Relational Empowerment
Relationships are complicated. What definitely does not help is how often we are inundated with messages about what they should or shouldn’t be. Your partner should be your best friend and fulfill all of your needs. You shouldn’t be too dependent on your partner, lest you end up in a codependent relationship. Your partner should be able to effortlessly heal you. If your partner loves you, they should know what you want and need without being told. Relationships should be hard work but also shouldn’t be that hard. You shouldn’t ever have doubts or feel unhappy.
By placing the emphasis on finding the ‘right’ person we shift the responsibility of how the relationship functions to them and their ‘rightness’. If they were the right person for us then they wouldn’t make us feel bad. They would bring out the best parts of us effortlessly with little to no conflict. We wouldn’t have to examine our own internal processes. As bell hooks eloquently explains, “False notions of love teach us that this is the place where we will feel no pain, where we will be in a state of constant bliss. We have to expose the falseness of these beliefs to see and accept the reality that suffering and pain do not end when we begin to love.” When we feel distressed we often want to place blame externally to protect ourselves. We want the hurt to go away. As Pema Chodron writes, “It [blame] is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect our hearts, to try to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves.”
This is not to say that fit isn’t important in choosing a partner. It definitely is. But even in very healthy and positive relationships we will feel hurt, disconnected or activated at times. Those feelings are an inevitability. So what if we looked at that truth as an opportunity to learn and grow both personally and within our relationships? A few of my favorite authors on relationships and compassion speak to this pretty directly:
The fact that our partner triggers us is not a bad thing- we are here to learn lessons, and our partner is a great tor-mentor.
-Richard Schwartz
Those events and people in our lives who trigger our unresolved issues could be regarded as good news. We don’t have to go hunting for anything...This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
-Pema Chödrön
Repair is an opportunity, not just a necessary recovery from a rupture.
-Mona Fishbane
When conflict arises within us or between us and other individuals when we walk on love’s path, it is disheartening...many people fear getting trapped in a bond that is not working, so they flee at the onset of conflict. Pain may be the threshold they must cross to partake of love’s bliss. Running from the pain, they never know the fullness of love’s pleasure.
-bell hooks
So how do we learn to utilize these opportunities? Richard Schwartz recommends a U-turn. A shift in focus to your own inner world and the many parts of you that make up the whole. We can become the primary caretakers of our own complex and dynamic inner workings which frees up our partner to help us heal instead of being our healer. We can intentionally and non-judgmentally observe our inner worlds. We can strive to understand these internal patterns and narratives and not blame ourselves for them. Kristin Neff explores how this can open up new pathways to growth and change. She says, “Mindfulness provides incredible freedom, because it means we don’t have to believe every passing thought or emotion as real and true...We can question the accuracy of our perceptions and ask if our thoughts and emotions need to be taken quite so seriously...Mindfulness provides us with the opportunity to respond rather than simply react.” I fully acknowledge that this, as I often say to my clients, is much easier said than done.
Mona Fishbane breaks this inherent difficulty down a bit more, “Many of our emotional upsets are activated quickly, beneath awareness. But then our higher brain gets in the act, trying to explain our emotional reactivity; we create a narrative that may or may not reflect how we actually became upset. We seek to explain-and often justify- our emotional, automatic behavior.” Instead of trying to justify our emotional responses, we can identify our own reactivity to break the cycle of blame. We can take this process from implicit to explicit and from automatic to intentional so we can work with it in a more compassionate way. None of this is meant to say that we alone bear the full responsibility of our relationships being successful. We co-create dynamics and patterns and ultimately we are both responsible for our part in dismantling them. Understanding this can facilitate empowerment in our relationships. We can focus on self-soothing and turning compassion inwards to take care of ourselves in difficult moments. This allows us to more productively express our vulnerabilities to our partners which in turn allows them to lower their defenses so they can hear and respond to our pain more effectively. Our partners are able to be more receptive when they don’t feel the weight of our blame or the need to fix us themselves.
I can’t resist one last Pema Chödrön quote:
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Resources/References
The Places that Scare You by Pema Chödrön
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
Loving with the Brain in Mind by Mona Fishbane
Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff
All About Love by bell hooks
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For by Richard C. Schwartz
Photo by Andre Furtado: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-sitting-on-bench-1417255/
