I have lost all my patience.
My compassion has depleted.
I let my frustrations rule the dynamic of my relationship.
How did I get here?
This is learned behaviour, this is not knowing how to regulate my own emotions and even worse not knowing how to articulate my needs and feelings to my partner without getting lost in anger and hurt.
Recently I’ve noticed that when I interact with my partner I am looking for the smallest excuse so that I can blow off steam. I immediately regret it because it’s not how I want to be in our relationship, it’s not how I was and it’s definitely not what deserves! Because we’re in a long-distance relationship I have a lot of time to reflect on my behaviours and I don’t like it.
I have to take responsibility for my reactions and responses because I can see objectively that he is not doing anything wrong. He’s not harming me and nor is he disrespecting me all that is simply frustrating me is him not being me! Unreasonable I know! He doesn’t meet my expectations and it frustrates me, but to be fair no other human can meet all of our expectations! It’s easy to blame our partners for all the problems but the reality is that the problems start and finish in our head (for the most part). So, it’s time to look at myself and ask myself is the type of partner I want to be? Is this how I want to resolve conflict and frustration? Is this how I want to experience my relationship?
I have chosen him as my life partner because we are aligned in values, we are able to understand each other and we have immense respect and admiration for each other. But we’re also incredibly different and are also in very different stages of our lives! Somewhere along the line the foundation we had built wasn’t enough for me so I started picking at all the things that were wrong instead of noticing everything that was great. I started noticing all the things he wasn’t doing, instead of practicing gratitude for everything he was doing. I started comparing him to me and how I operate in the relationship and he didn’t meet the mark; that’s on me! I started creating narratives from my end that made me feel like the scales were unfair and unequally weighted and so I started criticising.
The biggest frustration in my mind is that I am in the relationship and he’s only hovering over it. I’m in the depths scuba diving and he’s in the helicopter enjoying the view. It feels exhausting to me because I feel like I’m pouring everything out of my cup and he doesn’t pour back. Whilst I feel like this, I also recognise this is because I don’t give him credit for the things he does pour back into my cup. This is where the narratives are becoming hard to separate from truth because I’ve made them my reality! When I sit and look at it all, I can see that he brings to the table things that I don’t know how to do. He compliments me in ways that I don’t seem to appreciate. He is here in the relationship but his way of being is more subtle than mine!
So what does this mean? It means love takes work. It means love requires you letting go of your limiting beliefs, unreasonable expectations and learning to become independent so that you don’t expect your partner to be your everything. That’s not healthy, it’s not sustainable and if they’re too busy being your everything then when will they be there for themselves? It means that I need to understand what triggers my frustrations and learn the words needed to communicate my feelings and needs before they turn into eruptions of anger. It means taking a step back and asking myself what type of relationship do I want to have, how do I want to be in it and what is it that I want to bring to the table and take away from it?
Being in a relationship requires constant work, if you want love to grow you have to let ego go.
One breath at a time.
Life is too short to take it too seriously.
Love Always,
M
Souloom™ 