Identifying Feelings Adds Happiness To Relationship
“I want a divorce,” announces Molly, 32, the mother of two boys, 9 and 7. “Don doesn’t understand, and I don’t think he ever will: I need to be my own person. With him and the boys, I feel penned in and unimportant. They all take me for granted.”
Molly and Don, a social worker, met in college, and they married right after graduation. While Don pursued his master’s degree, Molly stayed home and had two children.
“I resented the fact that Don was in grad school, meeting people, sharing ideas and having a good time,” Molly says. “I should have sensed then that this was the pattern our lives would take.”
Indeed, Don, who now works long days and most weekends, is rarely home. “He spends all his time rescuing other people and has little time for his own family. He makes promises and never keeps them. Everyone resents his procrastinations and his long absences.”
Molly is also swamped with guilt. “I know I’m a terrible mother,” she confesses. “I should be spending more time with my kids - they both have learning disabilities - but when? I can’t do it all anymore.”
Thirty-three-year old Don is baffled.
“I don’t understand why she wants to leave,” he says. “I don’t drink, I don’t beat her, I don’t fool around with other women. All my hard work has been solely for Molly and the boys - what am I doing wrong?
“Except for an occasional snide remark about my late hours, Molly never complained about anything. I thought she was proud of my profession and the fact that peoples’ lives depend on me. And I thought she enjoyed being home with the boys, too.”
Don doesn’t want his wife to leave, but he doesn’t know how to convince her to stay, either.
Slicing Through The Confusion: How To Get In Touch With Your Feelings
“Molly is making one of the biggest relationship mistakes,” says Virginia Fullarton, M.S., a marriage counselor in Lafayette, Calif. “She’s not telling her husband, honestly and directly, how she feels and what she wants.”
Like Molly, men as well as women are often so cut off from their feelings, they don’t realize they even have feelings. While Don needs to spend more time at home and stop procrastinating, Molly has to learn to tap into that swarm of mixed-up emotions that’s preventing her from being happy.
Can a person who’s been so out of touch learn to do that?
Here are some general guidelines to help people like Molly learn to process their emotions:
First, get in the habit of regularly asking yourself: “How do I feel right now? If I’m upset, who am I upset with?”
Admit when something in your life is not working the way you want it to.
Pinpoint the emotion you feel about this problem. For example, Molly might say: “The fact that Don is never home angers me and makes me feel lonely.”
Allow yourself to feel the pain/anger fully; then, think about when in your past you felt this way before and why. Do you see a pattern? Is this something you’ve felt with other mates or with your parents?
Decide what you want. Let both your intellect and your emotions guide you to a solution that involves both your head and your heart.
Visualize yourself handling the problem with your mate. Molly worked first on telling Don that she felt overwhelmed having to care for the boys every night, which prevented her from meeting friends or continuing her education. She then told him she’d like to discuss ways he could scale back his work to be more available - and she asked him for a commitment to do that.
Act on your decision. Once Don began to follow through on his promises, Molly stopped talking about leaving. She’s had time to make new friends and take several college courses. Calmer and less stressed, Molly’s also had more patience with her children. “I feel there’s a balance in my life now that never existed before,” Molly said.