If you give up you, then who is home?

One of the 6 Don’ts to have a relationship that’s easy and fun is to never give up you.

I ran across a couple of startling examples of people giving themselves up in relationships which I’d like to share to demonstrate how this works in real life–in the hopes you’ll identify when you might be doing it so you can make another choice.

One seemingly intelligent woman, now happily married to her second husband, recalled her first husband saying to her, “Close your eyes. Everything you see is yours.”

Wow! She stayed married to him for 18 years. That’s more than giving up yourself in my book. That’s living with abuse.

A second subtler story: A friend of mine who lives in Canada learned a few months ago that his mother, who lives in Europe, has cancer which has spread to her liver and lungs. Although she’s doing chemotherapy, even the medics are not even suggesting she will survive.

The prognosis is obviously not good. How I as his friend long to have him be able to visit his mother one more time while she’s alert and energetic enough to enjoy the company of her beloved son. He is planning a visit–but not until December. Even if he learned his mother had but weeks to live, he told me, he could not go sooner.

He is on parenting leave from work for their young daughter. Since he is not working, he could take her so they could both visit his mother. But his wife cannot go until December, and he is not willing to take his daughter away from her mother even if it means he misses the chance to see his own mother one more time.

“I have to assume she’ll make it until Christmas,” he says again and again. Yes, he does. He has to assume that so he does not have to notice how he is giving up his only chance to say goodbye to his mother in person, just to spare his wife the pain of a week or two separation from their child.

Where is what’s good for him in this equation? How is sparing his wife a temporary pain at the cost of denying himself what is now a this time only opportunity to say goodbye to his mother honoring him in this relationship?

How are you honoring you or not honoring you in your relationship(s)? Where are you giving up yourself?

You can learn more about the 6 Do’s and 6 Don’ts in the teleclass under ecourses on this website. There’s still time to participate in a few live calls at a reduced price.