Reality Check
I got mad this morning.
Specifically, my husband and I stripped the sheets off our bed. I made a pile of sheets on my side of the bed. He made a pile on his side of the bed. I picked up my pile, went downstairs, and put my pile in the washing machine. He picked up his pile, came downstairs, and said to me, “These were left behind.”
“By whom?” I should have asked. But I didn’t. Instead,
I seethed.
And I worried. If I confronted my husband with my anger, he’d get angry at me and abandon me. Then I’d have to be miserable. And even angrier.
(Do you hear my transference? Fear of abandonment: That tends to point to early anxieties.)
But then I thought about the alternative: Feeling angry and resentful and disconnected and disappointed and self-righteous
all day.
Which would I prefer?
I took the risk.
And damn, girlfriend. My husband explained his thought process. I owned my shit: I shared my interpretation of his inaction, which was based on my expectations of the world and therefore automatic interpretation: that I am, fundamentally, a servant. Especially to men. He expressed horror at the thought.
And I felt incalculable relief.
Even more importantly, we agreed on how we would handle the
sheet pile
going forward.
This is the power of reality checks:
paying attention to your reality (feelings, assumptions, interpretations; your garden)
entertaining the possibility that their reality is different
asking about their reality
owning your shit (sharing your reality without blame, with “I statements”)
coming to mutual understanding, which is relieving, strengthening, even life-changing
making a plan for how to manage similar difficulties in the future
Teachers: