Love and Retaliation

As we find ourselves in stressful relationships whether it be a friendship, a marriage or with a family member maybe the 2 words of love and retaliation may help make things clearer.  These two words never seemed to mean much to me until I recently read a chapter in a book explaining that it is ok for us to feel the emotions we feel ( anger, jealousy, fear, resentment, etc) but it is how we react to these feelings that makes all the difference.  I often hear people telling of the not so nice things or gossip they have done to a friend, family member or a spouse and hear how they are justified in this act because of the anger they feel towards this person over most commonly small stupid things.  I think the reality that we need to grasp is that everyone is going to hurt us.  Even your spouse, best friend or person closest to you is going to do something at some time to hurt you.  We are all human.  You may even find yourself jealous or insecure by someone you are closest to.  It happens.  I think what we need to realize is that you feeling jealous or angry is not what is wrong.  What makes it wrong or perhaps right is how you react to it.  The actions we take towards others in dealing with these feelings.  I know better than anyone that there are bad people out there.  Ones you need to have your guard up towards, even those that should be people that should love and you should be able to trust  but they choose not to play that role in your life.  Knowing the difference for me has been key.  Daily reminders of those people that are good and true in my life, have good hearts and have not shown me retaliation in angry times when I am not perfect.  Who have maybe felt those feelings towards me but chose to love me and talk it out with me in efforts to work on the longevity of our relationship rather than break it down with acts that only make themselves feel better at the time but with each act of unkindness, gossip and unwillingness to communicate continue to drive more nails in the coffin of our relationship.  Its hard to remember this when you are in the heat of the moment remembering again we are all human but I think if we can make an effort to know that in these relationships we choose to earmark as the ones to make last they are the ones that we must make a valiant effort on both parts to try to keep these things the forefront of our minds with each other.  That together we make efforts at keeping ourselves in check.  The revolving door of reciprocation is happening.  It is those other relationships that we end up becoming a door mat, those are the ones we need to be concerned with.  The ones where you are always wrong, crazy and they always seems justified in their not so kind actions because of the emotions you caused even if you did not do it on purpose.    Those are the ones that at some point you need to be willing to let go of.  I see so many marriages, family relationships and friendships sadly come to an end.  I am not without having this effect be in my life and I am left wondering why this has to be?  It makes me think in my own marriage how things have changed over the years which has allowed for our marriage to overcome some rough times.  I think of this morning as I start the coffee brewing while my husband started to do his daily task of getting ready to head out for the day, today heading to Philly, filling the car with his tools, me taking care of the dogs.. You know all that fun morning routine stuff.  This morning we woke to a mess of dog poop and pee all through our house.  Not the most fun to wake up to and tends to set your morning off on the wrong foot.  The pointing fingers at each other for why it happened and blah blah.. you get the drift.  So being both in not the best moods we continue on about our morning continuing to pick at each other.  In all of this as I am putting together some lunch snacks for him to take with him I come across the last 2 chocolate donuts in the drawer.  I am left with the question of giving them to him or keeping them, after all I am mad at him and for anyone who knows me well I have a very big sweet tooth.  My decision at that moment is the exact thing I am talking about when I say retaliation.  This gesture although small is a gateway to how we have to identify our emotions and learn how to react to them.  If this was any other day, I would have gave him those donuts no thoughts about it.  But today, would I justify my leaving them for myself as ok since after all he was a jerk?  The decision I made was to give him the donuts because my husband is one on my list of people (he's #1 by the way) that I have on my "good list".  He is a good,  loving husband although not perfect but one I do want to spend the rest of my life with so on those days when he chooses to be a "jerk" or rather just plain frustrated with the day which he is allowed to do I choose to just let it go and move on.  And the revolving door comes in with the act he gestured back to me which was to remove them from his lunch box and leave them on the counter.  The reciprocation from him is there too.  Although even if he would have taken them he shows me this act in many other ways too.  So I encourage you as I would any friend that if you are having a stressful time with someone, feeling certain emotions that are hurting you act in the gesture of owning your feelings but in refraining from retaliations and unwillingness to communicate if it is with a person who you would say is or has been good to you but may not be perfect.  If they are someone who you would like to long term see in your life don't let the act of retaliation nail the nails into your relationship coffin but rather choose communication, love and understanding and know that if you do have to see a relationship end that in the end you did all you could to make this possible with your actions, which is all you really have control over..  Sometimes its just a small thing like donuts that makes all the difference in restoration in a relationship.  With each small act comes healing and understanding with love being the main focus...