Psychology Today: Does Your Relationship Bring Out the Best in You?

"Let’s be honest: For a relationship to function optimally, both parties need to put time and energy into it—and do so consistently.

What if only one of you knows how to tango?

If you persistently portray your best, most enlightened self in what’s definable as your most intimate relationship—and independent of your partner’s less positive self-presentation—you’re likely to eventually bring out the best in them as well. It doesn’t, and in most instances can’t, apply to partners with an impenetrable defense system or severe mental disorder. In these extreme cases, the other’s super-charged fears of vulnerability, their mostly hidden anxieties about failure and rejection, prohibit them from entering into an intimate union.

Enacting the best version of yourself primarily requires the courage to make yourself more vulnerable with your partner. For that’s an open (hopefully irresistible) invitation for them to reevaluate their resistance to making themselves more vulnerable with you.

In sum, focusing on what you can do—all by yourself—to improve the relationship is frequently enough to inspire your significant other to make changes they might not otherwise think of making— or be capable of making.

For if you can come from your most caring, least reactive self, you’ll be able to have a strong effect on how your partner sees you—and so they may alter what’s been their habitual response to you.

And none of the above is meant to imply that you give your partner’s needs priority over your own. Instead, your goal is to get them to value your needs as much as their own: to operate relationally—as a “we” rather than an “I.”

Here are some practical things you can do to change both your perspective and behavior;

1. Cultivate within yourself the strength and assurance to self-validate.

That way, your partner can’t undermine your efforts at effecting mutual change by provocatively questioning the sincerity or authenticity of your (unusually favorable) behavior toward them.

2. Choose your targets wisely.

Through freely exhibiting the behaviors you wish from your partner, focus on what’s critical to you. For you to be effective, you need to “edit out” admittedly minor differences between the two of you. So you’ll need to ignore some possibly bothersome habits that you really can’t see as deal-breakers.

3. Don’t allow yourself to resort to threats, blaming, guilting, or criticism.

Don’t argue with them or endeavor to persuade them that your point of view is unquestionably more levelheaded or logical than theirs. No tit for tat here, no attacking and counter-attacking, aggression, retaliation, stonewalling, or withdrawal. On the contrary, what you need to do is show them how you want to be treated by dealing with them the way they, too, desire.

4. Communicate in ways that make you feel good about yourself.

After all, what you’re presenting here is your ideal self—namely, the kindest, most understanding, and most compassionate version of yourself that you can offer them—even as you’re adhering to the personal boundaries necessary to uphold your honor and rectitude. You’re giving more of yourself to the relationship, but at the same time, you’re also giving more to yourself.

That ought to make you proud, for you’re assertively and autonomously endeavoring to create the couplehood that’s best for both of you.

Read the full article here!

Reflection;

Do your relationships bring out the best in you?

#Relationships #Communication #EmotionalRegulation