Ask yourself some questions: What is it that is not working in this situation? What am I always complaining about? What can I be responsible for? How does the situation occur for the other person / people? How do they see it? What’s missing for me or them in the situation or conversation that it would really make a difference if it were there? Very often what’s going on for the other person is not what you might have assumed. We human beings often assume that everything in an interaction is something to do with them: you are angry, I must have done something wrong or at least they think I have. Or we go to the other extreme: you are always angry – it can’t have anything to do with me – it must be your fault. It is also important to look yourself squarely in the mirror and work out your own devious ways of coming out on top or your own motivations – and we all have many. Maybe you are secretly hoping your other half will just disappear off the face of the earth: the more difficult you are about contact, the more likely they are to give up the fight, thereby ‘proving’ that you were right about them all along ie they were not committed and don’t deserve the relationship with the child. For myself, it was waiting to see if he was committed before I would commit. Actually, I was not ready to commit. I wanted him to do so before I did, so there was no risk to me.
