Poisoned Pineapples

Pineapples are divine. I can just imagine sinking my teeth into freshly cut pineapples, as the juice trickles in between my fingers. Another bite and I just don’t want to stop. Have you ever been in love?  To me, it is just like eating delicious pineapples. I bet you all want to hear my story, so here goes nothing.

Yup yup, I was a believer in ‘happily ever after‘, but boy was I wrong. As I sit here reminiscing about my past relationship (at least it felt that way to me), I cannot for the life of me place my fingers on what happened. All I know is that we drifted apart. I tried numerous times to resolve it, but all I got was silence. I became accustomed to the silence and I did nothing about it. Little did I know that the silence was poisoning my pineapples. My take was it will blow away and all will be well. What a stupid assumption. I could say the usual I tried, but there is always that voice that says “you didn’t try hard enough“. I guess the words of my wise friend comes to mind “sometimes you are to backward too fight for what you want”

What do I do? That’s the question I asked myself and I presume a lot of you will be asking if you are in a situation similar to mine. Well Orrin Woodward, who is gradually becoming my favorite writer, addressed this in his Master Mind 7 Speech and I am going to dwell on that today.

Prior to listening to him, I never knew that relationships had two destructive bombs. Sounds strange right? Well they do and they are SILENCE and VIOLENCE. But for today I want to address the silence bomb.

The silent relationship bomb is often called the silent treatment. If and when there is an issue or a conflict, it is either one of the participants is silent or both are silent. The issue is never resolved. This fosters the environment for future hurts to grow, eventually leading to a damaged relationship. In many cases, the hurt held is used to justify giving up on the relationship. Did this happen to me? Yes it did.

Woodward says that the silent treatment ” dwells on hurts without addressing the appropriate party, building pretense, hypocrisy and animosity within the person harboring the poisonous brew.”

Truth be told, when the silent bomb is dropped, there is always one party playing God, by allotting nasty motives to every action done by the other party. I will take a moment to admit that I was guilty of this as well and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it had crept into my place of work, my relationship with my family and just about everything. I got the silent treatment, so I gave it out as well. What a vicious circle.

I know I failed bitterly in my relationship, but thank goodness for time, and for change. I have the will power to change and so do you.  Here is another home truth. If you give out the silent treatment, you are a coward, “because only cowards dwell on hurts, runs them over and over and at the same time avoids the one individual capable of salving the wound.”

It takes real guts to address conflicts, because as human being, no one likes confrontation, no one wants to be wrong, no one wants to look or feel out of place. We fear hurt pride. Let us take a moment to see what Woodward says about resolving conflicts.

According to him, even when someone falls into conflict with another person, it doesn’t mean that he should drop a relationship bomb on them. So truth is I didn’t deserve the silent treatment and it is also unfair for me to dish it out. Allowing silence to grow, increased the level of poison in my pineapples and it broke the trust in our relationship. What followed next was bitterness and resentment.

I heard this word once, but was too young to comprehend. Orrin brings it back today. It is called Empathy, and empathy is the ability to view the situation from the other person’s perspective. He urges us to adopt the 10th resolution of life which is a resolve to “develop the art of conflict resolution”

He said “refuse to be bitter, but do get brave, brave enough to sit down with the other person, seeking to understand why the expectation on both sides were not fulfilled….reflect less on the hurt and more on the time of fellowship with the troubled relationship. Pause before you judge, pray before you become bitter and think about the entire situation from the vintage point of the other participant. Make each conflict a teachable moment, learning many valuable lessons to apply in the future. The bigger you are, the quicker you are to take responsibilities, seeking resolution for the benefit of the parties involved. A leader always apologizes first, focusing on the other person’s position and addressing the issue, not in an attacking spirit, but in a truthful one.”

For lack of better words, I just lifted his in hopes that he would not mind that I did. And though I have tried to break past the silence I got from the other party, I have not been so successful. I do hope you all are successful in your quest. My life lesson is that I will not give up, but give him space to be. A wise man once said always leave room for the prodigal son to come back home.

As usual, I have reached the point where I have exhausted all the sensible things I have got to say. I better run before I begin to rant the not so sensible ones. Have a lovely day people.

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• Repost: Conflict Resolution (makeitamazing.wordpress.com)
• American Silent Treatment Addiction: the lazy way out for many women (squisheddiorama.com)