Having a Successful Relationship with a Difficult Person.
After just having completed my manual: “Healing from Infidelity”: for the faithful partner, I’m starting to work on my next book “Having a Successful Relationship with a Difficult Person”. A number of future blogs will address different parts of this issue. Let me know if you would like to be notified when the book is completed.
The most difficult person we have to deal with is our self. If we are upset, angry, sad or hurt dealing with those feelings is not easy; our feelings follow us everywhere we go. The first step in responding effectively with a difficult person is being able to control with our response to that person both inside our heads and with that person.
Difficult partners often times make us feel angry, hurt, and sad or a combination of these feelings. We become angry because we don’t feel appreciated, understood, or loved. Sometimes we are angry because we feel disregarded. Often what we do is to either strike back or withdraw. When we are angry and strike back at that person usually that starts a war or our partner totally withdraws. When we withdraw we end our communication with our partner. Our natural tendencies of attack or silence don’t work very well.
When I work with couples often times I will hear: I’ve tried everything, I’ve tried being nice, angry and even being silent.” The trouble with that statement is that it’s inaccurate; what’s more accurate is you’ve tried everything that you can think of. Having a good relationship with a difficult person is hard work and takes a great deal of effort.
In the next section, I will be explaining why those of us who have difficult partners have negative feelings of anger, frustration, sadness, and disappointment.