Relationships – whether they be working relationships, friendships, or romantic – all involve some sort of conflict at some point. Whoopi Goldberg once said, If you have someone living with you who isn’t YOU, then you have a problem. This is true whether or not you’re living with someone. She simply meant that whenever you interact with others, as no one is going to see EVERYTHING the same way you do, you are going to have conflict.
What’s important is the manner in which that conflict is dealt. A long time ago I read a quote from Maria Shriver in which she said, practice instant forgiveness. And on so many levels, she was right. But it’s more than just not letting the sun set on your ire with each other. It’s about not bringing things up from the past.
If you’re lucky enough to have relationships that spread over decades, then you have witnessed both of you change, as we are ever-evolving in our thoughts, appearances, and behaviors. I know that I have completely changed the way I address issues, the way I think about certain topics, and the way that I communicate. However, I have friends from “the time before,” if you will, and sometimes, those people like to remind me of how I behaved during those times, even if it were years beforehand.
That is both hurtful and damaging to any relationship. First of all, none of us are perfect; even the most balanced person in the world has a bad day and acts out of frustration. Of course, we hope that our actions are more contained than those of a two year old, but we have all had our less-than-prestigious moments. And no one deserves to be reminded of previous mistakes over and over again.
So, for me, instant forgiveness does not necessarily mean ending my anger with that person at that particular moment. It means that I will not bring up past hurts, past behaviors while dealing with this present issue. It means that I won’t say things like, well, you have done this to me before or, gee, are you going to do what you did before and not talk to me? Because we all have things that can be tossed into our faces and no one likes having that done.
Choose your words carefully; they will be remembered, even if never brought up again. In law, there is a saying that you can’t unring a bell. This means that one attorney will ask a witness a question, knowing it will be objected to, and then the judge will instruct the jury to make believe that they never heard that question. Well, you can’t “unhear” something, so while the jury is not supposed to use this in their deliberations….it’s still out there. So is anything you say to someone, and especially, anything that you write to someone.
We are not always the best versions of ourselves; we are fallible; we are human. So when you do have the disagreements that any relationship brings upon you, stay in the moment. Focus on what the issue is that moment, not on what happened 6 months ago, 3 years ago, a lifetime ago. Don’t burden people with the person that they used to be; you would not like having that done to you either. Address the person standing before you NOW, not the person who hit you over the head with his or her sand shovel when you were in diapers.
