Wife upset about my family's integrity / Husband conned fiancé
DEAR ABBY: "Amy" and I have been married seven years. I used to enjoy family gatherings with my parents and brothers, but I am finding them stressful. Amy always seems to have an issue with "time." My family is easygoing and sometimes late for various reasons. Amy doesn't understand why this happens. She believes the timelines are being amended to suit one of my brothers and his family. Their tardiness bothers Amy, and she asked me to talk to my family members about it. I did, and they don't see a problem. This is the way our family has always been. Amy stresses me out (high blood pressure runs on the male side of my family) when I should be enjoying these gatherings. By the way, my wife is an only child and has no extended family. She has never experienced what larger families go through. Should she ease off, or should I ask my loved ones to change their ways? — PRESSURED IN TORONTO
Abby's Reply:DEAR PRESSURED: You said you have already talked to your family about this. Because this is the way your family has always functioned, it is highly unlikely that they're going to change now. Sometimes you have to accept family warts and all, and this appears to be one of them. If Amy's complaining is truly causing your blood pressure to spike, your physician should be telling her to lower the "pressure" she's putting on you. —Abby.
Gabby's Reply:
I wouldn't be surprised if one of the qualities you first admired about Amy was her integrity and the fact that she was truthful and kept her time agreements with you.* That said, you've got yourself a huge problem, as does she. What you believe to be the problem ain't it.
You describe your family as "easygoing," covertly placing the blame on Amy, instead of asking for support in identifying your cause in the friction, as though it's only a "time" problem. In truth, it's about integrity—telling the truth, honoring agreements, respect, blame, and the effects of abusive communications.
Re: "high blood pressure runs on the male side of my family." Yes, there is a correlation between ones personal integrity and outcomes—eventually affecting ones health.
You and your family are unconscious. Your mind, has created a story (a smoke-screen) that keeps you from seeing your integrity as the cause of this friction, your high blood pressure, and the less-than-satisfactions (having to do with harmony, happiness, health, and prosperity) you are all experiencing. You, yes you, are the leader; you're pretending you don't know that broken time agreements (even those non-verbally implied) are lies and that they are abusive. You're pretending to not know the effects of not honoring ones word. I say you because you take their side and make her wrong; you are covertly trying to enroll her in compromising her values, trying to get her to resort back to irresponsible, childhood, thwarting behaviors. She, on the other hand, is trying to change you and your family; whatever love she is professing is conceptual, not experiential. Wanting/trying to change another(s) is not love.
If she continues to compromise her integrity the relationship in its present form is doomed; communication breakdowns such as this begin to affect ones aliveness, eventually everyone's health. It appears that she intuited "your" outcome with them and therefore dumped her considerations on you, instead of going to them herself. It was irresponsible of her to ask you to do it; it reveals that there are thoughts of fear between them.
Until one commits to honoring agreements they can't eliminate the consequences of lies as a variable when it comes to health and all less-than desirable results, to manifesting results other than one's stated intentions. Mastery begins with creating a foundation of integrity, keeping ones word, in service to others, as opposed to thwarting and upsetting and, as you do, supporting others in thwarting and upsetting your wife.
It looks to me that you are unconsciously masterminding a divorce. Once you are clear as to your intentions your communications and actions will be consistent with the results you envision.
To get clearer do The Clearing Process (it's free). Once you've completed the process then invite her to do it, then you both can do the Clearing Process for Couples —also free. In this matter, any compromise, such as her submitting herself to your abusive treatment of her, affects everyone's outcomes.
She is right and all of you are wrong. What will disappear this problem (but create a new one) is for all of you, each individually to her face, verbally tell her that none of you are willing to allow her to support them in honoring agreements; then she would have a clear choice, as she would have at the beginning when first dating you, to continue or to quit. Instead, you all irresponsibly communicate this same ultimatum non-verbally, thereby deceiving her into thinking that her communications might have a positive effect, that things might change. You're all acting as though you love, value, and respect her. You can't see that you are treating her disrespectfully. Specifically, you all are treating her abusively. It's too bad because you brilliantly brought into your clan someone who has more experience about integrity than you and your family and now you're not taking advantage of the awesome benefits she offers. If you have children, sadly, daily, you are teaching them to lie, deceive, and blame. It'll start with them deceiving and thwarting you by not doing homework and chores on time—hiding all sorts of significant thoughts from everyone. Notice how you blame Amy for your experience of being pressured. You can't begin to imagine what it feels like for her to be invalidated by you taking your family's side. Had she written my answer to her would have been.***
Notice also that your family members have accumulated withholds about her and so they communicate these thoughts non-verbally, via covert thwarting. Clearly, they do not respect her.****
They are in fact unconsciously sabotaging your relationship with her. And, you, due to your withholds with her, have set it up for your family to punish and disrespect her. You are oblivious to the fact that she can see through the insulting lies they proffer as excuses. None of the reasons they give, as to why they are late, are the truth. It would be truthful and somewhat less insulting if they said; "Amy, we just don't respect you enough to honor our time agreements with you. You'll have to change because we refuse to." It could be said that you
conned her into assuming your family was honest and responsible. Read An inconsiderate gift to give a prospective partner.
An
ethical person would have warned her, up front; "BTW: My
family lies a lot, they make time agreements and don't keep
them, and, they refuse to acknowledge that implied
agreements are agreements or that broken agreements are
lies. Will that be a problem for you?" Instead, you force
her to compromise her integrity and to question her sanity,
her ethics, daily. To ask a question please go to Dear
Gabby's Message Board (free -
registration required).
She is incorrect in her judgment
that agreements are being broken because of your brother and
his family. In truth it's because you,
using your powerful non-verbal leadership-communication
skills, support them in disrespecting her. More
accurately, she has set you up to thwart and abuse her.
Part
of her communication mastery curriculum is to notice how
long it will take for her to
estrange
herself from your family, so as to play with people who respect and
honor her. In other words, she has been offering
you herself (think of her as a 40lb. bar of gold). To hang
out with her you must first let go of your 40lb. bar of
lead. You can't have a quality
relationship and relate with thwarters else you succumb to mediocrity.
Re: ". . . she asked me to talk to my family members
about it." It was irresponsible of you to allow her to dump
this request in your space. What works is to go to the
person with whom you have the problem; instead you supported
her in badmouthing them behind their backs. I understand why
you did; obviously there's fear in her relationship with
your family; she intuited the result you unconsciously
intended, that, ". . . they don't see a problem." Your
result also reveals that you had no intention for them to get what
it feels like to you for them to disrespect her. In effect
you communicated to them, [Self-righteous Amy has a problem
with our family's tardiness. Tell me to tell her that you
don't see it as a problem and that you refuse to honor time
agreements.]
The problem you describe is not
THE
problem in your relationship with her, it's so much more. I
predict with absolute certainty that unless you get
counseling/coaching you will eventually drive her out of
your life. A person of integrity can't survive in the space
of those who communicate abusively.
—With aloha, Gabby
P.S. Show this to everyone
concerned.
* If
not, if she breaks agreements with you, or others, then she
is merely reaping the consequences of her own hypocrisies.
In any case, this problem of hers is definitely a
consequence of her own out-integrity;
she has an out-integrity that she has yet to see as being
the cause of others thwarting her. A person who operates
with integrity, and cleans up (acknowledges) all withholds
and perpetrations, simply doesn't create such problems. Reunion
Conversations supports
one in recalling life's accumulated unacknowledged
perpetrations. Arrogance is—trying to make life work without
cleaning up the messes.
** More
accurately, it should read: ". . . if she continues to set you and your family up
to abuse her, and continues to blame you and them."
*** What
we're looking at here is your inability to create agreements
that work. It's both irresponsible and unethical to set up
others to break
agreements with you. If you want
harmony and abuse-free relationships play with people who
communicate responsibly (from cause) and who honor
agreements. Ask
Dear Gabby for support in creating
(co-creating) agreements.
**** Imagine,
if you will, that you rec'd an email from God saying that
He/She/It will be visiting ". . . you and all of your family
members next week, Thursday, at 12:00 noon." You've triple
checked, even called your Internet provider, and discovered
that there is no doubt that the email didn't come through
any Internet server. Too spooky, yes? In any case, after
thousands of doubting conversations with your family, I'm
betting that all of you would be gathered in your living
room at 12 noon next Thursday—out of respect, no one
would be late. In other words, none of you are
acknowledging the God-self that is Amy.
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Last edited 12/20/21
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