{"id":437,"date":"2010-08-27T19:09:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T23:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/?p=437"},"modified":"2010-08-27T19:09:09","modified_gmt":"2010-08-27T23:09:09","slug":"my-wife-doesnt-understand-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/27\/my-wife-doesnt-understand-me\/","title":{"rendered":"My Wife Doesn’t Understand Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m in a mid-life crisis, I guess.\u00a0 The passion is out of my life and I\u2019m looking for something more.\u00a0\u00a0 My wife doesn\u2019t understand me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Any polyamorous person on a dating site is almost sure to get a message like this from time to time.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not exclusive to men.\u00a0 Women do a serious version of it, too.\u00a0 So get off your high horse.<\/p>\n

But male or female, if you\u2019ve been in a long-term relationship that\u2019s gotten blah, you might find\u00a0 yourself saying, \u201cOh, it would be so much better if I had a partner that understood <\/em>me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m not saying that your relationship problem isn\u2019t<\/em> that you\u2019re misunderstood, do you really think something so commonplace and clich\u00e9 is really because partners of decades don\u2019t understand each other?\u00a0 Really<\/em>?\u00a0 After decades together.<\/p>\n

You people aren\u2019t paying attention, <\/em>are you?<\/p>\n

And you know what?\u00a0 That\u2019s rather the point.\u00a0 Now, you know ole Mama Java.\u00a0 She\u2019ll never advise you to try to get someone else to behave the way you want to fix your <\/em>problem.\u00a0 But honestly, this kind of intimacy problem is a genuine big deal.\u00a0 More than that, it\u2019s often pretty tragic.<\/p>\n

I want to offer a possible solution, and it\u2019s a good one.\u00a0 If you\u2019re feeling like your partner doesn\u2019t understand you, do something a little counterintuitive:<\/p>\n

Put all your energy into understanding your partner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not suggesting long, drawn-out conversations where you\u2019re prying like a parent with a non-communitive teenager.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work then and it certainly isn\u2019t going to work isn\u2019t going to work in an adult relationship.\u00a0 When I say put your energy into understanding your partner, it means understanding the lack of communication, too.\u00a0 Sometimes, it can be as easy as, \u201cBaby, we haven\u2019t been talking much.\u00a0 Is there a reason you\u2019d like to tell me about?\u201d and find a floodgate opens.\u00a0 Sometimes, it\u2019s a courting process.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t confuse \u201cunderstanding your partner\u201d with \u201cgetting the information you need to have a good lever with your partner\u201d.\u00a0 Understanding means exactly that.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t love and care about and want to know your partner down into his bones, my dear, you have a far worse problem that your partner not understanding you.\u00a0 Got that?<\/p>\n

If you think this is sounding a bit like Stephen Covey\u2019s Habit Five[1]<\/a> of the Seven Habits o Highly Effective People<\/em>, there\u2019s a lot to that.\u00a0 If you\u2019re having trouble connecting, if you\u2019re having a hard time communicating, seeking to understand and understand deeply does two things.\u00a0 The first thing it does is give you a clearer grokking of the issues involved.\u00a0 It is never<\/em> a bad idea to seek to understand a partner deeply.\u00a0 Prying and being invasive is something else entirely.\u00a0 If you\u2019re seeking to truly understand, you\u2019ll avoid being invasive because you\u2019re developing the empathy and compassion to understand how your partner is feeling.<\/p>\n

The second thing that seeking to understand does is build trust.\u00a0 \u2018Member how you were all upset and had your kickers in a bunch because your partner didn\u2019t understand you<\/em>?\u00a0 We all want to be loved and understood by our partners.\u00a0 You partner(s) want you to understand them, too!\u00a0 It\u2019s much easier to make that connection with someone you have seen demonstrate on a consistent basis that s\/he wants to understand you!<\/p>\n

Remember to take it slow.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve gotten to the \u201cMy wife doesn\u2019t understand me\u201d phase, your relationship has been sliding for a long time.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t something you can gloss over for a couple of months and expect everything to be all lovey-dovey and dandy.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to take time and patience.\u00a0 Me?\u00a0 I think good intimate relationships are worth it.<\/p>\n

This won\u2019t solve every single relationship problem you have.\u00a0 Sorry, there\u2019s no shortcuts.\u00a0 But this is a fantastic first step to repair and expand relationships.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Seek first to understand, then to be understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m in a mid-life crisis, I guess.\u00a0 The passion is out of my life and I\u2019m looking for something more.\u00a0\u00a0 My wife doesn\u2019t understand me.\u201d Any polyamorous person on a dating site is almost sure to get a message like this from time to time.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not exclusive to men.\u00a0 Women do a serious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-polyamory-101","category-relationships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}