Do you and your partner communicate?
Does your partner listen to you?
Do you feel like you and your partner are drifting further and further apart?
Do you long for a closer, more connected relationship?
Relationships are not easy. They bring up our childhood wounding and actually make us behave more like a child. If communication, hearing each other, and getting closer are important to you in a relationship, then you need to learn how to live in your higher self and stop acting out of your inner child. You can learn how to do this through a couples’ retreat.
Both partners have to be wiling to step up and participate at a huge level. They both have to learn how to look at their own woundedness and reaction through that place and stop projecting onto their partner.
A client was talking to me about how triggered she gets when her partner continues to leave trash next to the trash bin instead of inside and then forgets to take the trash out completely. She has asked him over and over and for whatever reason, he isn’t hearing her and continues his behavior. I have suggested that instead of telling him what to do, that she do her own trigger work around his behavior and work on shifting her old beliefs instead of shifting his behavior. She could let him know that it triggers her and that the belief her little girl is buying into is that she doesn’t have a voice and she’s not important and that the feelings around the trigger are frustration and anger, but mostly sadness. The action her little girl wants to take is to keep nagging to get him to listen so she won’t be so agitated about the situation. His action is just his action. It’s not about her not having a voice or not being important.
In partnership, we need to work on our own beliefs and not work on getting our partners to shift their behaviors to make us feel better. Try exploring the feelings that come up when you get triggered and try not to medicate them away. When we look to our partner to change his or her behavior, it is a form of medicating because we don’t want to feel the feelings we have. Sit with the feelings and then explore what beliefs you are having around the behavior and don’t be so quick to talk to your partner about his or her behavior. When working with couples in a retreat, they learn what triggers them and why and the tools to take action inside of themselves instead of outside.
