Another One For The One-Sided Double Standard Rule Book Of Marriage!
And thanks for this wonderful tidbit to add to my One-sided Double Standard Rules of Marriage collection:
A couple have a child with severe allergies to peanuts. The mother is very meticulously in charge of protecting their child, including fighting with airlines at times about making sure they have a nut free flight with no nut dust left in the plane from previous flights. I mean she is really up on it and has taken on the job in a serious way. So one night they decide to have Chinese food and he is going to be ordering the food on the phone and she says she wants Kung Pao chicken (which if you don’t know, has peanuts in it).
Husband says to her: Are you sure you want that, it has peanuts?
Wife gets mad at him for questioning her food choice and tells him to hurry and order the food.
Husband goes out to get the food and when she sees Kung Pao chicken she gets mad at him for bringing peanuts into their home. He says that she told him to order it and that he had double checked it with her because he knew it had peanuts…
She gets angry at him and thinks it’s his fault because he should have known she wouldn’t want it and shouldn’t have ordered it even after she told him to!
Seriously you can’t make these things up!
I am not just writing these stories, though, to amuse you all. I think these great examples I hear about how people don’t own their own stuff are great learning tools. We can hear the story and think, “I don’t want to be that person!”
In long term relationships and short term relationships, romantic and committed as well as friendships and work relationships, we all can get triggered emotionally and make up stories about each other that are not really very healthy or fair.
Why couldn’t she admit she had made a mistake and ask for help getting a healthier option? Why did she have to shame and blame her husband for her mistake? I always think there must be a lot of shame in there for people when they can’t admit to any mistake at all in life and feel the need to gift someone else our feeling of shame so we don’t have to feel it.
If we don’t “own” that these are our feelings and thoughts, we dump onto others in ways that are hurtful and shaming and people don’t react well. We lose trust in those who do this to us as we feel attacked and misunderstood. If we continually do this to others they will put up walls with us or end the relationship.
We can believe that being critical of others can be a kind of “Protection Spell” when we are feeling vulnerable. Problem is, it doesn’t protect us, it just puts up walls and we can end up losing everyone we love.
To be happier and healthier we can learn to admit we are perfectly imperfect, speak our truth and own our mistakes. It is forever painful to hold onto a perfect image, never really feeling it is real while hiding our true self from everyone hoping that they will believe in our perfection so we can feel good about ourselves.
Wouldn’t it be a peaceful place to live to believe you are good enough with all of your mistakes and warts?
