Over the last few years, I've inadvertently adopted a strategy for dealing with troublesome neighbours based on the theme of the reality TV show Survivor: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. Well, maybe not so much outwit and outplay, but outlast seems to be working for me with these people:

Cranky Old Men

First up was nasty neighbour Charles. I first met Charles while exploring the common property soon after buying my apartment. He a relatively short man around his mid 70s, with dark black hair, and a slight arch in his back which suggested that he was past his peak and was now growing shorter rather than taller. At first, Charles oozed charm and smarm: he was very friendly and welcoming in a rather disarming kind of way.

But things turned nasty only a couple of weeks later at the first body corporate meeting. The hot item on the agenda was wrestling control of the gardens on the common property from Charles, and employing a professional gardener to do the job instead. It was obvious as a newcomer that there was considerable conflict over the way the gardens should be managed, and agreeing to get a proper gardener in to do it was a no-brainer. Charles had been doing the gardens forever as though they were his personal property, and there was some suggestion that he'd been billing the body corporate for materials that didn't exist and that he wanted to be paid for his efforts. The problem was that his efforts weren't what the rest of the owners seemed to want, and this was generating conflict.

Now you might think "What's the big deal, it's just a garden, right?" Well, yes and no; yes, it was just a garden, but it was also a symptom of a deeper problem in the way Charles got on with the other owners and residents in the building. As the meeting degenerated into a slanging match over past grievances, I decided that being super-assertive might be a nice way to introduce myself:

"Look, as a new owner, I have no interest whatsoever in what has happened in the past. It's really very boring, and frankly I'm not interested in listening to you guys argue. What I am interested in the current situation, and how we're going to fix it. If you want to discuss the past, do it after the meeting when I'm not here. Clearly there are problems with the garden, and it's obviously causing conflict on the body corporate. I can't even open my garage door properly because there's a tree planted too close to it. Getting a professional gardener in to fix these problems sounds like a great solution to me."

The chairman of the meeting and most of the other owners appeared relieved, but Charles was incensed. I didn't even know exactly which parts of the garden we were arguing about, so I suggested we go outside and inspect it. As I led the group around the grounds, I pointed out the tree blocking my garage, and the noxious plants growing up over my balcony. "We're going to fix this", I said encouragingly with the unbridled optimism of the new kid on the block, not yet jaded by body-corporate shenanigans.

This made me Charles's mortal enemy. From that day on, he sent me vitriolic letters full of hatred, interspersed with newsletters from his church which he popped under my door. For a while he had me hooked, sending him courteous replies attempting to correct his misconceptions about me. I was determined to set him straight.

Silly me. Charles was never going to be set straight. Really I was just playing out a pattern of wanting people to like me. Plus the aggression that he used in his attempts to control other people really made me anxious. He lived in his own world of paranoia, and was so easily triggered to anger and spite it was just ridiculous. As an ex-journalist, you would have thought Charles would have the communication skills to get his needs met without so much hostility; but he either didn't have them, or chose not to use them. He was lonely because he had no friends, and he managed to alienate everyone in his life. Especially his neighbours.

Eventually I gave up trying to make amend with Charles, and just stopped replying to his letters. I felt rude at first, but it was clear that the more energy I put into engaging with him, the more vitriol I got in return. It was a completely lost cause. Charles clearly hated me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Finally Charles fell down the stairs one day, breaking his collarbone, and his spirit. He moved into a nursing home about a year later. Then he died. People usually imply that I'm a bad person when I point out that Charles's death led to a net increase in the sum of human happiness, but I'm afraid it's true. There's a lesson in that for all of us, and it's not just to be careful on the stairs.

The new owners of Charles's old unit are really friendly; they even lent me some carpet cleaner the other day when mine ran out, saving me a trip to the shops. Swapping Charles for them has raised the friendliness of the whole building.

Neighbours From Hell

But then there were the neighbours from hell who moved into the apartment directly above me. I swear, these people came straight out of a boiling pit of low self esteem hell, and inflicted it on everyone around them. They were a young couple, with a 2 year old daughter. Let's call them Rod and Natalie, and their daughter Minnie; I tried to wipe them and their real names from my memory. I'm only revisiting the trauma here as a lesson for you, so I hope you're grateful.

Rod and Natalie combined the worst aspects of passive aggression with active rage, anger and abuse; making as much noise in the process as they possibly could. Their conversations and arguments were laden with more expletives than a gangsta rap song, fired out thick and fast without even thinking. In fact, there wasn't a lot of thinking going on from what I could hear; it was just pure nastiness.

Rod's temper was completely out of control, and he unleashed it on his wife at a moments notice. She'd work herself up into a frenzy and respond in kind, and then they'd slam their doors real hard just to make sure they got the point across how pissed off they were. The two of them kept me up late at night with their arguments, woke me early in the morning slamming doors, and distracted me from my work during the day with their, and their daughter's, screaming. Their arguments were demeaning, insulting, and laden with words starting with F and C. It took me straight back to childhood and my anxiety about my own parents' vicious verbal stoushes. And on the odd occasion that Rod and Natalie weren't hurling abuse at each other, they'd keep me up late at night with loud sex in the bedroom immediately above mine; which was particularly annoying when I wasn't getting any myself.

I knocked on their door, and rang the police regularly. It would shut them up for a brief while, but they'd start up again the next day. They just didn't give a damn. And their daughter was living in sheer hell; I'd think "She's gonna be really damaged. As if having their genes isn't bad enough, she's growing up in a minefield." One day when she was angry, I overheard her say to her mother Natalie "Shut up you fu_k_ng c_nt." Obviously she'd learned that's how you deal with anger from her father Rod's example. She was less that two years old at the time. I started ringing the Department of Community Services Child Protection every time they started yelling, in the hope that enough reports would stack up for someone to take some action to help this poor kid.

One day as I was going out, I bumped into Rod storming down the stairs in a rage hurling expletives of abuse at his wife as he left the building. "Rod, you're an adult now mate. It's time you started acting like one", I said to him as he passed my door. "F_ck you, you c_nt! Mind your own fucking business", he replied gracefully. Well, I would have minded my business if they didn't keep screaming theirs into my home all the time. When I returned home that evening, in the split-second before I grabbed my door handle to put my key in it I noticed a huge gob of spit coating the entire door handle and hanging down below. Oh, gross. I managed to unlock and open the door without contacting the offending ectoplasm, reached for the rubber gloves and disinfected my door handle.

The next day, Natalie knocked on my door, looking even more sullen and submissive than usual. She always came across as the classic abused wife with low self-esteem. Barely made eye contact with me. "Can you help me please?", she asked, "I've locked myself out of my apartment. I need to call a locksmith, or get up to the real estate agent or something. Can I borrow your phone please?"

“Well this was bizarre”, I thought, “The wife of the guy who covered my door handle in spit yesterday is asking me for a favour today.” Still, I like to help people, and she's not responsible for his stupidity. Although by staying with him, she's coming pretty close in my books. "Sure.", I said, "I hate it when I lock myself out too".

I lent her the phone. She called someone. Got it sorted out. "Thanks", she said as she left.

Later that day at the clothes line, I bumped into Natalie again. No eye contact. Head down. Battered wife syndrome. "Natalie, do you know what Rod did yesterday after he stormed out?", I said.

"Umm... no?...", she replied sheepishly.

"He spat on my doorknob. As he left yesterday I told him he was an adult now, and it was time to start acting like one. He told me to F_uck off. When I came home, my doorknob was covered in spit. Huge gobs of spit."

"Oh, he wouldn't do that."

"Well, I don't think it's just coincidence that we had a brief encounter and I came home to find spit on my door. That's never happened before."

"But he's a good guy really."

"No Natalie, he's not. I've heard your arguments. He abuses you all the time. You don't deserve that. And what do you think it's doing to Minnie? You guys disturb me all the time with the door slamming and your arguments. When I knock on your door in the midst of it, you act like nothing's going on. I'd move to get away from you both if I could, but I own my place. Moving out just to get away from you and Rod would cost me a lot of money."

"I'm sorry, really."

Well, what was she to do, really? Her husband's a moron. The police told me not to knock on their door because he was considered dangerous. They wouldn't tell me whether he had a firearm or not; but they said to stay away from the guy and just call them instead. Eventually I got tired of calling the police and Child Protection, and decided to take my case to the man upstairs. Or rather, the woman... the owner of their unit.

So I started calling Martina regularly to let her know what was going on. She was a little old lady in her 90's who didn't want to cause anyone any trouble. She had heard that Rod and Natalie were causing problems, but was terrified of Rod. She was too afraid to even visit the apartment she owned to inspect it: she thought Rod would kill her. It didn't help that she was too tight to employ a managing agent who would normally deal with evicting troublesome tenants. Martina mentioned that Rod & Natalies's lease was up for renewal soon and although she knew they were causing problems, she was going to let them renew because she thought that if she didn't, they'd just stay anyway.

Oh no. That would be bad. I realised that if I could get Martina to terminate the lease when it came up for renewal, I might get some peace and quiet back. She lived in a house on the other side of the suburb, so I dropped around to visit. I may have taken chocolate; I can't remember. My aim was to sweet-talk Martina into standing up for herself and kicking Rod & Natalie out. She was very worried about how they would react, and that they might just stay without paying any rent. It turned out their rent was being paid by some government agency; my hard-earned taxes keeping a roof over an idiot like Rod's head because he was too stupid and violent to get and keep a real job. When I told her that the police would help her evict them if they overstayed, it occurred to me that Martina had grown up in communist Romania and her notion of police was quite different to mine. It reminded her of the secret police, and they just weren't on her side.

Nevertheless, the sweet-talk worked. After many phone calls and friendly visits, Martina decided to get her daughter to help her with the legal side of terminating the lease and evicting the troublesome tenants. Rod and Natalie were finally out of my hair. I can only hope they've set up a trust fund for Minnie's future therapy and legal bills, and that Child Protection take action to rescue her at some point.

And after all that time I put in developing a good relationship with her, Martina died of old age a few months later.

Couples Who Argue A Lot

The building I live in was built in the late 1960's, when the idea of talking with your neighbours wasn't quite so ludicrous. Each pair of units share a laundry, so if nothing else you've got a reason to co-operate on who uses the washing machine and when. Before I bought my place I'd knocked on the door opposite to ask what it was like living in the building, and met Michael & Lesley's. They seemed a little reserved but otherwise appeared as though they'd make decent neighbours.

However, Michael & Lesley had a stormy relationship. She had a quick temper and it didn't take much for bursts of expletives to come from her mouth. But she also seemed to calm down pretty quickly too. Fortunately I could block the noise out just by keeping my door closed, and occasionally upping the volume on the remote. Since I shared a laundry with them, I made a special effort to get on with them. It's pretty simple really: if you want a happy life, try to get on with your neighbours. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Offload your excess steam elsewhere. Try to make peace with the people you live near, not war.

Fortunately Lesley's aggression was never directed at me. Well, there may have been one incident, but I've forgotten about in now, and so did she. I was happy to do my laundry during the week, leaving the washing machine free on weekends. I'd stop to chat whenever I could. Michael was very reserved, but Lesley was quite friendly really. I stayed well out of their arguments. They were happy to collect my mail for me whenever I was off gallivanting around the country, and I was very grateful.

Eventually the global financial crisis hit, and they both lost their jobs. With no income, they decided to move back to New Zealand, where Lesley owned a house; so they wouldn't have to rent any more. On the morning of the day they left, I managed to drown out their latest argument by meditating with a few extra-loud "aum"s.

Goodbye Lesley and Michael, I will miss you; though possibly not as much as I miss Charles.

It's worth the effort to try to get on with your neighbours. But if that fails, while I don't recommend doing a Richard Hatch, if you can't outwit or outplay them, see if you can simply outlast them.

The Survivor Approach To Dealing With Difficult Neighbours is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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When I start hearing the same message coming at me from multiple independent sources, that usually gets my attention. This year I've had several sources giving me the message that women want men with backbone who they can “push up against”. They get tired and ultimately resentful of Nice Guys who always yield powerlessly to them, and everyone else.

I listened to an interview by David DeAngelo (of Double Your Dating fame) talking with Robert Glover described what is wrong with Nice Guys most succinctly by quoting a comment from his ex-wife, who said “How would I know that you could ever stand up for me, if you can't even stand up to me?”. Robert calls it Nice Guy Syndrome, and has even written a book titled No More Mr. Nice Guy! He points out that while Nice Guys think that what they are doing will please other people, ultimately it just leads to resentment. In short, it really pisses women off.

At Passionately Alive, Nicholas talked about the importance of having relationships with people who meet us where we are at, with a similar level of passion. Women want guys who don't just collapse or run away in the face of strong emotions, whether they be the pleasant or unpleasant variety. When a woman pushes up against a man emotionally, she's testing his boundaries and his resilience; she wants to know that he's up to it, and that he's not going to just walk away or act all pathetic in the face of what's real for her.

In an anger management workshop run by Denise Cook, she talked of the importance not only of being able to express our anger, but of being prepared to stand our ground and listen to another person's anger without collapsing, running away or becoming defensive. Women particularly want men who are prepared to listen to what they have to say, even when it isn't all sugary and sweet.

When I'm dancing, girls often comment that when I'm providing a strong, firm lead, they enjoy dancing with me more. They want to be led strongly; they don't want a weak, noncommittal lead. It works the other way too; when a girl has no “tension” and her arm just flops around and yields when I push against it, I feel no connection with her. I want a strong connection, not a weak one. When I push against a girl, I want her to push back because that makes the partnership feel more connected and ultimately more fun. It's the same in the rest of life too.

I'm still recovering from Nice Guy Syndrome. I was brought up to be polite and respectful, and thought that if I was “nice” to other people, I'd avoid conflict and get through life relatively unscathed. But another way of looking at it is that I adopted the nice guy persona because I mistakenly thought it was the best way to get my needs met. Being a Nice Guy is a lazy way of trying to be happy by seeking other people's approval and validation, rather than having to learn how to love and validate ourselves.

Some of the symptoms that have affected me are:

• Seeking approval and validation from other people
• Trying to make other people like
• Worrying too much what other people thought
• Avoiding conflict
• Worrying about offending other people
• Trying really hard not to upset people
• Taking responsibility for other people's feelings
• Apologizing for other people's feelings of upset
• Not allowing myself to feel or express anger
• Not asking for what I really wanted
• Not speaking up for myself
• Making rejection about me, rather than about other people
• Feeling like I was never good enough
• Believing that if I just tried harder to please people, they would give me what I wanted without me having to ask
• Telling people what I thought they wanted to hear
• Avoiding feelings of shame by not exposing thoughts, feelings or desires I thought were morally unacceptable
• Pandering to the lowest common conservative denominator

Nowadays, I'm starting to look at things differently. I recognize that Nice Guy Syndrome not only doesn't get me what I really want, but it also tends to piss people off. Especially women I relate too. They want a man that's his own real self with them, not a compliant wuss that's trying to seek their approval all the time.

I'm working on finding my own validation internally instead of seeking it from other people. I'm learning to accept that when people are upset or angry with me, that's about them rather than about me. I can take it. I'm learning to question and challenge the misguided things that I have been taught about basic human nature which made me feel shameful about myself.

I'm standing up for myself and speaking my truth, whether other people like it or not, and I'm learning to handle the uncomfortable feelings that I get when I do so. Ultimately, I'm learning to be more authentic by stripping away the act that I misguidedly played in the hope that it would make other people like me.

Nice Guy Syndrome is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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1. I lied to the guy from the phone company today

See larger image And when did you last see your father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss (Paperback) By (author) Blake Morrison I first encountered Blake Morrison when I heard him speak at the Sydney Writer's Festival last year on the rarely-deeply-discussed topic of the relationship between fathers and sons. I knew immediately that I was going to relate to his book And When Did You Last See Your Father. The book is an autobiographical series of vignettes spanning Blake's life, each of which add a piece to the puzzle depicting his larger-than-life father as seen through the son's eyes. Interspersed between these snapshots is the background scene of Blake's aging father's gradual death due to cancer. But rather than just talk about the book itself, I also want to tell you what it reminded me of in my relationship with my own father. Blake Morrison's father and mine share only superficial similarities: They are both in their early seventies. Both have a pacemaker; although my own father acquired his only mid last year, when a series of fainting spells led to the diagnosis of an “easily fixed” heart problem. Pretty lucky, that. I recall at the time contemplating my father's mortality and what it would be like to “lose him”, as we so euphemistically like to say. I also wondered what it really felt like for him to have something wrong with that vital organ with which even the most basic problem seems pretty serious. I tried to ask, and he tried to tell me, but I'm still not sure I really understood whether he was scared or not. Scared is just not something us blokes usually talk about. Both Blake's father and my own were well-regarded professionals before retirement: his a Doctor and mine an Engineer. And like Blake's father, my own has a certain emotional detachment which frustrates me and makes it difficult for me to really relate to him as well as I would like. Freely expressing feelings is not something us blokes learn by default in our culture. It's taken me years to learn to talk about how I feel, and I certainly didn't learn how to do it from Dad. I'm not sure if it's that he doesn't know how to talk about how he feels, or whether he's so out of touch with his own emotions that he doesn't even know. Probably a combination of both. Reading the book, and later while watching the movie, I could relate to Blake's frustration and longing to really connect with his father with both of them seemingly just unable to do it. Blake's camping trips with his father reminded me of my early camping trips with mine. My mother would encourage us both to go, as much to get him out of the house as to encourage a little father/son bonding. Dad had this little old white ex-Army canvas tent which we'd huddle together in during storms and tempest on trips up the north coast. Somehow it always seemed to rain when we went camping in that tent, which was rather too small even just with one adult, let alone with the addition of one medium sized adolescent. Nowadays when I go camping, I take a 4-man tent; even if it's just got me in it. And then there was the first driving lesson that you do when you're still too young to actually be learning to drive, but Dad wants you to try anyway. While Blake's was on a beach, mine was in a farmer's back paddock adjacent to the Nepean River, at the scout-camp-of-all-time that I will never ever forget. I learned to fang Dad's lime green Toyota Corona around the paddock while dodging the slow-moving cows and never getting past 2nd gear. I've no idea who chose lime green as the stylish colour of our “family car” in the late 1960's. And how we fitted 3 kids in the back seat, two adults in the front and all our luggage in that tiny boot and roof rack on family holidays, I'll never know. You just couldn't do it these days. Yet somehow it seemed bigger back then. Size is relative, and everything shrank as I grew up. Blake's Dad and mine had their similarities, but there were also many big differences. My own father is still very much alive, and pacemaker notwithstanding, shows no signs of dying any time soon. Dad's father lived to 100; I hope we both have that gene too. Blake's father is portrayed as boisterous and something of a charmer; a ladies man almost. Blake grows up highly suspicious of his father's obvious affection for “Aunty Beaty”, suspecting an affair and feeling deeply wounded at the perceived affront to his mother. I have a hard time imagining my own father engaging in anything remotely as exciting or morally dubious as an illicit liaison, and the many arguments that I used to hear between my parents were over much more mundane matters. I rather think that this particular flaw and the associated indiscretion wasn't one he was even capable of. I have often wondered what sort of man my father would seem to me had he not married my mother. Would he still be the same affable, timid, emotionally shutoff mixture of niceness tempered with the occasional explosion? Or would he be more like what I expected, and perhaps hoped for in a father, had he not had such a dominant wife telling him what to do and putting him down when he got things wrong all the time. Of course the question is a bit moot given that if he hadn't married her, I wouldn't be here to ask it. And while there are parallels between the relationships between Blake and his father, and me and mine, there are differences there too. I'm glad to say that I've had “the talk” with my father that Blake leaves to the very last minute to initiate, by which time his Dad is too ill to talk; and wouldn't have known what to say anyway. My father has apologized for his failings, and that helped me forgive him for them. We've had the breakthrough where we felt we could broach the big questions in life, and even tell each other those 3 magic words every human longs to hear: “I love you”. We still regress back to talking mindless crap when we meet, but at least with a little effort and encouragement we can connect more meaningfully. It would be nice to feel I could tell my Dad that I loved him spontaneously and old day of the week, but somehow it still feels uncomfortable and wrong so we usually don't actually say it. What does it mean for a grown man to love his father anyway? Isn't it “a bit gay” for a man to love another man? I thought that sort of thing was supposed to be wrong; it's not what I was brought up to approve of. Not that there's anything even remotely sexual about my love for my father, but love is a feeling and somehow expressing that feeling still feels uncomfortable. I grew up with two emotionally inexpressive parents, then went to a boy's high school where you got hammered if you expressed any of the softer emotions, so by the time I was all grown up I didn't know what I felt towards my father. Anger at his explosive outbursts which taught childhood-me to repress my own anger, resentment at his choice of wife to be my mother, boredom at his verbal diarrhea. Frustration that he uses bland words to keep other people at a safe emotional distance and thereby waste the precious time that we have to really connect with each other while we're here on this earth. And finally, love; yes, love for the man who made my life in all its richness possible. By the end of the book Blake's father is well and truly dead, and Blake is grief-struck. I found myself overcome with waves of emotion as I read each page. Multiple emotional tsunamis striking as if out of nowhere as the tears flowed freely. Did I simply empathize with the plight of the loss of his father, or was it more than that? I pictured myself in his shoes, and felt his loss. It wasn't just that his dad was dead; it was that the possibility of that meaningful relationship with him which Blake clearly has yearned for all his life, was now dead too. Blake became a writer, much against his father's wishes, who hoped he would follow in his own footsteps of becoming a Doctor. My father and I were both Engineers for a time, and although this was a sort of common ground between us, it's not a profession that encourages emotional expression and I've given it up now in the search for a deeper connection with other people generally. Neither Blake nor his father ever truly felt understood by the other, and we all yearn to be understood and to feel loved; especially by those most close to us like our parents, our children. It took me 6 months to finally get around to reading this book, by which time the movie version was conveniently also available on DVD. When I came to watched it, I could relate deeply and it made my cry just as much as the book. Whether it's on the printed page or on the big screen, the message is the same. As Margaret Pomerantz of the ABC's At the Movies, concluded in a rare moment of complete agreement with her co-host David Stratton: “I do think that that father/son thing is quite strong”, “Oh yeah.”, David replied, “I think it is too”. And when did you last see your father? List Price: $12.00 USD New From: $3.39 In Stock Used from: $0.01 In Stock

And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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I love the TV show Wife Swap. If you haven't seen it, the premise is that they get two families from middle America who volunteer to have their wives swap places for two weeks. During the first week, both families run by the usual rules so the "new wife" can learn how they normally operate; but in the second week, the new wife gets to make whatever rule changes they want. Each family volunteers on the basis that they agree to abide by whatever rules the new wife chooses to set.

Invariably the producers choose two families at the opposite ends of some spectrum, be it religious, political, economic, traditional/progressive, or whatever. Today's episode featured a real estate executive who was always on the phone and had no time for her kids, swapping places with a suffocating obsessive-compulsive stay-at-home Mom who home-schooled and controlled her whole family.

I always seem to find the husband's reactions remarkable. They must know in advance that there will be rule changes, and anyone who has watched the program would know that the new wife isn't going to be anything like their real one; so you would think that they would realise well in advance that they are not going to like all the changes. Often they react angrily with cries of "not in my house!" or criticism of the new wife; even when the changes change the power balance in the family in their favour. But they react angrily, resort to passive aggression, name calling, and all sorts of techniques to buck the new system that they disapprove of. However, something magical also happens as the week progresses: they start to adjust to the new rules, and begin even working with the new wife to get their kids to follow the new rules. You see the men growing in ways I would never have expected, and starting to relate more positively towards both their new wives, and their existing children.

Some of the kids welcome the changes, like the girls who were allowed to date boys for the first time; while others do not, like the girl who loved school but was told she was going to be home-schooled from now on. "Oh come on", I'm thinking, "it's only for a week"; you'd think she was being banned from school for life by her reaction. Somehow, everyone in the family is eventually able to overcome their resentment towards the new rules and the new "Mom" as the week progresses, and they start to see some benefits. The kid who had to return his new video game to the store and used the money to go to the movies with his mom was excited about being able to spend more time with her. Previously, he was just zoned out in front of the video game all the time; and he had plenty of others anyway.

The final debriefing session is always interesting too. Sometimes the guys are defensive. It's not all smooth-sailing. But the conflicts seem to get resolved in the end, and people who were at extremes of the spectrum both end up finding better balance closer towards the middle. I think I'm just not used to people facing conflict, getting all upset, calming down again and then being able to go away a better person having learned something profound from the experience. I thought people just got upset and the upset simply boiled down to fester and come back another day. Yet it's fascinating to see wives go back to their family with a new outlook, and an even deeper love for their husband; and likewise, their husbands having greater appreciating for their wives. Somehow the emotional independence of the newcomer to the family and the rules of the show give everyone the ability to embrace changes that they would otherwise find virtually impossible; and even though there are plenty of tantrums thrown in the process, everyone seems to be able to go away both with their dignity intact, with mutual respect in place, and with remarkable growth of personal insight.

Yes, they get set up by the producers to get into conflict, but they also manage to resolve it, and it ends up making a positive difference in their real lives. And I think that's why I love Wife Swap.

Wife Swap is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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Dr Phil is on TV again, using big words like "maturity" and "responsibility", and talking about relationships. I like Dr Phil; he's charismatic, compassionate and assertive with the people who come on his show. He doesn't take crap from them, and calls them on their blind spots when they try to spin some story on him. But I can't help wondering about the people who agree to go on the program. There is something voyeuristic about watching another person's personal problems being aired before a mass audience, and surely something exhibitionist about wanting to go on the program.

Some of the people are clearly at their wit's end and don't know what else to do; perhaps they think that going on Dr Phil and exposing the lies and the secrecy that keeps them bound will release them from whatever is keeping them trapped. And maybe it does; but not everyone ends up with a happy ending. Jeffery from the Obsessive Love series is a case in point. I won't spoil the ending for you if you haven't seen it but it made for compelling viewing. Perhaps their appearance on Dr Phil brought the issue to a head; Jennifer appears much happier now, but I wouldn't have wanted to be in Jeffery's shoes and to some extent I felt he was exploited for the sake of our entertainment. He was clearly set up to be the "bad guy", and played his part dramatically well. But he was also a real person in need of some real help; and although Dr Phil and Creative Care sincerely offered it to him, the show also had another agenda of creating entertaining TV. Generally I think the show does a remarkably good job of aligning these disparate goals, but not everyone walks away a winner.

Some of the people appearing on the show have some deep and serious issues in their lives, and the daily relationship miracles we see worked on Dr Phil no doubt require many hours of counselling, therapy or other ongoing support to make the changes stick. I like the fact that he often refers people for therapy on the basis of "making some resources available" to them; and the responsibility for the outcome remains with the guest/clients. But in a sense it all looks too easy; real therapy is hard work, and doesn't fit neatly into a one-hour TV show where everything is resolved before the final credits role. Still, at least the people on Dr Phil are real, and are there because they have some degree of commitment to resolving things, exhibitionism aside. While I worry about the sort of people who want to air their personal issues so publicly, I worry more about people who would rather keep everything buried; because the symptoms are bound to come out somewhere.

Having Dr Phil on air gives the rest of us permission to examine our own relationships and life circumstances, and to seek help and support in resolving them when necessary. Generally the show makes pretty compelling viewing and often the issues raised strike a chord with me.

Dr Phil is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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Ever since I was a kid, I've felt a burning desire to have other people like me; to be accepted. It's not unusual to want to fit in with other people, and perhaps you can relate. Often when I didn't feel accepted by other people, I thought the problem lay with me. But a recent interaction with a rather extreme neighbour was an opportunity in disguise to learn otherwise.

A few years back I moved into a block of flats in a neighbourhood not far from where I'd previously been living for several years. I knew the area well, but the immediate neighbours were all new. It wasn't long before I met a neighbour who I'll call Edward, who lived upstairs in the same building quite close to me. At first he was friendly and appeared very charming. A little too charming perhaps, to the point of being a bit smarmy. Edward seemed very keen to be my friend, but something seemed a little odd about him which I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Not long after moving in, I attended the annual body corporate meeting, where the owners of all the units in the block get together to make joint decisions about earth-shattering issues like who we should employ to mow the lawns, and who should take care of the gardens surrounding the building. It turned out that the gardens were quite a bone of contention, largely because Edward had been acting as the gardener for some time and in the process had managed to get most of the other owners off-side. Edward had lived in the building for many years, and basically thought that this meant he should be able to do whatever he wanted. In his mind, all these relative newcomers had no right to impose their will on him, when he'd lived there longer than anyone else. The other owners weren't pleased that Edward was doing his own thing in the shared garden, and expecting to be paid for the privilege. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the simplest answer to resolve this conflict was to employ a professional gardener to take over the responsibility on behalf of the body corporate. Even if it cost a bit more, the resolution of this particular conflict between the owners seemed well worth the money. There was a vote at the meeting to do just this, so I happily voted in favour. I even went so far as to interrupt Edward during the meeting when he started airing long-held grievances relating to events in the years before I even lived there, to point out that these grievances were irrelevant to me and would be better dealt with outside the meeting. They had no relevance to me, were no longer current as far as I could see, and it seemed that Edward was derailing the meeting from the shared goal of resolving the issue which was causing conflict between the owners.

All of this was enough for Edward to declare me the enemy, and brought me immediately within his firing line. Prior to retiring, Edward had been a journalist and before long he started writing me long-winded letters accusing me of all sorts of evil practices, from destroying his beloved garden to being in cahoots with the previous owner of my unit, with whom he clearly didn't get along either. I soon learned that this was something of a pattern that Edward had with other people: at first he acted very charming to try and woo you into friendship with him, but then as soon as you did something he didn't like, he would turn on you. Edward was the classic grumpy old man, lonely and bitter about life, and angry at the world for the way he felt it has treated him.

Edward's letters were full of vitriolic vindictive, paranoia and spiteful misunderstanding, and they soon drew me into his orbit. I felt compelled to reply in order to correct his misconceptions about me. After all, I was not the horrible person that his letters painted me to be, and I hadn't done any of the things of which he accused me. Surely it was my duty to correct such gross errors of character assessment so that Edward could see me the way I really am, not as some sort of neighbourly enemy. Each time I would write a polite, considered reply attempting to correct any obvious misunderstandings that Edward had about me and my actions, I would receive another letter stacked with vitriol. Again, I would feel compelled to correct Edward's mistaken notions of the evil lurking deep within me. And again, yet more vitriol would flow by letter into my apartment, and into my life. I felt angry and hurt at being so misunderstood by this new neighbour who barely even knew me. Surely if I could connect and communicate with him meaningful, he would begin to understand and would cease to hate me?

After a while, I couldn't help noticing that the continual exchange of letters full of hatred in return for polite letters of reconciliation was making me unhappy. All I was doing was attempting to feed my need for acceptance and Edward's need for attention. It may have been working nicely for him, but it wasn't working for me. So if it was making me unhappy, why keep doing it? Was there another way of dealing with this chronically difficult person?

Indeed there was. I couldn't entirely ignore him, because he lived in the same building as I did. But could decide to change the way that I viewed Edward, and his presence in my life. Rather than seeing him as a nasty irritation of the worst kind that just won't go away, I chose to see his purpose in my life as being to teach me a valuable lesson: That not everyone is going to like me. That it wasn't even important for everyone to like me. I have plenty of friends who like me, including other people who live in my building. Yet time I spent writing letters to Edward was time that I wasn't spending on these other people, who made a much more positive contribution to my life, and me to theirs. Edward wasn't likely to wake up one day and suddenly realise that he'd been wrong in his cynicism and paranoia. No amount of effort on my part was likely to change his view of me and of the world around him. I could either continue to expend my effort trying the impossible, or choose to see him simply as a lesson on how not to relate to other people. So I stopped replying to his letters, and even stopped reading them so they couldn't incense me. I felt bad for being so rude as to not even read a letter someone had written me, but there was a lesson here too: sometimes being polite isn't always the best option. After a while, the letters of hatred stopped arriving and I was off Edward's radar.

A year or two later, Edward had a nasty fall down the stairs in the building which broke his collar bone and came pretty close to ending his life. His letter box began to overflow during an extended stay in hospital, so I started collecting some of his mail for him. After he returned, it was with some trepidation that I went upstairs and knocked on his door to give it to him. He summoned me in, and was like a different man. Edward had clearly been knocked about pretty badly by the fall and the increasing onset of dementia. As I entered, he was on the phone to someone lamenting in a depressed voice that nobody had visited to make him a cup of tea, and that he hoped the nice young man who just entered might be able to keep him company for a while. That nice young man was me. Edward was rapidly losing touch with reality and evidently no longer remembered who I was nor the hatred that he'd had for me.

At this point I had the choice between saying "Serves you right for being so horrible to me, you miserable old bastard" or to make a lonely, dying old man a cup of tea. Who did I want to be at that moment? Someone who returned spite with spite, or someone capable of forgiveness and compassion? I don't even drink tea and frankly had no idea how to make it, so doing so would put me in a slightly embarassing position; but I knew Edward did, so I said "Sure Edward, I'll make you a cup of tea. But I don't drink tea and I have no idea how, so you'll need to help by telling me how". So he sat in the lounge room and gave me step-by-step instructions on how to make a cup of tea, and I hung around for a chat and shared some biscuits as he drank it.

It would be a great ending to this story to say that Edward and I remained best of friends, but reality gets in the way. As his strength gradually returned, so did his obstinance and irritability. I decided that I could choose what sort of people I want in my life, and that frankly Edward wasn't one of them. But Edward got his cup of tea when he needed it most, and I went away with a valuable lesson in forgiveness, compassion and the fact that not everybody is going to like me.

Not Everyone is Going To Like You is a post from Graham Stoney: Writer, Speaker, Communicator - Set Yourself Free!

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