Adjustment isn't Punishing

punishment isn't necessary

Punishment is not adjustment, and adjustment isn't punishing.

Conflict-pursuant people (those who might call you conflict-avoidant) often require conflict because it allows for the emotional expression of punishment.

They want you to participate in the pain that they are in to know that you care.

In intimacy, we know that pain is pain is pain. It cannot be fixed or held by anyone outside of ourselves.

We know with certainty, creating painful experiences for ones we love can never heal us, and exposing ourselves to pain at the hands of a loved one is not a gift to them or to us.

Receiving the pain of punishment damages our ability to show up for one another, distances us from each other. It is a gift to the other as much as the self when we opt out of participating in this practice with them.

In intimacy, the experience is true, and we create in peace around the fullness of the truth—the observable events as they're happening, my perspective, and your perspective. They are all equally real, important, and impervious to efforts to change them.