saving up sins

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Question: I hate conflict. So when my daughter or my husband do something that bothers me, I don't say anything. I find myself saving these things up as examples to use when we finally have a big talk, but then when the big talk comes I forget half of them, or maybe we never even have the talk. I've tried writing them down but that hasn't worked. How do I express my displeasure at the inconsiderate things they do without fighting about it?

Answer: Learn to love conflict. Do you remember that great movie you saw where the main character went through two hours of joy and bliss and nothing bad ever happened? No? Neither do I, because without conflict there is no story, nothing happens.

Somewhere along the way you learned that if you assert yourself it will lead to a fight. If you get in a fight your feelings will get hurt, or the other person's feelings will get hurt and then then you will feel guilty, so it is better to just not say anything.

This is a great strategy if you plan to be a door mat for your entire life but if you want reciprocal relationships with healthy people this is not going to work so well.

You figured this out on your own so you decided that it would be best to just save up other's sins against you in some kind of list and then eventually you have a nice, quiet, adult conversation about these issues. The problem with this plan is it turns out most people don't like to have conversations about things they have done wrong. These don't stay nice and quiet conversations and your talking partner paints you as the bad guy for hanging on to things that happened weeks, months, sometimes even years ago.

So what is the solution? State your feelings and observations as soon as you feel/notice them.

Example: You walk into the house after a long day of work and your husband is watching tv you daughter is chatting online up in her room. No one has started dinner, the house is a mess, and the dog is barking because he needs to go out and get fed. Normally you would: Sigh, let the dog out, feed him start dinner, and clean later, and let the sins list get a little longer.

Instead you could say. "Wow, I'm feeling really over whelmed right now. Is there a reason why A, B, and C have not been done?"

More than likely your husband and daughter just didn't think of doing it because you always get it done. We train people how to treat us and you have trained them to be docile to a point we call learned helplessness.

It is important to ask "Is there a reason?" because if there is, or if something awful happened to that person that day you don't seem like such a jerk, you have created an out. This will help you to be less afraid of confronting.

If there was no reason, and there usually isn't, the next step is to say "Well, could you help me by..."

The worst they can say is no, in which case you are no worse off than if you did it all yourself in the first place. Remember that your conflict avoidance is not being done to benefit others, it is your own selfish way of avoiding discomfort. The sooner you can grow comfortable with conflict the faster you will improve these relationships and let go of your resentment.