You're not invited to my barbeque

One of the terrible things we humans do to each other is say hurtful things that can't be unsaid.

If you are a parent, you have probably suffered the heartbreaking statement, "You're mean and I hate you!"

I have often given the advice to people contemplating marriage that you should only consider marrying someone that you will still like when you don't love them anymore, and who you will still love when you don't like them anymore.

Because, let's face it, if you have parents or brothers or sisters or children, at one point in time you lived with someone you loved but didn't like, or liked but didn't love.

Emotions are like the tides, they ebb and flow.  Over the course of a lifetime with the people we love, our emotions will make us want to cling to those we love as tight as we can, but they will also make us want to run away and start a different life.

I'm sure there are people reading this who are shaking their heads, who live life on a much more even plane than I do.

That's OK too.  But I am one of the emoters in the world.  My highs are really high and my lows are really low.

So, I had to learn how to not put the harshest emotions that I have into words.  Because those words could damage my relationships with those I love.  And I don't want to do that.  Because over the course of a lifetime, I will love and not love, like and not like hundreds, maybe even thousands of times.

When my husband and I blended our families, we realized we needed a safe way to tell each other when we didn't like each other anymore, without damaging each other, and without saying hurtful things that could not be unsaid.  Hence, "you're not invited to my barbeque" or "if I were having a barbeque, you couldn't come".

One of those statements became the conversational opener to what was a discussion of what was making one or the other of us feel "less than".  I have a firm belief that most arguments in a family start when someone feels they are being disregarded in some way.  I also believe that most of the time, the person who you believe is disregarding you is unaware that you are feeling disregarded.

Yes, there will be times when two people simply can't see what each other are trying to say.  Adding hurtful speech to those interactions doesn't make anything better.

After twenty-eight years of marriage, I hardly ever don't want my husband at my barbeque.  The years have softened my edges, and the wealth of happy memories, of support in hard times, of steadfast love have overcome my fight or flight response.

But I still respect how important the "you're not invited to my barbeque" was to our success as a couple.

You can't unsay hurtful things.  Finding a way to communicate that you are hurting, and you want resolution without threatening or demeaning your partner is a great thing.