![]() I know that I’m the only person in the house who uses dairy milk, I know that you do almost all of the grocery shopping in spite of the fact that it’s not your job to do so, and honestly, I’m annoyed at myself for forgetting to buy milk, and I secretly wish that someone else would just take care of my responsibilities for me, like when I was a kid. That’s What the am I supposed to eat?” Within a few months, I’d learned to say it more calmly: “I always eat cereal for breakfast, but we’re out of milk and I’m annoyed.” By the same time the following year, I was able to get to the core of the matter more quickly, and was able to express my concerns sincerely-all this, while Kristen continued to listen with patience: “You know, I grew up in a house where my mom took care of all the grocery shopping, and we just always had stuff on-hand. In the early stages of learning to communicate, back when I was forcing a new habit of expression, I would actually say precisely what was on my mind, while Kristen patiently listened: “We’re out of milk. “Use your words,” she would suggest, playfully, reminding me that a tantrum doesn’t yield results. But when we decided that we needed to communicate more effectively, Kristen no longer allowed that to happen. If, for example, I would come downstairs for breakfast to discover that we had cereal but no milk, my instincts were such that I would stomp around the kitchen, holding an empty bowl and rolling my eyes, hoping that Kristen would pick up on my frustration and somehow, perhaps magically, summon eight ounces of milk out of thin air. (What could go wrong with such a sure-fire strategy?) I’d cultivated those “skills” over three decades by the time I decided to start learning a better method of communicating, just a few years ago. ![]() My nature is to brood and sulk, assuming all the while that the person on the receiving end of this man-tantrum would take note of my distress, then take immediate and tireless action to make me happy. Both options have their advantages, and both can be surprisingly challenging. To improve communication between ourselves over the past few years, I have been employing a combination of both using my words and learning to let go. ![]()
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