Dealing With Pride In Your Relationship

A lot of relationships have crashed by seemingly little acts of pride. Pride may look harmless but its effect is usually devastating. This is because when pride creeps in, the person will become unteachable, arrogant, incommunicado and many other things that will affect the relationship negatively. If you do not deal with pride at the onset, it might be blown out of proportion and you may begin to have difficulty in staying in relationship. Obviously, relationship will definitely require sacrifices and some of them will be selfless and humble. It is true that pride may be a natural instinct or trait of humans, but you can still put it to check.

The subtle part of this is that, in most cases, the people that are proud do not know they are proud, they may see it as being confident, independent, or self-ego, but all these are different from pride. The moment you begin to see yourself as being superior to everyone else or you see others as being inferior to you, then you have already started exhibiting the traits of pride. Anytime you feel like "how will a 'whole me' do this?" then pride has already crept in. Or if you feel that your partner should always be at your beck-and-call, or that it is an absolute privilege for them to be in a relationship with you, then it might just be pride.

The first and obviously a very crucial step towards dealing with pride is to acknowledge the pride itself. That is; know when you have started tilting towards pride. If you try to cover up your pride or try to convince yourself that you are not proud even with the glaring evidences, then you are not helping yourself and it will continue to grow. In a relationship for example, if you find it difficult to apologise when you are wrong, then it might just be an expression of pride. However, when you acknowledge the pride, then you have already gone over halfway to overcoming it.

A problem that is acknowledged is a problem that is set to be solved. There is no point in trying to cover up your problem because it will further weaken you. It is true that it is okay to have self-ego, at least it makes you more confident. However, what is not good is to make it to degenerate into pride and to let control you and your actions. Acknowledging when pride comes will limit the likelihood of it controlling you. If you know that arrogance, not apologizing when wrong, being unteachable, etc, are all expressions of pride, then you will know how to put up a fight against them.

Another way to deal with pride is to be open-minded and communicate honestly. As you keep communication in relationship effective, and telling each other how you feel, it will help to ward off pride. More so, learn to be humane and respectful when communicating. Know that everyone values respect and you also earn it by giving it. Try to maintain communication at all time. Instead of going silent and being on the defensive when your partner offends you, it is better to speak up and do it respectfully. Trust me, to overcome pride, you need to practice it. Of course, humility is not a gift and you have to put in conscious efforts to fight pride in order to achieve humility.

Dealing with pride also requires you to be empathetic. When you try to put yourself in the position of others, you will know how to deal with them. Trust me, everything in the relationship is not revolving around only you, and it is pride to think it does. So calm down and put yourself in the shoes of your partner, and probably go a mile or two in it, then you will understand how to deal with them. Of course, their feelings also matter in the relationship and everything is not about how you feel or about your emotions; try to consider them too. Also remember that relationship is not all about "I, myself," but it is more of "we, us." When you know this, you will know how to deal with pride.

The last point to consider in dealing with pride in relationship is that you have to learn and practise forgiveness. More often than not, holding tightly to the offences of the past without letting go is an expression of pride. It may not be easy at that moment to forgive but if you keep giving it a shot, you will discover that it has become a part of you. Just to let you know; offences will definitely arise, so you have to learn and practise forgiveness.

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