Moments of Joy, Moments of Pain
I was walking our rescue pitbull terrier, Fannie, as I do nearly every day. She had stopped to lie in the shade under a tree, as she does nearly every day. She is a creature of habit and she stops under this same tree any day when the temperature is over 70 degrees. I often hear the lady of the house doing dishes through the open window just behind the tree. This lady once stopped as she was driving away from her house, to tell me how much she enjoys seeing Fannie roll around on the grass under her tree. It’s a moment of joy for her.
On this particular day, as I stood on the sidewalk for a moment watching Fannie, I heard an argument coming from the kitchen window. The woman started to say something and her husband shouted, “Shut up, b — ch!” It startled and hurt me at the same time. I was hurt on her behalf. I urged Fannie to get up. All was quiet as we moved on, but thoughts of that couple lingered with me.
I wondered, “What does love look like in that situation?” and “How will they be able to move forward in love?”
I have gotten to know a lot about many of my neighbors as I’ve walked my neighborhood over the years. I know that the lady of the house I described above and her husband have two children, a boy and a girl, who are about 8 and 10. I know that the boy has special needs and may be on the Autism spectrum. I know they’ve lived in that house, a rental, for about two years. And now I know that they sometimes have arguments that end in hurtful words — words that bruise, wound, and inflict pain.
Arguments can do that. We sometimes say things that are hurtful when we are angry or we behave in ways that wound just as deeply as words. We roll our eyes and communicate contempt. We stonewall (refusing to communicate) and negate a person’s very presence. We blame and criticize when things don’t go our way. We commit “sins of omission,” withholding affection, attention, appreciation, and so on. We miss needs and potential connections.
How do we move forward after those moments of pain? How do we heal the pain we’ve inflicted or that has been inflicted upon us? In some cases a heartfelt, “I’m sorry, please forgive me” will suffice. But there are times when the hurt from a conflict runs deep and causes emotional injuries. And there are other times when we aren’t even aware that we’ve grieved our partner. In those cases, more is required than a simple apology in order to heal from the injury. In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John M. Gottman and Nan Silver write:
Once, after my dad had passed away, my mom expressed regret that she and my dad had not taken daily walks together like my husband and I did every evening. She said that she had once asked my dad to start walking with her in the evening, but his response had not been favorable. His reasoning was that he walked miles a day to traverse the entirely ground level hospital where he saw patients and performed surgeries. Clearly, this had caused an emotional injury to my mom that had not been healed or forgotten in over 25 years.
If she’d been able to process this grievance with him, she might have recognized and said that what she was really asking for was more companionship. She might have owned that she did not make that explicit. She might have said that his refusal made her feel hurt, unheard, and uncared for. He might’ve apologized for not understanding that. Then, they might have discussed what else they could do to increase their companionship.
They did, in fact, find a way to increase their companionship and regain emotional connection once they started to sail together in the years thereafter, but what was missed was the opportunity to process that initial grievance. As a result, my mom still felt the hurt from that earlier interaction many years later. If they’d had that conversation, her grievance…hurt feelings that he didn’t consider her need and what she was really asking for…might have been healed and not have lingered inside of her for all those years.
So, how do we transform those moments of pain and injury into moments of greater intimacy and ultimately, moments of joy?
We have to risk vulnerability and follow a process similar to the imagined processing that I just described above. As we think about one specific incident in which emotional injury occurred, like my mom’s request of my dad to start walking together in the evenings, we need to initiate a conversation about it. We need to take turns talking about it: including the feelings experienced, the reasons behind them, any triggers that may have been present, each person taking responsibility and apologizing for their part, and then planning ahead. This kind of processing not only promotes healing but also deepens emotional intimacy.
Several years ago, my husband was going through a period of personal transformation. During this period, he asked me to share with him any memories I had of being hurt by him. He did this because he recognized that earlier in our marriage he had not been good at apologizing for his mistakes and he wanted to correct that. I resisted his request for some time because I did not want to bring up past hurts. I thought it would only inflict more pain on him.
But he persisted, so I started to share memories that came up when he would ask. I would tell him about the incident, how it had made me feel, and why. Afterward, he would sincerely apologize to me. I had long ago forgiven him for whatever we were talking about, but this processing was more healing to me than I had imagined it would be. The grievance…the hurt and pain, had been fully processed with and understood by him and there was now an apology attached to the memory, where there hadn’t been one before. It was healing for my husband as well because it gave him closure and allowed him to let go of the emotional baggage left by mistakes he’d made.
Processing these past grievances drew us closer together. Where there had been pain tucked away in hidden places inside both of us, there was now freedom and even joy in the deepening of our love.
Moments of Joy, Moments of Pain
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