I was having lunch with Terri, who was telling me about her problems with her husband. “I feel worthless,” she proclaimed, her drawn, pale face confirming her words. “Fred is down in the dumps again, and I have been running around doing everything I can think of—great dinners, a spotless house, little surprises in his briefcase—to cheer him up. But nothing seems to be working. I don’t know why I can’t make him happy.”
“Oh sweetie,” I replied, “you’ve sent yourself up for an impossible task.”
In my practice as a thinking partner, I come across this situation all the time—people who believe it is their duty to ensure the happiness of family and friends, and then feel like failures when their caring fails to have the desired effect. I once knew a businessman who moved ten times in twelve years in a futile attempt to make his wife happy. No house was right; she’s still discontent and he feels like a failure. “My therapist says perhaps I love her too much and need to set limits,” he confided in me.
While this man’s situation may be extreme, there’s something about love, at least in this culture, that makes us think we’re supposed to be able to create joyfulness in our beloveds. We take our loved ones’ unhappiness personally, even when it has nothing to do with us. We bend ourselves into knots, jump through hoops, give up what is near and dear to us in an attempt to “make” them happy. But that’s impossible because happiness cannot be granted by one person to another. It is earned through our choosing to embrace all the beauty life has to offer and using all of who we are for a purpose we deem worthwhile. And that is something no one can do for us.
So why do so many of us get caught in this trap? Tune in next time…
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