What does it mean to accept your mate? It means that you view your mate as a person of worth. It means that you like him as he is and can respect his right to be dissimilar from you. It means that you allow him to possess his own feelings about matters. It means that you accept his attitudes of the moment, no matter how they may differ from yours.
Although it is highly rewarding to accept another person just as he is, it is not easy to do. You will need to ask yourself some frightening questions. Can I accept him when he looks at life's problems differently than I? Can I accept her when she chooses a different method of coping with problems? Can I permit him to have separate likes and dislikes than I? Can I accept her when she feels angry toward me? Can I respect his right to choose his own beliefs and develop his own values?
Acceptance of others doesn't come easy because of the common resistance to permitting our spouses, our children, our parents, or our friends to feel differently about particular issues or problems than we do. Yet this separateness of the individual, this right each person has to use his experience in his own way and to discover his own meanings, is one of the most priceless possibilities in life.
Does this mean that one should pretend that his mate is perfect? Of course not! Acceptance means that you recognize the imperfections but that you are not going to concern yourself with these areas. Instead, you determine to accept your mate as he or she is—faults and all.
Some people feel that they have been practicing acceptance when all they have done is tolerated their mate. They have mustered the strength to restrain criticism but have continued their doleful looks, grimaces, glances, and long painful silences. And each of us can usually sense when we are merely being tolerated rather than being fully accepted. If you can begin to control critical remarks where before you freely stated them, you may well have taken the first step toward full acceptance of others.
An important prerequisite to accepting others at face value is one's ability to accept himself just as he is. Self-acceptance enables us to become more aware of others' needs and to feel less of an urge to rush in and fix up other people. We will become more and more content to be ourselves and to let others be themselves.
Although it is highly rewarding to accept another person just as he is, it is not easy to do. You will need to ask yourself some frightening questions. Can I accept him when he looks at life's problems differently than I? Can I accept her when she chooses a different method of coping with problems? Can I permit him to have separate likes and dislikes than I? Can I accept her when she feels angry toward me? Can I respect his right to choose his own beliefs and develop his own values?
Acceptance of others doesn't come easy because of the common resistance to permitting our spouses, our children, our parents, or our friends to feel differently about particular issues or problems than we do. Yet this separateness of the individual, this right each person has to use his experience in his own way and to discover his own meanings, is one of the most priceless possibilities in life.
Does this mean that one should pretend that his mate is perfect? Of course not! Acceptance means that you recognize the imperfections but that you are not going to concern yourself with these areas. Instead, you determine to accept your mate as he or she is—faults and all.
Some people feel that they have been practicing acceptance when all they have done is tolerated their mate. They have mustered the strength to restrain criticism but have continued their doleful looks, grimaces, glances, and long painful silences. And each of us can usually sense when we are merely being tolerated rather than being fully accepted. If you can begin to control critical remarks where before you freely stated them, you may well have taken the first step toward full acceptance of others.
An important prerequisite to accepting others at face value is one's ability to accept himself just as he is. Self-acceptance enables us to become more aware of others' needs and to feel less of an urge to rush in and fix up other people. We will become more and more content to be ourselves and to let others be themselves.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment