Finding freedom in your partnerships
Knowing what your partner needs can give you the freedom to enjoy some downtime. Photo by Dennis Wong
We have this fear that once we settle down in a relationship and partnership, that we will end up losing ourselves. We become responsible for someone else, we put our needs on the back burner, and we stop sharing whats really important to us. We’re caught up in whether or not we can actually make our partners happy and forget our own happiness is also crucial. Eventually we find out that our needs have gotten left by the wayside.
If we’re lucky, we have great partners who recognize that our needs are getting lost in the dirt, but that only happens if our partners know what our needs are, and what those needs provide. Once you know what those needs are, you have a lot more freedom, because you’re not trying to read someone else’s mind.. you can focus on what is important together, instead of guessing.
Last night I was with a friend who was deeply hurt by feeling like her boyfriend was far more interested in going off and playing with a bunch of “ADD guys who don’t get anything done on their projects anyway!” She felt that his time away was him saying she wasn’t important to him, and their relationship was at risk. After we spent some time working this out, she realized what it was he was getting from these nights out that she could hear that her relationship wasn’t in jeopardy and what he was getting wasn’t something she wanted to provide. “Hanging out” and not finishing projects isn’t her idea of fun and was actually just going to be frustrating and cause more tension between them.
Seeing this, it became a blessing to have him off with the guys, because then she could go do something she loved instead.. hitting the spa for a relaxing night! Before this realization, she would never have scheduled a night at the spa, because she would have been feeling hurt and abandoned by her boyfriend. Once she realized that this time away from her, wasn’t about him not wanting to spend time with her, it became a gift where she got to be free to have the evening in decadent relaxation instead.. and he got to go play with the guys.
If you know your needs and your partner knows your needs, then together you can plan to get them met in a way that takes care of you both.
