Do We Really Have Meaningful Choices in Our Relationships?

Recently, in talking with a friend who is beginning to study Choice Theory, he mentioned that he wasn’t sure we really had meaningful choices because the people in our relationships are doing things and we have feelings as a result of their actions. He felt that we were somehow trapped in our relationships and raised the question, “Is our only choice to accept what they say and do, or to leave the relationship?”

I believe that he has put his finger on an essential misunderstanding of Choice Theory that most people run into when learning it. I know I did. In fact, I went into the office and quit Murray after the first two months because I was stuck in that misunderstanding.

The first axiom of Choice Theory is, “The only behavior we can control is our own.” Most of us believe that we are making some choices in our lives, but we feel that we are being controlled by many people around us and that there is little we can do about that. We feel trapped, like victims of the choices others are making. This is an understandable first interpretation of axiom #1.

It is certainly a fact that others are attempting to control us and we are attempting to control them, but according to Dr. Glasser, we are not successful. No one can control our choices.

We can't control the choices of the people around us, either. This means that we are all on a planet with others who are doing whatever they want. We are dealing all day long with what others are choosing to do. Their choices are impacting our lives in important ways. This includes the people we love. We aren't in charge of them, either, and they aren't in charge of us.

When they do something that impacts us, we get to make choices about how we're going to handle it, how we're going to feel about it, even if we’re going to stay in the relationship. However, we don’t get to choose what THEY do. We only get to choose what WE do. Like the example of the dirty kitchen in the previous blog entry, I can’t choose whether or not my husband leaves the dirty dishes in the kitchen. I can choose, however, whether I want to feel angry with my husband or not.

We definitely feel an initial “jab” of emotion before we have a chance to really think about what we want. But when we learn Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, and Lead Management, we see that we can slow that moment, that jab of emotion, down, and wait before we lash out at someone.

We can think through what is going on, what the other person is probably trying to accomplish by what s/he did, and what we really truly want out of the situation. We can slow our responses down so far that we can think through how we want to answer, what the most likely results will be if we answer in certain ways, and if we want to deal with those results.

For instance, if we feel hurt by something our beloved says to us, we can decide to slow down that moment and think through the feeling. We could just say, "You horrible person! You hurt me! How could you? What kind of person would do what you did? What's the matter with you? I hate you!"

OR we could say, "I'm feeling hurt by what you just said/did. I really value our relationship and I don't want to damage it, so would you please tell me what you want here? What led you to talk to me that way? Did I do something to upset you? If so, I'd like to apologize and clear the air so we can start over. I'd like us to have a great day together, if we can organize it. What can we do to straighten this out?"

I think it's pretty obvious that the first response, which is all too common in most relationships, is what Dr. Glasser calls a “disconnecting” comment. It will bring about more conflict because it's filled with judgment and even personal insults. It's creating more things that will need to be worked out to get back to a normal feeling between you.

Whereas, the second comment lets the person know that you value them, that you are hurt, but you’re trying to take care of the relationship and to listen to what the issues are without judgment. Clearly, that response is MUCH more likely to end up with two loving people when the smoke clears.

Recently, my husband and I have developed a technique when one of us snipes at the other for no good reason, just because we didn't take the time necessary to think through a loving response and just gave ourselves permission to jump on the other one with anger or frustration. We say, "Let's just pretend that never happened."

It sounds funny, in a way, like a joke, but that sentence lets the other person know that we are taking responsibility for having just acted in a way that could hurt the relationship and that we don't really have a good reason for doing it and that we would like to wipe the slate clean and start over with a good heart.

So far, every time one of us has thought to say that, the problem is over. We smile in acknowledgment of our humanity, and we move on, without hard feelings. It works quite well, actually. And if one of us wasn't willing to just "pretend it never happened," then we could stop and work it out.

We have a system to repair the relationship because it's important to us. It works so well that we are going to have our 32nd anniversary this year and we're still madly in love, which we admit is pretty miraculous, considering how bull-headed we both are. :-)

Using Self-Talk to Improve Important Relationships

I teach at Murray High School, the first Glasser Quality Public High School in the world. Our school is based on the ideas of Dr. William Glasser, a genius who has developed a system of learning how to get along with one another that actually creates a joyful school environment, even with students who have been designated “at risk of dropping out or of graduating below their potential.”

As a Murray teacher, I have developed many methods of using Choice Theory with my students and the result has been that my students and I come to love one another and enjoy working with each other every day. When we have conflicts, we have a system to work them out. We don’t stay miserable, or nurse hurt feelings. We just mediate and go away feeling good about one another again.

One of the most important benefits of living in a Choice Theory environment, is that these ideas don’t just stay in the world of work. Once we begin to “think in Choice Theory,” it becomes a part of the way we look at the world.

I have found that the longer we live in a CT environment, the more difficult it is to maintain the usual external control behaviors that we use, even with those we love, whether in school or outside of school.

A good example of that would be that I came downstairs at my house one morning and found that the perfectly clean kitchen that I had left the night before had been completely trashed by by my beloved husband, who is a writer and composer, and who had stayed up all night long working. He'd fixed himself a meal and left everything everywhere. My first thoughts were, "Damn it! I just cleaned this kitchen! Why is he so thoughtless and selfish as to believe I'm just going to come in here and do it again?! Why didn't he clean up after himself? What does he think I am, his slave?"

If I had continued to think along those lines, I probably would have done the dishes in complete and total anger and when he got up, we'd have had a fight about that, with me feeling completely abused. I would have blamed him and attacked him and that's how our day would have gone. Glasser would say that I was using the seven disconnecting behaviors to destroy my relationship with my husband.

Luckily, I'd been learning CT/RT/LM at Murray, so I was able to pause long enough to get another thought process going. I thought, "Hmmmm.... Let me use some CT/RT here. First off, do you love your husband? Yes. Do you have lots and lots of good reasons for loving him? Definitely! Do you want him in your life, exactly as he is? ... Yes.... Okay. Do you think that if you leave these dishes here, he won't clean them when he gets up? You know he won't complain at all that you didn't do them. He'll do them when he feels like it. In fact, that's why he didn't do them before he went to bed. He was tired and he didn't feel like it. Is that evil? No. Is that selfish? No. That's just getting what he needed. In fact, if I leave them here now, it'll be because I don't want to do them now either. Am I evil for that? My mother would probably think so, but I don't. :-) I just don't want to do them, just like Paul didn't.

So, what is my problem this morning? Did I think that by cleaning the kitchen last night it was going to stay perfectly clean for all time? Hah! That would be nice, but it was doomed to be dirty again the next time one of us used it, obviously. So, now, here I am on a Saturday morning, looking at a filthy kitchen. Who says I have to clean it? No one. Only me. I'm doing a number on myself here. I am a free woman who could get in the car right now and take myself out to a marvelous breakfast if I want to. I could drive to California and start a brand new life this morning, if I want to. I could do ANYTHING at all.

If I'm feeling like I don't want to face Paul's dirty dishes in the kitchen, I can give myself permission to just leave them here for him to do when he feels like it. If neither of us EVER feel like it, we could sell the house and leave the dirty dishes here for the next people. Hah! We could, if we wanted to.

So, can I let go of being angry about Paul leaving the kitchen dirty when he went to sleep? Yes. Can I good-heartedly leave them here myself and go do something today? Or would I prefer to get to work and get this kitchen cleaned up again, so Paul doesn't have to do the dishes when he gets up and so he can come down to breakfast in a clean kitchen. What do I WANT to do? Either choice is good if I can do it with love in my heart, rather than blame, anger, and frustration."

I can't tell you how much that conversation with myself improved our relationship in a thousand ways and is still improving it. You can probably imagine how grateful Paul was to have a clean kitchen and a happy wife who didn't say, "How could you have done this to me?" but who instead said, "I love you. Did you get a nice sleep?" No mention at all of the dirty kitchen and not a single bad feeling about it because I'd thought it through and it was a gift I wanted to give with love in my heart. I felt great and so did he. Relationships connected, not disconnected.

This type of thought process is what Choice Theory and Reality Therapy are all about. I would say that 100% of my relationships are better because of all the CT/RT/LM I've learned here at Murray.