The stories we tell ourselves are comprised of a wide variety of scripts we’ve picked up along the pathways of our lives, from what we learn from our parents to what we see on TV and in the movies.
For Steve and Lauren, part of the stories they’d been telling themselves involved what they had learned as children through movies. And even though we’d like to believe that we put these sometimes childish fantasies away as we age, they can sometimes find strange ways of infiltrating our lives much later in life.
For instance, because Steve wanted to be a protector and savior, he failed to recognize and respect his wife Lauren for her strength. He didn’t want to recognize that she could do life on her own quite well. He wanted to be needed.
On the other hand, Lauren needed to be wanted. Because one of the stories she’d told herself as a child was that she ought to be the most highly valued woman in her man’s life. She would never have said so out loud, but she assumed that her man would just know to treat her accordingly. Consequently, Steve consistently felt like he wasn’t appreciating Lauren enough.
Though their issues were much more complex than him just wanting to be a cowboy or her wanting to be a princess, these subtle stories they’d both been telling themselves based on scripts they’d picked up as children had a serious and definite impact within their marriage.
Reality quickly collided with their fantastical expectations of living happily ever after. Because each person subconsciously expected the other to act like a supporting character in a movie, their minor conflicts never seemed to fully resolve.
To save their marriage, the cowboy and the princess would need to learn new stories to tell themselves—and preferably ones that don’t involve made-up movie stereotypes.
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