How To Be Happy In Your Relationship- No Matter What
We often look to our relationship to supply us with a sense of personal happiness and fulfillment. While relationships can certainly be enjoyable, they also bring with them a great deal of unhappiness depending on how we go about them.
Many of us can sense when a relationship is not enjoyable but few understand what leads to the state of discontent. We often are led to believe that it is our partner who needs to change to accommodate us or we ourselves who needs to change to accommodate our partner in order to find happiness in our relationship.
There is no shortage of books intended to guide people to find happy and fulfilling relationships. Many give advice on how to find the right partner, how to better understand our perceived needs and how to better communicate. Some books no doubt offer great help and insight into getting along with our partner and increasing empathy, but they are still emphasizing external factors.
When we put our happiness on external conditions we are at the mercy of those conditions.
When you are getting along with your partner and getting what you want from them you think you’re happy (and in love) but as soon as you perceive them not meeting your needs, desires or expectations the relationship takes a turn for the worse. Why is this?
We enter into a relationship with expectations for the other person and how we want them to be.
Ultimately we want our partners to be a certain way because we want to feel a certain way. (I want to feel pretty so I want a partner who compliments me. I want to feel lovable so I need an affectionate partner. I don’t want to feel lonely so I need someone who will talk to me and want to hang out with me.) We look to our partner to make us feel secure, desirable, safe, appreciated, loved and so on.
I often hear couples talk about not having their needs met by their spouse and quite frankly who haven’t been in a relationship where they felt their needs weren’t being met. When our expectations are not being met that is when we have difficulty in our relationship. Many people do not see themselves as having expectations when, in truth, they have a number of them.
We want people to act a certain way because of a fear. Instead of looking inward and uncovering this fear and really facing it, we blame our partners and try to change them to supply something to put our fear temporarily to rest.
We can feel this fear in various different forms: anxiety, hurt, anger, disappointment and so on. When we look at our partner to change to make us feel a certain way we are missing out on a wonderful growing oppor
tunity. Our relationships are wonderful tools to show us were we can grow and highlight where we are getting stuck.
The next time you feel yourself getting upset with your partner’s antics there is one sure way to start addressing the fear that is being triggered: Forgive them for what you think they are doing to you.
What people say or do to us cannot hurt us unless there is a piece of it that we believe to be true. Confusing? Consider for a moment the following example.
If someone called you a “purple unicorn” would it upset you? Chances are being called a purple unicorn would not hurt your feelings. You would probably look at amazement and think that person is crazy. You know you are not a “purple unicorn” (well most people do anyways) so when someone calls you that it doesn’t penetrate.
Now what if that same person called you something else. You can take you pick on names: jerk, fatso, lazy, lousy lover, stupid, etc. These are names we typically react to more than being called a “purple unicorn” but why? In short, because there is a part of us that believes it could be true. More correctly, there is a part of us that is terrified that it is true.
When we react to something our partner does it is because it hits a nerve (or fear) that is already part of our (unconscious) belief system. We often times try to get our partner to change because they do hit these tender areas. The only trouble is our fearful beliefs about ourselves will never be addressed until we take a look.
When you forgive someone for what you think they are doing to you, you being to address your own vicious beliefs about yourself.