Emotional Hoarding

Marriage Mistakes – Part 1

In this series I want to explore three of the more common mistakes I see week in and week out with couples who are in conflict.

This first entry is characteristically (but not exclusively) seen in wives. Part 2 is characteristically (but not exclusively) found in husbands. And in Part 3 we’ll observe a fault that both husbands and wives contribute to.

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A couple is riding down the road on a beautiful spring day. They are sitting quietly, listening to the music on the CD. (Remember those?)

The wife breaks the silence with this. “I just want you to know that I forgive you for what you did to me at Mom and Dad’s.”

The husband responds, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What did I do and when did I do it?”

She answers, “I’m talking about what you said to me at the dinner table on Thanksgiving.”

A brief silence follows while the husband is trying to sort this out in his head. He then says, “Honey, we haven’t been to your parents for Thanksgiving in three years!”

The wife replies, “Yea, I know. I just want you to know I’m ready to forgive you.”

Three years. One hundred and fifty-six weeks. One thousand and ninety-five days.

And her husband had no clue.

This is what I mean by emotional hoarding.

Here’s something important... I would say crucial... to remember about emotions.

If you’re hanging onto a damaging emotion, you have two options.
You can talk about it – or you will behave it.

That’s a cardinal truth.

If you don’t talk about it, you will behave it.

And you will negatively impact your relationship by doing so.

Some years back I developed a technique that will prevent emotional hoarding. I call this technique the DI-DI Principle.

DI-DI stands for Discuss It or Drop It.

Where there is emotional immaturity you will find a third (and indefensible) option. The individual will hang on to the issue – emotional hoarding – and will punish you.

This practice creates a lot of relational disturbance and conflict.

If you wish to avoid this kind of relational conflict, practice the DI-DI principle. Hold yourself accountable to do one of two things when your spouse hurts your feelings or otherwise irritates you.

Choose to discuss it... or drop it. Don’t hoard it.

If you trap those feelings inside, you will (consciously or unconsciously) begin to behave them. And your marriage will suffer as a result.

Let me add one final comment. Not everything is worth discussing. Overdoing this just makes you come across as petty.

In fact, the more you choose to let go of – within reason of course – the freer you become from the actions and attitudes of others.

Letting go doesn’t make you weak, it makes you wise. It reflects back to yourself the belief that your life is too significant to spend it in the weeds addressing trivialities.

That’s real power.

And it’s the way to break the practice of being an emotional hoarder.

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Thrive Thought

You can think of emotional hoarding like a harmful bacteria that infects a relationship, at best weakening it and at worst breaking it down over time.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer a few suggestions that may facilitate whichever of the two—discuss it or drop it—you choose.

If you decide to discuss it, take responsibility for how you processed what the other person said or did. In other words, lead with the words, “I felt like you were saying…” or “what you did made me feel like…” instead of “You said…” which is much more accusatory.

If we take responsibility for how what was said or done made us feel, rather than accuse the other person of intending harm (which puts them in a defensive posture), we’re that much closer to a peaceful resolution.

Otherwise, trying to judge their motive or intent just drags the conflict out and often makes it worse.

And if you choose to drop it, just make sure you do, indeed, let it go. Human nature wants to hold onto hurt as a way to justify our pain and even comfort ourselves in it.

We refer to emotion as “energy in motion” or “emotional energy” because it is. And the first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be destroyed; it must be transformed. Which is to say, emotional energy needs an outlet of expression.

So if we choose to drop it, that means we need to seek a healthy means of expression if we’re going to be successful at releasing, or transforming, this energy.

Here are some ideas for healthy expression:

• Go for a drive or a walk somewhere you can talk out loud and not be heard by others… and then talk it out with God as if you were in conversation with Him about it. Tell Him honestly how you feel. Or just do the same thing in your prayer time. And then ask Him for the strength and love and forgiving spirit to let it go.

  
  “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

• And… or… you can express the hurt by writing it out on a piece of paper. Why it hurts. Where it hurts. How bad it hurts. You can even let the paper catch any tears that come. Keep writing until you see and feel the hurt being transferred from inside you to the paper outside of you.
  
  And then shred the paper. Or wad it up and set fire to it. Or tear it into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet, thereby seeing yourself physically “letting it go.”

• On the other hand, you may just simply be able to drop it. Like a rock you hold in your hand and then open your fingers and just drop… choose to open your heart and release it. Then ask the Lord to fill the hurt spaces with His love, for “love conquers all.” That’s true spiritual maturity.

I hope this is helpful in a really practical way.

God bless,

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