We shouldn’t treat our loved ones less kindly than we do with strangers. However, this what we often do. We need to try to improve our tolerance with our loved ones’ idiosyncrasies, so that we won’t regret about how we treated them.
But don’t do this because you need to recharge your tolerance for the things about your loved ones that annoy you. Do this to acquire a new perspective. Get out into the world and try to appreciate the good in your loved ones to have a balance view of the things that frustrate you about them.
I’m not referring to horrible treatment, just random stuff that we normally do to strangers, even when interactions are apparently unobserved and unlikely to be repeated. Behavior is constrained by psychological mechanisms that evolved predominantly in the context of repeated interactions with known individuals.
There will always be people who do not care about you. Most strangers don’t warrant strong emotions. What you normally get is politeness or annoyance.They may not get the kind of negativity we push onto our loved ones, but they also don’t get the strong love we give to them either.
Apparently, it isn’t that we treat strangers better, we just don’t treat them with any kind of strong emotion. We give compliments and smiles freely and naturally. Yes, we all run into the rare person who is having a bad day and who may be in a grump. We usually tolerate those people and may even be extra kind and polite in the hopes of making their day better.
It made me sad to realize that we treat strangers better than the people we live with and love! When we are busy and have a million things to do, we can easily lose our patience. We tend to shove those we care about to the side and not take the time to be loving and nurturing. We can say things rudely instead of politely. We sometimes don’t take the time to really listen. We snap and say unkind things. We worry more about our task at hand than the relationship we should be honoring. I’m afraid I am terribly guilty of that.
Strangers are not concerned with our shortcomings either. Because home is a place where people don’t need to pretend, and family is supposed to be listen to and tolerate each other. People know that, maybe unconsciously. However, this tolerance get offhand, so families often appear mean to each other, which is sad.
We are nicer to strangers just because they cannot see the real us within a short period of time. In our family, we show our real colors. We cannot maintain a fake image within the family through out our life. The reason why we fail to become nice to our family.
We often treat strangers with an arms’ length of respect than our family. We are supposed to understand our loved one’s tendencies and know they do not mean to be rude. But somehow the contrary happens because we are too occupied with our selfish intentions that we become mean to them; which should not be.
It does not mean that all the wonderful things we loved about our loved ones have gradually become repulsive to us but it’s that our tolerance for all the things we’ve always disliked invariably diminishes over time.We remember negative experiences more than pleasurable experiences which enables us to have the least tolerance for the negative qualities of those with whom we spend the most time.