Your Partner is Hurting you on Purpose

If you crash your car three times a week, nobody's gonna call it an accident. 

But if you hurt your partner's feelings three times a week, people will call it an accident. 

Even therapists will talk about impact versus intention. 

In reality, the emotional impact you had is probably the emotional impact you wanted to have. 

People are really good at predicting the emotional impact of their words and actions. 

If you've lived for someone for many years, you have a really good idea of how they're going to feel when you say or do a certain thing. 

When you hurt your partner's feelings, you're usually doing it on purpose. 

It's organized behavior, not accidental behavior. 

In your mind, you might think of hurting someone on purpose as something that only bad people do, but in reality, everybody does. 

You can learn not to do it, but you have to start by realizing that you're doing it on purpose, not accidentally. 

If you consistently think that you hurt your partner's feelings on purpose, you probably also think that your parents didn't intend to hurt you when they were mean to you. 

Every child's brain is designed to see their parents as more benevolent and innocent than they really are. 

If you go back to the visual evidence from your childhood, you will eventually see that your parents knew about the impact they were having on you and did what they did anyway. 

This is, unfortunately, a normal part of childhood for most of us. 

When your parents were angry at you, they probably tried to make it seem like you are being a bad kid, and they were just trying to be good parents. 

In reality you were probably a normal kid and they were normal parents. 

Normal kids are a lot more innocent than normal parents. Because parents are old enough to be responsible for their behavior, and because kids usually learn unhealthy behavioral patterns from their parents. 

Ichiro Kishimi tells a story about a mother who's berating her child for getting in a fight at school. In the middle of her angry lecture, the school principal called to discuss the incident with her. She instantly let go of her angry tone and talk to the principal with respect and appreciation. 

This story illustrates the fact that she was choosing to use anger to punish her child. To her, it probably didn't feel that way. It probably felt like she was just responding to her emotions and doing what felt instinctive. But as soon as the context changed, her emotional expression also changed. 

This mother would be much more effective if she would talk to her child respectfully all the time. That is what will help the child learn to be respectful.

This mother was hurting her child on purpose, not accidentally. She was taking out her anger on her child in an attempt to control him. 

Before she can change her behavior. She has to be able to see that it's intentional behavior, not accidental behavior.