Understanding the power you have inside your relationship

Photo by Tiraya Adam on Unsplash

Do you realize how much power you hold inside your relationship?
Do you know how you are currently using that power?
There is so much that can be said about relationships, how to make them better, how to communicate better and how to resolve problems and crisis. I was looking for something that I could share with you, that could help you get out of an impasse you may be experiencing in your current relationship, and I realized that what I observed over and over in the past few months, talking to you all about relationships is, what I would define as, a strange side effect of emotionally driven communication that somehow reduce the awareness of your own power and how to use it for good.

​Inevitably, when you find yourself in a difficult situation inside your relationship, you get emotional, sometimes more than you realize, emotions take over and also your thinking and behaving is influenced by that. Your partner may also be in an emotional space , as it often happen, and therefore reacting also under the influence of strong emotions.

You can imagine how communication can get compromised, if this is the case. How emotions can affect how you both are expressing yourselves and how the meaning of what you mean to say can end up being twisted.

That your vision of your partner and of the relationship get negatively affected in the process is no surprise.

In light of all this, I would like to suggest an exercise or activity where you are invited to bring your focus on a specific difficult situation you may be experiencing, to then look into it carefully to make space for a different interpretation. The idea behind it, is to let go of the layers of emotionally driven misunderstanding that may have contributed to the disharmony in your current situation.

What I share here below is inspired by The Work of Byron Katie. It is a powerful way of working and requires serious self-investigation and surrender. If you want to hold on to ideas like: I am right  and my partner is wrong, it won’t work, not only the exercise but also your relationship.
This is a process in five steps that lead you gradually to a change in perspective and deepening of understanding with regards to the way you currently feel about your partner.

The first step consist in taking a moment of relaxation and silence to reflect, calm your thinking and your emotions. From this state of relaxation and centredness I invite you to formulate one sentence about your partner, more specifically about what in your partner’s behaviour or language use you experience hurtful or difficult, what seems unfair or unjust or what you strongly believe is problematic about your partner.

Just one statement about what you believe to be true and that you consider important to be looked into to improve your relationship.

I will walk beside you as you do the exercise by using an example that should help you understand and execute the activities suggested. I will use a statement that I believe is true in many relationships, often for both partners, as an example: ‘My partner doesn’t value me.’
 
The second step consists in a kind of first control for accuracy of the sentence that you choose to use for this process. Take the target sentence you selected and ask yourself: ‘Is it true?’

What I am asking you to consider here, is if the sentence you wrote is your truth or an objective truth. An objective truth is that your partner has brown eyes and an example of your truth could be that she/he always has an upset expression when coming home after work.

Understanding if your sentence portrays an objective truth or your truth is indicative of what is possible in terms of transformation, growth and improvement of your relationship. You surely can see that it would be a painful challenge if your sentence was an objective truth and therefore if the change would require a change of reality as you know it (ex. If you needed your partner to change the colour of the eyes). An objective truth is one that can be agreed upon without much discussion.

While if you realize that what your sentence is expressing is your truth, there is space for further investigation. Your truth normally has a trigger that can be investigated. What make that truth develop in you? What is the emotion touched when you feel like that about your partner? Where does that come from?

When you know about what you feel and where it comes from there is space for healing.
Using my example I would ask myself: ‘Is it true that my partner doesn’t value me?’ I would say that for how strong a conviction I may have that I am not valued by my partner, I cannot consider this an objective truth, so it must be my truth.
There is no right or wrong answer, the only objective of these steps are self-reflections and self-exploration.
 
The third step is a continuation of the second. This time the question I suggest you ask yourself with regards to the affirmation you are working with is: ‘Can you be absolutely sure it is true?’
After having considered whether your affirmation is objectively true or your personal truth, now I ask you to consider if you have enough information to assert with absolute security that your affirmation is true.

This step has the objective to challenge you to step out of your personal experience of your partner inside your relationship, maybe stepping out of the emotional pain you have endured, to see how truth is out of reach from all of us, even with regard to our most close connections, our romantic partner. All we have is our reactions, our perceptions.

On an emotional level our partner is so close to us that we often merge with them and feel like becoming one organism, much in the same way as we did emotionally with our parents at birth.
This closeness and interdependence makes us stronger when things go well, however it can feel extremely vulnerable and unsafe when the relationship is going through a crisis.

This kind of closeness doesn’t always help us to be objective, and in majority of situations we don’t need to be objective inside our relationship, we are allowed to have positive biases around those we love. Only when the relationship is challenged, this closeness can transform the biases in negative ones and gave us a sense of rightfulness that feel somewhat justified even if doesn’t help the pain.

What I am suggesting is that, if you are struggling in your relationship, that you try a different approach, taking a step back from the emotional closeness with your partner, to see the difference between your personal experience inside the relationship and what more there could be to understand about your partner, what else could the behaviour you observe mean.

Using my example: ‘Can I absolutely know it is true that my partner doesn’t value me?’ No. absolute knowing feels out of my reach. I wonder if I could check in different way if my partner values me and also why I conclude I am not being valued. What does my partner’s behaviour triggers in me?
 
The fourth step is transformative and invites you to take full responsibility for your contribution to the situation you are experiencing in your relationship. You may already know how I look at the power share and responsibility share within relationships: each partner has, in my opinion, 50% of the power. If that seem not to be the case, my hypothesis is that you probably delegated some of your power. You may have done that out of love, to make the other happy or even unconsciously because of the differences in your personalities. The fact remains that harmony in a relationship is achieved by each taking responsibility for their 50% of power.

It is often in midst of a crisis or when there is dissatisfaction inside your relationship, that you become aware of the power balance you are experiencing. And it is in this situation that you can more easily become aware of how it is now, how you got here and what you want and need to do about it.

What I ask you this time is reflect on the question: Who do you become when I believe … (the sentence you choose)?

When you apply this question to the  sentence you selected to work on, you will notice that holding those believes has an effect on you and influences how you speak to your partner, what you say and what you omit. The way you behave is also affected because  your all demeanour inside the relationship is inevitably the result of what you believe.

Your believes are actually influencing how you show up inside the relationship.
What does this mean for you?
How much influence has your focus on this specific believe about your partner (see your target sentence) in your current relationship crisis?
Who do you become when you believe that of your partner?
What is the effect on your relationship?

The good news is that knowing this, you can do something about it. You can strongly influence your fifty percent of contribution in the relationship by adjusting what you choose to focus on.
Using my example: ‘Who do I become when I believe that my partner doesn’t value me?’

Inevitably my communication is less open en trusting, my partner becomes someone I have to be careful when around. I feel less safe, less fairly treated. I may feel alone, emotionally not supported. As a consequence I may be less approachable and relaxed around my partner. This will be interpreted by my partner that may be reacting according to their truth.

You can imagine how this is going to end in terms of emotional and intimate connection with your partner: more and more difficult to achieve.
 
The fifth step makes you jump acrobatically to see it all upside down. In this last step you are asked to turn your sentence around, let me show you how:
Using my example: ‘My partner doesn’t value me?’ becomes ‘I don’t value my partner.’

The challenge here is to notice in which way the turned around sentence could also be true. As I was showing in the previous step, the behaviour that you will have as a reaction to what you believe to be true about your partner, has an effect on how you treat your partner when you believe you are right in thinking he/she doesn’t value you (if we use my example).

If you observe yourself do you see a possibility that you may be showing with your behaviour a lack of value towards your partner?
Is it at all possible that my partner may also feel not valued by me for whatever reason?
Am I capable of acting in a way that may be perceived as not valuing someone else?

This last step guid you deep inside of yourself. I never did this exercise without being able to see how the opposite of what I believe can also be true. That can be confronting at first, however, it is also really empowering to be able to turn the tables and see things from a completely different perspective that, after all, give more hope and gives you your power back.
 
At this point you probably have discovered more about what is moving inside of you and how this is affecting your relationship. This exercise has, most of all, the function of helping you self-reflect. However, it is really wise to bring all this new information in a healthy conversation with your partner.
​
For healthy communication I intend an exchange where your truth is communicated as ‘how you feel’ and ‘what you need’.
Using my example: When you say … I feel not valued. It is important for me to feel you value me.
I hope you feel how much I value you.
 
Hope this reading has helped somehow and that your relationship will soon go back to being a safe emotional space where you can share intimacy and joy.

Lara Briozzo

Psychotherapy, Coaching, Meditation, Qigong, Family Constellation