luvstarved Posted April 7, 2007 Posted April 7, 2007 which I assume describes most of us or else why would we be hanging out here? Anyway I just spent the last hour on a little assignment our new counselor gave to us and...I think I just had an epiphany!! This is so cool! He asked us to write up our "CNI" description of our spouse. CNI stands for core negative image and what he was really asking us to do was to write down the absolute worst interpretation we had of our spouse. Like, if you see your spouse as a lazy ass sometimes, that is one of the things you would put down. It is supposed to represent your deepest fears about the person you married... Part 2 is writing down what you think your spouse will write about you. I very enthusiastically dove in to the CNI of my H part. No problem! How long is TOO long? But I already knew all that crap. It's been replaying in my head for 10+ years! The epiphany came when I started to write down what I thought my H would say about me...and realized that...in SOME places, mind you...he actually has a point! And *I* am the one describing his viewpoint! I thought that would be very hard to do but once I honed in on a few of the oft-repeated phrases I hear from him, I was able to start to paint a pretty rich picture of ways that I can also be an ass!!! Oh the joy! BTW this comes from the book "The New Rules of Marriage" by Terrence Real, which I highly recommend. Anyway a pretty eye opening experience for the righteously indignant little beast in us all... Side note: very hopeful about this counselor. TWICE he called H on namecalling and "violating boundaries" in the session, but in a very calm , clear matter-of-fact manner. It wasn't this speechy preachy spiel, just whoops, there you went again. Unfair. We shouldn't do that to those we love. Let's move on.
km Posted April 7, 2007 Posted April 7, 2007 "Righteously indigant" - thank you. You just named what I need to realize I am being. Sounds like a valuable exercise for me, too -- I'll give it a shot.
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