Dan O'Connor

I deserve an explanation…my boyfriend dumped me.

Article posted on Friday, November, 6th, 2009 at 3:16 am

Dear Dan:

My boyfriend dumped me with no explanation. I think I deserve one. How do I get him to tell me what’s going on?

Scorned in Schenectady.

Dear Scorned:

I always receive questions during my communication training seminars, and letters from my onsite training clients, asking me how to get their spouse/significant other/boss/friend to give more, explain more, or do something out of obligation, because the person who’s writing to me thinks that he or she DESERVES something after all they’ve done, or sacrificed.

As a communication trainer and keynote speaker specializing in dealing with difficult people, this issue comes up frequently.

The following section comes from my upcoming communication program, “Special Relationships”. I hope it helps everyone of us who struggles with these types of issues:

“But I’ve sacrificed so much!”

How often do you say or think this?

“I’ve sacrificed so much for you, I’ve sacrificed so much for this…I DESERVE…”

What does that even mean? Sacrifice?

I thought I’d look it up.

In the Oxford dictionary, sacrifice has many definitions…the first one is “The act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else more important or worthy.” The second definition had to do with slaughtering an animal, and I hope you’re not doing that. The third had to with an act of prayer, the fourth was Christ being crucified (which might be how you feel, but it’s far from reality), and the fifth definition I found particularly interesting: “In games, a loss incurred deliberately to avoid a greater loss, or to obtain a compensating advantage.”

I’m going to say that most of us, when we sacrifice, are defining sacrifice either the first or the fifth way. Basically, we’re either giving up something good in hopes of getting something better, or we’re playing a game, or both. None of these definitions states that we WILL be getting something in return, or deserve anything in return. None of them. “Sacrificing” is a gamble, and you don’t deserve anything in return..

The only example I’m aware of– where people selflessly sacrifice—just might be for their children. That’s about it. We go without, and give up things so that our children can have better lives. But even that is something we do because we want to be good parents. This type of sacrifice doesn’t give us heartburn, because we don’t feel we must get something in return..

What most of us do, however, is give something up, whether it’s our time, or our money, or satisfying some need we have, and then we expect something in return. And boy do we get mad if we don’t get what we “sacrificed” for.  We get mad when we give up one thing, hoping to get something better—something we think of as more valuable—and then we don’t get it!  Our children don’t graduate from college, though we sacrificed all those trips to pay for school.  Our husband leaves us, after we sacrificed and paid for his law school education.  We took care of aging parents, who then left the bulk of their estate to the church.  OUR SACRIFICE WAS IN VAIN.  Yes, it was.  The bet didn’t pay off.  We didn’t get the “better thing” we were trying for.

In our relationships, for example, we tend to give things up, such as other relationships, our time, our youth, or whatever else we think we give to people, and then we have…take a breath now…expectations. That’s where the trouble begins. We expect and even demand the payoff for our “sacrifice.”

We tend to (what we refer to as) sacrifice out of self-interest, and when we don’t get our reward, boy do we get mad. That’s ridiculous.

In general (and there are always exceptions, though I can think of none at the moment, when you sacrifice, you’re doing it for you—to gain something. Sometimes you get a payoff, sometimes you don’t. It’s like any other gamble. If you’re in a casino, and you have a $100 black chip, you can either hold onto it, and leave the casino with that same chip, or you can put it on the table and hope for the casino gods to bless you. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but wouldn’t it be silly if everyone who loses in a casino complained about it? Imagine people saying, “It’s just not fair, I put that chip down, and I lost it! I deserved to double my money!  That casino didn’t live up to my expectations and didn’t appreciate my sacrifice.”  (That’s another thing—expecting our sacrifice to be appreciated by the person that we’ve sacrificed for….)

The point is, when you sacrifice, you don’t deserve anything. You sacrifice for you, and then take your chances on the bet you just placed. But that’s it. Sacrificing for “others” is an illusion. We sacrifice for ourselves. We place our chip on the table with the hopes of walking away with more. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It’s that simple.

But in our thoughts and our words, when we use the word sacrifice, we tend to also use the word deserve, and the two of them have nothing to do with one another. We don’t deserve a reward, and we don’t deserve appreciation for our sacrifice. Kids get this one. When parents speak to their kids about sacrifice, they frequently get the response “Who asked you to???” That’s what I ask of you as well. So you sacrificed, did you, well WHO ASKED YOU TO?

I’m sure you can think of some area in your life, right now, where you feel you sacrificed something, and you’re expecting something in return. So you sacrificed something, did you? Well who asked you to?  Once you realize that you “sacrificed” to achieve something good—something you saw as better than whatever you gave up—you’ll see it’s all about you.  You’ll stop pressuring the other person to be a certain way, or perform a certain way, or achieve something because of your sacrifice.  Get over it, and stop with the martyrdom.  You were the one who decided to play the black chip, so deal with it. If you’re going to be a player in the game of life, sometimes you lose your black chip. Don’t be a sore loser. There are many more chips to be played.

Do you have a question for Dan? CLICK HERE to ask Dan!

 

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