Only a few days left! As we are getting closer to Valentine’s Day find new ways to grow your relationship and satisfy your partner. It takes only a small change in you to have a great effect on your relationship. Make that change inside you!
Tip #9: When there is a problem, look first at you
Our relationships are given to us as an opportunity to learn and develop. And sometimes the most difficult moments can be the biggest lessons that grow the relationship even stronger.
Why is your partner next to you? Because you love each other, you connect, you learn form each other, you grow together, you actually magnify the experience of life!
And your partner is also there to be a mirror for yourself.
If there is something that you don’t like in your partner, if there is something in his/her behavior or way of being that is difficult to accept or it makes you angry, then you need to look inside of you! Most of the things that we reject in others are actually things that we reject in ourselves. Things that we did not solve yet and we did not accept yet in ourselves. So, most of our conflicts are actually calls for us to rediscover a part of us. We need to work on this part and accept it first to be able to solve the conflict.
Let me share with you the case of my client: she is a very organized person at home. She loves keeping everything in order and gets angry at her husband when he leaves his stuff around the house. I asked her what was the reason she was getting angry and she told me that she would love to be disorganized too but she could not afford that because if both of them are the same the house would be a complete chaos. This was the part of her she could not accept, she could not solve and her husband was the mirror of it, that’s why she was getting so angry about it.
But she needed to solve this conflict inside of her: on one hand she was supposed to be organized and on the other hand she wanted to relax from times in a while and throw around clothes, not do the dishes, not make the bed etc. As her husband works out of town one week every month, she decided she will let go of herself that week. And she enjoyed every moment of it! It was a good solution to get in touch with this part of herself, understand her husband better and accept herself and her husband with their limits. She also talked to him and helped him understand what happens when he is disorganized and how he could make her happier (if you remember what I was saying in an earlier post, our partner wants to make us happy, as we want to make them happy too). And she used lots of humor for this discussion. 🙂
So, thank your partner for being the mirror you needed in these conflict situations! And instead of increasing the conflict, look inside yourself and find what you need to work on. Once you accept your limits, you will accept your partner’s limits too and grow.
The quality of your relationship is not your partner only, but both of you!
Inspiration for these tips: Tony Robbins and two of my favorite clients that showed me that love is above everything.
Photos: Lidia Dogaru
