When the goal is positivity

[Zues126]

When I listened to him and hearing the things he is angry about with me, I kept thinking to myself the anger you feel for me is just way too out of proportion. You keep hanging on to this anger and it is not helping. I am not a horrible villain, just someone who made decisions impulsively and said things to you because I was hurt. You need to let this go. all you are doing is rehashing and coming up with things to be angry at. Etc

I realized it is very similar to me with my anger torwards him.

Awesome insight Julie. Good job.

I never remember to validate in the heat of things either.

I don't think validation is a technique you should try to remember. I think it is the natural outcome of understanding your partner. If you can 'forget', this just means you haven't really understood his point of view. Because if you did, you wouldn't lose sight of it.

There was a story I never forgot about the dad with 3 kids riding home on a bus one day. The dad was quietly looking out the window. The kids were running up and down the aisles, running into other passengers, causing a ruckus. The dad did nothing to stop them and was just not attentive. As the kids grew more wild, the passengers on the bus started exchanging glances at each other, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads. Finally, one passenger decided he needed to address it. He tried to be polite but it was clear he was irritated. He walked up to the dad and said "excuse me, but if you haven't noticed your children have been behaving a bit inappropriately and it's bothering some of the passengers. Would you mind talking to them about it?" The dad turned slowly and said in a monotone voice, "I'm so sorry, I hadn't noticed. It's been a hard day. We are on our way back from their mother's funeral and I guess none of us really know how to handle it."

I read that over 10 years ago and it stuck with me. I believe it was from the 7 habits of highly effective people, but the point was about paradigm shift. How we see things a certain way, and how that can shift entirely. Once it shifts, it doesn't just shift back.

So once you truly hear what your H is saying, you won't need to remember to validate, any more than the passenger on the bus would need to try to remember to be patient with the dad the remainder of the trip home.

I'm not trying to beat this to death, but rather than trying to remember to act like you're hearing him, keep working on doing what you did above and actually get to know who he is inside and why he is doing what he is doing.

Proud of you J.