Respond Or React? In Each Interaction You Grow or Defend

OUR BIGGEST RELATIONSHIP WOWS OVER 40 YEARS OF MARRIAGE – PART 14 OF 31

Let’s get right to the acid test for your close relationship, for any relationship really–getting undefended in the right-now moments of your days. It’s SO tempting to get righteous, indignant or downright peeved when it really looks like your partner is:

Picking on you…

Misunderstanding your perfectly innocent comment…

Not seeing your point of view, again.

There actually is a choice here that gets obscured by the vacuum-bag debris of defensiveness. Defensiveness is wired in; we get defensiveness when our nervous systems register an offense, real or imagined. What most people don’t know is that you can learn to respond rather than react. Rather than a rat in the same old maze, you can grow your responsiveness and create new journeys, new adventures. Rather than the same old two-note nyah, nyah, nails-scraping sound of disharmony, you can create rich musical and varied harmonies with others. And each interaction is, you guessed it—your choice.

Read the full series: Our Biggest Relationship Wows