I believe I have had a breakthrough. Instead of holding anger against people, I have taken a new tack. I'm looking at things from THEIR perspective, instead of just mine and how pissed off I am. It really helps you figure out how things go wrong and keeps you from festering with all the anger and disappointment.
I really hate that there are a couple of people that I don't get along with. It's not an overwhelming thing, but it's one of those things that are always in the back of your mind and just bothers you. You wonder how it happened and what you could have done to cause it and/or stop it. I've finally got the perspective to understand the whole thing.
Someone in the family got upset because I had my two youngest kids within a week of both of her kids' birthdays. I spent a lot of time trying to make everyone understand that I didn't mean to get pregnant at any specific time with my kids (or at all with the third), and how I was offended by anyone saying anything. In the end, what I needed to realize that despite how I felt, if it was the other way around, I would have felt like it was on purpose too, and I should have just apologized, or at least said, "I'm sorry you feel that way. I didn't do it on purpose, but I feel bad that it's turned out that way."
Someone I was friends with back in the day is no longer my friend. We were getting an apartment together with another friend, and while I continued to look, she ended up getting an apartment with her sister, leaving me totally in the lurch. I got pissed off, and we haven't talked since (except for one embarrassing episode where I called her, hoping to be friends again, and she blew me off). Now, with some perspective, I get it. I didn't have a job, and figured I'd just find one once we had an apartment (I figured I wanted to get a job close to where I lived, and we weren't sure where we would be living), and I should have realized that she was scared of signing a year long lease with someone who was seemingly broke with no job prospects. She could have ended up paying all of the bills, which wouldn't have been cool. I understand why she moved in with her sister. That made a hell of a lot more sense.
Someone in the family asked Russ to be his best man at his wedding. It is at a time that's somewhat inconvenient for us because of Quinn being in first grade, and considering we can't pull her out of school at all (she struggles enough in kindergarten), Russ had to say no. That translated to them that Russ was selfish and jealous. We got stuck on trying to defend our stance that we are happy with our life and aren't jealous of anyone, and that we weren't being selfish by looking out for our kids' needs before anyone else's needs. Yesterday, it smacked me in the head. If one of our groomsmen or bridesmaids said when we asked, "No, we can't do it," we would have been badmouthing them for YEARS and probably not talked to them. I get it now. A wedding is supposed to be your day as a couple, and you expect the people you care about to care enough to drop everything to be there for you. That's not saying that we're going to change our priorities. That's just saying I GET IT NOW.
I think if you're having any sort of communication problem with ANYONE, you need to try and look at it from their perspective, and it will give you some insight into what the problem is. What's really the point of trying to be right all the time? You know where you stand and what you did or didn't do. There's no problem with expressing it once or twice, but beating a dead horse with it isn't going to help things. It's alot easier to move past things when you're not trying to be the victor in every fight.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
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