Photo courtesy SuziJane

Editor’s Note: This post is by Simple Marriage contributor Mary Ann Crossno.

Let’s spend a little bit more time exploring the importance of complaining and how that might play out in relationships. Let’s say that you took the complaining steps to heart and you put a good bit of effort into delivering an effective complaint – asking your spouse for a behavior change to alleviate some discomfort you experience around that behavior. Your spouse responded with amazing grace to your thoughtful request and immediately made the desired change, right? That is what happened, isn’t it??????

Or did your partner react to you as though you were still talking in your old critical, contemptuous manner?

Or did your partner eye you suspiciously, agree to make the behavior change at some unspecified point in time, and ask, “Who are you and what did you do with my wife/husband?”

Here’s where becoming a student of human behavior comes into play. Human behavior occurs in knowable, observable, and predictable patterns that shape relationships and these patterns are natural ways of reacting to real or imagined threats. We inherit relational patterns from the families that we grew up in and they inherited their patterns from the families that they grew up in – across generations. The more you know about your family’s history of functioning, the better equipped you will be to understand your functioning. Read more »