How to Think More Kindly About Your Partner’s Habits that Bug the Shit Out of You
Strategies for Minimzing Judgement
Strategies for Minimzing Judgement
Judgements and struggles over who’s right are destructive in relationships (see Right and Wrong, Tale of Two Stories). In essence, what Marshall Rosenberg of Nonviolent Communication calls “moralizing judgements” are thoughts or statements that imply another person’s wrongness, badness, or inferiority. The extreme exemplar of judgement is contempt, which is anger with a tone of superiority.
Contempt is corrosive to relationships, and at the core of in-group/out-group binary thinking that promotes xenophobia and violence.
It is the emotional opposite of love.
Recently, a partner in one of my couples asked, in effect, “OK, so now that I see the ways I’m judging my partner, and I recognize it’s not good for them or our relationship, how can I do it less?”
Great question!
Some preliminary context. The first step (modeling my client!) is acknowledging and starting to identify the judgements we make. Start notici…