How Patience Can Be Your Secret Weapon
As we wait for the world (as a whole since New Zealand is already going to concerts) to get back to a sense of normalcy, I’ve been thinking about how much waiting sucks. It’s not a favorite thing to do but it’s helped me on more than one occasion in my relationships. Do you remember when you learned how to practice patience? If the answer is right now, recently or I haven’t, you're not alone. It’s incredibly difficult to choose to pause instead of immediately reacting. And most times our reactions aren’t of the nice variety. So much of our culture focuses on the reactions, which is probably why our media looks the way it does but that’s a whole different conversation, rather than how to handle situations with love in mind. You know it’s all about the love here!
Imagine you’re in the middle of an argument with your partner about an annoying habit they have that you’ve already told them about a number of times. You’re fuming because maybe you hate repeating yourself or feel like they don’t care about your concerns. As you wait for them to come home or show up for a date all the things you want to scream at them flood your mind. Each thought makes me even angrier. There’s a small part of your mind that tells you to calm down and really get to why you’re upset. You might ignore it and proceed to lay into your partner when you see them. While you tell them about themselves for indulging in the dumb habit, you notice their body tense but their eyes gloss over. They aren’t really hearing you. They just want you to shut up.
Now you could have this scenario happen over and over and wonder why nothing ever comes of it, or you can take a different approach. Ready to hear it? Take a breath and wait for the angry thoughts to pass.
Before you exit this post, wait a minute! Your feelings don’t change if you pause. They just don’t eclipse the root of the issue anymore. Have you noticed how hard it is to stay on topic when you’re upset and trying to prove a point? It’s like your brain is actively trying to keep you off track. So many other small issues come up when you’re mad and pissed you thinks bringing each one up is a perfect idea. I promise you it’s really not. Pausing right before you whisper “you know what?!” under your breath keeps your head from pounding hours after the argument. It’s hard to stop yourself in the heat of the moment so you can start practicing. Try asking your friend (the non-judgmental one) to role play a fight with you until you feel comfortable stopping yourself. This is how you make pausing a habit and once you’re there you can focus on what you really want to say to your partner.
On a petty note:
Honestly, it can give you the upper hand in an argument. Most people aren’t prepared for a level headed person on the other end of a dispute. That’s when you can calmly tell your partner what’s bothering you and see that they heard you rather than just waiting for you to stop yelling. Your partner might be so confused they stop yelling at you and actually listen. They might even apologize for raising their voice instead of staying as calm as you.
Patience gives you the necessary time to process. It gives you time to know which emotions serve you, the situation at hand and/or the desired outcome. Depending on which outcome you want to happen, you can decide which way you would like to handle the situation. For example, if you want an apology you can focus on how your partner’s actions really hurt you. If you want to receive reassurance, emphasize how much you need to know they still love or care for you despite what they did. The point of the argument is to make sure everyone is understood despite whatever the breakdown is. When you utilize patience you can get to the root of your concern much more easily. Who doesn’t want easier fights?
Being a hot head ain’t as cute as we all remember when we were kids. When you see a child get upset, it can make you smile and chuckle since you know whatever they're upset about will most likely blow over. But that commitment to anger and destruction can follow us into adulthood and our relationships. It’s easy to blow up whenever you feel like it but when you’re in relationships with people, you have to at least give them a chance to explain or change the behavior. If you’re not willing to be wrong about the situation to get to a deeper understanding, you haven’t realized you are fighting the problem, not your partner. If the behavior is the issue, it takes time to see a visible change in the relationship. So before you scream at your partner about the same issue you brought up in your last fight, you might be expecting a change way too fast. Give it a couple of months if you’re willing to wait. But if the problem has been going on the entirety of the relationship, you have some internal decisions.
I’m not going to say you need to break up with your partner whenever you’re upset. That gets very old, very fast. Taking time to figure out what the problem is, being patient with your partner when expressing yourself and waiting to see progress are all tools you can use to cut down on the noise complaints you might have been getting in your apartment building. However, you are not obligated to wait until the end of the world to see if your partner listened to you and made a change. Just take a moment to practice patience and see how it changes things. And if it doesn’t, you can go off on me in my comments.
