James Cordova

How do I put that advice together with your acceptance advice?

For example, let's say you're dealing with what you called a perpetual issue, and the other person reacts in a way that diminishes you.

Criticism, name-calling, etc.

What do you do then?

How do you ask them to see that?

What I'm asking is, do you communicate that to someone to give them a chance to change?

Can you even do that?

Or do you have to come to terms with it and then choose whether you can live with it or not?

Yeah, I can feel the anguish in the question as well.

The first step

almost always, maybe to the point of always, does have to begin with a kind of radical acceptance.

We have most likely changed everything that we can change.

And it's hard sometimes to tell, is this a mezzanine level problem and we just need to keep working it?

Or have we reached that point when really what I'm dealing with, what you're dealing with, are the places where

The degree of change that we want is just not available.

So when we start with radical acceptance, like maybe this just is who you are and we've done our level best to change.

And this is who I am and I've done my level best to change.

And this is just the truth of who we are together.

Sometimes we have to stop beating our head against the wall long enough to take a step back to see that the efforts that we are grappling with to try to get that change are actually part of what's keeping us stuck.

And from that place, then we get to make hopefully a decision that's rooted in care for you and care for me, that the cost of admission for me, the cost of admission maybe for you into this relationship is simply too high.