I thought this to myself as I dealt with my daughter this morning.<\/p>\n

Jealous of the new baby, she’s decided that I’m no longer always her wonderful mother.<\/p>\n

No, sometimes I’m the traitor, the one who (she thinks, of course) loves the baby more, the one who pushed her lovely self aside to bring someone else home, to share our lives.<\/p>\n

But this story isn’t about her jealousy or how we’re handling it. Instead, what I want to tell about is how, in being treated off and on like the bad guy, I’m becoming one more easily.<\/p>\n

It’s much harder to remain neutral and empathetic when treated poorly and, sadly, this realization led me to also think about how I’ve been treating my husband.<\/p>\n

Tired and new-mother hormonal, I often lose my patience with him over minor things that have been a part of him and our life together for years. Things like leaving a pair of jeans folded in front of the heating vents, placing a seltzer can on the glossy top of the girls’ dresser—minor marital grievances—become focal points for my “tsk-ing” and grumpily tuttering about our\u00a0house.<\/p>\n

Now obviously he doesn’t deserve to bear the force of my own temper tantrums, just like I sometimes feel I don’t deserve my daughter’s, but this is life and, in it, we don’t always act ideally or even as we’d genuinely prefer to. That said, this thought—that being treated angrily and disrespectfully can encourage bad behavior in return—has got me thinking a lot about why I believe so strongly in both positive thinking and, equally and perhaps most importantly, how this all translates back to self-love.<\/p>\n

Another person who has been treated badly is me—by me<\/em>.<\/p>\n