How To Stop Getting Annoyed With Loved Ones

2023 Author: Henry Pass | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 21:12

We asked the psychologist and our regular columnist Elena Novoselova to talk about how to survive the quarantine surrounded by loved ones and not destroy the relationship amid anxiety.

So I hear the words of indignation: “These are the closest people! Happiness that you can spend so much time with them! How dare you doubt? And I not only have no doubt, but I am also sure that such close and every minute contact in a closed space without fresh impressions and with different reactions to what is happening can give rise to many family problems.

During our usual work-home-weekend lifestyle, we experience a lot of emotions during the day, sometimes too many. The most different. Returning home, we want peace and quiet communication with family. An hour and a half, and you have to go to bed. We don't even have time to quarrel, we postpone it for the weekend. And one more important factor: with every person with whom we have fairly close and frequent communication, we are in a certain role, a behavioral scenario. With children - one demeanor, even intonation. With parents - another, with her husband - a third. Not to mention girlfriends and colleagues. And this is a very important aspect of our perception of each other.

With close and long interaction and the absence of external impressions, the boundaries of roles begin to crumble. And suddenly someone discovers that they did not know their partner from some new side. Quite recently, a woman complained to me that she was rapidly disappointed in her husband, because she could not even imagine how he communicated with subordinates. At a remote location, she became a daily observer of the “unknown husband”. And her idea of him changed dramatically. But they've been together for 7 years.

I was reminded of a medieval story from the collection Melmot the Wanderer, about a young couple of lovers. Passionate romantic love made him do crazy and dangerous things for his beloved. She, violating all the prohibitions, threw him a rope ladder out of the window from a high window. Parents on both sides did not want this union. We decided to tie a pair of ropes back to back and place them in the dungeon. At the same time, it is good to feed and drink. When a month later the couple in love came out of the dungeon, except for a feeling of disgust for each other, they no longer experienced anything.

Cruel story. But it is she who clearly and in an exaggerated form shows us all that distance and intimate modesty are necessary in human relationships. It is difficult for a person to perceive another person without distance, which leaves us room for "painting the image", for light flair and fantasies about his partner.

Now, when most of us unexpectedly found ourselves locked, yes, not in a dungeon, we are faced with our own unexpected reactions. The same thing happens to our loved ones. Add to this cocktail a feeling of chaos and unpredictability of the situation, psychological fatigue and panic, shake it up with fake news - and a bomb appeared in your house, ready to explode every minute.

How to neutralize it?

• Accept the situation. Do not fight it, do not be indignant, do not wait for the end of isolation.
• Understand that your partner is a completely different person, and not an extension of you.
• Show maximum mercy and kindness to a loved one. If you find any new aspects of personality in him, this does not mean that he has become worse than he was in previous years. All this happened before, there was no situation.
• Set up a "personal time" when you shouldn't be asked any question. Two hours of internal "immigration" />
• Respect the desire of your loved ones to be alone with themselves. Arrange a time.
• If there are small children in the family, make a schedule of who "takes over" them and when. If children are older than 3-4 years old, then after some time they will also get used to the fact that they should not bother mom or dad at a certain time. You can think of some funny or understandable name for such interruptions in communication.
• Organizing each day in order will greatly improve the atmosphere in the home as opposed to the chaos outside.
• If you are acutely experiencing a change in the rhythm of life and feel a lack of employment, try to fill your time with new activities, changing activities every three hours.

All these simple measures will help to avoid the tension and deprive the "emotional bomb" of energy. This means that you will survive the difficult times safely and without loss. What I wish you with all my heart!

Photo: frames from the films "The Tenenbaum Family" (2001) and "Force Majeure" (2015)