When you change your responses to your partner, your partner changes
NOTE- Article adapted* from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201906/is-your-relationship-evolving-or-devolving by Nancy Coller
A not-so-fictional couple, in a long-term relationship, have experienced intense conflict and emotional turbulence lately. Neither partner however, has been willing to leave the relationship as both believe that there are genuine signs the relationship may indeed find its way back to goodness and peace, if only the other person would change some things. Those things may or may not have been specified or defined.
And yet, despite real glimmers of hope and happiness, one or both continue to repeat a pattern of certain comments or thoughts: “This relationship is a failure;” “I’ve totally failed at this relationship;” “If only s/he would change, everything would be great;” “I haven’t ever been able to succeed at anything;” “S/he can’t ever do anything right;” “S/he never sees my side of the story;” “S/he doesn’t care how I feel;” “I’m scared to try anything new because if it doesn’t work, I’ll be blamed or shamed;” “I / you don’t deserve anything better.”
When the comments or thoughts first started, each person would become defensive and angry, though not necessarily visibly, feeling hurt or back-handedly insulted. Each may have blamed the other. Perhaps worse, one partner or friend absorbed or accepted responsibility or blame that was projected by the other. Sometimes the projected blame or hurtful words were rationalized as justified or otherwise deserved by the sender or the receiver. In most, if not all instances, this only propagated the cycle of defensiveness, aggression, pain and sadness.
Recently, one partner started trying a different approach: S/he began pretending as if s/he didn’t notice the other’s comments or troubling behaviors. Instead, s/he behaved as if the other hadn’t said the hurtful words. It was an attempt to stave off the shame of being wounded and show the other (falsely) that the efforts to blame or cause harm were useless or otherwise not damaging. Unfortunately, this strategy didn’t work either, because underneath the nonchalance, s/he may have felt enraged and deeply hurt. Pretending in this way only resulted in feeling like s/he was tucking away and even betraying true self, which only resulted in even deeper resentment and confusion.
Most recently, one partner has shifted the focus to letting go of the ‘controller’ inside—the part that feels it has to change or manage the other’s behavior or feelings. Letting go of the idea that it’s one person’s responsibility or duty to manage or change the other results in feelings of liberation and helps to avoid resentment. Realizing there can be a lot of things about the other’s behavior that we don’t like, and that’s OK. When we’re not failing at getting the other to be the way we want, and vice-versa, we can actually start to relax.
When we start to let go of the controller inside us, and allow the other to be as s/he is, we feel more separate from that person but at the same time become more aware and accepting of who each of us actually is. And paradoxically, this begins to set a foundation where we can be more in relationship with each other. This doesn’t mean that we stop telling the other person when s/he says things that hurt us; Quite the opposite, it remains important that we respectfully communicate when someone’s words or behavior cause us pain. But we begin to no longer see each other as a piece of clay to mold. The other person starts transforming from being an object who is supposed to make us happy, and starts to become a separate human being, with both pleasing and not-pleasing parts.
A surrender occurs. We stop trying to make the other partner or friend different as a condition of our being happy. What’s left is the same reality (the other partner is still the same person, with the same characteristics) but we are no longer in a battle with that reality and living in a state of chronic dissatisfaction and frustration.
The process of letting go (surrendering) is vastly liberating and it also includes grief. When we surrender the controller, we surrender the hope that we will get to have the partner we wish we could have; that we will get to have the happiness we imagined our partner could bring us. We may discover a totally different kind of happiness, but our idea of how it was going to happen and who our partner was going to become must die.
When we stop betting our happiness on our partner changing, we discover a different kind of partnership, a bond without shackles, a union that’s both separate and together. When we step out of the role of manager (or victim), we start to see who our partner actually is rather than who they are not. And hopefully, we can do all this with a bit of compassion.
This process, while painful in many ways, is a spiritual evolution. It involves shedding a central part of ourselves, a primary component and motivation in how we relate. Our relationship, with a loosened controller, is fundamentally different; our purpose is no longer fixing the project that is our partner. Without a controller, it’s a relationship without the hope of having exactly what we want, but with a new and undiscovered hope of meeting what we actually have, who our partner is and who we are in this relationship as it is.
In letting go of the controller, we give ourselves the freedom to focus on our own behavior, our own happiness. We have permission to not have to be in charge of everyone else’s behavior. The more we practice this, the more we get the hang of letting others be who they are and moving on. In so doing, we also give ourselves the possibility of loving our partner or friend now, not if and when we turn them into who we want them to be.
And remarkably, when we change our responses to our partner’s behavior, our partner’s behavior also changes. It has to, as we’re feeding it different food. One thing’s for sure: If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always gotten. When we change, the people around us change, either through their own behavior or simply through how we see them.
We gain a new clarity, a new wisdom that’s not the other person or even our relationship. We begin to discover an authentic desire to move away from negativity and what hurts and move towards love and kindness, moving towards others, our friends and family who are positive experiences and connections for us—who do not view their relationship with us as a failure or something that needs to be changed. When we reach this stage, even if our partner or friend puts out hurtful words or behaviors, we have developed wisdom that helps us let go and act in service of our greater happiness. Or, as the wonderful Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron puts it, to not bite the hook that’s dangling. When not responding is not just another tactic, but rather a true act of self-love, we’ve discovered a most powerful tool.
Evolution and happiness in our self and our relationships is not about figuring out how to better control our partner or friends, learning to not care, or swallowing behavior that’s bitter or hurtful. It is about learning to allow everything to be as it is, letting go of control and responsibility for our partner’s behavior, and practicing self-love. Ultimately, it’s about learning to take what we want and leave the rest behind, moving away from what hurts and moving towards kindness.
A final and critically important point: In the case of abuse of any kind, emotional or physical, we do not allow anything to be as it is when it puts us in harm’s way. When abuse is present, we remove ourselves from the situation. When abuse is happening, we do not surrender control or wait for our partner’s behavior to change, we take ourselves out of harm's way. This is our right and our responsibility.
---------
*For KC CoDA purposes, articles are edited to come from an "I/me" perspective. They also may have edited content and format.