Brave New Kitty

It’s that time of year again. You know, lots of good food, parties, pretty lights, shopping, caroling, chestnuts roasting and sleigh bells ringing…For many people, it’s also the most stressful time of year. There is so much pressure! Pressure to spend too much money, pressure to find the perfect gifts, pressure to be cheerful even if you might not feel that way. Some of the worst pressure of all is to spend time with people who make you crazy, and even worse, pressure to ignore that craziness and act as though nothing’s wrong. I’m talking, of course, about family.

Everybody wants a good relationship with their families; everybody wants the Norman Rockwell holiday. So much so, in fact, that we will ignore the dread in our guts and go back year after year, hoping it will be different, hoping to get something, anything, from them that feels real and personal and about us. And when we don’t get it, the pain can be enormous. Few people talk about that stress; it’s a complex and often intangible thing to name, much less define. But for many of us, it makes the holiday season one of agony, shame, depression, and overwhelming emotional stress.

The main reason this “familial stress,” as I’m going to call it, is hard to name and define is that a family is such a complex organism. For me, for example, good memories of cookies baking and presents to open lay side by side with horrifying ones of my father’s rage and violence this time of year, and the ever-present necessity of “walking on eggshells” around him that intensified about a thousandfold during the month of December. (I have written in more detail about this here and here.) In a family, there are no black and white areas, only infinite shades of gray. This complexity isn’t a holiday issue; coming to terms with the truth about our families is an ongoing, lifelong process. But if you have particularly painful truths you are trying to come to terms with, the holidays can be like tearing open those old wounds and grinding salt into them.

To complicate matters, the pressure to be happy has both internal and external sources. Not only do we wish for a connection that isn’t there, but we are also bombarded with messages that it’s there for everybody else, that such a connection is normal–the implication being that we are abnormal because we don’t feel it. (And that maybe, if we buy exactly the right gift, the connection will be made and the emptiness filled–but that is another topic.)

Well, I’m here to assure you that you are not abnormal. Not having that idealized family connection is normal; so is wanting it. Or maybe you haven’t identified the source yet, you just know there’s an emptiness inside that you think shouldn’t be there–that’s normal, too, both the not knowing and the thinking it should somehow be different. It’s all normal! The emptiness, the angst, the sense of loneliness that all of us occasionally feel (some worse than others) during the holidays, it’s all normal.

It’s the Norman Rockwell family that isn’t normal, because it doesn’t exist.

The thing is, existential angst and unmet needs are part of the human condition. Everybody feels these things; just some more than others. But because the holidays are all about emotion, all emotions, good and bad, get magnified. So it makes sense that the holidays will make all the unmet needs and undiscussed tensions in your family feel worse.

The question is not whether you have familial stress or not, the question is how much it gets to you and what you want to do about it.

If your level of familial stress is low, then I’m happy for you. Don’t read another word of this essay and go out and have fun! But if your level of familial stress is high, then you need to stop whatever you’re doing and figure out how to best take care of yourself through the holidays. Everybody’s situation is different, and it would be impossible to speak to them all. But as a person with an extremely high level of familial stress (which I experienced for many years as staggering depression for the entire month of December), here’s what I’ve figured out.

First and foremost, give yourself permission to do what you want. This is the most important thing of all, I think. You do not have to do anything simply because it is expected of you. You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do. You do not have to overspend, overeat, put up a tree, cook a huge meal, or pretend to be happy if you don’t feel that way. Most of all, you don’t have to visit a family that makes you crazy and, more importantly, unhappy. When I had this epiphany myself many years ago, I think it was the beginning of actually enjoying the holidays. My father was so miserable around the holidays, he went out of his way to make the rest of his family miserable. One year, as I dreaded the prospect of driving up there for the long holiday weekend, I had an “aha” moment. I realized that, if he really wanted his family home for Christmas, then his actions would show it. But they never did. Ever. Suddenly it was obvious to me that I had no obligation to spend time with people who made no effort to appreciate or enjoy my company. I had always made excuses for him, that he didn’t know any better because of his tortured soul, etc., etc. But of course, he did and does know better; he’s an intelligent adult who is capable of kindness, but chooses not to express it and in fact goes out of his way not to. Why should I feel any obligation to spend time with such a person? Suddenly, it seemed insane that I would make such an effort for someone who made no effort whatsoever on his end. In this realization, I found freedom. I stopped trying, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

My situation was less complicated than most; my father being a violent drunk around the holidays made it easy, once I realized that I got to take care of myself, holiday season or otherwise. Most people’s situations are more complicated, I know. But the point is to free yourself of obligation. The holidays are supposed to be fun, and you are free to make them fun for yourself and the people in your life who truly love and care about you. Let go of all the other stuff. Just let it go, and see how good it feels! And if people try to guilt you and shame you into complying to their wishes, see their actions as validation of your decision. Then let that go, too.

But what if you decide to see your crazy-making family, anyway? You make the journey, haul your luggage in, haul the gifts in, all while trying to ignore the angst percolating inside of you. You want things to go well, but they don’t. Your mother is complaining, your father is drinking too much, your siblings are picking at each other, and nobody is happy. Guess what? You can leave! If it’s what you really want, you can pack everything back up and leave. There is nothing holding you there. You are an adult. You wanted things to be different but they weren’t. So salvage what you can of the season and find something fun or useful to do. You may cause a stir, and you may end up with some fallout to deal with, but if your gut tells you it’s the right thing, pay attention. The gut is never wrong.

If doing what you want means not seeing or setting different boundaries with your family, are you being selfish? Yes! Gloriously so! Deliciously so! Necessarily so! Because–and here is the beautiful irony–it is only when we learn to take proper care of ourselves that we become able to take proper care of others. It is only in loving ourselves, with all our warts and shortcomings, that we can love the warts and shortcomings in others. It’s sort of the Prodigal Son parable: only by leaving our families do we fully come to appreciate and accept them for who they are. Only by striking out on our own can we come back to them with a fuller, more tolerant perspective. And only by learning to meet our emotional needs ourselves can we be happy with a family that doesn’t do so very well.

You may never get what you want from your family, but only in taking care of yourself does it become a possibility. As always, taking care of yourself is the best way–indeed, the only way–to take care of other people. If you don’t, you stay stuck in an empty, unsatisfying, dishonest cycle of behavior in which nobody ever gets what they really want.

If you struggle with familial stress, if you find yourself overwhelmed, sad, anxious, irritable, or depressed during “the most wonderful time of the year,” you are not alone, and you are not abnormal. Don’t discount or minimize those feelings. Give them a voice. Listen to what they’re telling you. I assure you, it’s where all the answers lie.

On that note, best wishes for a happy holiday–a truly happy one, whatever it takes!

It is a fallacy that people in healthy relationships don’t fight. If people in a long-term relationship don’t occasionally fight, it’s highly probable that one or both partners aren’t being honest about their feelings. This is an easy predicament to fall into. When people like each other a lot, then they want to please each other. This is alright, but only to a point. If you get into the routine of not voicing something you feel strongly about for fear of risking disapproval, this is not healthy. A long-term habit of not voicing feelings, thoughts, and opinions results in built-up tensions, hostilities, resentments, and a basic emotional disconnection in the relationship (if you feel “alone” in your relationship, then you are experiencing emotional disconnection). To make matters worse, when couples like this finally do fight, the fight ends up about all the wrong things–nothing either person has an emotional stake in–and nothing ever gets resolved.

Before I go further, let me define “fight.” By fight, I mean arguing about personal issues, as in a difference of opinion or hurt feelings (which covers a big range of possibility) with the goal of resolving the issue and increasing intimacy in the relationship. Fighting as I mean it involves two people who consider themselves equals and feel safe enough in the relationship to say what’s on their minds (even if they haven’t yet learned how to do so very well). If fighting in your relationship means something else, such as manipulative mind games, psychological cruelty, or even physical aggression, then these suggestions won’t be of much help. You have bigger problems to solve. Also (and I hope this is obvious), if one or both people are under the influence of mood-altering chemicals, any fighting is a pointless waste of time and energy. Better to try and have fun together, or keep your distance if necessary, and save the problem-solving for a more lucid time.

I could use the word “argue” but I like the messiness implied by “fight.” To me, fighting means rolling up your sleeves and really digging into the issue. With the caveats listed above–that both people feel equal and safe, and are sober–fighting is my preferred word. But it doesn’t really matter. If you prefer “argue” to “fight,” that’s just fine.

So anyway, by following a few rules, fighting can solve problems productively and bring couples closer. They are simple rules, but they are not always easy to adhere to because they generally require a person to have both self-control and self-awareness. As these are both ongoing projects for all of us, we won’t always be able to follow the rules and fight perfectly. This is okay; it’s what apologies are made for. As long as we’re making the effort, there will always be progress.

Here are the rules:

• Don’t fight with a person not willing to resolve problems. This might sound obvious, but it can be hard to discern, especially if you grew up with an emotionally distant parent who you spent too much time trying to please. People can stay in relationships like this for decades without realizing the futility of their efforts. I know it goes against the accepted wisdom that you should “work on a marriage,” but if your partner fits into this category, there is little to work on. Don’t waste any more of your precious time and energy trying to fix things with someone who can’t or won’t hold up their end. Life is just too short. (How you figure this out is another topic, but here is one post I wrote about it.)
• Don’t fight about non-pertinent issues. Do you know why people fight about the toothpaste tube and the toilet paper roll? Because fighting about what’s really bothering you is too risky. It’s far easier to focus your energy on something mundane than to say, “My feelings were hurt when you said x or did y” or “I want to do x differently than we have been.” It takes courage and practice to approach your partner with sensitive issues honestly, but this is how intimacy grows. So before you fight, clarify in your mind what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it, and how you would like to resolve it. And stay away from trivial topics, because fighting about them won’t clear up anything and won’t bring you closer together.

  I should also mention here that sometimes people fight about non-pertinent issues because they don’t know what they’re really angry about; in fact, unidentified emotions are quite common. Sometimes outside help like a marriage counselor can help couples identify their issues and talk openly (often for the first time) about them. Having said that, anger between couples almost always boils down to a few basic issues: not feeling heard, not feeling appreciated, or not feeling loved. Scary as it can be to talk about this stuff, it’s really the only stuff that matters, because if these issues get resolved, everything else is a cakewalk.

• Don’t say “I’m not angry” because you are! People fight because they’re angry, period. You may characterize the anger as hurt feelings, but having hurt feelings is a form of anger. You may also be sad or even afraid, but the primary feeling is anger, because that’s what hurt feelings result in–anger. It is easier, especially for women (who generally aren’t as comfortable with anger as men) to focus on the hurt aspect, but it is far, far, far more productive to focus on the anger and have a discussion about it. The one exception to this would be if you have felt sad in the relationship for so long that you have nothing but a flat numbness where that anger should be. If this is the case, once again you have bigger problems to solve and this article won’t be of much help.
• Don’t get defensive. Whether you are the injured party, hurt by something your partner said or did, or you are the one who did the insensitive thing and are being confronted about it, try your very, very best not to get defensive. Because once we go into defense mode, there is little hope of any resolution until we come out of it again. Rather than try to justify what we did, it’s far better to try and hear what the other person is saying and approach it as rationally and open-mindedly as possible. This is very, very hard to do, and you must forgive yourself over and over for not getting it right. But if you believe in the goodness of the other person and truly desire resolution, then you will be able, eventually, to do what is required: stay calm, listen carefully, and make every effort to hear what the person is telling you.

  There is no need to be defensive, ever. While this is another topic, too big to go into here, try to remember that people’s issues are always their own, and have nothing to do with you, even if they’re about you. Which also means that your defensiveness is about you, even if it feels like it’s caused by someone else. It isn’t.

• Don’t give in just to stop the fight. If your partner insists on blaming you for something that you don’t agree with, don’t give in if it doesn’t feel good to do so. This does not necessarily mean don’t apologize; you can apologize for inadvertently hurting his feelings, yet hold your position, as in, “I’m so sorry I hurt you, I feel awful for doing it, but I didn’t mean to.” Apologize for the hurt feelings, but never acquiesce to accusations of wrongdoing if your intentions were pure. Doing so will only result in more unresolved anger.
• Don’t dig in just because you’re angry. Conversely, if you did do something hurtful or insensitive (which we all do from time to time), don’t be stubborn. Don’t let feeling foolish or stupid deter you from owning your actions. The sooner you admit your wrongdoing, the sooner the issue can be resolved.
• Don’t blame. Blaming, similar to getting defensive, never solves anything. Your anger and hurt feelings are your own, no matter what the catalyst was that brought them on. You can discuss them, you should discuss them, but they are never anyone’s responsibility but your own. This rule can be hard to follow when emotions are running high, but the better you are at it, the better able you’ll be to resolve the fight. If you are so angry that you want to hurl blame, take a time out and come back to the fight when you’re calmer.
• Don’t use charged words. Charged words include profanity, name-calling, and any terms or phrases particular to your partner. For example, because my father loved to call me “oversensitive” when he was in one of his rages, I bristle at that word today and my partner knows it. Using charged words are deliberate attempts to hurt a person and will result in creating a bigger rift rather than a bigger intimacy. If you’re so angry that you have the impulse to resort to such nastiness, try to gain enough composure to excuse yourself from the fight. Nothing good will come from continuing.
• Don’t raise your voice. Ditto everything above about charged words.
• Don’t hesitate to apologize. The willingness to admit wrongdoing and apologize is the mark of a mature person. Take responsibility for your behavior, and let other people take responsibility for theirs. As I said above, this does not mean giving in to the other people’s demands if you disagree with them. That is not honest and will not result in more intimacy. But where you are wrong, or even inadvertently wrong, do be able to apologize for it. None of us are perfect, so apologies should be a part of everybody’s repertoire.

Fighting is inevitable in intimate relationships. Everyone has differences of opinion, bad moods, and sensitive areas that get stepped on from time to time. Everyone wants alone time occasionally when their partner doesn’t; everyone has (or should have) interests outside the relationship that may at times cause a strain. This is all very normal. The key is not to avoid these things, but rather, to deal effectively with them when they come up, in a way that increases rather than decreases intimacy.

It’s a tall order, yes, but worth every effort.

Related posts:

Being Angry With, Not at, Someone
Three Secrets to Cultivating Intimacy
Two Halves Do Not Make a Whole

I saw this status on Facebook:

I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light. Press like if you agree!

Are there people out there who really think like this? People who believe that it is better to reject knowledge than to seek the truth? Who hold ignorance as a value? I am amazed that there are.

It’s ironic that religion began as a way of explaining the world. Myth was the first science, the earliest way man explained his world to himself. Since he had no means to find answers any other way, he invented them. Today that might seem silly, but back in our early beginnings, with a choice between inventing myth and not asking the questions, myth was unavoidable, because asking the questions was unavoidable; as conscious beings we can’t not ask these questions. But now myth–and by myth, I mean ancient texts and stories that dealt with questions of utmost concern such as purpose, meaning, the origin of life, and death–stands in the way of truth. So it is not only ironic that what began as an explanation is now antithetical to actually finding explanations, but also–and far more tragic–that these outdated stories have become literalized by “believers” and taken to be true spirituality.

On the contrary, true spirituality concerns itself with seeking truth, meaning, and utmost concern, with letting go of old beliefs as you grow and understand more and more about the world. Seeking truth and spirituality should be synonymous, but they aren’t. Instead, people cling to these old stories and defend them virulently, even if it means they must hold ignorance as a higher value than understanding.

I guess that sort of explains a lot about the state of the world, huh?

The news: everybody keeps up with it, or feels guilty about not keeping up with it. People want to be perceived as knowledgable and intelligent, and can also feel a sense of urgency about following current events because they think that this is what grown up, responsible people do. Childhood memories of watching Walter Cronkite at dinnertime have lingered longer and gotten in deeper than  most of us realize.

Quite often, the reasons people try to stay up on current events have more to do with meeting external standards rather than any internal, value-driven belief that it’s important to know what’s going on in the world. For those who keep up with current events out of a sense of duty or fear of what others might think if they didn’t, I would like to make a radical proposal: stop bothering. Just stop! Because unless it affects you personally, there is very little reason to pay attention to what’s going on in the world. Seriously.

Oh, you might want the bare facts, sure. Who are the elected officials, what wars are being fought, what natural disasters have occurred, etc. But how many of the details do you really need to know? And how do you choose how you get those details? Today we have such a dizzying array of options, it’s hard to know where to focus your attention. Television news is probably simplest, but it is slanted, glitzed up, a slave to its sponsors, and dependent on the 30-second soundbyte so as not to lose its audience with “boring” in-depth reports. Newspapers offer a bit more depth than television, but are also mostly slanted and still largely incomplete–this is inevitable, even for in-depth reporting (like Frontline and 60 Minutes, for example), because human affairs are complex, multi-faceted events that simply can’t be fully covered even in an hour long report. And if you choose the Internet, you probably seek out the sites slanted to your beliefs–why wouldn’t you? Even if you don’t, how can you know if what you’re reading is a factual account? Without a great deal of background checking, it’s extremely difficult to say for sure. And even if it is a factual account, what facts have been omitted? There is simply no way to know.

Thus, staying informed is largely a fallacy. News is a collection of superficial statements and facts that offers almost no way to truly understand an event. Yet it is the way most people form their opinions about the world. And if they’re not cognizant that such opinions are based on vastly incomplete information, they might make the mistake of thinking they know a lot when they really know almost nothing.

I’ve gotten off track here. My point was supposed to be about reducing stress. In the early 90s, I read a book called Information Anxiety. Outdated as it now is–there was no Internet then–it had some of the wisest advice I’ve ever found for decreasing the stress of modern life: stop trying to stay informed. The amount of information available is overwhelming, and trying to stay on top of it can produce a great deal of anxiety–for no good reason! And this book was written pre-Internet, so I can only imagine what the author would have to say now about the constant bombardment of information that we have today.

If you doubt the wisdom of this, ask yourself what good it does you to be informed. Does it make you feel better? Does it help you relax? Do you feel more in control of your life? Does it improve your quality of life in any way? Furthermore, if you make every effort to stay informed on current events, does it ever really result in a sense of confidence that you know anything about what’s really going on?

If you’re honest, the answers to all of these questions can only be negative. It doesn’t make you feel better to watch the news, it makes you feel worse. It doesn’t help you relax, it makes you feel more anxious (why do you think news shows are all sponsored by antacid and ulcer medications?). And it can’t really result in a sense of understanding for all the reasons I mentioned above. Therefore, to knock yourself out in an effort to gain incomplete and often quite biased knowledge that is only going to rob you of serenity seems like a less-than-necessary undertaking.

So just stop. If you want a simple way to reduce stress in your life, stop trying to be informed. There’s just no reason to bother. Better to spend that time watching sitcoms that make you laugh. Or better yet, doing something far more personal that adds to your quality of life and reduces stress. Exercise. Meditate. Cook a meal from scratch. Spend time with your spouse or kids. Write a letter. Go for a walk. Take a nap. Any one of these would feel better than finding out what’s going on in the world. Let yourself off the informational hook, and devote that time to enjoying life.

And if you do feel a strong need to stay informed, here’s a suggestion. Rather than watch the news, instead read books on topics that interest you. Because the truth is that, without a frame of reference, a body of deeper and more comprehensive knowledge to fit the news into, it’s really pretty useless, anyway. One senator’s opinion or one journalist’s summary means very little unless you understand its context. To gain such understanding, you have to educate yourself–by reading books. Political science, biography, philosophy, biography, economics, and history. Read a wide range of books, those you think you’ll agree with and those you might not. You will probably never become an expert, but possessing even basic background knowledge will be a huge help in analyzing what you’re hearing or reading in a media that is, in general, far more concerned with entertainment value than with imparting factual information.

If you do an internet search on “how to reduce stress,” it will return tens of millions of hits. They will tell you to do things like drink less caffeine, exercise more, meditate, eat a more balanced diet, and numerous other things, all of which are good ideas. But few, if any, talk about reducing the amount of news you expose yourself to. When I first read this back in the early 90s, I embraced the idea immediately, and I have never regretted it. I can’t tell you good it feels to have freed myself from the obligation and guilt of keeping up with current events. And because I read books, I understand most issues better than people who consider themselves well-informed, but whose deeper understanding goes no further than high school history.

In the big picture of your life, current events just don’t matter that much. If you enjoy keeping up with them, or have some other reason why they’re important to you, then by all means do so. But if you’re just trying to do what you think is expected of you, give yourself permission to spend that time doing other things, things that have more personal meaning to you or are simply more fun. Because in the end, there’s no question which is more significant.

It’s a good thing there’s no statute of limitations on talking about unresolved feelings, because if you don’t talk about them, they’re going to come out one way or the other, anyway. The technical psychological term that most fits here is passive-aggressiveness, which can manifest in a number of ways, including procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, “forgetting” to do what you said you’d do, and most of all, picking fights about things other than what’s bothering you, either with the person you’re angry at or a poor innocent third party. During my tenure in therapy, “coming out sideways” was our shorthand terminology for this, which is a great, almost-literal description of what happens when we don’t talk about our real feelings.

Feelings coming out sideways is an extremely common thing. In my family, it worked like this: My father would come home from work frustrated and take it out on my mother. My mother, annoyed at my father’s treatment, burned more dinners and “forgot” to do so many things for him that after awhile I wondered how it could still anger him. And we kids, unable to voice our feelings in this volatile environment, found targets outside the home to focus on: skipping school, doing drugs, failing classes, and finding friends we knew our parents would hate. Even our dogs had behavioral problems, taking out their “frustrations” at neighbors and cars! If you grew up in a family like this, it shouldn’t take much effort to come up with your own childhood examples of sideways behavior (either your parents or your own).

In my family, most of these things were not done consciously, not even on the part of my parents, I don’t think. The idea of talking frankly and honestly about feelings was so unfathomable and so foreign a notion that sideways behavior, as well as a lack of awareness about it, was largely inevitable. And I think this is probably true for a lot of families, which means that if we don’t become aware of and address this issue, we are doomed to repeat it, and raise children doomed to the same fate.

Don’t panic too much yet. We all do some sideways behavior, and we always will, due to our shadow and the impossibility of ever completely understanding ourselves. The goal shouldn’t be to eradicate sideways behavior completely, as that would just serve to make us feel hopeless, but rather, 1) to notice when we do it to the best of our ability, 2) to correct it as quickly as possible, and 3) to make amends where necessary when we’ve fallen short.

Noticing the behavior is the most difficult of these. If you’ve never learned to talk openly about your feelings, it’s likely for good reason. As a child you were probably ridiculed, shamed, or worse if you showed genuine feelings. In such an environment, talking about things that don’t matter and being indirect are great self-protection mechanisms. As such, they become deeply ingrained habits that go back to very early childhood, and this can make recognition of them very hard. When recognition does come, it is often in the form of a painful experience, as none of us like to see how we hurt ourselves and the people we care about–another reason noticing sideways behaviors can be hard.

However, once you do recognize them, the rest is mostly downhill, as such recognition usually awakens a strong desire to change. The necessity of making amends when you fall short is also great incentive to think before you act. And the more you do both of these, the better you’ll become at them; thus begins an upward spiral of honest, loving behavior that feels good to you and everyone around you.

Or most everyone, anyway. Certainly some people might balk. When you stop quibbling about minor issues and actually talk about what’s going on with you, it can sometimes cause great upset to those closest to you. But what a wonderful upset to cause! Because even if people are uncomfortable with what you’re doing, you are making an effort to be honest, and that can only benefit a relationship. If people resent you for this and aren’t able to move past that, then you have a clear answer about what they want from you where before you had only murky hunches. Even if you don’t like what you find out, at least you’ve found it out, which frees you to pursue more honest, more loving, more meaningful relationships…sometimes growth means leaving people behind, and as sad as that sometimes is, it’s usually for the better.

The point is really just to be aware of your own personal tendencies toward sideways behavior. Get to know your own signals and be on the alert for them. These signals vary for each individual, but usually they involve some form of irritability or a sense of being disconnected from yourself or numb, sometimes described as being “out of body.” Another sure signal is if you lose your temper or snap at somebody and immediately think something like, “where did that come from??” Any of these are indications of sideways behavior, clues that you need to slow down and look within to try and figure out what’s going on. The more you do this, the better you will become at doing it. Eventually you will be able to fine tune your awareness so that only slight irritations, or even just interruptions in your normal flow of thoughts, will be enough to alert you to look for causes. This will also help you tune in more keenly to other people’s emotional honesty, or lack thereof, and give you more options about how to deal with it. Whether you choose compassion, confrontation, or overlooking (because sometimes it’s just not worth anything more) you will have given yourself choices where once you had none.

And really, what could be more empowering than that?

Having a resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. — 12 Step saying

Have you ever had a disagreement or misunderstanding with someone where afterward, you still felt angry, hurt, or otherwise not quite at peace with the outcome? Of course you have, because we all have. (In fact, I’ve had entire relationships like that, I’m sorry to say.) But often, even if you feel unsettled, you hesitate to bring the topic up again because you don’t want to be perceived as unforgiving, resentful, or otherwise unable to “let go” of a conflict. Or you might not want to risk the other person having a negative response and starting the conflict up all over again. So you nurse your thoughts and feelings in silence, thinking you’re taking the high road, being strong and maybe even being “tolerant” or “forgiving.”

You are not being any of these. Having unresolved feelings is the antithesis of tolerance and forgiveness, no matter what your mother may have taught you about the virtues of stoicism or your own inclination to avoid having difficult conversations. More importantly, there is nothing worse for a relationship than unresolved feelings. They build more walls than all other issues combined, with the possible exception of betrayal (although, in a way, long term unresolved feelings is kind of a chronic form of betrayal). The truth is, if you want to have good relationships, you must learn to talk about your feelings until they feel “finished” to you. And this is true no matter how much time has passed, because as my therapist used to tell me often, there is no statute of limitations on feelings.

It’s easy to see how we learn otherwise. When I was a kid, my parents would fight long into the night; next to drinking, it was probably their favorite pasttime. The fights were usually sparked by something in the present, but they always ended up the same way: one would harangue the other about the same old issues over and over and over. They’d rant about things that had happened years ago, some of them very minor incidents. It was awful, full of hurt and anger and cruelty, and nothing ever got resolved, which is why the fighting went on for decades, I suppose. From watching this, I learned that “bringing up old stuff” meant I was like my parents–resentful and looking for a fight–and that was the last thing in the world I wanted to be.

But it doesn’t necessarily take an upbringing like this to learn that holding in your feelings is the “right” thing to do. Some of us learned to do so because we grew up in a family where we were taught to hold things in, or where big feelings were frowned upon, or where, for whatever reason, we learned to fear and avoid confrontation no matter what. And even today, women are still culturally conditioned to be quiet and demure, to not create conflict, to believe that doing so is unladylike and will bring disapproval (a surprising number of both men and women still buy into this silliness). For all these reasons and more, the necessity of talking about our unresolved feelings can be a difficult idea to get used to.

By talking about feelings, here is what I don’t mean. I don’t mean continuing an argument. I don’t mean blaming the other person for your feelings. I don’t mean trying to make someone agree with you when you know they don’t, and I don’t mean trying to make someone capitulate so you can have your way. All of these come from a place of anger and of trying to win the argument. This is not what talking about your unresolved feelings is about. Certainly, you may still be angry, in fact you probably are, but if your goal is to hit someone over the head with that, it’s better to wait until you’ve cooled down and thought the issue through as objectively as you are capable of being. Figure out what part of the conflict is yours and what isn’t (knowing full well that, because of your big feelings, you may arrive at some inaccurate conclusions which you should keep an open mind about!), then approach the person with the goal of understanding each other.

This is what “no statute of limitations” is all about: arriving at a point where you both feel heard and the issue feels finished. You can reach this point several ways:

• You can explain matter-of-factly to the person how you feel and why you think you feel that way. For example, maybe something he said triggered a memory from the past that hooked you and caused a big reaction that had little to do with the present, but it took you a while to realize this.
• You can apologize for anything you might have done to upset the other person and say why you think you might have done it–but don’t apologize unless you truly believe you said or did something hurtful. Doing so would be dishonest, and thus, not helpful to resolving the conflict.
• You can ask questions of the other person in hopes of understanding where he’s coming from.
• You can say you don’t understand what happened and ask for an explanation, then offer one of your own. If this goes well, you will have created a dialogue where you both feel free and safe to say what’s on your mind.
• If you feel that you understand each other but still can’t resolve the issue to both person’s satisfaction, you can agree to disagree and leave the door open for future discussion. This may not be ideal, but at least you haven’t withheld your feelings.
• You can do any combination of all of these, or come up with an approach on your own that you think will result in mutual understanding. All that matters is that you’re calm, kind, and respectful, and that your only goal is to understand each other.

How do you know when an issue is finished? When it feels finished. When you are no longer angry. When you are no longer hurt. When you feel that the other person understands where you’re coming from. When the issue no longer eats away at you. When you are able to forgive. When you feel at peace. This doesn’t necessarily mean you reach the outcome you wanted, but if not, then you should understand why and accept it. And all of these apply to the other person as well, which makes sense, because it’s unlikely that you would feel at peace if the other person still did not. Again, the point is about mutual understanding and satisfaction.

What you’re really doing by talking about your unresolved feelings is increasing intimacy in the relationship. Intimacy is not possible when hurt or resentment simmers, unaddressed, just under the surface. If you’ve ever wondered why couples who’ve been together for many years seem disconnected from each other (not to mention unhappy), it’s usually because they never learned to talk frankly with each other about their feelings. They probably made an effort when they were first together, but never figured out how to do so without provoking so much anxiety for each other that they gave up trying. They never figured out that real intimacy is not about being nice to each other all the time, but rather, about sharing your emotional truths as honestly as you can, even if this sometimes means dealing with each other’s messy, complicated, deeply-rooted, multi-layered feelings. And this is why there can never be a statute of limitations on talking about your feelings: because if there is, you will never feel free enough and safe enough to have the kind of close relationships you really want. And that is very, very sad to contemplate.

So be brave, and figure out how to talk to your friends and partner when issues feel unresolved to you. And encourage them to do the same! As long as you are honest, kind, and respectful, there is no statute of limitations on these discussions, nor should there ever be.