Reality Checks for Confrontations
1. Check your motivation. Do you want to help or hurt by
what you say? Will bringing this up lead to healing and
oneness? Prayer is a good barometer of motivation. When you
take your situation to God you can usually see your
motivation for what it is.

2. Check your attitude. Loving confrontation says: "I care
about you. I respect you and I want you to respect me. I
want you to know how I feel, but I want to know how you
feel, too." Don't hop on your bulldozer and run your partner
down. Don't pull up in your dump truck and unload all your
garbage. Approach your partner lovingly.

3. Check the circumstances. This includes timing, location
and setting. The time for Barbara to confront me is not just
as I walk in from a hard day's work. I need to confront her
sometime when she isn't settling a squabble among the kids.

4. Check to see what other pressures may be present. Be
sensitive to where your mate is coming from. What's the
context of his or her life right now?

5. Be ready to take it as well as to dish it out. Sometimes
confronting your mate can boomerang on you. Beware of what
psychologists call "projecting"-seeing your own faults in
others. You may start to give your spouse some "friendly
advice" only to learn that the problem you are describing is
actually your fault!

- posted by Eric @ 3:10 PM