Pride and Selfishness

Pride. It should be a 4 letter word. I consider myself a prideful person. I try to hold my head high. If I'm wrong or have made a mistake I hold my chin up and admit it. Pride in your relationship can lead you to make ,well.....illadvised decisions. I have been training people,men and women alike, for the past 15 years. I watched marriages, divorces, children be born, the loss of loved one, and just about every other form of the human experience. It has given me a keen insight as to what works and what doesn't. When it comes to conflict I have noticed that you have to put your cards on the table right away and you have to be willing to compromise. It seems simple right? you'd be surprised how many people don't do it. I never compromised in my marriage. It was all at my pace,my desire,and my plan. I'll give you a simple example. Take the last year of your current relationship. Think of all the movies you have gone to see with your partner. How many are the ones you wanted and how many were the ones your spouse wanted to see? Be honest. You men out there, I promise your wives didn't want to see Terminator4 . Women, your husbands didn't want to see Becomming Jane. But it has to be give and take. When I was married, it was only the ones I wanted to see. I compromised nothing . This simple thing was an example of a deeper problem. I was selfish. Now selfishness has different causes. I was selfish because I didn't want to sacrifice something for someone who was just going to leave and hurt me later anyway. I was never taught through example how to share. I ws showed at a young age that if you want something you take it. And god forbid I had to do something I didn't want...well you make life a living hell for the person that brought you. It was horrible. However , through example this is what I was taught. While I knew that it was too late to repair our relationship from a personal standpoint, I needed to make things better for us as parents. So I started using a phrase that I still use to this day. "It's not about me." In fact it ceases being about you the minute you find out your spouse is pregnant. It should become about that small life that you are both raising. I see many divorced parents argue over time, affection, discipline, and rules. For the most part we as parents both want the same thing. We want our children to grow up well adjusted and we want the pain of divorce to be as minimal as possible. Yet we drive theses constant wedges in between ourselves and our exspouses for no other reason than to disagree. Why? Because we are not feeling as though we are being heard. Or maybe we felt as though we sacrificed everything in the marriage "now it's my turn." What gets lost is that little child that just wants to feel secure. It has to be a conscience decision on one or both of the parents involved. "We are no longer together, but I value you because you are our childs parent. Because I value you, I will value everything you have to say as it regards to our child." It's not an easy task. I've gotten selfish in the past. What about me? What about what I want? The truth is, it doesn't matter what I want. I have to do what is best for my child. This may make me feel slighted,uncomfortable, shortchanged or unpopular, but in the end it isn't about me . My therapist and I would talk about pride a great deal. She felt that in her experience, pride hurt so many fathers relationships with their children. When I asked why, she said it was easy for men to point fingers at their exwives and say "this" is the reason why we are divorced. You didn't do enough of "this." or You never appreciated "that." When I started writing , I wanted to make a conscience decision to not get in to finger pointing. Maria and I got divorced. I'm sure she has her own perspective of who did what and why. For me to truly heal, and become a better man ,I needed to look at myself and my faults. And one thing that everyone in a healthy or unhealthy relationship needs to undestand is that every action has a cause. This is in no way a copout or scapegoat for bad behavior. But before you correct the behavior you need to understand the motivation or cause of the behavior. When I felt underappreciated, I imediately flashed to my mother. All the hurtful words. When I felt scared I thought of my father. As an only child I opened up to no one. When I got married , nothing changed. Now, in my early thirties I had to play catchup and learn how to communicate. That communication meant swallowing my pride, not being selfish, and asking for help. In the midst of all this discovery and rebuilding something happened that almost derailed everything. It was one of the afternoons that I went to have lunch with Tommy at daycare. "Dad, why doesn't grandma cheryl and grandpa Joe love you?" What?! "they said they don't love you and you're a bad person." I immediately saw red. And I felt the snowball in my mind start rolling down hill. I was heading into a deep depression. Fast.