejection experienced in redundancy is taken personally) and loss of ‘self’ as you probably linked your self-worth to your job.
Support
In this blog, I am not going to handle redundancy from the point of view of the person being made redundant but from the point of view of the person who is supporting a partner or loved one through a redundancy.
It may be that your partner, parent or close family friend has just been made redundant and you are watching them spiral slightly out of control.
Feelings
Many feelings will arise including moodiness, upsetness, depression, anxiety, panic and insomnia. It is very hard to know how best to support someone through the roller coaster of emotions and if they are your close partner, you will almost feel like you are on the roller coaster with them.
It’s tempting to want to make them happy, distract them or tell them to stop being gloomy and feel different/ look on the bright side of life. A common human trait is to try to intellectualise the emotion:
“think of the opportunities”
“you never liked your job anyway”
“don’t be sad, this is a chance to really examine everything from a fresh perspective”
Although all these statements are probably true – it’s ALL about timing. Delivering these messages in the first few weeks is not going to go down well.
In the first few weeks, it’s critical for the ‘redundee’ to just feel their emotions. Emotions, when fully experienced, naturally evolve along the path of healing but its often the people supporting the person being made redundant that interrupt this healing pattern.
The Redundancy grieving cycle
Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
Anger and betrayal stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
Panic and negotiation stage: Seeking a way out. Making deals with your company, trying to make deals with others in avoiding the inevitable.
Humiliation, fear of failure or looking bad stage: Gradually sinking into a spiral, feeling embarrassed and avoiding seeing people.
Despair stage: Realization that something awful is coming your way and you’re strapped into the roller coaster and helpless.
Loss, grief and depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable, surrendering to the grief.
Space and nothingness stage: Once you have grieved and grieved, experiencing loss and pain, you’re left with a feeling of nothingness. It’s different to numbness because you feel very present and can notice things around you. Your senses are heightened. You may also find that you cannot cry anymore. You experience an emotional vacuum.
Acceptance stage: Seeking realistic solutions and finally finding the way forward. It’s not a feeling of resignation. It’s a feeling of profound understanding of the way things are and the way things are not.
Responsibility and forgiveness stage: Taking responsibility for what happened and examining if there was anything you did which may have contributed to it happening. Forgiveness is key at this stage and is a critical part of true and real healing.
Gratitude stage: Transformational experience. Learning from your redundancy and seeing positives and negatives from the experience. This stage completes the healing.
Who are you helping?
What you don’t realise, in offering intellectual platitudes is that you are only doing this so YOU can feel happy again. It’s your own discomfort with their emotional state being so linked to your own emotional state that upsets you. If you resist their emotional state, it will persist because it has no avenue to be expressed.
So to survive and be happy in the first few weeks of supporting your partner, it helps to stop linking your happiness to the happiness of this person – move to your own orbit and allow them to simply ‘BE’ where they are. Break your dependence on them and instead of fretting, go play tennis, go for a walk on your own or go shopping and allow them to be.
Here are a few tips of what to do and what not to do in supporting someone through this change.
Don’ts
Don’t give pep talks. Its not your job to pump them up and ensure they are happy again. Understand their need to express their emotions and use the BUCKET exercise below to give them an avenue to express these emotions Don’t intellectualise their emotions or offer any ‘sage’ advice – telling them to look on the bright side of life or telling them that ‘everything happens for a reason’ just invalidates the pit of despair they are looking into. Allow THEM to come to this conclusion on their own – this way, they will own the conclusion on a deeper level Don’t orbit around them or link your own happiness to their happiness – they are entitled to their process and way of dealing with things.
Don’t tell them to snap out of it
Don’t tell them they are being ridiculous, self indulgent or dramatic – use the BUCKET exercise to hear them – sometimes people just need to vent their emotions – its not necessarily about you.
They will want to indulge in what I call STEATs (short term emotion avoidance tactics) so they can feel better and run from their emotions. They will want to avoid dealing with their emotions by focusing on decorating, shopping, partying, drinking or being super ‘busy’ with something or other. Rather than rejoice in these activities with them, encourage them to stop and feel their emotions. Validate their right to their emotions. If they engage in STEATs for too Long, they may end up depressed due to repressing their emotions
S.T.E.A.T.S explained
One thing to guard against is that your partner does not avoiding dealing with their emotions by burying themselves in things which either numb the pain or distract them. Don’t get me wrong, in the early days of redundancy, the S.T.E.A.T.s are probably the things which help your partner feel better in each moment. BUT the thing to be aware of is that it’s not feeling better for real – it’s a false sense of security – a false feeling of recovering. It fits into the false healing category.
Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics include but are not limited to:
Excessive eating
Alcohol and drugs
Excessive anger towards others
Excessive socialising
Over-exercising
Fantasy or escapism activities (books, TV, movies)
Isolation
Random sexual encounters
Shopping/retail therapy
Spending countless hours with your children under the guise of being a good parent but the actual agenda is using your children to help you feel better
The problem with Short Term Emotion Avoidance Tactics is that they are short term. They do not last, and they do not deal with the true emotional issue. S.T.E.A.T.s are distractions that either damage or delay the recovery process.
Do’s
Have compassion. Allow them their feelings and validate their need to process things in their own way
Do reassure them that you love them as they are, that they are amazing, that you are here for them whatever happens
Do show them the redundancy emotional cycle and reassure them that they have a right to their emotions and there will be an end to the journey and that you have full faith in them
Listen to them
Give them lots of hugs.
If they look sad – just give them a big bear hug
Whilst they look for new work, discuss everything with them positively, reassuring them
Give practical advice about how their skills and competencies can be utilised in different industries – The book BRAND YOU is excellent at focusing on skills and how they can be applied in different situations
Encourage them to bucket and do this daily for 21 days (see below)
Once 45 days have passed, if they are still moping around – get them to see someone to process their feelings so that they can move on
Bucket your frustrations
Go fetch a bucket (a real one) and sit together with no TV or chaos in the background with the bucket between you both You start by encouraging your partner to express their frustrations, feelings and emotions into the bucket – you not allowed to respond except to acknowledge that you hear what they are saying and ask if there is anything else to go into the bucket – encourage your partner to ‘put all their frustrations into the bucket’ and vent everything that is pissing them off about life and how life should be the job is – JUST LISTEN.
Keep asking if there is anything else and keep going until the bucket is full and they can think of nothing else When done, you both pick up the bucket and throw out these frustrations out of the window or door Now it’s your turn It’s good to say how you feel but I recommend not sharing your worries about the redundancy – focus on other things that annoy you or frustrate you — this way, your partner will feel they are not alone in being frustrated but they will feel that you are not pressuring them to snap out of their emotions. When done, you both pick up the bucket and throw out these frustrations out of the window or door
Gratitude
Now you both take turns to say what you are grateful for about your life. Your lives are actually very rich and amazing BUT because you dont focus on that, you dont see this. I want you both to come up with at least 5 things you are grateful for
Create tomorrow
Now you both take turns to say what you will accomplish tomorrow. This is important because at the moment, life is happening to both of you – neither of you say how you want your life to go or feel like you have any control over your lives.
So, I hope that helps a bit. It is very challenging to go through a redundancy, but even more challenging if you are the partner of someone in that situation.
They take no notice of me. They don’t support me or show any interest in my job, or my passions, or my interests. They don’t listen. They seem bored when we’re together. I don’t feel they’re proud to be with me. They don’t call or text to see how I’m doing. They’re always too busy to talk. I feel I’m last on their list of priorities. It’s like we’re not even a couple.
I feel suffocated. They won’t let me breathe
I feel suffocated. They won’t let me breathe. They’re jealous. They want to know where I am all the time. They hate me doing anything that doesn’t involve them. They call constantly while I’m out with friends. They want to know exactly when I’m going to be home. If I have to work late, they sulk about it. They want to do everything together, all the time.
On the face of it, these two sets of problems sound like polar opposites, right?
You might have even heard the same person say these things about two different relationships. Or about the same relationship at different times.
At the deepest level, all of us need to feel both free and autonomous, and safe, needed and claimed.
Perhaps you thought they were being fickle – that they don’t know what they want. Perhaps you heard yourself saying something like:
“What are you complaining about? I wish my girlfriend was that laidback!”
Or:
“Count yourself lucky. At least he cares enough to get jealous!”
But the thing is, at the deepest level, all of us need to feel both free and autonomous, and safe, needed and claimed.
These things are hard to reconcile. But if you don’t strike the right balance, or understand how these needs fit together you will drive the other person away.
Maslow pictured our physical and psychological needs building on each other like a pyramid. You need each type of need to be met before you can worry about the ones at the next level:
Let’s start with the basics.
At the bottom of the pyramid you have the survival stuff. You can’t focus on anything else when you’re scare about going hungry, just as you can’t function properly if you’re sleep deprived. If you’re reading this, you’re probably fortunate enough to have access to resources to tackle these fundamental needs. But to get by, even at the most basic level, we also need to feel safe and secure.
Safety and security are complicated
Safety and security are more complicated than they seem at first glance.
You might not be living in a warzone, but if you’re afraid of or intimidated by your partner, you will obviously not feel safe. You might not be in a physically abusive relationship, but if your partner cuts off your financial access, or makes it clear that they will kick you out / threaten your home life if they don’t get your own way, you can’t possibly feel secure.
What’s more, people often try to persuade their partners, outsiders and even ourselves that what we are doing is for their benefit, even when our motivations are actually selfish. When it comes to safety and security, these are easily translated for emotional blackmail.
Fine line
This means that there can be a very fine line between one person’s idea of being made to feel “safe and secure” and one person’s idea of feeling precisely the opposite.
These distinctions can be subtle. Sometimes only you and your partner really understand each other’s motivations. Sometimes only you know if you’re really doing something to make the other person feel safe, or to make sure they know you’re in control.
Take my friends Tia and Rob (not their real names).
From the outside, they’re adorable. Tia had a rough time growing up, she’s teeny-tiny, and she’s spent much of her life feeling vulnerable. She desperately needed to be in a relationship that would make her feel safe.
When you see her with Rob, he always has a protective arm around her. He boasts on Facebook about running across town in a thunderstorm to pick her up when she was in a crisis. Her friends joke that they wish their boyfriends sent so many messages saying “I love you” throughout the day. Rob is always looking after Tia, doing little things make her feel safe.
Or so I thought.
What matters is that both of you have your basic needs met. Not that one of you gets to take the high ground. Not that you feel obliged to thank someone for getting to play the hero. That you actually feel safe and secure.
Until I found her crying in the bathroom of a bar and she admitted she was exhausted and wanted to get a cab home, but Rob controls the money and wouldn’t let her leave alone because it was ‘unsafe’ – and he wanted to stay out all night. Until she told me that, when they fight, Rob reminds her he’s the only thing keeping her from the streets. That she feels trapped and depressed, but she can’t really complain, because he’s just like this because he loves her, right? That she should be grateful that he wants her to feel safe and secure, even if it’s having the opposite effect.
Uh-uh. Nope.
What matters
What matters is that both of you have your basic needs met.
Not that one of you gets to take the high ground. Not that you feel obliged to thank someone for getting to play the hero. That you actually feel safe and secure.
The key
The key is honest communication. It’s listening to each other.
Different people need different things in order to feel safe. If you want your relationship to work, you must be willing to provide those things, not the things that suit you.
Different people need different things in order to feel safe. If you want your relationship to work, you must be willing to provide those things, not the things that suit you.
If your partner’s actions seem possessive rather than protective, explain this to them. If you feel harassed because they keep messaging you while you’re out, set boundaries. If you feel their aggression is targeted at you instead of whatever might hurt you, or that their “concern” makes you worried, stressed or dreading the next fight, you need to make this clear.
And If your partner says this to you, don’t flip out and tell them they’re ungrateful. That you only care about their safety. That you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. After all, if you claim you’re doing something for their benefit and it turns out not to, why keep foisting it on them? Listen to what they actually need from you – and what they don’t.
Out of reach
Equally, if you feel your partner is always out of reach when you need them, or you genuinely feel unsafe and unsecure because of their behaviour, tell them. It’s fair to expect someone whose reckless, dangerous or destructive behaviour undermines your peace of mind to tone it down.
Just make sure you’re being honest about which needs are actually being unfulfilled. Don’t claim, for example, that being alone in the house makes you feel unsafe if really you just feel bored or neglected. These are valid feelings too, but it’s a different type of problem, as we’ll discuss in Part 2.
Our basic needs for safety and security are fundamental to everything else in our lives. No matter what else is great between you, if your partner’s behaviour consistently makes you feel less safe and secure, or if they refuse to do simple things that that would help you fulfil this need, your relationship will turn toxic fast.
Do people keep telling you to give yourself time to heal? That you just need to put some distance between yourself and your trauma? Simply wait for long enough and you’ll feel much better, get over it, and move on.
Well… tell them to get stuffed.
Time is not a healer
Time doesn’t do anything, in fact. It’s passive. It just passes by. Everyone’s seen the elderly person that’s still bitter and angry about something that happened decades ago – clearly time didn’t heal for them. I’m sure you know yourself that old rejections and cruelties and breakups still smart years on, whereas the fights you strive to make peace over straight away are barely remembered a week later.
That’s because healing is an active decision, not a passive one.
Be proactive about tackling the problem head-on
If you want to get over an injury, you have to be proactive about tackling the problem head-on. You clean it, dress it, fix it and make sure it heals properly, so that it doesn’t keep giving you trouble for the rest of your life. We know this about physical ailments. Why pretend it’s any different for psychological ones?
Do you have emotional scare tissue?
If you don’t come to terms with your trauma, it just sits there, like a festering wound. Eventually scar tissue might grow over the top, covering over the cut, but it’s still the same old untreated wound.
Worse, this emotional scar tissue is incredibly damaging, because it acts as a kind of “false healing” that prevents you from ever getting to the root of the problem. If you keep telling yourself that you’re fine when you aren’t, if you keep waiting in hope that the anger or pain or dysfunction you’re experiencing will simply diminish over time, you not only deny yourself the healing you so desperately need – you will also keep repeating the same self-destructive behaviours and mistakes that caused the trauma in the first place.
The chances of divorce increases each time they get married
Did you know that the chances of divorce increases each time they get married? As in, you were to marry a second, third or fourth time, there’s less hope of it working out every time you do? You might think that someone whose first two marriages had gone tits-up, who had lived through the awful trauma of divorce twice already, would learn from their mistakes, get better at choosing the right partner and become more adept at navigating the issues that damage or weaken a relationship. But statistically speaking, they don’t.
Why? Because they trample from relationship to relationship with the same baggage, the same hang-ups, the same issues in tow. The more you repeat an action or way of responding to something, the deeper it becomes ingrained as a habit. The more instinctive that behaviour feels to you. Ironically, it makes you feel safer to repeat a behaviour or a decision you’ve made in the past, purely because you recognise it – and even though it hurts you.
Feels safer to repeat a behaviour or a decision you’ve made in the past – even though it hurts you
False healing doesn’t address these problems. Waiting around until the ache isn’t as sharp as it used to be won’t stop you doing the things that caused the ache in the first place. It doesn’t help you to walk into your new life or your next relationship with the skills, self-awareness and confidence to do things better. It might give you a brief feeling of reassurance that your past misery is behind you, but it doesn’t place happiness firmly on the horizon.
Brighter future
If you want your future to be brighter than your traumatic past, false healing just won’t cut it. Don’t wait for “time” to fix things. Take control. Decide it’s your time to heal, right now. And commit yourself to doing the proactive, practical things you have to do to make it true.
This is the second part of a two-part series. To read the first part, click here.
In my last post, I talked about one kind of eternally single friend that we all seem to have: the type who we know is awesome, isn’t shy about meeting people and always seems to have the next hot date lined up – but somehow, never ends up in a “proper” relationship.
In this second part, I want to talk about the “other” type of eternally single friend. The friend who is just as lovely and amazing, but never seems to meet anyone at all.
I know someone just like this. Let’s call her Jennifer.
Case study
Jennifer is a great friend and a great all-round catch. She’s clever, she’s fun, she’s cultured, she’s pretty. Professionally, she’s doing very well, with an interesting job in a highly competitive field. Despite a humble start in life, she’s carved out a great future and she has every reason to feel proud of herself. Prospective partners have every reason to be impressed.
So why is it that I can count on one hand the number of dates Jennifer has been on in the past three years?
Why is it that she hasn’t even had a whiff of a serious relationship since the last one ended years ago?
The thing with Jennifer is, we all know she’s awesome. But does she believe she’s awesome? Does she hell.
Ask Jennifer what she’s up to and she will play it down. Play it down to the point that you’d think her career was about to go off a cliff, when in reality she’s doing better than just about anyone in our friendship group. In a field she’s always dreamed of working in and that’s she’s genuinely passionate about.
Five minutes into catch-up drinks with Jennifer and she will tell you how much weight she’s put on (she hasn’t). Or how bad her skin is at the moment (it’s not). Or how boring she’s been lately (her life is one big social whirlwind). How she’s doing so badly at whatever project she set herself, or how bleak things are looking, or how she’s worried about being irresponsible and overspending (again, she’s a deeply practical and organised person who gets more done than just about anyone I know).
Jennifer’s friends can obviously see past this. We sigh and roll our eyes and tell her to stop being ridiculous. But we still love her.
Because we know that Jennifer is what I like to call a Rapunzel.
Tower of negativity
She builds a huge tower of negativity around her to protect herself against disappointment.
We know that to get to the “real” Jennifer – the fun, brilliant, witty Jennifer – we have to do the emotional equivalent of getting her to let down her long hair, so that we can climb up.
Jennifer’s exes reflect this. They were all long-term friends before they were boyfriends. People who took the time to really get to know her. Who made that long, arduous climb, even when she made it tough for them.
But that’s not how most dating works.
First date…
When you meet someone new, or head out a first date, you don’t have the luxury of five years’ friendship behind you. This person has no idea what is on the other side of the wall. All they are seeing is the wall.
And why would you go to all that trouble when you have no idea if it’s worth what’s beyond?
Sure, if you’re a Rapunzel, you can blame your date. You can dismiss the opposite sex as shallow and not recognising your worth. For failing to get to know the “real you”. But why make it so hard for them to see the “real you” in the first place?
After all, would you go to all that trouble to win around a stranger who might turn out to be totally wrong for you anyway? Would you jump through all these hoops for someone you don’t even know yet?
Because the thing is, too, that all this negativity is kinda selfish.
When we meet or go out with someone new, we tend to be nervous. We want to be put at ease, to relax, to feel comfortable chatting and opening up.
But as emphatic animals, we quickly “catch” the emotional state of the person we’re with. So, when the other person does the opposite – when they project a mood that makes it feel inappropriate to be cheerful, happy and positive – it puts us on edge.
That’s not to say that you have to spend an entire relationship pretending to be happy. You don’t necessarily even have to spend an entire date pretending to be happy.
As you get deeper into conversation and start to trust one another, it might feel perfectly fine to start touching on subjects that are a bit darker, rawer, more serious. Vulnerability is a big part of intimacy, and as a relationship blossoms, you will inevitably reveal things to one another that frighten you, are painful to you, or that paint you in a less-than-confident light. Revealed at the right time, these things will bring you closer together.
It will probably make them want to escape pretty sharpish
.. But that’s very different from making this your opening gambit. Launching into a stream of negativity in the first few minutes is exhausting, even alarming, for the other person. It makes it impossible to take any pleasure out of the situation. It will probably make them want to escape pretty sharpish.
And, worst of all, it makes you even more convinced that all this misery is justified, because It makes you even surer that you’re unlovable.
Excessive self-deprecation is largely about diminishing yourself before anyone has a chance to do it for you, so when someone seems to agree with your poor-self image, that only encourages you to keep jumping the gun.
And that makes you even more likely to keep building up your negativity wall.
But it’s the negativity wall that’s the problem – not you.
Take a recent date of Jennifer’s. She met up with a guy with similar interests. Who she’d been chatting to through a dating site for a while, and seemed really keen. He was witty and interesting and good-looking, and he clearly thought she was, too.
Jesus. Who hurt you?
They met for a drink. The conversation was flowing and Jennifer thought it was going fine. She didn’t even realise how unrelentingly negative she was being until the guy looked at her in bewilderment and said “Jesus. Who hurt you?”
Needless to say, the relationship did not progress.
If you don’t stop yourself from building up your negativity tower, pretty sure you’ll find yourself stuck Inside. You won’t remember how to actually get out of it. You might forget that you’re even in it.
Like Jennifer, you’ll stop noticing that you’re being miserable about everything. You might have stopped noticing the effect this has on other people.
And then, from a relationship perspective, you’re really in trouble.
So where do you start if you’re a Rapunzel? How do you learn to let down your long hair?
Not all about you
The easiest way to begin is to stop making everything about YOU.
If your bad feelings are dominating the conversation, stop talking about yourself so much. Ask the other person lots of questions. Get them talking about what they’re excited about and interested in. Do your best to be excited about and interested in it, too. Bounce off their enthusiasm. Notice how it feels to be talking to someone who is passionate and positive about something. Notice how it puts you at ease.
And then, when the conversation comes back around to you, work on mirroring this mood.
(As a side note – there’s loads of evidence that mirroring another person’s behaviour and body language actually builds rapport and helps people warm to you, too!).
Don’t fake passion for things you hate, but rather focus on the things you really like and why they make you tick, rather than ways in which they might be lacking. Allow yourself the pleasure of being upbeat as you talk about things that make you happy. Pay attention to how pushing yourself to focus on the positives actually changes the way you feel.
You don’t have to talk yourself up, but that doesn’t mean you have to put yourself down.
Plus, if you can’t refer to your achievements without feeling sick to your stomach (and if you’re British, you’re probably familiar with this phenomenon), talk about what you enjoy about your work instead. Talk about what you loved about that last book you read or that last film you saw. Talk about something really fascinating or exciting thing that you heard or read about today.
So Rapunzel, go ahead and let your hair down. You will enjoy yourself much, much more – and, of course, so will your date.
