Helping Out of Love or Ego? How to Talk About Your Partner Without Destroying Your Relationship

AVAlexander Volchek

Listen, your question falls into this area. Many people discuss their relationships with different people. Some talk to female friends, some to their mother, some to their father. People discuss their relationships with friends, psychologists, coaches, doctors, at training sessions, publicly. Others don't discuss anything at all and remain within their own understanding, thinking it through by themselves. In every case, absolutely every case, including when you are alone, there is always the question of motive. When a person discusses it with someone else, what is their motive? Do they want to truly understand it and resolve the issue? Truly understanding and resolving it does not mean improving the situation for yourself, making it better for yourself, or obtaining the best possible outcome for yourself. Do they want to understand this situation as it really is and resolve it truthfully? Or do they want to express their own opinion about it? Their own opinion. They are interested only in expressing their own opinion and presenting themselves as the person doing the right thing. Your own opinion always presents you as the person doing the right thing.

Let me point out that, in theory, your own opinion can coincide with the true solution. No question about that; we aren't discussing that arrangement now. We are examining what happens when your own opinion doesn't coincide with the true solution. Suppose a wife goes to a female friend and expresses her own opinion, but has already worked through it and examined it within herself. She wants to discuss it with her friend not to reinforce her opinion once again, but to weigh it again and look openly at whether she understands it correctly and is making the right decision, ready to hear that another position exists. Always ready to hear that another position exists. There is no problem with that at all, no issue at all. Of course, it is important to understand how capable the person you are speaking with is of hearing you properly. I'll discuss listening separately in a moment. But if someone goes to a psychotherapist for what seems to be a private session, interested exclusively in expressing their own opinion without examining the truth of what is happening, then it isn't a question of the female friend. What difference does it make whether they went to a psychotherapist, went to a friend, went out into the street, or are telling it to themselves in a video?

The person is telling it—he or she, it doesn't matter—not to understand, but to humiliate the other person, demonstrate their own rightness and importance, and show the other person's behavior as inappropriate in their opinion. Even if it is inappropriate, they highlight it to humiliate rather than find a solution. That is a major problem. Now there is another side to this: listening. If someone comes to me wanting to humiliate another person, or wanting to understand, I will always talk with them and work to understand the situation. Always, even if they want to humiliate someone else. That is why conversations with many people aren't easy, and why people won't discuss certain things with me. They immediately say, "There's no gossiping with you." It is a familiar theme. I hear it from time to time: "There's no gossiping with you, no judging someone, no saying anything bad." Even people close to me sometimes say, "No one can say anything bad in front of you anymore." Or, "Let's skip the speeches," or "No philosophizing," and so on.

But I am not willing simply to sit there while someone is being condemned. Sometimes a person lacks the strength and ability to see the overall picture and seems to be judging someone, but through conversation they can reach a normal, real, truthful perception, see the picture a little more broadly, and understand why the person behaves that way. What is happening? Are they doing it deliberately, or because of certain energies, traumas, or something else? So, Sasha, your question always depends not only on who starts the conversation, but also on who listens. What kind of friend is she? A great deal depends on the friend. There are female friends it makes sense to visit and complain to about your husband. If those friends are reasonable and act from love and truth, they will show the person that her behavior and what she is saying are inappropriate, that she shouldn't act that way, that she needs to show respect, including toward her husband and the other person, and genuinely examine the positions involved. There is always the possibility that a woman comes to a friend, complains about her husband's inappropriate behavior, and the husband really did behave inappropriately.

Again, why does she come? Often, people come simply to receive human support, human love. But human support and human love are possible above all through seeking truth, seeking truth. Again, many people don't like that. They say, "Can I just have love without discussions, details, and all that?" For that, you would probably have to sign some kind of agreement at the start of the conversation and say so. Even when people go to psychotherapists, coaches, or psychologists, you need to understand that the person on the other side may not be interested in love and truth. Some are interested in helping you win. Those are different things. I remember meeting a woman who was a very capable psychotherapist, in the context of resolving a business matter. She always made this point: "I can help you take this action, but you will bear responsibility for it. The responsibility is yours, not mine." That is always important. Whose responsibility? Whose responsibility? Remember the film Night Watch? At the very beginning, he comes to her and she says, "Yes, I can easily make her pregnancy end.

But the responsibility will be yours, not mine. You must take responsibility for wanting this. Take responsibility, and I will simply do it for you from my side." An enormous number of training, development, and psychotherapy programs in the world are built partly on this approach. The help you receive isn't always truthful and beneficial; someone may simply help you resolve the issue. Many people come to me about resolving business matters. Many. From time to time, I tell people very clearly: look, in terms of your development, your life, your spiritual dimension, your perception of the world, the universe, truth, and genuinely living through everything that happens, you need to act this way. But if you act this way, you will lose socially. That isn't how people act in the social world. So choose where you stand and what you are doing. Choose. That is your right to choose. Then it is up to you how to decide.

AMAlexander Mineev

I have a question. Suppose someone says, "My husband has been depressed for so long that he has started looking like a stinking, beaten-up bum." My question is: why are you living with a bum, then? Usually, the answer is that these were just words spoken out of emotion, right? But I don't believe words are simply thrown around, especially under the influence of emotion. My question is: are they really just words connected to one particular moment? The person is tired; it is hard to live with someone who has been depressed for a long time, and this is how they express their emotions to female friends in chats and so on. Or is this actually a red line they are crossing?

AVAlexander Volchek

Look, a person will bear responsibility for communicating any such things about someone else. It is inappropriate in any case, inappropriate in any case. But people in the world really are in different states, and this has been called "speaking out of emotion." Yet emotion is a very fine line, as you yourself are saying. On one hand, the person said it out of emotion. But then someone can also kill another person out of emotion. And we're supposed to forgive that. Did they kill out of emotion, or because they had—

An impulse to do it? Can everyone kill under the influence of emotion, or can some people refrain from killing? Can everyone say such nasty things out of emotion, or are there people who won't? In any case, the person will bear responsibility for it, basically speaking. Next: can someone say it without actually feeling that way toward the other person? In general, yes. People are malicious; they can say anything without even understanding the issue. But that still shows the person carries a certain malice toward others. In any case, they carry malice toward other people. Whatever the circumstances, however much we discuss this particular case, the person carries malice toward others because they said it. Again, they will answer for it. How should you respond? You are asking how the person who was spoken about should respond, right? How should they respond and what should they do? It is important to understand that going to a psychotherapist or psychologist does not mean telling other people that someone else is a monster.

How are you saying it? From what motive? From what impulse? From what state? What matters here is understanding that someone who speaks this way emotionally has an unhealthy inner state and is struggling. When someone shows that kind of aggression toward another person, they are struggling. Again, as I said, on one hand, it may be deliberate and intentional, and the person may fully believe it. On the other, people can sometimes say certain words relatively unconsciously. But that person definitely needs to work on their own state. Whoever the other person may be, however badly they behave, wherever they are, that does not give anyone the right to express such extreme aggression in this situation.

AMAlexander Mineev

How much can you trust that a person can change, change their attitude toward someone else? Or is this most likely a systemic problem?

AVAlexander Volchek

In this case, let's imagine that the person who was spoken about has found out. Right? As I understand it, they found out. You ask, "If I found out, how much can this person change?" The only thing you can do is work on yourself and change yourself. The only thing you can do is work on yourself and change yourself, change yourself. That is the only thing you can do. There is no other way, as far as what another person says is concerned. Anything might be seething or arising inside them. That always has to be examined individually with the other person. It isn't a question of the odds. You want to define the case independently of yourself and say, "What decision should I make next? Will the person be good or bad?" I am telling you that you need to work only on yourself.