Patience

Patience is a virtue was always my least welcome adage. I never felt I was good at it, but at times I apparently exceeded expectations in my performance; and when I lose it, the consequences feel disproportional to when the same happens to others. It’s worth digging into, because my son has the same demeanor, and he experiences the same. It goes something like this: throughout the day, folks make all kinds of comments, are in your face without any good reason, and you usually just take it, because when you escalate the situation, usually what happens is you get the lecture, because you usually win when you unleash. There are scenes in a movie like that: kid gets teased all day long, but does not react. One day, kid witnesses bullies becoming physical against a girl in class. Kid intervenes, hurting one of the bullies in the process. It’s kind of a “him or me” situation, and kid decides “not today”. Kid gets suspension, bully‘s parents threaten to file charges against kid, kid gets into deep trouble with parents. Extremely frustrating.

I must confess, I never found a solution to this. Some just are able to play the game much better than me, or as it were, my son. But unreleased aggression and tension just builds up, and often leads to disproportionate explosion over minor things down the road. Dealing with those kinds of stresses in one’s life is not easy. I found doing sports alleviates the immediate pressure, but does nothing to resolve the underlying issue(s), and therefore actually leads to a much more dangerous place: one where you think you’re doing fine, but you’re actually not, and an emotional (or physical) outburst surprises even yourself when it inevitably happens.

In my relationship, I try to release the aggression in controlled bursts, and ideally close to when the frustration occurs. The idea being that if you act immediately, and decisively, but in a controlled manner, you both address the immediate concern with the other party, and you deflate any anger you might feel that otherwise would just accumulate over weeks. This usually works, but only if it is situational. Pent up frustrations over the partner’s general disposition towards certain things you see differently is immune to this. Because it is in the partner’s nature to act a certain way in a certain situation, the anger and frustration this creates does not go away because you know it’s not something they will change - you will have to come to grips with it, and cannot expect them to adapt. For example, when you just cannot believe your partner when they claim they cannot do something very basic (to you), and despite you having shown them multiple times how “it” works, they just fail at it. “I can’t believe you still don’t know how to restart the Apple TV, I showed you a thousand times!”

Here, it takes two to tango. The partner undoubtedly realizes that this causes you stress, how they react to it tells you a lot about whether you are in a long term successful partnership or whether this will end sooner or later. Usually sooner.

In the end, patience really is a virtue, but only if you can exercise it in an environment, that is generally supportive of you as a person. If your surroundings end up being hostile towards you, patience is not a virtue, it turns into foolishness as it is diametrically opposite of decisiveness, clarity of thought, and action. It can actively hinder you from reacting well in a threatening situation, and provides a mental block adding just that much delay into your action should you be actively threatened. In order to counteract this, I strongly advise to take martial arts classes. Muscle memory is the only way to counter this programming.

Incidentally, martial arts also teaches relaxation techniques that help release tension and frustration: breathing exercises, meditation and focus exercises are all good ways in which to counteract the brain’s tendency to grasp on to indignities suffered throughout the day.