Love Me Slender by Thomas N. Bradbury PhD & Benjamin R. Karney PhD

Author:Thomas N. Bradbury, PhD & Benjamin R. Karney, PhD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

If Your Partner Is a Dreamer

If your partner is a Dreamer, the best support you can offer is a reminder of what commitment really means, and to help your partner make that same level of commitment to his or her health. Drawing upon the Principle of Long-Term Commitment, here are a few specific ways to help translate your partner’s fantasies into reality (and if YOU are the Dreamer, see if these strategies change your perspective):

BRING YOUR PARTNER TO EARTH, GENTLY. If your partner is proposing a goal that he or she can’t reach, then you do your partner no favors by following him or her into a fantasy. Instead, a loving partner can help focus the Dreamer on attainable goals, as a prerequisite for a discussion of how to reach those goals.

Navigating these waters can be tricky. You do not want to scold but you need to be firm, and that is a delicate balance. Look again at the conversation with the husband who wanted to eat ribs and potatoes and never gain weight. When he expressed this impossible wish, his wife followed along, echoing his rapturous descriptions of the foods he loves. Without entirely raining on his parade, she could have grounded her husband by saying something like this:

Of course you want to eat and not gain weight! So do I! And I know that eating great food is important to you. It’s important to me, too. Still, until they invent a magic pill, we are going to have to face the fact that we can’t do everything we want to do forever. Your health is nonnegotiable. I need you to stick around for a long time. And that means something is going to have to change. So what do you really want to do about your weight? How are we going to know when you’ve met your goal?

Look at all that this sort of statement can accomplish. In the same breath, you can recognize the appeal of your partner’s fantasies, acknowledge that you share them, and redirect the conversation back toward reality. By asking some pointed questions, this wife encourages her husband to describe realistic goals, without imposing any particular ones on him.

LINK LONG-TERM GOALS FOR THE FUTURE TO CONCRETE BEHAVIORS IN THE PRESENT. An ambitious goal can inspire us to great heights, as long as it accompanies explicit steps for reaching that goal. The Dreamer skips over those steps but you can shine a light on them, focusing your partner’s attention on specific ways to change his or her diet today.

Imagine if the wife who wanted to fit into those leather pants had a partner who took this approach. When she shared how threatened she felt after going out with her much skinnier friends, her husband made a joke. If he had instead taken her disclosure seriously, when she exclaimed, “ You know what I mean! ” he might have responded with something like this:

Honey, I do know what you mean. I know where you want to

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