Listen to Your Lookout
If you’re in a close relationship, you have a resource others don’t have. You have a lookout.
When the wheels start to come off, everyone is prone to develop their own kind of problem and make their own kind of mistakes. Some get depressed or anxious or angry or just withdraw into themselves. Others use substances, or gamble, or have sex with everyone, or can’t stop shopping; others get controlling. Some have a combination of several kinds of problems and mistakes. Everyone’s got their thing. Your own type of problem and mistake is yours because it’s the very thing that sneaks up in your blind spots. When it fools anyone into thinking it’s a good thing, it fools you first.
Your problem was not custom made for your lookout. It doesn’t sneak up in her blind spots. She observes it coming before you do. She can see through the deceptions more easily. She has a vested interest in keeping you safe from this problem. She could warn you that it’s approaching if you’ll only listen.
It takes hard work to eradicate problems and eternal vigilance to keep them away. Relapse can be expected. When we’re…
