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You dream of learning a foreign language, and your spouse lazily remarks that you are not going to go to a country where it is spoken anytime soon. You sign up for financial management or time management courses, and your chosen one screams that you can’t lower the family budget on “nonsense”. What to do if a man does not support your desire to develop? We asked Anna Vsekhsvyatskaya, an expert on personal growth, for advice.
First of all, try to honestly admit to yourself: why do you need a relationship? Why do you want family and marriage? What exactly unites you and, like cement, holds your union together? Depending on the option chosen, it will be possible to outline a strategy for behavior in a situation where your husband impedes your growth and movement forward.
If you think globally, then three main reasons affect the decision of people to come together: security, pleasure, development. Let’s consider each of the reasons in more detail.
Security
It provides you financially and gives you a reinforced concrete feeling of stability and support. In this case, your desire to develop goes into the background, because security and development are incompatible things.
Development is always a step into the unknown, a jump out of your comfort zone. Development is either an opportunity to gain something new, or a huge risk of losing everything. And if a person is obsessed with security and comfort, he will oppose development in every possible way.
Therefore, you will have to choose what is more important for you: to live in peace and stability, or to search for yourself, not knowing exactly what the result will be.
Pleasure
You had fun, had a great time and did not have any special claims against each other, however, as well as plans for the future. And if a problem suddenly arises: “My husband does not understand me and does not approve of the desire to develop,” it is worth considering: was there anything other than the desire to live in eternal pleasure? Were there common values and aspirations?
Development is often associated with pain, reformatting one’s habits, reshaping oneself, and this is not always pleasant. That is why true hedonists are not big fans of «this self-development of yours.» Why doom yourself to difficulties and inner pain when you can just enjoy life?
If your chosen one is like this, try to explain to him that one completed course or meeting with like-minded people will not affect your relationship in any way. A man resists your growth because he is afraid of losing what he has.
Show him that your personal development does not threaten feelings, but, on the contrary, can revive and strengthen them. But if these arguments do not work, just accept the fact that a man does not owe you anything, and choose how to live on: continue to enjoy being around him or find your own way.
Development
This option does not exclude that you enjoy every day you live and feel that the world is safe for you. In this case, the partner is unlikely to speak out against your desire to develop. People with a value of development understand the need of others for inner search and hold it sacred.
However, if dissatisfaction with what you are doing slips in the dialogue, it is worth talking and explaining to the man why it is important for you to develop in this or that area, why you need new knowledge and skills and how this should help you in life.
But whatever the type of your relationship, if you understand that a partner deliberately slows down your growth, you will have to decide for yourself what is more important for you: what your husband gives you, or what you can achieve on your own.
I always advocate compromise, for people to look for ways to save families and relationships. But practice shows that a woman, having embarked on the path of self-development, begins to better understand herself, earn more, open up new opportunities, and she becomes bored next to a man who is marking time. And then the couple is likely to break up.
Stay with a partner who interferes with development, or leave? The choice is yours. Weigh all the pros and cons, discuss the problem, try to clearly explain your position, and only then make an informed decision.
But I insist that you defend your right to self-development and do not step on your own throat in the name of a family idyll. Because an unhappy woman poisons the life of her loved ones. And, on the contrary, a woman who lives brightly, richly, in harmony with herself, inspires others to develop too.