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Temperament Issues in Adulthood.
We believe there is a
world of value in recognizing, accepting and working
with differences in temperament. This is as true for
parents and children as it is for business partners,
colleagues and caring couples. We differ in ways
that are sometimes so basic that it may not be
possible to completely imagine the world from the
perspective of the other person. We can, however,
see those differences in our own and others’
everyday behaviors once we become sensitized to
them. How we interpret the differences we encounter
plays a huge role in how we respond to them. Because
it seems more intuitively obvious that we differ
from one another in stubborn, unchanging ways as
adults, we will look at this first.
An Orderliness Example.
The woman whose husband constantly leaves behind
socks, towels, yesterday’s clothes, and last night’s
snack plate, may be being disrespected by a
man who simply expects to be waited on. But—if his
car, desk, tool-bench and address book all look
similarly disorganized, that may just be who he is—a
man for whom order is inherently not important. If
she is naturally neat, the behavior will be a great
irritant either way, but the discussion they need to
have will be very different. If he values neatness,
but feels his wife should provide it at home, the
issue is primarily one of whose role it is to keep
order. If the fact is that he is perfectly
comfortable with a high level of disorder, they have
a different problem to resolve. Now it is not so
much who should pick up after whom, but just how
important neatness is. In the first case, we might
guess that his view of his wife is learned from
childhood experience, and needs a dose of 21st-century
reality. In the second case, it is more likely that
they have fundamental differences in temperament in
this area. If so, they need to recognize this, and
find some compromise that neither will love, but
both can live with.
Resolving Differences.
We see the world so clearly and strongly from our
own perspective—a perspective given by both
experience and temperament, (but more and more truly
by temperament as we mature), that it seems
unimaginable that someone we care about sees it
differently. The repetitive fights over the same
issue start from the assumption that the other
person is just misguided. If you can just find the
right, really convincing words, or just say it more
strongly, or, or, or, then the beloved other will
surely see the light. When that seems more and more
unlikely we are apt to fall back on that
devastating, “if you really loved me you would…”
Even this, however, is usually based on the inner
feeling that, if the other person just started doing
the important thing, whatever it might be, they
would be perfectly okay with it.
If we thought we were actually
saying, “If you really loved me you would be happy
to make yourself miserable for the rest of your
life,” we would be appalled.
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