When the going gets tough, the tough get honest.\u00c2\u00a0 Lying and evading is the easy way out; honesty takes effort.\u00c2\u00a0 For one person, putting effort into the relationship means speaking up when feeling fragile.\u00c2\u00a0 For another, it means listening to a partner rather than bulldozing.\u00c2\u00a0 What is easy for one person may be a challenge for the other.<\/p>\n
Usually those aspects of ourselves that we try to conceal — our personal demons — do shade how we come across.\u00c2\u00a0 We like to believe that what we lock away won’t affect us.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it’s like a radioactive leak:\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the time it does.<\/p>\n
For many people, the hardest thing to say to a spouse is “I’m angry at you.”\u00c2\u00a0 They may feel it; they may communicate it obliquely, but they won’t admit to it.\u00c2\u00a0 The anger strikes too close to taboo emotions.\u00c2\u00a0 This may frustrate the other person because the anger is intuited but never confirmed….<\/p>\n
When your partner doesn’t recoil from your darker feelings it kickstarts your own acceptance of yourself, and your own self-acceptance helps you to create a stronger bond.<\/p>\n
By the Together as Two Stage, you can say to your partner, “It terrifies me to say this, but I have to tell you that I’m furious with you.”\u00c2\u00a0 The other person breathes a sign of relief because your words are congruent with what you portray.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, the anger is out there!\u00c2\u00a0 At that moment, you and your partner are on the way to a special kind of synergy, primed for the type of healing only couples can give each other.<\/p>\n
Because marriage is so interdependent, the growth potential is enormous — not by pleading or demanding, nor sitting at a drawing board, but through the models of integrity you provide for each other.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t develop intimacy without involving and evolving yourself. . . .\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t generate growth, intimacy, or maturity from being polite to each other for fifty years.<\/p>\n
— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, <\/em>p. 214-216<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the going gets tough, the tough get honest.\u00c2\u00a0 Lying and evading is the easy way out; honesty takes effort.\u00c2\u00a0 For one person, putting effort into the relationship means speaking up when feeling fragile.\u00c2\u00a0 For another, it means listening to a partner rather than bulldozing.\u00c2\u00a0 What is easy for one person may be a challenge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,27,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","category-relationships","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}