Echoes.

Bits and pieces of thought for the day from today’s discussion on Carolyn Hax:

“If you take someone else on as a “project” you are essentially rejecting part of who they actually are, and that will generate resentment, too. We need to learn how to live with the person we fell in love with, and we sandpaper each other’s rough edges in the process, but that isn’t criticism. That is adjustment. You shouldn’t mistake the two. You don’t love who a person *might* be, you love who a person *is*. Criticism is not an expression of love, it is an expression of dissatisfaction, and thus it’s a serious problem requiring some serious communication.”

“My personal take is that constant “constructive criticism” can be soul-killing. Treating every person as “work in progress,” in constant need of improvement can be demeaning to that person…At some point, you started to feel that it wasn’t worth trying because no matter how hard you tried, it wasn’t going to be good enough anyway, so why bother?”

“I dated someone who offered a lot of “advice,” always well-meaning of course. Problem was, it was soul killing to hear, day after day, how I just didn’t quite measure up. I told him that it was hurtful and he needed to stop. He “explained” that he couldn’t help it or that he didn’t mean to be hurtful. And then he kept right on doing it, even after I said to him that hurtful intentions or not, he WAS hurting me. So I left him, and never looked back.
To people who do this: If someone makes you that unhappy that you have to improve them, don’t waste your time or theirs. Just end it. And if you truly don’t mean anything mean by it, then shut up. Seriously. How would you like to be picked at all the time? It’s horrible. Stop, or you’ll end up alone.”

“It’s not “help” if he’s taking charge and imposing the improvements on her. It’s “help” if she’s wanting to improve in some area and she appreciates his assistance. “Help” is when you assist someone in a task that they are doing. It’s not “help” if you take charge.”

“I think the reason it is so fraught is that you want your marriage to be a safe place, a kind of sanctuary from the slings and arrows of the outside world, and if your spouse is critical of you, it really undermines that. Before I criticize my husband for anything, I try to ask myself: Is it really important? Does it really matter? Is it just something I disagree with, or is it something that could actually cause harm?”

HMMMmmmm.
If this doesn’t spark a mental reflection of how you communicate with your spouse over disagreements, I don’t know what will.
It certainly did with me.