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One of the most valuable things you can do for your relationship is to work on yourself. This may seem counter-intuitive since our mate will often appear to be the one who needs work. (It’s not me, its him/her!)

Respond rather than react

As it turns out, it’s actually easier to change ourselves than it is to change our partner. We don’t have a lot of control over our partner but we do have some control over our responses in any given situation. Notice that I said responses and not reactions. Our reactions to things people do or say are often automatic and happen before we get a chance to think about them rationally.

Have you ever felt hurt by or taken offense to something your partner said? Notice how quickly the reaction happened and how little control you had over how you felt? Feelings are feelings. We create the best outcomes when we accept them without judgment. It took me a long time to accept myself and my feelings especially since people have been saying, “Boy! You really are super-sensitive, you know that?” to me for years. I finally realized that I can’t help how I feel. I can, however, work to improve how I respond when my feelings are hurt, my expectations aren’t met or when I feel slighted in some way.

Feelings just are

When we give ourselves permission to feel the feelings we have, a space opens up for us to choose how to respond. We get to rethink what just happened and see if we can find some other interpretation than the one that upsets us or has our partner look like a perpetrator. The willingness to see a situation differently can have a huge effect on how we respond and thus can change the “dance” between us and our partner.

The healing power of self-expression

Recently, a client who took the Powerful Partnerships^® Course without a partner, identified some pent up feelings she had about her ex-husband. Even though they had been divorced for years, there were still a number of property issues that had not been resolved. Remarkably, she was able to transform her relationship without even having a conversation with him. Just getting in touch with and expressing her truth the way she learned to do in the course had a healing effect on her. Out of that experience, she started to see him differently and the dance between them changed dramatically with surprising results. Susanne was kind enough to share her remarkable experience (above).

Believe it or not, the results she got are not all that uncommon.

Talk to you soon,

-Jim