PERCEPTION AND PERSPECTIVE
It so happens that I often speak with men who are perplexed at how to handle their partner’s foul moods.
“When she’s in a pissy mood, it throws me off my game,” they will say. It follows that they feel significant disregard from her in the home when she’s such a frame of mind.
Think for a moment about the word disregard.
You already know it means to NOT pay attention to something or someone, to ignore. Get a sense of how her emotional state affects you.
If you find her mood bothersome, unsettling, distracting, etc., and that it preoccupies your thoughts and feelings, ask yourself why that is.
When else have you felt this way?
When is the first time those feelings made their way into your awareness?
At what other time did you find your body and being negatively affected by someone else?
You might even body trace your present feelings to the very first time you remember feeling these sensations.
Now, think of how these are HER negative feelings… and ask yourself how those feelings are somehow influencing and even directing your own feelings today.
Why is that? How is that?
How can it be that you, a separate person from her, are suddenly taking on her foul mood. I know, I know, it’s as if we are following the contagion of a yawn.
Her negative mood says jump and in response, your nervous system says, “How high?”
(See the Taming Shame course for a full dissection and strategies around this topic).
The biggest mistake a man makes in those situations is taking things personally.
He does it automatically. It’s subconscious, his nervous system putting out a hypothesis which has worked in the past… for him to evaluate and possibly adopt in the present.
The thing is, to take on her negativity, he must relegate who he is presently to a former version of himself.
In all likelihood, to a time of his life when his very existence depended on the kindness and goodwill of a powerful figure. That’s usually mom (though not always).
In those long ago moments, he may have had fear struck into the center of his heart. Let me explain.
I have two older brothers born 11 months or so apart. This makes them Irish Twins (as siblings born within 12 months of each other are known).
This is something common in Irish Catholic families. My very devoted Ma had ten pregnancies in 12 years (bless her Irish Newfie heart).
A daughter soon followed the birth of my brothers, but she died in the days after she was born. It was the 1950s, and ma blamed painting the basement stairs with lead paint during her pregnancy for losing the child.
I was born next: 9 pounds 10 ounces of maternal redemption.
As a youngster, I longed to be part of an older boy’s trio. In a family of eleven, you needed allies.
The gap between my age and my two older brothers caused by the birth and loss of deceased sister Marie Claire (the name Ma had picked for her) made it difficult for them to take me seriously.
I was very much the lesser brother, never fully accepted but tolerated, especially if I was useful. My brother once told me that all they had to do to get me to act on something was dare me. A double dare meant it was as good as done.
Strive as I might to belong, equality wasn’t possible. The age hierarchy was too great an influence.
Though, when it came time for punishments, an exception was made. After all, I couldn’t very well disown them after striving to be like them and so, I was often lumped in with them when things went wrong.
I remember ma would get pissed at my older brothers, Duncan and Stephen, especially the eldest, Duncan, and threaten to send us all off to a boy’s reformatory in Alfred, Ontario.
We knew it existed because Mr. Bougie down the street reportedly worked there.
I was six or seven… and she’d say she was going to call Mr. Bougie and send us off… and I believed her. When I first got wind of it I even remember asking her if she was serious and in her frustration she insisted that she was.
Oh the horror! I expected the boy’s prison van to pull up at any moment and take me away. What did I know?
It was one of the many Sword of Damocles scenarios of my childhood.
Talk about abandonment fear.
That weakness lingered in the back of my emotional self as an adult. A similar thing happens in an infinite number of ways to countless men.
Parents install abandonment fear in children, mostly with good intentions and sometimes in frustration, for the sake of survival and socialization.
A three-year old will walk onto a busy road unawares until we drive home the idea that a car might run them over.
They ask what would happen. We tell them it would hurt and may kill them. More importantly, that we may never see them again and this would make us sad.
We may repeat that theme for years to effect change in the kid’s roadside protocol so they look both ways before attempting to cross a street.
It is leverage that works.
So next time you find yourself a little out of sorts when she’s out of sorts, stop and track its true source.
Almost always it’s not what’s before you. Rather it’s a prediction from long ago coming back in case it’s useful once more in the present.
The trick is to use perception and perspective.
You must have the perception to know you are triggered by your partner beyond what the circumstances call for and realize the predictive nervous system is doing its thing.
Keep in mind, all you own in life as an adult are your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
How is it you, as a grown man, are controlled as if you are an emotional puppet?
By doing so you may gain perspective.
I have long ago abandoned free will, so I am saying that with awareness you can exercise a little more “free won’t.”
You can put her remarks or foul mood or detachment into its proper context. Soon, you and I both may see it’s not about me or about you.
In fact, it’s more that her gifts sometimes turn on her.
Her fantastic powers of wider scope with heightened sensitivity to sickness and danger are often too much for her to bear and she suffers accordingly.
It means she sometimes finds herself in protection mode instead of connection mode.
The Quebec French up my way have a saying for that: “Nous avons tous les défauts de nos qualités.” We all have the faults of our qualities.
I guess we could say this is what is meant by “there is a price to pay for everything” and “nothing for nothing”.
The last thing I need to do is make things worse by failing to realize that she is temporarily offline.
So, if possible, I rescue her from her insanity with reassurance. What I won’t do is make it worse by becoming needy in the face of her discontent.
That’s like adding fuel to her fire.
LOL (I know you know it).
Instead, we can best tend to order in the kingdom and remain unflustered by her foul mood…
… and instead encourage her.
If necessary, I may hold up my hand and impose a limit. I’m nobody’s punching bag. Remember respect is earned or taken. The “wrong guy” signal, said with a calm smile, deflects her angst elsewhere.
But it is compassion that best serves you both. Compassion for myself and what might trigger me. Compassion for her as her gifts turn on her to create her discomfort.
Compassion is like that. It spreads. Seems to me the feminized culture complains we need more compassionate men. Kill two birds with one stone by starting with you.
Surely, we can do that for a partner. We can do that for ourselves. For us. For Team Human…
Only men can ensure love prevails in a home.
She can’t do it without you.
Men lead, women command…
Next time, use perception and perspective to rise up and remain a powerful man.
A powerful defender of life.
Could you do that?
Questions? Comments?
true and free…
cw
* want to talk about how you can manage this stuff on your own? Talk with me and let’s see what we can do together…
