A lot of Westerners married to a Filipina, after the initial excitement for the relationship has passed (as it inevitably does), start experiencing sinking feelings of hopelesness once they find out what being married to a person who is dead set in ways that go completely against the grain of the Western ones really entails.
One of my followers recently asked me: "In one of your posts you wrote about time management in Pinoy understanding. It is a great shock for me, since I am the type of man who cannot procrastinate....." and he, basically went on to ask how he can help her to change and become more structured and organized.
For many years I have struggled with similar feelings and attempted to turn my wife into my ideal and "improved" version of her.
And this is the trap that we all fall into: "I will be happy when she....I will be happy if she....".
Not only do we fall into this "I will be happy when...I will be happy if...." trap when we interact with others, we actually even do it with ourselves: "I will be happy when I....I will be happy if I....": we put conditions around our happiness feelings and in so doing we postpone the feelings of happiness that we could leapfrog to right now.
Not only does feeling miserable about our partner's reality and wanting to change it at all cost keep us from enjoying the relationship right now, it also is a very ineffective strategy to actually get the other person to change. Why? Because labeling a person as "not enough" makes that person feel disconnected from us, and how can we possibly expect another person to change into what makes us happy from a place of lack of connectedness?
Also being in love with an ideal version of our partner rather than the "real thing" basically puts the focus on our own happiness and we become like those parents whose children want to become, let's say, an artist but they tell them: "you are not going to become an artist, I want you to be a lawyer", which is another way of saying: "I understand that becoming an artist would make YOU happy, but who cares about YOUR happiness, you are going to do what makes ME happy....and, by the way, I love you".
It isn't gonna fly.....
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