If you don’t know, you might be in trouble.
It is good to know where we are in life. When you can see where you are, and where you partner is, you feel seen and acknowledged. And being seen feels like love. You are connected to yourself and your relationship when you can truly see where you are, or where your partner is. When we feel seen, we feel loved.
To see and be seen is to love and be loved.
To see more of yourself, your relationship and each other, work through some of the following questions to get a sense of where you are.
Questions to ask yourself
The following questions might guide you in thinking about yourself:
•What do I need in life?
•Where am I emotionally, physically, financially, sexually or spiritually?
•Which part do I play in the ‘upsets’ in my relationship? How do I think I have contributed to the upsets in my relationship?
•What do I think I could have done differently that could have helped and improved my relationship?
•What are some of my best contributions and what am I proud of when it comes to my relationship/s?
•What am I trying to do to contribute to the well-being of my relationship?
•Why do I think I behave in my relationship as I do?
•What are my true intentions when it comes to my relationship?
•What am I hearing and what am I struggling to understand?
•What am I trying to say?
Questions to ask about your relationship
The following questions might guide you in thinking about your relationship:
•What is it like to be in our relationship nowadays?
•Which experiences of our relationship do I/we dislike?
•Which experiences of our relationship do I prefer? How would I/we like our relationship to be?
•What am I/are we contributing to the life of our relationship?
•How can I/we improve the experience of being in our relationship?
Questions to ask about your partner
The following questions might guide you in thinking about your partner:
•What do I see when I look at my partner’s behaviour?
•What is my partner really feeling and thinking?
•What is my partner really trying to say to me?
•Why is he or she thinking and feeling like this?
When you reflect on your life, it is good to make mental or physical notes. While you have thoughts about yourself and your relationship, consider writing them down on your phone or laptop, or in a journal. Making notes of thoughts and feelings is, for most people, a good tool for observing their lives. In this way you don’t have to hold your thoughts in your memory, and will have clear ideas of where you are.
THE SEVEN STEPS TO CONNECTION
After some thinking, it is time for some doing. Real change does not happen through thought alone – it happens through thought and action. If you want to change the experience of your relationship, take action now, before you destroy your love for each other.
If you are feeling unhappy in your relationship and disconnected from yourself and the people you love, and you are stuck in a damaging pattern of fighting, take any of the following seven steps to start reconnecting:
Step 1: Stop the damage now
We have all been there.
You pick up a topic, and try your best to share what you think and feel about it. Soon, you are screaming and shouting, or walking away. You feel even more hurt and upset in that moment; neither of you really feels understood. You feel disconnected, unloved, distant and stuck. You don’t feel safe enough to be honest with each other. The atmosphere is tense, sometimes for days – until you have the courage to try again, only to find the same pattern repeating itself. You learn to keep quiet and live separate lives. You start sharing your inner thoughts and feelings with friends or family members; the distance grows until you feel like strangers living together or co-parenting.
In times of disconnection, we seek comfort. We create a false sense of love and intimacy by creating comfort zones. You spend more time at work, or with friends and family. You spend your evenings in front of your laptop or the television. You learn to live in the same space, but avoid any real sharing. This is what it means to put your relationship at risk.
Most couples ask me how to break this pattern. They feel stuck, lost; they do not know how to become unstuck. How is it possible to be upset and speak your mind, but still feel close? How can we break this horrible cycle of fighting and silence?
In case you don’t know how to have a conversation without damaging each other, this is not the way to talk to anyone, ever. Whether you are in an intimate relationship or not, speaking to anyone like this is not good for you or your relationships.
If you damage your relationships, you damage yourself.
Before you start talking, remove all the ways of speaking that damage you and your relationship. Just as you would clean a wound before you put a plaster on it, you need to cleanse your relationship of your damaging ways before it can heal.
If the way in which you speak or behave is doing damage, rather do or say nothing and learn, first, how to treat each other with respect. If you cannot speak with gentle respect, do not speak at all until you are ready.
The best conversation you can have is a conversation that causes as little damage as possible.
Most couples fight more about how they speak to each other than about what they say to each other. What they say is often less damaging than how they say it. The way in which you speak your mind will determine the outcome of your conversations. The sooner you stop your damaging ways, the better for your relationship.
A damaging conversation is one in which you:
•scream or shout at each other;
•use sharp or sarcastic tones;
•call each other names or use labels (‘you are stupid/ridiculous/oversensitive/crazy’);
•shove, scratch, or hit each other, or push or pull each other around;
•slam doors and cupboards, or break things;
•use silent treatment and refuse to speak as a form of punishment (passive-aggressive behaviour);
•withhold your love and your thoughts, refusing to participate or show interest;
•swear;
•interrupt each other;
•threaten your relationship or say things you don’t mean (‘I am not doing this any more!’, ‘You will regret this one day!’); or
•make general, sweeping statements you don’t really mean (‘You always do this!’, ‘You never do anything!’).
Despite the fact that we all know we are not allowed to speak to or treat each other in these ways, most couples struggle to keep it gentle, calm and respectful.
Why do we raise our voices and scream at each other when all we want is to be heard? Why do we keep fighting when we know it doesn’t work? Often, I find that the more misunderstood you feel, the more you raise your voice. We shout to be heard. We fight to be seen and to be understood, because we believe