Discussing your partner and words said in the heat of the moment: where is the line after which a relationship can’t be restored?
This question lies in the following plane: a large number of people discuss their relationships with different people — with girlfriends, with parents, with friends, with psychologists, with coaches, with doctors, at trainings, publicly. And someone doesn’t discuss anything and stays in their own awareness of it, reasoning about the issue on their own.
Absolutely always, in all cases, there is a motive. When a person discusses this issue with someone else, what is their motive?
Do they truly want to figure it out and resolve the issue? This means not to improve the situation for themselves, not to get the best decision for themselves — they want to understand this situation, to really figure it out, to truly resolve it.
Or does the person want to voice their opinion about this situation? They are only interested in their own thoughts, in being the person who is doing the right thing.
I’ll note that in theory one’s own opinion can coincide with the true solution — no problem there. But we aren’t considering that construct now. We’re examining when one’s own opinion does not coincide with the true solution.
For example, a wife shares her opinion with a friend, having worked it through within herself and understood it — and wants to discuss the topic together to once again weigh it and look openly at whether she is understanding it correctly and making the true decision. If the wife is always ready to hear that another position exists, there is no problem in that. At the same time, of course, it’s important to understand how capable the interlocutor is of hearing you properly. I’ll talk about that separately.
But if a person comes to a psychotherapist as to a closed session, but exclusively with the desire to voice their own opinion without having figured out the truth of what’s happening — then it’s not a question of the friend or the psychotherapist; or the person tells themselves in a video not to figure it out but to humiliate the other, to show their own rightness, significance, someone else’s inadequate behavior — that is a big problem.
There is another situation from the standpoint of listening. If someone comes to me wanting to humiliate another person, or someone comes to me wanting to figure things out — I will always talk from the position of “figure it out.” That’s why it’s not easy for many people to talk with me, and some topics they won’t discuss with me. They’ll immediately say: “You can’t gossip with you, can’t discuss someone!” — this is a known theme; I hear that from time to time. I even have close people who periodically say to me: “You can’t say anything bad in your presence anymore,” or “Let’s do without sermonizing and philosophizing!” and so on.
I am not willing to be in a state of pure condemnation of another person, because there are situations where a person lacks the strength and ability to observe the bigger picture. They are in a state of judgment, but through conversation they are able to arrive at true perception, to take in the picture a bit more broadly, to see why a person behaves this way — whether they are doing it on purpose or coming from certain energies, traumas, and so on.
Therefore, this depends not only on the initiator of the conversation, but also on the listener. For example, what kind of friend is it? A lot depends on her. There are friends whom it makes sense to visit and complain about your husband to: if they are adequate and act from a state of love and truth, they will show a person that the behavior and statements are inadequate, that you can’t do that, and that you need to show respect, including to your husband, to another person, and so on.
There is always a situation where a woman complains to a friend about her husband — and he really did behave inadequately. Why does she come?
People often also come simply to receive human support and love. But they are only possible through a search for truth.
Many people don’t like this. They say: “Can I just have love without discussions, without details, without all the stories?” For that, you probably need to sign some sort of contract at the outset of the conversation. Therefore, even when people go to psychotherapists, to coaches, to psychologists — they need to understand that on the other side can sit people who are not interested in love and truth. There are people interested in you winning. And those are different things.
I remember once meeting a strong psychotherapist in the context of a business solution. She said: “I can help make this action happen, but you will bear responsibility for it.” This is the important point: whose responsibility is it?
In the movie “Night Watch,” the protagonist comes at the very beginning to a woman who tells him: “I can easily make it so that her pregnancy is interrupted, only the responsibility will not be mine, but yours. You must take the responsibility upon yourself that you want this. Take the responsibility on yourself — I’ll do it from my side.” So, a huge number of training, development, and psychotherapy programs are built in part on this story — they do not always truly help you. They can simply help you solve the issue.
A lot of people approach me regarding solutions to business issues. I periodically say to people very clearly: “From the perspective of a person’s development, of a person’s life, of their spiritual component, perception of the world, the universe, the truth, the living of everything that happens — here you need to act like this. But if you act like this, you will lose socially. That’s not how it works in the social world, so choose where you are, what you are doing — it’s your right to decide how you make the decision.”
— If a wife says: “My husband is so depressed he looks like a bum!” — the question arises: “Then why are you living with a ‘bum’?” As a rule, they say those were just words said in the heat of the moment. Are those really “just words” tied to a specific moment, and the person is expressing their emotions to friends in chats this way? Or is that still a line a person crosses?
— From the standpoint of broadcasting such things about another person — the person will bear responsibility for that. In any case, it’s inadequate.
In the world, people really are in different states. It’s called “a person speaks in the heat of the moment,” but it’s a very thin line, and you yourself are saying that. So it turns out that “in the heat of the moment” you can kill another person and that must be forgiven? Did they kill “in the heat of the moment,” or did they have an impulse to do so? And can everyone kill “in the heat of the moment”? Can everyone “in the heat of the moment” say such nasty things? In any case, the person will bear responsibility for it.
Can a person say something like this while not actually feeling that toward the other person — broadly speaking, yes. People can be malicious; they can say whatever they want without even having figured the issue out. But that, in any case, indicates that the person carries a certain malice toward others — under all circumstances, because they said it, and they will answer for it.
How to react to this and what to do? It’s important to understand: when you go to a psychotherapist or psychologist, it does not mean that you are telling others that the other person is bad — the point is how you say it, from what motivation, impulse, state.
An important thing to understand: a person who speaks out so emotionally has an unhealthy state inside, and it’s hard for them.
When a person shows such aggression toward another person — again, it’s hard for them. As I said, this can be done deliberately and the person really thinks so; on the other hand, sometimes a person can voice certain words unconsciously, but they need to work on their state.
No matter how the other person behaves, no matter how badly, no matter where they are — that does not give you the right to display such aggression.
— How much can you trust that a person can change and change their attitude toward another person? Or is it more likely a systemic problem?
— Let’s assume that the person about whom such things were said found out about it. The only thing you can do is work on yourself, change yourself. There is no other way. From the standpoint of the other person’s statements — anything can arise within them. This should always be dealt with individually with the other person. This is not a question of chance. You want to define the case independently of yourself, to ask: “And what decision should I make? Will the person be good or bad going forward?” And I’m saying you need to work only on yourself.