Hey, this is Adele from Naked Recovery…

So, I want to thank everybody who gave us so many awesome comments about my first tips video in advance of the webinar, thank you.

Thank you for watching the tips video, and here’s the third one. We wanted to make sure that we really covered some good content prior to the actual webinar itself. So in the previous video, we were looking at all the kind of blockages to achieving a victor mindset, and in today’s video, we’re going to look at what it actually takes to adopt a victor mindset when you’re going through any kind of life turmoil.

Cool stuff

So I’m going to cover some cool stuff that we’ve developed in many of our retreats, I’m going to be referring to some notes, hope you don’t mind I’m going to kind of look down at my notes, come back to you, and so and so forth. But, I wanted to make sure I don’t skip any of the really cool stuff that you need to know. All right, so without further ado let’s look at that.

Victor mindset

In the last tips video, we covered some of the blockages to actually adopting a victor mindset. We looked at the concept of resiliency and what blocks resiliency is a kind of learning resistance and the learning defiance. In this video, we’re going to be looking at this mentality of being a victor.

Now, as I kind of covered a little bit in the last video, when you have a bad thing that has happened to you were you’re just cruising along in your life, something really shocking has happened, the first experience is very normally to have that kind of shock. You’re in a shock experience where maybe you’re in a bit of denial about the thing that has just happened, and you feel like this thing has happened to you.

Healing Journey

Now anytime you feel like something’s happening to you and you’re in that place of being victimised this is such a normal response for people to be there. I was just cruising in my life, this thing happened, and now I feel at the effect of it and therefore victimised. Being victimised is a very normal part of the healing journey, it’s actually the first stage is the victim stage, is that feeling of being victimised.

So, if you find yourself in that stage don’t be hard on yourself about it. It’s not a problem. The problem though is when that stage lasts a really long time, and you can kind of get stuck there, and a little bit bitter. So what we want to do is look at what are some of the techniques and mindset you need to have to move on from the victim stage through the various other stages of healing. So, if you’re in that kind of victim mentality you’re going to be feeling not good enough, this thing has occurred and happened to you.

Poor me

You might be saying things like, “Poor me, how could this have happened?” You’re feeling reluctant, you’re feeling maybe a bit of outrage, you’re sympathy seeking, you’re feeling quite righteous in feeling hurt, entitled to your hurt. Maybe there’s a blame of shame game that you’re having your fault-finding, very, very normal to be in that in the first kind of stage after turmoil.

To move from the victim stage to the next stage of the journey, which is the stage of feeling like the survivor, what you need to focus on is shifting your perspective where you’re kind of in this victim place to the next part where you’re beginning to cope with what has happened.

Analogy

Now an analogy that we sometimes use is if you’re driving along in a vehicle, and you’re driving along in that vehicle and the driver of the vehicle is actually the person that has created the trauma in your life. If you’re feeling like the victim you’re actually the person that has been hit by whatever it is that they’re doing. You’re actually the pedestrian that has been hit by this vehicle and you’re in a place where you’re feeling victimised by the driver of that vehicle.

Now whoever the driver is, maybe it’s a corporation that has fired you, or maybe it’s someone who’s cheated on you, or somebody who is divorcing you, or someone that has created an accident in your life. You’re in that place of feeling like the pedestrian at the effect of what they’re doing.

What we want to do is move you from the place of being the pedestrian to being the passenger within the vehicle. So this is the place where you’re actually witnessing what is occurring and you’re beginning to cope with what has happened rather than feeling at the effect of what has happened. So, you’ve gotta shift your attention from blame seeking to focus on what you can take ownership for, and accountability for. And to have a plan in place for managing all the triggers that are occurring off the back of this thing that has occurred in your life.

Survivor

Now, when you’re in that space of being the survivor the mindset of the survivor is you’re beginning to cope with what has happened, so you’ve got some systems in place to survive this event. So you’re starting to take control of various things. You’re tolerating the pain, you’re taking control, you’re starting to get up in the morning wash the dishes, you’re starting to actually do things, and you’re stopping the incessant feeling of being victimised. You’re actually like, “Okay, I need to get on with this. I need to do what I need to do.”

To get from the place of being a victim to the place where you’re starting to survive the situation you must commit to the survival. You must tell yourself, “Okay, I’ve had enough. I need to get over this now. I need to begin to move on.” And you’ve gotta commit to actually moving on and developing those coping mechanisms. So, that’s the next stage and that’s the mindset you need to have to get to that next stage.

Now that’s not the end, right? To move beyond survivor, ’cause survivor’s also a disempowering place. It’s disempowering because you’re alive but you’re not living. You’re surviving but you’re not thriving, right? You’re not actually loving life, you’re just kind of surviving life. So to move on from survivor the next stage is to be in the learning stage, and that’s where you really decide that there’s gotta be a better way.

Learning

We’ve gotta start learning from what has happened to us so that we can actually begin to incorporate moving forward from what has occurred and what has happened. This is where you’re starting to kind of attend some workshops, attend some seminars, take on your personal development, read some books, experiment, practise, workshop. You’re accepting help, you’re starting to go to therapy, you’re doing counselling. And this is where you’re taking on the concepts that, I need to learn from what has happened, and I need to actually start being proactive in my learning.

Now whenever you want to heal, the first stage of healings is committing to learning from what has happened. And that’s hard when you’re in the victim stage. When you’re in the victim stage the first thing you’ve gotta do is just survive. You’ve gotta start coping with what has happened. But if you want to kind of be more than just coping you’ve gotta commit to learning, that’s the next stage.

So if you commit to learning, you’re starting to kind of learn and integrate things that you’re learning, you’re in that learning stage and that’s the first stage of the next part, which is healing. So you’ve got victim stage, survivor stage, learning stage. If you want to get into the healing stage this is where you need to start actually processing and integrating some of those learnings.

So in the learning stage, you’re just learning as an intellectual concept, it’s a cognitive experience. When you’re in the learning stage you’re kind of just passively interacting with some of the learnings. When you’re in the healing stage you’re actively interacting with those learnings, you’re actually wanting to kind of really integrate those learnings into your lives. This is where you’re starting to have some breakdown and breakthrough moments.

Let go

You’re actually ready to let go of this pain and the punishment, you want to move on. And you’re starting to practise what you’re learning. When you take learning from a cognitive understanding perspective and you start practising what you’re learning that’s when the healing starts to occur.

Now that’s not the end either, because the final stage, the way you really want to get to is the victor stage.

Now the victor stage is not just where you’re learning, it’s not just where you’re healing. It’s where you’ve had a massive breakthrough in your life, and you feel like the experience that you have it becomes a testimonial, an inspiration for your life. You want to share the victory that you’ve had.

You feel like none of the suffering that you’ve been through has been in vain. And you realise that whatever’s happened to you hasn’t made you less, it’s made you more. And you see that what’s happened is an actual blessing for your life, and it was a necessary turning point for you to go through to have this new life. So the victor stage is really what we focus on producing in all of our retreats and programmes, but it’s really for yourself if you want to move from being the victim to the survivor, to the learning, to the healing, to the victor stage, you’ve gotta really focus on integrating all the things that you’ve learned to produce the breakthroughs, to eventually have a place where you feel grateful for what has happened.

When you feel grateful then you’re in the space of being the victor.

So, to develop the mindset just to recap, what you need to do shifting from victim you’ve gotta move into the place where you commit to survive what has happened. You’re like, “I’m done. I’m done with winging about it. I want to survive what has happened.” From that survivor place, you need to then move to the learning phase, and that’s where you commit to learning from what has happened.

Experience

When you actually integrate those learnings into your life and have those breakdown and breakthrough moments then you’re in the healing phase. And when you start having an experience that you can share the victory, and you’re grateful for everything that has happened because you feel like your life is better for the trauma that you’ve been through, that’s when you’re in the victor stage.

So, I hope that’s kind of helped you in terms of what are all the stages you need to go through to develop the victor mentality, but you’ve gotta take it one day at a time. You can’t leapfrog from victim to victor overnight. You’ve gotta really go through the stages of development. So, some other principles to look at is, at the end of the day you’ve gotta take responsibility and ownership for your own healing journey, your own recovery.

Guilt

Don’t take on any kind of unearned guilt or shame from the event. Focus on having compassion for yourself and just moving forward every single day. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Be nice to yourself. Just give up all those destructive emotions, and the parts in the victim stage that keep people stuck, just keep committing and moving forward, and developing all of those steps as you go.

All right, so that’s what I wanted to cover in this tips video. I hope that was useful.

Come and join us on the Overcome Any Life Event online seminar, we’re going to be covering in a lot more detail a very special technique that you can use to really overcome any trauma in your life.

So we look forward to welcoming you on the webinar, till then.

Hey there, this is Adele from Naked Recovery.

In preparation for our webinar next week, I wanted to just put a few tips videos together to cover some of the other tips and techniques around how to overcome any torment that has happened to you in life. 

Now, it doesn’t matter what the torment is, whether you’ve uncovered an affair in your marriage, or you’re going through a divorce, or you lost somebody really important to you, you lost your job, you’re going through a health scare, you’ve been attacked, your child is really ill, or there’s just been some horrible accident or event that has just side wiped your life completely. 

Learning

There’s always something to get out of the thing that has happened. There is always a way to turn what has happened into a victory in some way, shape or form. Now, it’s very difficult to image that when you’re going through that trauma, because the first place that people go to when they’re in that horrible place, where you were just cruising along your life and this thing just came side wiped you, is that feeling of just being victimised by life.

How could this have happened? Why has this happened to me? And that place of feeling victimised is so normal. That’s such a natural stage of development that we go through as we are developing ourself through the journey of overcoming a trauma. But it’s staying stuck there that is the problem.

Stages of trauma

Now the various stages of moving through trauma. The first stage is that place of feeling victimised and feeling like a victim of the situation. The next stage is what I will call, being the survivor. So that’s when you’re starting to develop coping mechanisms to kind of move on and deal with and adapt to the situation that has happened. When you’re in a place where you kind of get that there’s something to be gotten out the thing that has happened, then you’re in the learning stage. 

Learning stage

The learning stage is where you’re actually, not just developing skills to survive what has happened, you’re actually seeing what has happened as an opportunity for growth, for development, for learning.

They should actually re-label healing, learning

And hand in hand with learning is healing. They should actually re-label healing, learning. Because it is kind of the same thing. When you’re learning from something horrible that has happened, healing is a foregone conclusion. And the final stage, which Is really what we attain in all of our retreats and our kind of big programmes, is the stage of being the victor. And the victor is really where you haven’t just learnt, you haven’t’ just healed, you’ve used this trauma as the catalyst for your transformation in your life. 

Self actualize

So whatever it is that you wanted to self actualize in your life has actually become possible out of harnessing all the energy and all the drama out of the trauma that has happened, for the good, for the best, for the better in your life.

Okay, so let’s go right back to the beginning of this stage, and all of us have been there. Something horrible has happened. You’re just cruising along in your life, and suddenly you discover somebody’s had an affair in your marriage, or you discover you’ve just been dumped. Your job has just let you go. A horrible thing has occurred. That first stage of feeling victimised, totally normal, totally natural to be there.

Resistence

What is the very next thing you need to do, to kind of move out of that, and to begin to develop that kind of survivor mindset? First thing is you’ve got to deal with your resistance to learning, and your resistance to kind of moving forward. And that is the process of what we will call resiliency. And resiliency is such a key cornerstone to adopting a victor mindset at the end of the day. And two of the things that really block resiliency is learning resistance, and learning defiance. 

So learning resistance is whenever we are unwilling to accept what has happened. It’s just like no, this has not happened. It’s like total denial. And we’re in total denial where we’re just kind of numb. This thing has occurred, and we’re just carrying on with life as absolutely normal. Our routines are completely normal. And we’re just continuing. We’re just numb, we’re not even thinking about that thing that has occurred.

Or we’re doing some panic or some kind of negotiation to maintain the status quo. But that kind of unwillingness to accept what has happened, it can manifest in many ways. And some of the signs are even retreating, like just getting away. Like you don’t want to talk to people. 

You avoid people completely, you bury your head in the sand. You indulge in what we call short term emotional avoidance tactics. Excessive shopping, excessive drinking, drugs, sex, TV binge watching. Anything to an excess, that is actually quite negative and not good for you. That obsessive rumination, that’s all avoidance tactics. And it’s anything we can do to kind of avoid dealing with the thing.

So learning resistance is our inability to accept that which is. And you’ve really got to, in those moments stare the demons straight in the face. And just get it. It happened. It happened. It’s not great that it happened but we cannot resist reality. Reality is that that horrible thing has happened to you. 

And I’m really sorry that it happened to you. And you beating this and you overcoming this, is a function of embracing the learning from this. That is what you need to do. And the first step of the learning, is to stop the resistance, accept that this thing has happened. Now you’re beginning to develop the muscle of resiliency.

Learning defiance

The next resistance to resiliency is what we call learning defiance. So learning defiance is when we’ve accepted that the thing has happened. We’re completely clear that the thing has happened. But we’re unwilling to adapt. We’re unwilling to grow, or learn, or adapt, or adjust in any way shape or form to the thing that has happened. So here is where we … What I see the most with our clients, they go on a quest for justice. 

Now you might recognise that in yourself. Where it’s like what’s happened isn’t fair, it shouldn’t have happened. I’m not okay that it happened. And now what I’m going to do, is I’m going to seek ultimate justice from the universe. I want vengeance, or I want this to be even, or I want an explanation, or I want to be able to understand this, or I’m not willing to adjust. We begin to have external criteria and conditions for our willingness to adjust to what has happened.

We become rebellious in these phases. And to move on, you need to kind of understand that putting external conditions or demanding justice, running around gossiping about what’s happened, or repeating the same story over, and over again. None of this is actually moving you forward. 

What it does is it just keeps you stuck. And people get stuck in this place for years. I’ve seen people ruminating and asking these questions and being unwilling to adjust to the circumstances in life for years, and years, and years. And it’s just ridiculous.

What you need to get in that moment is have compassion for yourself, but don’t … Suffering is optional. And you don’t need to be in this place forever. 

Become a hero of your own story

What’s ridiculous is accepting that this trauma that has happened is somehow now going to define you. And is going to be your cross that you must bear like a martyr for the rest of your life. Nonsense. Absolute bollocks. What it is, it’s an opportunity for you to get something. It’s an opportunity for you, if you’re willing to adjust from this, and to take the learning from this, to really move through those stages and become a victor.

Not have this thing beat you. And to become a hero of your own story. So drop the quest for justice. Life isn’t fair. There isn’t always coordinated reasons for things occurring. Sometimes really uncoordinated reality is present with us. Random things occur that are horrible, to really, really good people. 

Justice

Trying to get justice for these things, it leaves you in a place where you can become really angry and bitter, and full of outrage. You become the person that is just gossiping about the situation all the time. Or you become the one that is always bad mouthing the situation or always complaining about what has happened. Just stop talking about what has happened. Focus on, what can I do to accept and adjust to what has happened. 

Those are the two important things I want you to understand in this video, so that you can move through those stages. Because once you get that, you begin to survive the situation. You actually begin to have techniques that you can adopt to get out of the place that you’re at. And when you’re beginning to get out of the place that you’re at, and you’re learning, then the learning begins to occur. Then the healing will occur. And then you will become a victor of your own story. And you will use this horrible trauma that has happened to you as a catalyst for your ultimate transformation. 

Next…

Alright so in the next tips video, I’m going to talk about how to develop that mindset of the victor and how to move through the stages of resiliency in a faster way. So I hope this was useful, until next time.

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.

 
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You made it all the way through to retirement together. You survived all those early fights, the nappy duties, the teenager tantrums, the little jealousies and resentments, the financial strains, the never-ending couple conflicts, and now…

Now you’ve decided enough is enough. You don’t want to grow old together, after all. You’re getting divorced.

Average age of divorce

In fact, the average age for divorce has been Trying to get a mortgage when you’re nearing retirement is seriously tough, regardless of your financial situation.

This particular sacrifice can come as an unexpected blow to many people who decide to divorce late in life.

Yes, you may have come to the painful decision that you do not want to spent your golden retirement years with the person you’ve lived with all this time. Yes, you might be terrified of loneliness after so many years of sharing your home with someone. Yes, you might have prepared yourself for the emotional punch of breaking the news to your children and/or grandchildren, who may have assumed, always, that you would be married for life.

But you might not have seriously considered the practicalities of separation. When you’ve spent years and years feathering your nest in exactly in the way you love, it’s easy to be caught out by the pain of walking away from a home that has become an expression of who you are.

Don’t forget the kids (even if they are parents too)

You may be caught out, too, by how traumatic your kids find the loss of the house. Even if they grew up and left home years ago, this house probably still represents their childhood to them. It’s an enduring thing in their lives, a trove of memories, and they may be far more sentimental about this than you could have expected.

I’m not saying this because you ought to feel guilty about your divorce. Far from it.

I’m simply saying this because many people who divorce late have become so comfortable and complacent in their lifestyles that they simply aren’t mentally prepared for how strong they need to be.

They assume, deep down, that getting divorced means continuing their lives in the same way, minus their spouse.

To put it bluntly, they often assume that the only thing that will change is that they no longer have to put up with this person.

That they will be able to do away with a relationship that they find hurtful, or a hindrance, or that no longer gives them what they need emotionally – but that all other elements of their lives will magically remain intact.

Divorce changes everything

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Divorce changes everything.

You don’t only decide to divorce your husband or wife. You decide, in the same breath, that you are willing to be financially and emotionally independent. That you will start again. That you will, in all likelihood, give up your home. That emotions will run high and you will fight with your family. That you will have to divide up your friends.

That, ultimately, you will shelve a lifetime’s worth of shared memories and plans and accept that, now, you are responsible for your own happiness – there’s no one else’s failures to pin it on.

Survive

This is scary. It’s terrifying. You can only survive it if you are willing to let go of everything you assumed would be a constant before.

Clinging to your past existence, resenting your partner for taking this away from you, turning the breakup into a bitter war over the scraps, forcing your children to take sides, chastising yourself for throwing away the “good” life you enjoyed before – these are the emotions that will drag out your suffering and make it impossible to heal.

Divorce doesn’t mean cutting a person out of your life. It means embarking on an entirely new, different life. It’s essential to go into this with your eyes open, and to focus on healing and rebuilding. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to weather the loss, and create a new home of your own.

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Relationships are about compromise. Right? I mean, we hear that a hundred times a day. It’s drilled into us non-stop. If you want to make your marriage work, you have to be willing to compromise.

Compromise?

But what does “compromise” actually mean?

There’s a huge difference between accepting that you won’t always get your way and feeling you have to crush a piece of who you are to please your other half. 

A world of difference between letting your partner pick tonight’s film on Netflix, or dropping a pointless argument because it’s not worth the drama, and letting your partner tell you that your feelings, interests, beliefs, passions or needs are invalid.

… Between letting go of the things that don’t matter and putting up with things that chip away slowly at your soul.

Common mistake

This is a mistake that so many couples make, and it can be fatal to a relationship in the long run. If one of you always has to be right about everything, if one of you feels like you had to settle for something that wasn’t right, if you were pressured to give up a career, a dream, a friendship group or a part of your personality (or you pressured your other half to do so) – beware.

Because that battle isn’t over. That sense of loss is still there, simmering under the surface.

You might ignore it for years. Decades.

But it hasn’t gone away.

And if “compromising” in your relationship makes you feel genuinely diminished, there is only so long you’ll be able to cope with this. Essentially, you’re a ticking time bomb.

Midlife crisis time-bomb

You’re a midlife crisis waiting to happen. When we talk about midlife crises, what we’re really talking about is this time bomb finally going off. A midlife crisis is the inevitable outcome of a lifetime of compromising on who we are – turning parts ourselves off, brushing over things that really matter to us, saying that these things are ok when really, they’re not.

Perhaps you’ve come to just accept your partner’s rudeness or bad behaviour, even though it cuts you and slowly erodes your confidence and self-respect. Perhaps you find yourself justifying a vanilla sex life that bores you to tears as an evitable part of a long-term relationship. Perhaps your parents and your other half hate each other and you’ve never managed to resolve it, even though it brings you out in hives every time there’s a family dinner. Perhaps you act as if you’re perfectly happy to sacrifice things that matter deeply, be they career opportunities or personal passions, just to keep the peace back home.

Eventually, you’re going to crack

Eventually, you’re going to crack. You’re going to make a crazy grab for your freedom or to take back control of your life or resuscitate that part of an identity you thought you’d lost forever.

Midlife crises are the butt of many a joke. Often, we see them as superficial or pathetic in some way – an unseemly grab at a youth that’s starting to fade away. But downplaying their emotional significance is a mistake; these crises are symptoms of a genuinely traumatic time in many people’s lives, a time when they are suddenly deeply aware of their own mortality and petrified that they have failed to live the life or be the person they’d hoped.

It’s an experience which is often exacerbated by years of feeling demeaned or belittled by the person you’re facing the rest of your life with – and if that person responds by dismissing your fears just as you feel most vulnerable, that reservoir of resentment can break its banks.

For many people, the fallout is enormous, leading to a reassessment of your relationship, or even divorce.

As divorce support expert Cathy Meyer explains, a midlife crisis can manifest as:

• Unhappiness with life and the lifestyle that may have provided you with happiness for many years
• Boredom with people and things that may have been of interest to you before.
• Feeling a need for adventure and change
• Questioning the choices you made in your life and the validity of decisions made years before
• Confusion about who you are and where you are going
• Anger at your spouse and blame for feeling tied down
• Inability to make decisions about where you want to go with your life
• Doubt that you ever loved your spouse and resentment over the marriage
• A desire for a new and passionate, intimate relationship.

These are big, painful, scary emotions, for you and your spouse. It’s no wonder that so many midlife crises lead to the breakdown of a relationship.

What’s more, a lot of people whose partners are heading for a midlife crisis don’t even realise it’s happening. Later, they say that their partner seemed to change overnight, switching from a seemingly content person to a stubborn, selfish a**hole who no longer cared about anyone else, including them.

The worst thing is when everyone can see it coming – except you

What they don’t realise is that this unhappiness has been building for years. It’s just that their partner failed to assert their identity in meaningful ways sooner and/or they failed to realise that they were pushing them too hard to change.

The worst thing is when everyone can see it coming – except you.

Case study

Take my friend Harry.

He’s an awesome, outgoing guy that met and fell in love with a vivacious, larger-than-life woman who the thought was the one. She was desperate to have kids straightaway and even though he wasn’t ready, he went along with it. Then, once the baby was born, she started demanding more and more “compromises” – she became increasingly controlling, as well as cold and bitchy to his friends and family.

In little stages, Harry’s ended up agreeing to compromise so many little pieces of who he is, what he wants and the kind of relationship he was looking for that there’s hardly any of him left. These days, he looks like a shell of himself. Already he books himself on every work trip he can, as a chance to escape from a home life he feels trapped by and blow off steam. Each time, it becomes harder and harder to return. Each time, he’s more and more resentful of having to push himself back into that little box called “compromising your personality”. You can just tell that eventually, he’s going to snap like a twig, and I hate to imagine what ill-advised or self-destructive cry for help will constitute his personal mid-life crisis.

Because the trouble is, your midlife crisis isn’t genuinely tackling the problem; it’s superficial.

Buying a flashy car, pursuing an extra-marital affair or experimenting with drugs (or all three, if you’re Kevin Spacey’s character from American Beauty) might give you a temporary sense of reclaiming your youth, but it’s not going to help you feel at peace you are in any real way.

To do that, you need to actually reassess what’s been lost. What parts of you that have been compromised.

Did you use to…

Did you used to have the confidence to speak your mind? Were you once spontaneous and open to trying new things? Did you always dream of being able to travel and have an adventure but somehow ended up going on the same package holiday every year? Do you resent your other half for talking down to you, for acting as if everything you say is nonsense, for refusing to recognise your needs?

These feelings and frustrations won’t evaporate now that you’re the proud owner of a Harley Davison or tattoo.

You might have a nice shiny distraction, but it’s your relationship dynamic that you need to address. Rather than escaping into a fantasy world where your partner can’t dictate your behaviour, the important thing is to start setting boundaries in the realworld. Getting used to asserting yourself, calmly and rationally – and breaking out of the cycles of behaviour that see you ceding too much ground on the things that really matter to you.

Otherwise, what are you doing except lashing out at your other half? Having a teenage tantrum at the tender age of 50? This is not going to give you the peace and happiness you’ve missed out on all these years. It is not going to give you the tools you need to establish a healthier dynamic in your current relationship, or in your next one.

Too late?

Of course, if you’ve left it too late, it might not be possible to fix things with your partner. This feeling that “Enough is enough, I’ve lost too much of myself already” is a common enough reason to go through a divorce.

But like any midlife crisis or reassertion of independence, divorce itself is not the cure

But like any midlife crisis or reassertion of independence, divorce itself is not the cure.

Once that person is out of your life, you won’t have someone to resent or blame anymore for your failure to be yourself. Suddenly, you’re exposed and vulnerable, and it’s all down to you.

You now need to find your way back to that person you were before and re-learn how to live in their skin. You need to figure out how you hold on to your principles or the things you value the most, even when someone pushes you to drop them. Otherwise, you’ll soon find yourself making the same compromises again and again – and there are only so many times you can go through a crisis and survive.

 
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Know someone who you think might be heading for a midlife crisis? Or have you been through this process with your own partner? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!