Relationship Satisfaction is an Inside Job

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Chuck McKay, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

Your ability to relate well to others depends on your ability relate well to yourself. The greatest gift you can give to the people around you is to present yourself as a whole and thriving person. If your loved ones need help, you will be a Level 99 rugged, kick-ass Grizzly Bear Linebacker Warrior for them.

But leveling up does not come from self-deprivation.

To assess how you relate to yourself, think of yourself as two people. What are you doing for you? What are you doing to you? Have you called yourself a ugly, rancid, or stupid lately? Make sure you get that in at least once per day. And since it’s such a healthy message for you, it must be good for others, too, right? So next time you feel like doing your good deed for the day, go find a few second-graders and call them ugly, rancid, and stupid. Then watch them thrive!

Do you imagine that you can have a successful relationship if you yourself are not thriving? Or did you buy into the Disney fairy tale that you can’t thrive until you find your Prince or Princess Charming?

I sometimes submerge myself in misery when joy is readily available. I consider it a superpower because it magically transforms the mood of anyone who tries to interact with me. If I could channel this ability I would use it against criminals, slinking through the night to infect the bad guys with the green fog of my toxic mood, leaving them too flummoxed and depressed to bother trying to escape the police.

Instead, I have often watched in horror the fog tumble out of me, indiscriminately infecting anyone unfortunate enough to be lingering in my midst.

I remember the first time I found relief from the poison. It happened a few summers ago at my favorite spot in nature, a place where a pristine mountain stream has spent the last a few hundred-thousand years smoothing a mountain of granite into magnificent waterslides and swimming holes that overlook a stunning view. It’s so beautiful that I don’t even care that people pee in the water. And yes, this is the place where I spent a huge chunk of the day giving myself a mental atomic wedgie. Why? Because I f—-ing hated my loser self for being a f—-ing loser, that’s why.

You see, my wife and my daughter, age 9 at the time, confidently climbed up some of the steeper rock formations to explore less accessible parts of the falls, and I sat in the shade and sipped a nice bottle of Self Loathing, Chickenshit flavor. I’m afraid of heights. And I don’t trust my balance. And I could not bring myself to be the kind of father I believed I was supposed to be – one who joined his kid on her adventures instead of whimpering in cowardice under a tree, hoping she didn’t fall and crack her skull open when I was totally not there to help her. Because I suck.

Have you ever endured this kind of thought stream in your mind? If so, my hat goes off to you for still being here. It’s enough to drive a person insane, especially if you have to listen to it every day. Thankfully, those tracks don’t often scream in my head anymore. When I’m on my game I keep them in the distance, barely audible from a few hundred yards away.

One of my key turning points took place on that sun-splashed slab of mountain granite. Somehow, in the middle of my stupor, it occurred to me that I was one of about 30 people there, nearly all of whom were strangers. From there, my mind naturally wondered what we all looked like from above. I imagined the 30 of us appearing to God as ants appear to us. I brought my imagination about 100 feet up into the air, and I imagined what I would think if I could see everyone from that vantage point, including their thoughts and feelings. I said, “hm, here are various people with various strengths and problems. Most of them are having a good time, that’s nice to see. Oh, here’s one who has a weakness that doesn’t mesh well with this environment; too bad. Ah, he’s torturing himself over it. How silly! He doesn’t realize that every other person here has serious issues. Jeez, he’s only 20 feet away from a person who brings her kids to the doctor six times a month for problems that don’t exist. Oh, and there’s one who abandoned his kids ten years ago and has a gambling problem… and this one doesn’t wash hands after going to the bathroom even though it only takes about 20 seconds to at least make a cursory effort to participate in the universally-recognized method for not spreading infectious disease all over every touchable surface in the known universe, because he has way more important things to do, evidently. And over here is someone who goes off on tangents too much in his writing. But since there are no casinos or bathrooms on this mountain, my friend down there is suddenly convinced he’s the only one who isn’t worth a dog turd under a pile of Blockbuster gift certificates.

It was around that point that I realized that I could decide, in that moment, whether I had enough courage to climb the rocks, and if not, I could find another way to enjoy myself. I used a nearby trail to meet up with my family further upstream. And by the time I did, I had no resentment or guilt left to spew onto anybody, and I was able to pee in the water in pure bliss.

I don’t know how it occurred to me to bring my imagination skyward, but I thank Cory for the revelation, and I repeat the exercise frequently. If I keep my Earth-bound tunnel-vision, I am prone to frustration and sadness, because I tend to judge my efforts based on results. If I transfer my perspective to above, I can shift to, “Here’s a guy who is trying to help a kid. And he refuses to give up on him. I love when that happens. Maybe I’ll slow down his balding as a little reward.”