Dealing with Difficult People; When People Are Annoying.

Difficult People

I do a LOT of relationship coaching. Makes sense, right? It’s one of the most important aspects of our lives, healthy relationships. So let’s dive into this.

 Why bother with this relationship?

Here’s a question that I’ve wondered, and I hear my clients ask sometimes too – especially when the relationship just seems so challenging, so much work to maintain, we ask ourselves, “why bother with this relationship anyway?”

Let’s address it in the context of marriage. Why bother with getting married, or staying married, when you know – either first hand, or from watching other people – how difficult marriage is?

Relationships & Expectations 

I think it’s really easy to get confused about what marriage is for. I see this all the time. And I know it all too well, from my own experience of being married for twenty-seven years. 

We come into marriage or a committed relationship with expectations of how the other person is going to make us so happy.  We have needs and desires.  We saw in our dating time together, in the other person, in our long talks and in our dating time, that this other person was fulfilling parts of us that made us feel more whole, more complete, and connected. 

It’s an amazing feeling, really. There’s nothing like it. I think of my dating times with my husband and I remember how much fun we had together.  I remember the long talks late into the night, me sharing ‘my most appalling of secrets’ with him, and him sharing his with me – it was magical. It was amazing.

Then, that first year of marriage was hard. Reality set in hard for both of us. We jumped right into full time college and full time work – putting ourselves through school. We didn’t want to have to carry any debt for getting through college, so we committed to this intense time of full time work and full time school. We went from dating and fun to business partners who were exhausted a lot of the time.  We saw each other on weekends, would have tons of homework – and I was a music major so I spent tons of time on the piano.  While he’s a computer programmer, so he spent tons of time in front of the computer.  We truly felt like business partners.

I often wondered, in the back of my mind, if we were doing it wrong. The spark and the fun and the dating vibe we had enjoyed, kind of vanished right when we got home from our honeymoon. 

I expected to my husband to fulfill my needs and desires in those early years of marriage, and to just kind of know what I needed, if he really loved me. When he didn’t know, I would get frustrated, then feel guilty that we weren’t one of those ‘happily ever after couples’ after the honeymoon. So another thing I did, I would then layer guilt on top of my frustration.

Not a good recipe for a healthy relationship.

I thought marriage was difficult. I thought my husband was being difficult. It was all so difficult. 

Self-Coaching Model

Which brings me to the self-coaching model.  To review the self-coaching model that I’ve taught on previous podcasts... Our thoughts create our feelings, which fuel our actions, which create our results.

Emotions in relationships come from our thinking.  What we think about ourselves in the relationship and what we think about the other person. It really does not matter what other people say or don’t say to us, what they do or don’t do, it’s what we make those things mean in terms of our thinking that causes our feelings. We don’t experience hurt feelings or frustration in relationships unless we have a thought that our brain is framing the other person’s words or actions around, our brain is causing all of it.

So the feeling of frustration, it’s because of what I was thinking. The thought that ‘ he’s difficult.’ 

I was frustrated because of the way I was thinking. 

If you are feeling frustrated in a relationship, it’s because of what you are thinking, not because of what the other person is doing. 

 The truth is, we are the creators of our feelings and emotions.

 Realistic Expectations

 It’s time to get more realistic of your expectations of other people. 

 Really start to examine what your expectations are of the other person and see if you are being reasonable with your expectations. 

 This can be easier said than done. 

 It’s easy to think that other people should just know what we want.  I’ve learned it’s better to level the playing field to zero and assume they know nothing of what I want or would like.  That assumption serves me so well when I assume they don’t know what I want or need and that it’s my job to communicate it kindly and clearly, versus expecting them to just know.

 Sometimes we blame people for things we think they should know, and well, this is not an effective strategy to get what we want. 

 How to have uncomfortable conversations…

1.  Manage your expectations: Of yourself and other people. Do you think they should just know? Do you have mental scripts in your mind of what they should say and do that they are not doing? 

A lot of us do. A lot of us aren’t aware of what we think other people should just know. Or maybe we are aware, but we wonder why they don’t care enough to follow our relationship rules.

 2.  Take responsibility for your own feelings: Notice the times when you are feeling frustrated or let down, and see instead, a huge opportunity for the relationship to grow. 

Instead of shutting down and getting protective, what if we could get curious instead? Curious about overcoming our own limitations as a person, our own preconceived ideas of how we think the world should work, and what everyone else is doing it wrong.

Personal Growth

We can see our emotions of frustration and our labeling of other people as difficult – as an opportunity for personal growth. 

We don’t have to use the excuse of difficult people as a reason to be upset.

People are upset about all of the upsetting people. 

What if you could instead, look inside and muster your ability to see yourself more objectively, from a place of curiosity, and self-coach yourself to a more loving place toward the other humans?

What if, instead of labeling other people as difficult, you could get really honest about where you are being difficult?

Fantasy Thinking

Here’s an example of how it can go:

• Husband says he wants to hang out with the guys on Friday night.
• Wife makes it mean he doesn’t like spending time with her.

Slippery thoughts – these can happen lightning fast, lightning speed:

• He doesn’t like spending time with me.
• It must be because I’ve gained a few pounds.
• I’m fat. He doesn’t like me because I don’t look like I used to.
• He thinks I’m ugly. 
• I wonder if he ever really loved me for who I am. 
• He shouldn’t just love me for my looks.
• What a jerk.
• I’m married to a jerk.
• Great. What have I done? I don’t know if he ever really loved me.
• He only loves me for the sex.
• What a jerk.
• I don’t know if I even want to be married to this guy. 
• All he cares about is himself.
• I’m married to a jerk.

 I’m going to stop there: Do you see what just happened there? This is very common. This is not an exaggeration.

This is an example of fantasy thinking, of inventing expectations of other people, and of how we make other people’s comments mean things about ourselves that most likely, aren’t even true.  Which causes all types of problems.

What would love look like?

In the case of the newlywed wife and husband, love might look like: husband wants to hang out with the guys. Wife knows she’s responsible for her thoughts and feelings. She decides on purpose to feel trusting of her husband.  Trusting in his love for her, maybe even happy for him to get some much needed down time, maybe seeing the possibility that he’ll come home from such a night a little more light-hearted, a little more himself and a little more grounded. Who knows? Maybe she’ll use the evening to do something with her own friends she hasn’t seen for a while. Maybe she’ll take a long bubble bath and do some self-care. And maybe, the intimacy that night when he comes home will be all the sweeter . . . 

Whatever the couple decides to do, there are so many options available. 

 Anytime we are thinking that other people are being difficult, what if we could instead tell ourselves that this is an opportunity to look at ourselves - and to experience some growth on our own part?

And so going back to my original question about why bother with relationships in the first place?

My answer:

Because love feels amazing.  And the point in all of it is that we get to grow.

Love is an emotion we create. It comes from our thinking. Other people don’t create it for us.  Love looks different for two different people.  It doesn’t look the same to anyone – that’s so fascinating to me. 

What love looks like to you looks different to other humans. 

I would love to help you better the relationships in your life!  Yes, difficult people exist.  It’s true.  But I’ve found more often than not, we are the ones causing our own difficulty.  Let me help you STOP causing your own difficulty.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out.  You can sign up to work with me HERE.  Join the newsletter here. I want you to be happy friend.  Let’s navigate through this together.

I believe in you,

Danielle