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Originally Posted by Statikkk  So outside of actually trying to talk the person into positivity, how can one deal with these types of situations? |
I had a partner who was pretty negative. For me what seemed to work was listening with empathy when he would complain or get angry about an apparent wrong done to him. The thing is that I wouldn't tell him he should get over it because he was so negative or try to convince him things could be better if he had a better attitude and didn't play victim. What happened was when I listened with the intent to understand, I saw the underlying pain that was the precursor to all the negativity. And when I sought to understand that it was easier to separate the way he was acting from who he really is.
It seemed like when I would behave in this way, the end result would be that, without my saying anything to the effect, he would conclude that it wasn't doing any good to dwell.
The jist is that when I resisted or complained about the negativity it grew.
Not sure if that's helpful, but I felt it worked better for me.