After a disagreement or fight with your spouse do you...
- find it difficult to set it aside and focus on something else?
- choose to remain disconnected and not give affection?
- feel the need to stay distant for a little while?
- feel that your spouse needs to put in some work to be worthy of regaining your love?
Answering yes to any of these questions is a sign that the momentary pain that was just caused by your spouse has awoken unresolved pain from your past. So, to some degree, you are blaming your spouse for pain he or she didn’t cause.
Your spouse stepped on a landmine, triggering deep wounds. But those wounds were there before the two of you ever met.
During the argument, your spouse stepped on a landmine – and perhaps they should have known better. But who put the landmine there in the first place? Where did it come from? You weren’t simply born with it. And, even if your spouse did do something wrong, why does it awaken such an extreme response of hurt and rage within you?
Newsflash: Your partner has little to do with how hurt you are feeling.
Your spouse triggered deep wounds. But those wounds were there before the two of you ever met.
Think about it:
If you truly felt whole and positive about yourself and your life, would your spouse’s words, actions, or inactions result in such feelings of outrage, pain and sadness?
It may feel to you as if your spouse is the root of your hurt because what he or she is doing elicits these potent feelings of betrayal, hurt, and unworthiness. But chances are you are blaming your partner for pain that was planted in you way before he or she ever stepped into your life.
And when you’re focused on your spouse’s culpability for your pain, you miss out on discovering the underlying role your past is playing in the feelings you’re experiencing in the present. That prevents you from working through those lingering issues and traumas, resolving them, and moving forward to build a healthy life and a relationship of tranquility and joy.
So how can you know if your present pain is rooted in your past?
Here are three signs:
Sign #1 – You’re completely closed to your spouse's point of view.
Are you absolutely sure that the way you're viewing the situation is the only correct way to look at it?
That's a sign that the present disharmony with your spouse is awakening acute pain from your past. This pain is usually dormant, but it's always there in the background. That's why you're so sure that your perspective is the only correct point of view. Because what your spouse said or did hit a sore spot that is part of the entire framework from which you experience everything in your life. So when your spouse triggers that pain, it’s as if your entire reality has been provoked – and you can’t see anything outside of that.
Sign #2 – You Feel All-Encompassing Pain
Does a minor infraction by your spouse cause you to feel major pain? Does a small misstep by your spouse lead you to feel like your entire relationship is way off and worthy of being torn down completely?
If the hurt you’re feeling is out of proportion with your spouse’s offense, that is a sign that the hurt is rooted in past traumas that predate your spouse. The hurt you feel is not merely an effect of what your spouse did now. There's something bigger and deep-seated that is coming to the forefront.
Sign #3 – You Feel as if you’re being Erased
Do you feel like any little disagreement must be resolved right away? Do you feel like nothing else matters if the two of you can’t “figure this out” right here and now? Do you find it impossible to go on performing other responsibilities and activities if disharmony exists in your relationship?
The inability to allow for disagreements and contain disharmony signals a lack of independent self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love. You seek personal validation through your relationship, so you feel like you’re being blotted out or erased when your relationship isn’t operating in-line with how you think it should be.
When you experience any of these signs, and you focus your attention and blame on your spouse for triggering them, you miss out on two important components of any healthy relationship:
- 1. You’re so laser-focused on your spouse’s transgression that you lose sight of your piece in it all. You don't take a step back to ascertain where you can make a proactive change to improve your situation.
- 2. You’re so wrapped up in the emotions you’re experiencing that you don’t take a moment to empathize with your spouse and what he or she is experiencing. You don’t give yourself a second to enter into your spouse’s reality and consider where he or she might be coming from and what he or she might be feeling.
How to Get Unstuck
The solution is to get mentally and emotionally unstuck. Up until now, you’ve been so overwhelmed and caught up in your emotions and your perspective that you've lost sight of everything else.
The next time you’re getting flooded with these sorts of negative and painful feelings and thoughts, try this instead:
- Remove yourself from the situation and find a secluded place.
- Take a second to step outside your pain and emotions and get centered.
- Describe for yourself the feeling that you're experiencing that is underneath the hurt.
- Have you felt that feeling before? What was the first time you recall having that feeling?
- Envision yourself back in that moment, with that person in that situation, only this time you are determined not to be hurt by them no matter what they do. Envision them utilizing all their methods to hurt you and break you down, but you stare back at them with disdain. You allow whatever that person or situation does to you to wash over you like water off a duck's back. And you simply relate to their smallness with a sense of pity.
By doing this exercise, you'll make yourself bigger than that person or situation that left you with a wound that was never resolved. By reliving these experiences in a way in which the catalyst of your trauma is powerless and you are victorious, you expand yourself to contain those experiences of the past, move through them, and put them in the rear-view mirror. (This exercise should ideally be done twice a day for 10 minutes a day, for two weeks in order to experience real and lasting healing and transformation.)
Now that the pain of your past has been reduced, you can deal with the actual issue at hand that has arisen between you and your spouse – a singular issue, not a landmine that triggers an emotional apocalypse. Having released some of the bonds of your underlying hurt, you will find it much easier to step outside of yourself for a moment and consider that your spouse has their own past through which he or she experiences your relationship. Perhaps your partner acted the best he or she could, with different intentions and motivations than the ones you ascribed to them.
And ask yourself where in the relationship you can make things better. Then, without criticism or blame, share what you feel with your spouse in an open and heartfelt way.
By approaching your spouse in this balanced and introspective manner, you’re much more likely to be successful in problem-solving and relationship-building. By coming from a place that’s respectful to yourself and your spouse, you infuse your relationship with love, care and harmony.
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(7) Anonymous, January 30, 2021 6:13 PM
I wish it were true
I would love to believe this article, but I just can't agree. I went through extensive therapy for many years, believing that I was the problem, working through my baggage, trying to come to a whole place so that my marriage wouldn't be so unbelievably painful and hurtful. My husband is NOT, baruch Hashem, abusive but the fractures of our marriage and the deep all-encompassing pain I feel from his actions are NOT based on my triggers and ARE based on the relationship between the TWO of us. I am grateful to know this now. I do feel like this article is a little risky for people like myself who desperately want to fix and appease and will sacrifice their very soul to have peace, even if that means blaming themselves to the very end.
(6) Danny, January 28, 2021 4:01 PM
Yes and no
For the first offense, I agree with you. For the second offense one should already be aware it triggers their spouse. Need to learn to be more sensitive. People don't resolve old triggers overnight.
(5) Anonymous, January 28, 2021 3:55 PM
I'll add my 2 cents to previous comments.
This is a beautiful and well-thought-out article, and is probably most helpful and relevant to normal, healthy people. But there are so many other types out there, aren't there? My ex, and his whole family, were so odd and so mean to me, I admit I was triggered a lot, but I would have had to be just as odd as them to be happy there. My ex in particular was and probably still is emotionally stunted and unavailable, so I imagine that only a similar type of woman would be happy with him. Not me. So much happier without him. (Btw, he did a very convincing performance when we were dating, fooled me into thinking he was a warm, caring person. Yes, I fell for it. My bad.)
(4) KH Ryesky, January 28, 2021 3:06 PM
You are partially correct, BUT ....
My wife and I realized long ago that our blow-ups usually have nothing to do with the seeming trigger, but by other unrelated issues which needed to be addressed.
That said, the observations in these Comments that you are blaming the victim are valid because your article seems to ignore the possibility that a spouse or significant other can in fact actually be abusive.
Your article itself steps on a landmine, very early on, by the honorific term "Rabbi" in the by-line. Plenty of those landmines have been laid by rabbinical abuse.
Example: In his article "Helping the Agunos: Halachic Solutions: Myth and
Reality" (Jewish Observer, Iyar 5760 I May 2000, p. 12) Rabbi Yehuda Leib Lewis states, "Everyone knows that agunos are caused by recalcitrant husbands, not by rabbis who plead in vain for civilized behavior."
HOWEVER, in his book The Shame Borne in Silence (Mirkov Publications, 1996), on pages 125 - 126, Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, MD writes:
"A husband's refusal to provide a get is an obvious abuse of power. He has
taken a provision of the Torah and made it into a weapon of tyrrany and oppression. Without exception, every case of aguna, every case of a husband's refusal to give a get, will reveal a history of a woman's having been abused during the marriage, This last and perhaps greatest abuse of power, refusal to give a get, occurs only in individuals who were abusers and who had been either batterers or tyrannic controllers of their wives.
"In virtually all of these cases, the abused wife had turned for help to her
family or to rabbis earlier in the marriage, and they had made efforts to reconcile the couple, convincing her to return to the marriage for the sake of shalom bayis. It is these cases that may result in the woman becoming an aguna. The benign intentions of those who sought to preserve shalom bayis unfortunately contributed to the plight of the woman who became an aguna."
Nancy, February 4, 2021 3:39 PM
To commenter KH Ryesky
Thank you for quoting Rabbi Twerski, z'tl. I miss him.
KH Ryesky, February 4, 2021 4:24 PM
MeToo!
MeToo! I had the privilege of meeting him on a number of occasions. He was thinking outside of the box before anyone used the term "thinking outside of the box."
(3) Anonymous, January 27, 2021 5:44 AM
the article does assumes zero culpability on part of the spouse
Interesting perspective, but why assume that the pain was introduced before the spouse was met? What if the spouse is actually causing the pain? Sorry, it just seems like an over simplification and possibly a way to let people off the hook who may be actually causing the pain. I am just saying
Eli Deutsch, January 27, 2021 1:04 PM
Thank you for your respectful reply.
Yes, any article that offers a perspective on relationships and personal development can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. An article can promote giving to one’s partner, but, taken to the extreme, that can lead to losing yourself. An article can promote establishing healthy boundaries, but, taken to the extreme, that can lead to rigidness and selfishness.
The same applies here.
Obviously, we are not looking to absolve anyone who hurts their spouse of responsibility for their actions. The purpose of this article is to point out that if objectively small offenses or mistakes make you feel big and everlasting pain (and if you often find yourself in this kind of pain), chances are high that the pain you’re experiencing comes from a pre-existing wound (likely unresolved trauma from childhood).
Rachel, January 27, 2021 10:20 PM
I agree
When publishing an article on this topic, it would be useful to begin by setting aside some behaviors. From my experience, most serious family arguments (whether with parents, siblings or spouses) arise from a real difference in values or a minimizing of the other person’s needs.
(2) Anonymous, January 27, 2021 4:32 AM
Blaming the victim?
This is an absolutely great way to deflect any responsibility on the part of a misbehaving spouse, and place it all on the past of the spouse who is hurt. My abusive ex-husband used to say this too, that my pain was from before I met him. Rabbi Deutsch, what are your qualifications to teach marriage advice? What certification or degree do you have? Oh, nothing? Great.
(1) Anonymous, January 26, 2021 4:47 PM
I love articles like these
How do i save it so that i can re read it?
Anonymous, February 4, 2021 3:59 AM
I saved the article to re-read by copying and pasting to a document in my hard drive.
I hope this helps.
The advice in the article sounds very down-to-earth and I plan to use it. Thank you.