As I promised last week, today I'm sharing with you 5 Ways To Improve Things When Your Partner's The Problem. Because, I know it can be infuriating, heartbreaking, and so discouraging when your partner is rude, makes mean comments, gets irritated easily, or goes distant and cold on you.
You feel dismissed, unimportant, unvalued, and totally disconnected from him, and likely, at moments, hopeless to bring back the loving feelings you used to have between you.
You might find yourself asking, “What happened to my dream of a loving relationship, one where I feel close to and at ease with my significant other?” You wish your relationship was one where you can laugh together and really share yourselves emotionally and physically.
As you may have noticed, I’ve talked quite a bit about how you can actually create a very different, much more happy and healthy relationship with your partner by shifting the way you approach things. Now I am going to give you some very specific ways to do so and get that process moving.
Below are 5 keys to give him the opportunity to start to feel better and therefor behave better, with more kindness and care, so you can both begin to see things improve between you. I will list them out here, and then go into more detail for each key over the course of the next few blog posts.
Key #1.Get Out of the Victim Mentality and claim how much power you have to make a difference. I gave a pep talk about this at some length in last week's video here.
I am writing an article about the victim mentality and how to get out of it, which I will share with you in when published, so I won’t be writing a separate post on this topic right now. For now, I want to briefly summarize what the Victim Mentality is and how to get out of it.
When you are in the victim mentality it means that you believe on some level that your partner can make you feel what you feel and even act how you act. A sign that you have some of that operating in you (like most of us!) is that sad, self-pitying, or righteously angry finger-pointing feeling of “You made me feel….[fill in the blank]” .
The truth is, no one can make us feel what we feel. We alone have that power.
When you know deep down that you are in charge of how you feel you don't get sucked into reacting to something he does or doesn’t do for you with a “retaliation” attitude or by withdrawing into coldness.
These behaviors are expressions of “an eye for an eye” attitude, (i.e. “well screw you!”) which lead to war, or the “poor-me, I’m defeated attitude”, which keeps you subdued and unhappy. Neither will ever get you closer to having the loving relationship you really want!
Because you know the saying “an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind”.
So your relationship is not one of the blind leading the blind, you must understand that you are not the victim of his weird actions ( that’s him trying to cope as a weird wonky human, as most us of are on some level).
When you take back your authority over yourself and what you need to to feel secure and content and filled up, you begin the process of healing the whole relationship. Instead of going "blind", you become the vision and the peace-leader of the relationship. Until he catches onto the new dynamic, and then you do it together.
A great starting question to ask yourself is, “Do I want him to be in charge of how I feel?” Then tell yourself “I choose to be in charge of how I feel.” Then do what it takes to feel good. Helping you get there is one place a good coach can be a godsend.
Ultimately in a really healthy relationship, both partners want to be caring for and supporting the other, and seeing themselves as helpers of the others emotional life. But you can lead the way there by dropping the victim mentally and taking the reigns. Which leads me to your next keys.
Like I said above, we go into more depth on this and the following keys over the course of the next few posts. For now, keep in mind that when people are met with love and kindness, most people cannot help reflecting that back. The golden rule works.
We all need to know where we start and end. Even—especially— in intimate relationships. Learn how to claim your own space, and what you will tolerate and what you won’t, kindly and clearly. As you do so you will begin to teach him how to treat you.
What softens your partner’s heart (just like would yours) and paves the way to emotional intimacy is giving him your respect, trust, and confidence, so he feels safe and capable when around you. We’ll discuss the subtleties of respect (it may not be exactly what you think) and learn some how-to’s soon.
Honesty and openness are essential for a healthy close relationship. But that’s not the same as saying whatever comes into your mind at the moment. Learn how to be authentic without spewing every thought (good or bad) out when they arise.
As you engage and communicate differently by following the above keys (again I’ll go into more detail over the next few posts) you will begin to elicit new and better responses from your partner and open up space for him to meet you in a new dynamic…one where he finally feels safe enough to be that loving person you could see in him in the early days.
What from above resonates? Maybe you tried the experiment I suggested in last week's video? If so, how'd it go? Comment below. I love hearing from you!