Relationship With Friends, Lessons, And Room For Improvement When Handling Conflict

Creating a healthy relationship with yourself and others leads to a fulfilling life. These prompts are an invitation to step inside yourself. Take a deep breath. Shuffle the deck. Pull a card. Write your heart out. Rupi Kaur

The beauty at 7:47 a.m. in the photo above

It is Love

Loving the beauty of Mother Nature

It is an adventure

Every morning it is different the picture

Not a fixture

You can never catch the beauty on camera

even on telecamera.

Rupi Kaur’s Relationship Writing Prompts — What is something you miss doing with your friends?

Spending time in the boundary waters canoe area (BWCA). A girls' trip every year for years, portaging and sleeping on the ground by the water. Now, just an occasional trip and staying in a cabin.

Overnight visits, staying up and playing cards/games, or watching chick flicks. Going to meetings in other towns. Spending a few days together for conferences, and training.

Downhill skiing. Swimming. Thrifting. Greeting new babies. Birthday parties. Weddings. Comedies.

When we lived closer — lunches, breakfast, dinners. Entertaining at each other's house. Theatre. Art. Museums. Symphony. Concerts.

Woah, I guess I am missing a lot. There are still many things we can do together. The pandemic slowed us down. We can pick up some of those things again.

Rupi Kaur’s Relationship Writing Prompts — What lessons have your friends taught you, and how have you implemented these lessons into your life?

Friends taught me to live in the present, by saying the serenity prayer over and over again until I got it. I can live in the present now. I was always in yesterday or tomorrow prior.

Making decisions. My friend Verna made me pick where we were going to meet for coffee/dinner each week. That translated to having no problem with decision-making. She said it was my problem with wanting to be perfect.

Verna told me I could turn my obsession and compulsion over to God to let go of my alcohol and drug addiction. I had done that for jealousy and sarcasm a few years earlier. After that, I could make the connection easier in letting go.

JoAnn taught me how healing art is. She gave me watercolor art with sayings that were helpful to me. I could see how helpful her art was in her healing.

Rose told me if we were meant to be, we would be, but it wasn’t going to be so sick. (In leaving my first husband around the fifth time.)

And I can go on and on with all that I have learned from my friends over the years. Those above were from my 20s and I’m 71 this year.

Rupi Kaur’s Relationship Writing Prompts — How do you handle conflict with your partner, and is there room for improvement?

First, I think how important is this. Is this worth my serenity? Then if it is I let him know, how I am affected or what I think of whatever it is. He usually knows that I am going to win, as I am a scrapper from way back. He gives in easily. If I hurt his manhood, he may keep on for a while longer.

He apologizes, or I ask for an apology and we hug and make up.

Politics have been a bit different. I don’t understand this love of number 47, nor did I understand when number 45 was in office. We had to agree to disagree.

His issue is anti-government and anti-abortion. I hated when I worked for the government in our state and tribal government and he could take something he saw (workmen standing holding their shovels, too many workers for a small project) this and more as an excuse to call all government workers lazy and stupid.

And especially when old white men think they know what is best for women. It is none of their business. It is the couples' business and especially the woman's business. And then their medical providers' business.

So you can see why my comments will not fly with someone like my husband. My husband is going to be 75 in about 6 weeks, and he is white. I know all older white males are not the same, just as all women don’t agree with abortion. Most don’t think they know better.

In the process, I started taking everything personally. His comments about the vice president from the entertainment television he was watching were terrible. We are both women of color and Native American.

Then he said, “Do you know about people being treated differently?” Referring to whom? I live with being treated differently every day. Many groups of people are treated differently. Differently sized, women, aged, people of color, LGBTQ+, and others.

My experience as an overweight elder, Native American woman makes me very familiar with racism and prejudice. I started counseling this month as 47 triggers my abuse issues. Hearing him, seeing him, hearing about him I get sick to my stomach and get a headache.

A decision was made by me to enter counseling to get EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) to try to get rid of my reactions to 47. Another 4 years is not going to be fun for me without some intervention.

Most people, including the new therapist I am seeing, will say when my reaction is brought up, “Well of course, he is a perpetrator.”

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First published by Mercury Press on medium.com