Sure, if I could go back to Saturday night, I would take a totally different approach. I truly see these statements as examinations of herself and not statements as against me....sometimes the defenses go up.
Many, many moons ago, I was on a job photographing a wedding and we got to the point in the day where we were at the restaurant, some really nice French place in NYC. I was tired from already running around working for about 5 hours, I was hungry, and they were going to feed the vendors, and, as usual, the musicians who had only come in a half hour earlier to set up had already gotten a whiff of food and were seated and being fed, like so many little piggies at their mother's nipples pushing this hungry little piggy out.
The chef came out and I lamented and complained about the circumstances. Then, he did something which struck me then and later influenced me deeply.
When I was done with voicing my hurt, he looked at me in silence for a moment, and said, "OK. You don't know me, I won't take this personally". I didn't really understand it at the time, but now I recognize that whatever I said to him, his initial inner reaction was to personalize my hurt as a complaint against him. Instead of a knee-jerk reaction to it by raising his defenses immediately or whatever, he had stopped to process it first and happened to verbalize his processing. What a good lesson that was.
