Mind Reading in Love and Relationships
It’s Devin, the romantic traveler, or perhaps becoming the Love and Kabbalah guy. Today we are with you for our fourth installment of relationship and love killers. Stuff that you’re probably doing that make your relationship that much harder to maintain, or find love, happiness and serenity through. Welcome for being here, as always we’re here promoting love and great long lasting relationships and if you haven’t found one yet, I’m here to help you do that too.
Let’s start by saying this, we’re a clever species, without question. One of our greatest assets is our keen mind, sadly it’s that keen mind that sometimes creates problems. Our number three love killer is mind reading, and what do I mean by mind reading?
Mind reading is not helpful magic
No, I’m not talking about the magic act of mind reading that people do on the Internet, like “Pick a number between five and twelve and I’m going to guess seven. Did I do it? Did it work?”
These kinds of videos are all over the internet, there’s quite frequently a trick to them as well, but the funny thing is that we have this uncanny belief that if we follow the trail of breadcrumbs that we’re going to find the answer, and we’re going to figure out wht the other person is thinking, what they understand about us.
How Mind Readings Show Up in Our Relationships
Let me give you an example. I’ll give you an example in my own life. I used to cook all the time, and my wife loved it. My cooking all the time was a good thing. However, I have been growing my business and have been cooking less. Her first reaction was, “Well, why is he cooking less? Oh, there may be a problem. What is that problem?” The ironic part of this mind reading is that, and this is what people do, I’ve done it, I think you probably at home have done it, you may find this little bit of information, like there’s something amiss, something doesn’t happen as usual as it once did and now you’re having a feeling about that thing. It could be about your partner not cooking for you as often, or it could be about one thousand different things.
Other examples could include, “Why didn’t they say I looked nice tonight? We went to the Gala Ball and I looked fabulous and everybody else noticed how fabulous I looked, but my partner didn’t.” It’s those types of moments where we will pick something out of the air, something that in us, in most cases, that we’ve invented, and we’ve decided that that’s a meaningful clue to what our partner’s true feelings are. The truth of the matter is more often than not we are completely wrong.
I stopped cooking because I was working on my business, I started exercising more, and so there was just less time for me to sit down and cook. Now as somebody who loves to cook and loves my wife and loves to cook for my wife, that tradition will continue, but right now it’s just been a busy time. However, this fact does not prevent my wife from noticing the change and reading into what’s happening.
This is the mind reading element. It is where we start thinking we know what the motivation is for somebody else doing or saying something can lead to a terrible word, a challenging word in relationships, and that’s jealousy. Because that might mean, “Well, my husband noticed another woman or her short skirt or something like that, and he glanced over.” You may, as a lady, or as a gay male, read something into that, something bigger that it may not even be there. The alternate is true, that we may see our women staring at a guy in a way that we don’t appreciate and we may create a scenario where we’re threatened or in danger that probably really isn’t even there.
You know, as human beings we’re going to look at people we find attractive and sometimes we’re going to look at people we don’t find attractive, just because we look and we’re curious. What we want to avoid is things like jealousy and mind reading where we start creating little wedges between us and our loved ones because we’re having feelings or that they’ve changed their behavior, even in a slight way. We’ll notice those little nuances and we will start building a case against the other person.
More of this story below the video…
The Antidote to Mind Reading
All right, here’s the good news. We don’t have to react to our mind reading tendencies. Thoughts come into our brain, then they leave but sometimes they build a nest. What we don’t want it to do is build a nest where it becomes a problem between us and the relationship that we want. Are there things that you can do? For starters, understand that our thoughts come in and out, we have a million of them all day long, some of them are relevant, most of them aren’t. We daydream. We create little scenarios through fantasy in our mind, and ones that scare us sometimes do in fact build a nest.
How do you not let that happen? I talk about in my free ebook, “Women are Smarter Than Men”, if you don’t have it go to deving2.sg-host.com and download yours free today. I talk about when women talk to other women in the hopes of understanding men. I’m going to say right now that if you are a woman trying to figure out a man by speaking to another woman you’re barking up the wrong tree, because men and women don’t think alike, and the reverse holds true as well. If you think you can understand women by going to your buddies, forget it, that’s probably not going to happen. More often than not your friends are just going to justify whatever your fears you are having because they’re on your team. If you say, “I think Larry is doing X.” Or, “I think Sue is doing Y and I’m nervous and I’m afraid. They’re just going to say, “Well, you might be right,” because they’re on your team.
Consider a Relationship Coach
What I suggest is actually going to somebody who’s not emotionally invested in your stuff or your relationships, somebody’s who’s not actually looking to get with you and potentially break up your relationship. Somebody like an uncle who lives out of town, your father, your mother, somebody who is really looking out for you and may have some perspective. The most important point to understand is that you want to keep distance to the many thoughts that come in and out of your brain. For more constant and immediate issues I suggest that you go to a relationship coach, somebody who has a little bit more insight and experience, like myself, who has a better handle on how our minds work within the confines of a relationship.
Get Clarity from you Partner
Maybe the most important thing, talk to your partner. Definitely if you want to get insight, talk to your partner, find out where they are at, and if you are going to talk to your partner about your fears and your concerns it’s not the time to accuse them of what you are thinking.
What you don’t want to do is come at your partner and say something to the effect of, “I think you’re cheating with Susan, or Larry. (I’m sorry for picking on Susan and Larry, it’s just something that I do, they’re two random names that are always inside of my head.).” If you are going talk to them then just talk to them from your standpoint. “Hey, when you didn’t cook for me I kind of felt like you cared less and I don’t want to feel that, because I love you and you’re my partner,” will be much better than, “I think you stopped cooking for me because you don’t like me very much and I am pissed.”
Now of course I’m giving you some extreme examples, but left unchecked, you know, sometimes we get these thoughts in our head and then the relationship and love can go downhill very quickly.
Next week we’re going to talk about punishing next week. Until then keep making conscious choices in your life and be happy, and if you are new to we’re going to start putting our show on iTunes. We’re going to be here every week at noon, where we’re going to start doing live shows after this series. I hope you stick with us and I hope to talk to you soon. Thanks so much for tuning in. All this and more on http://devingalaudet.com.
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