• Apologetics
  
• Arts Ministry
  
• Children's Ministry
  
• Evangelism
  
• Pastors
  
• Worship
  

Involuntary Transition
Part 2: Some Dynamics of Involuntary Transition
by Norman and Ann Bales
All About Families


Send this page to a friend

Today, we turn our attention to some of the dynamics that are peculiar to involuntary transition.

• Denial of closure. We know people who have received a termination notice from company management late in the afternoon. They were given only an hour or two to clean out their desks. A company employee was assigned to watch the process. Of course they felt like their integrity was being challenged. Worse yet, their relationship with fellow employees was severed without an opportunity to say "good bye." They feel an enormous sense of loss. The same thing can happen when a spouse abruptly walks out of the home or a child runs away from parents.

• Shock and denial. When a relationship termination occurs without warning, people who weren't aware that it was going to happen often resist accepting the truth. They may pretend that it's all a very bad dream from which they will later awaken.

• Defensiveness. Listen to the conversation of people whose marriages have been terminated. Most of the time they talk about the ways their spouses behaved irresponsibly. If they talk about their own behavior in the relationship, they make it appear that they "did everything they could" to resolve the conflict.

• Carry-over. There's a tendency to carry hostility, unresolved anger and perceptions of blame into the next relationship and dump it on the unsuspecting person who enters into a new relationship with you.

• Unrealistic expectations. You may go into your next relationship, marriage, job or whatever with the same communication patterns, roles and expectations that you had before. It may never occur to you that you need to look inward and analyze the things you did to make the relationship fall apart.

• Unwillingness to trust. When you've been hurt, you don't want to experience that same hurt again. Success in relationship building always involves an element of risk, but you may be reluctant to run the risk of trusting again.

• Projection. Let's suppose your termination is beyond your control. You can't talk back to the people who did it. In a job situation, the decision may have been made on a computer half way around the world. You're so frustrated, you think you've got to pour out your anger to someone. Family members, friends, even fellow Christians often become the scapegoats.

There are some additional dynamics of involuntary transition we need to consider. We'll share them next week.

Send this page to a friend: