Exhale #18: Tension with Adee, managing my phone addiction and letting go
My wife, Adee, and I have had a lot of tension between us the past week or so.
From my view it started out as me feeling more irritated by her than usual. Then I became aware that I was being more irritated by her than usual and wondering why it was happening.
At some point she said something to me in a way that I knew she was feeling tense as well. We weren’t talking about it yet though.
It had been a few days since we had had sex, and I knew if we did that would probably solve everything. It would allow us to soften up, speak up, and listen to the other with our defenses down. But I was annoyed with her, and she was angry at me.
So neither of us made a move.
Tuesday night we had our weekly date night coming up. An hour or so before it started I asked her if she wanted to go on a bike ride. “No thanks,” she said. Fifteen minutes later I asked, “How about a walk?” She said, “Nah it’s so hot outside.“
“Fuck,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be an uncomfortable few hours.“
So I took Shai on a bike ride and relaxed. When we got back home my head was clear. We fed Shai and put him to sleep.
We drank a glass of wine together and talked for a while and things seemed fine.
I invited her into the meditation room where I had planned to push through the funk we were in and try to seduce her.
We started talking, I said something that triggered her, and she went off on me.
She let it all out.
We talked for the next 90 minutes really trying to get through to each other.
When the dust had settled it became clear that we were playing out the same pattern that we’ve experienced on and off since Shai was born.
She feels under-appreciated by both my words and actions.
And she is right. I haven’t been appreciating her.
I know that to be true because I see the same evidence in my actions that she does. I also know what’s been going on in my head has been “I don’t feel appreciated.”
When I tell myself things like that I have no room for appreciating her.
This thought is destructive to our relationship, and it can be really hard to get out of.
It causes me to only see the things that I’m doing for us and to almost completely miss the things that she’s doing.
I imagine that working through this is a lifelong process with ebbs and flows. With that said, here is what has been helping me.
Dealing with destructive loops of thought
I simply re-engineer the thought to be something more supportive to my well-being, and I back it up with hard evidence.
When I became aware of the thoughts rather than being caught up in them, I changed, “She doesn’t appreciate me,” to “She DOES appreciate me,” and “I haven’t been appreciating her.”
Then I briefly and completely informally just think of a couple reasons I know each of those to be true. Evidence that she does appreciate me and that I haven’t been appreciating her.
Doing this has allowed me to do a few different things:
1. Really hear her. When I remembered that she does appreciate me, it turned on the part of me that really wanted to understand her side.
2. Fully own my shit and start looking for solutions. To start demonstrating my appreciation towards her with my actions.
3. Release tension and give me energy back. I spent a lot of energy being frustrated and brooding over how annoyed I was with her this week, and as soon as that conversation was over, I could stop doing that.
I learned nearly the same exact technique from Mark England, founder of Procabulary, and Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is.
Mark calls what I did a “translation.”
There are direct translations where you simply invert the thought. Such as turning “She doesn’t appreciate me” into “She DOES appreciate me.”
Then there are indirect translations such as turning “She doesn’t appreciate me” to “I don’t appreciate her.”
In Byron Katie’s “The Work” she calls these “turn-arounds.”
The goal is simply to see reality more clearly and to give us our power back in the situation rather than being stuck in victim mode.
Letting go in my relationship is like dodging a wrench
I’ve written a lot about Michael Singer’s work lately and the impact that it’s been having on me.
He says that the only spiritual work that really matters is “letting go of your stuff.” Letting go of the things in your mind that keep you from being your highest Self.
So this line from Dodgeball popped into my mind in the middle of our fight the other night.
The idea that if I can let go of my stuff in my relationship with Adee, then I can let go of my stuff anywhere.
Even though I conceptually understand that conflict is natural in relationships and can be used for greater understanding, I’m not always present to it.
When I’m in it, I often label it as “wrong” or “bad.” I sometimes tell myself “We must be doing something wrong.”
Thinking about that line from Dodgeball was helpful for me because it reminded me that the conflict was actually an opportunity to grow. Moments like that sharpen our swords more than just about anything else can.
As such a growth minded person, this gave me even more motivation to stay open and not withdraw from the discomfort of the situation.
I only wish all of this would help me with my relationship with my phone.
Relationship status: Complicated
For about 10 years now I’ve been consciously trying to manage my relationship with my phone and other technologies.
My primary goal is to be more present, and I’ve identified my phone and the things on it to be at odds with that.
I believe that poor boundaries with my phone lead to distraction from my own internal dialogue, distraction from the people in my life, way less productivity, a feeling of business where there doesn’t need to be, and overall diminished feeling of well-being and ease in life.
Sometimes I feel like I’m doing well managing this relationship, and other times I realize I’ve been compulsively using my phone in some way.
Recently, I noticed I had slipped back into a compulsive tendency of checking email on my phone about a dozen times per day. That felt distracting and really unproductive, so I’m reinvigorated to crack down on it.
A buddy of mine reminded me of the Chrome Extension “Inbox when ready” that simply allows you to pause your email inbox.
You can also set it up so that you’re only allowed to check it a certain number of times per day. If you try to check it more, it will lock you out for however long you set it up to.
I started using it again and within hours I felt so relieved to be free of the addiction. I have my attention back under my control.
Some other ways I manage my phone addiction:
I turned off all notifications years ago – literally all of them. The only notifications I leave on my phone are banner notifications (the little red number above an app) on any messaging app. This is without a doubt the most important one in my opinion.
I rarely use social media – I haven’t had social media apps on my phone for years, and I only check for direct messages a couple times per week on the web. Occasionally I will post something using Planoly which is an outside service. This allows me to post about podcasts or other things I want people to know about without being sucked into the actual app whose sole purpose is to get me to spend more time on it. This is the second most important for me.
No Gmail app. I intend to only answer email on my computer. If there’s ever something that is urgent and necessitates me using it on my phone I download the app.
Freedom app – this blocks me from going to social media sites on my browser on my phone.
Peace,
Michael