Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First

Talking with some friends about our relationships it became clear that, not only have my ideas on this topic evolved a lot over the years, but the way I am within my current relationship has changed quite substantially from the way I have been in any other relationship to this point.

Since many of us get exposed to similar ideals through media, at home and in society generally, my early ideas about relationships were probably similar to yours. The sorts of beliefs that formed in my head were things like:

• it is my job to make others happy, and it is their job to make me happy
• we are meant to be with someone, the right person is out there for each of us
• we ‘fall in love’, an act which is outside our control and completely random
• if it is ‘meant to be’ it will just work
• children are better supported by a mother and father who are together… and so on.

While society has changed a lot in the last four decades and some of these ideas have become a bit old fashioned, many of us still hold on to these beliefs somewhere in our psyche. I know I certainly felt I’d failed on many levels as the years chugged on and my relationship numbers tallied.

On the plus side, I’d had plenty of opportunity to test out my beliefs. I tried hard to make things work each time, and read pretty much every relationship book I could lay my hands on. I learned a lot about personality differences, gender differences and communication, and - as someone who is sensitive to the way others are feeling – I generally tried to accommodate my significant other’s needs.

Things always started out well, but after a time the unavoidable “what about me?” voice would speak up. With all those sacrifices towards another’s needs, all that learning and insight, why weren’t my needs reciprocated I’d wonder? So I would inevitably end up searching elsewhere.

When I met my current partner twelve years ago, it was almost the first time I had been alone since I had hit my teens. Admittedly I hadn’t been single for very long, but it was the first time in my life I had actually been happy about being single. Getting to that place had given me the chance to really start to understand my own needs better and take a more honest look at myself.

By the time we met in our thirties we were both very aligned on what we had learned from our previous relationships. We agreed on the need to be ourselves, to keep doing the things we each enjoyed (even if it wasn’t something the other wanted to do), the importance of independent friendships and of good communication.

Around that same time I heard two things that really resonated deeply, and have reshaped my beliefs ever since. The first was advice to let go of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control other people and circumstances. That phrase “cumbersome impossibility” just felt so rich and on-target and conjures up exactly the way it feels when I am trying to control anything other than my own reactions.

Since I am the only one who controls my reactions, I then began to really understand I am therefore the singular creator of my own reality. So the second thing that stuck - although really confronted me at first - was hearing that if I really understood my ability to make myself feel good, I would ask no one else to be different so that I could feel good.

Over the years I have proceeded down our relationship path with these new thoughts in mind, yet admit I have often been drawn into thoughts and behaviours that are attached to my old beliefs, like looking to the other to “make me happy”.

This was especially true amid the intensity and pressure of bringing children into the world while working full time in a job that carried a lot of responsibility; that cast up many strongly rooted archetypes. My partner and I both highly value our autonomy, yet were feeling trapped by our circumstances. We became freedom seekers, fighting control with control; it was pretty ugly. 

It was really only in 2014 when I took a far more intentioned hold of the reins to release some of the pressure that things started to change.

I get my energy from inward reflection, not outward interaction, and that requires having my own space on a regular basis. I could not go on giving my attention outwardly twenty-four hours a day (literally, even in sleep, it was with one ear alert to the kids’ awakening through the night), so with deliberate focus I etched out some me (only) time.

Then my partner followed suit with a big authentic leap of his own in 2016 when he started his own business. It’s amazing how, with no real focus on ‘the relationship’ and pretty much allocating any time to spare on our authentic selves, the relationship has become naturally more harmonious.

I’m not saying we should never work on improving our relationship; but our relationship is always improving when I look at each annoyance, disappointment and frustration as things that hold a lesson for me. Then I find the root cause is rarely my partner; he is merely the trigger of some other deeply entrenched belief that is typically not helpful to me anymore.

Neither am I condoning that anyone stay in a relationship that is unhealthy or abusive. But it is important to understand why you were drawn into it to try to break the pattern and avoid a recurrence.

One thing my friends and I were talking about, that I found quite thought provoking, was whether it is healthy and/or helpful to change our own actions in order to fulfill another’s needs.

We were specifically talking about the different love languages we all have. So if one person thrives on (for example) lots of praise but the other is not naturally inclined to give gushing praise, is it even healthy to indulge that?

While that may be a small thing that could make a big difference to one person without particularly diminishing or overly taxing the other, my mind curved back around to what I’d learned 12 years ago. If someone is looking for lots of praise then they are looking for something from another person to feel good; yet they have the power within them to feel good with or without it.

And while it may be a small thing to make an effort to praise someone, knowing they enjoy the praise, does that then perpetuate their reliance on others to make them feel good i.e. does it actually disempower them?

As evolved as my friends and I are about some aspects of our relationships, we all acknowledge that we are being and doing various things to please our partners, even in small ways like wearing or not wearing perfume. Then we wondered what our partners were being or doing in order to please us?

While I’ve come a long way towards my authenticity within a relationship, I recognise there are still ways in which I’m not fully myself. Interestingly, with my partner working away for a week, it’s given me the opportunity to notice who I am without him here and flush out some of those behaviours. 

So far I’ve noticed I’m more relaxed in many aspects. It feels like the pressure is off to act in certain ways, like the way I might manage the kids’ behaviour if he’s around, or when things get tidied, or what I am doing with my time or even what time I go to bed.

Now, I could make that about him, or about what we need to change in the relationship, but it’s not about that; it never is. He is not actually driving any of those things, even though he may make comments or act in a way that might make it appear it’s his issue. I have come to learn that if I wasn’t buying in to those comments on some level, he wouldn’t even think to make them.

There is always room for us to step into more of our authentic selves, and each step we take we feel the freedom of our being in response. That puts us in a much better place to be present and give another person the space and freedom they need to be more of who they are.

And what could be more beautiful than a relationship with another who is being their authentic self and freely choosing each day afresh to be with you?

​If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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