You can’t complain your way into a better marriage.
It’s time we come to terms with our penchant for complaining.
All of us – you, me, Meredith, your spouse – know a thing or two about complaining.
In fact, we’re so good at it that it’s deluded us into thinking that complaining is a good strategy for getting our spouse to change how they show up in our relationship.
So what is complaining?
Complaining looks like this:
“I don’t want you to __x__.”
“Why can’t you ever…?”
“I need you to…”
Complaining also looks like:
“My love language is X, and you don’t speak it!”
“You’re dismissive and avoidant.”
“I can’t accept that… you’re not respecting my ‘boundaries.”Complaining is basically any language you use to prove a point, point out your partner’s flaws or mistakes, or win an argument.
The problem with complaining is that it NEVER works.
It can’t work.
And why is that?
Because the very act of complaining stirs up negative sentiment. And that fills your conversation with negative energy.
No one moves, changes, improves, or self-reflects in a state of negativity.
It’s impossible.
It also violates the fundamental human desire to ask for and receive what you want.
You see, your complaining – for better or worse – isn’t coming from a bad place.
You want things. And you deserve things. But you’re frustrated you’re not getting them.
And I get that. Your partner likely gets it.
The issue isn’t with the request itself.
The problem is with the delivery. The reality is that there is no frictionless way of expressing frustration that isn’t going to be received negatively by your partner.
Again, I’m not telling this to say that your requests, wants, and desires aren’t valid.
What I want to do is give you the communication skills that transcend friction. Scarcity. And lack.
Complaints are almost always rooted in something deeper than that which you are complaining about.
Here’s my personal example:
I don’t want Meredith talking to another man in a way in which he thinks she could be interested in him. I don’t want another man to think he can laugh at me. I don’t want to be humiliated.
All of that is understandable. All of that is my ‘complaining’.
But it’s not sharing with her what’s really going on for me.
The thing under the thing is my deep-rooted belief that I’m leavable.
So what I want her to do, and how I want her to act out in the wild, is to remind me that I’m stayable.
I need to trade the complaining for the sharing of my identity-level wound.
Trade: Don’t let other men hit on you.
For: Remind me that I’m stayable.
Let me ask you:
What will she respond to better?
The complaining I do about some imaginary fear I viscerally experience every time she has an interaction with the other gender?
Or me saying, “I trust you and part of that means that I want to know you’re never going to leave me. Can you tell me that you’re staying – forever?”
It takes a lot of courage to lead with your fear. To share the thing under the thing.
It takes so much courage that we’ll bury it under our complaining and negativity.
Do yourself and your relationship a favor and write down – today – what your biggest fear is.
- Does your partner sharing the load at home make you feel thought of?
- When they’re intimate with you, do you feel desirable?
- Is their attention directed only at you because no other woman could occupy real estate in their mind?
- When they say they’re proud of you, do you know that you’re a successful and good man?
If you want to hear those messages about yourself, then you’ve made the most important first step: you’ve come to understand what your identity-level wound is and figured out what the opposite message you crave to hear is.
Remember, when you trade complaining for courage, you will discover that conversations about not getting what you want in your relationship become easier.
And that’s because vulnerability is soft.
And if your spouse actually is in your marriage operating from genuine authenticity, they won’t look at their partner who’s wounded and choose to inflict more pain.
That would mean that they are a bad actor.
Or wounded themselves. And if that’s the case, then when they find the courage to be vulnerable and ask for what they want, well then you have two people daring to be vulnerable.
Two people who are softening.
Two people who have decided to let their guard down and open themselves up to feeling…
Chosen and cherished again. Perhaps even for the first time in their lives.
