“Why is my relationship like this?”
“Why isn’t my relationship better?”
“Why is she/he/they like THAT?”
“If only they would _____ (fill in the blank)”
I get it.
I’ve spent time in past relationships hoping it would change, or my partner would change, or I would somehow wake up one day feeling different and not be bothered by THAT thing anymore.
Or if this One Little Thing would just change already to make everything different.
Fantastical thinking is addictive - the idea that things will just change without me actually having to do anything whatsoever. When we engage in it we don’t have to go through the mess and discomfort and fear of actually changing.
The truth is we humans find it much easier to stick with the mess and discomfort fear of what we already know - have you noticed that too?
My invitation to you is to flip the question of Why Isn’t My Relationship Different? to What Does My Relationship Need From Me?
And I’m going to extend this a little bit to What Does My Relationship Fife Need From Me?’ Because maybe you’re not in a relationship right now but you’d like to be.
Here’s a personal recent example of me wanting something different in my relationship, but then realising that my relationship needed something different from me.
I thought I wanted more space in my relationship. I didn’t know exactly what that might mean. I wasn’t certain if that was actually true, and what ‘more space’ might even look like if it was.
I was engaging in some very compelling mental loops fueled in part by my anxiety that my very request for space would lead to the end of the relationship, despite the fact that I have much lived experience with my gorgeous partner that sharing and exploring even the most uncomfortable places leads to expansion and deepening. But that’s how anxiety works. Take a bow you hard-wired closed-circuit miracle of design.
The masculine part of me wanted to present the finished article - the request, the solution, the decision - to my partner. And then everything would reshape around that. Oh that feels good even writing that.
But I was in resistance to what I wanted, in resistance to talking about it.
I was tense, preoccupied, uncomfortable.
I was Not Much Fun to be around (see previous post about how we unconsciously ‘act out’ and manufacture situations to create space in our relationships, instead of asking directly. Yep, I was writing about it and not even aware I was doing it or about to do it). A serving of humble pie over here, thanks.
But what my relationship actually needed from me was to share my disquiet, to share my process (I’m getting flashbacks to math teachers demanding ‘‘show your workings!”) with my partner.
Because when I’m in my anxiety loop, my gorgeous partner senses my disquiet because it interferes with our connection. My experience is that women have an incredibly nuanced radar for connection, an ability to read the subtlest shifts.
Don’t Lone-Wolf It
When I lone-wolf it, and allow it to drag on because I’m lost in my own wilderness, she’s sensing it and creating stories about what’s happening. This ADDS to the confusion and disconnection. My staying quiet erodes our connection and the trust between us. The very foundation of the relationship.
What came out of my deep dive last weekend, was that sharing my uncertainty, and sharing what I was mulling over - before I had formulated a request, solution, decision - would have allowed us to explore and find a solution together. To connect around the process. We would have avoided a lot of stress.
So what does my relationship need from me?
It needs me to share my work-in-progress. Doing so will connect us. Doing so will remove the doubt and uncertainty that can occur when an undercurrent of disquiet is accompanied by a void of information.
Sharing myself-in-process is not something I’m used to doing. It feels vulnerable and uncomfortable. It might be a guy thing.
In my next post I’ll share with you what I need to do to be able to share my myself in this way, observations from working with a client, and how you can do this in your own relationship.
