Shift #2: Realize change is up to YOU
This is the other half of the statement above. If we want to enjoy our relationships we have to focus on what WE can change.
Perhaps our phone-talking Target friend could step back and grapple with the hard truth that her husband and father have their own relationship and it’s their job to work that out. She can help her husband understand how much his relationship with her father matters to her. But if he isn’t willing to or capable of changing the Tigger personality that annoys her father, the only thing she can do is adjust her response.
And there might be upsides of that. Since her husband apparently has long known that she wanted him to change his personality around her dad, he’s probably also been walking on eggshells for a long time. Or feeling like a failure when he gets it wrong. What if she decides to stop giving him the disapproving glare after every family visit and says, instead, “I’ve told you how I feel, but I do so love your sense of humor. You are so fun to be around. Yes, I still want you to dial it back a bit, but it’s also up to my dad to lighten up. It shouldn’t all be on you.”
Perhaps she can also stop venting about his ways to her friends, since venting usually makes annoyance worse.
By focusing on herself, she’d be demonstrating self-control, honoring both her husband and her dad as the grown men they are, and probably turning her own frustration dial down a few numbers.
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