Читать книгу The Truth about Relationships - Stefan Blom - Страница 28

Stop trying to fix, and start trying to understand

Intimate relationships, involving emotions, are different from business and all other relationships. In work relationships, there might be right and wrong problems that have obvious solutions. But you cannot treat your intimate relationships like work relationships, as your intimate emotions and thoughts are deeply personal and influence the way you perceive and feel things.

How you perceive the world reflects your identity – your personality. Work is often about goals, outcomes, productivity, results, competition, money and performance; relationships are about intimacy, connection, sharing, honesty, respect, understanding, individuality and togetherness. Your intimate relationship lives in a very different world from your business relationships, and has different rules of engagement. You cannot treat your intimate relationships like you treat your business relationships.

Personal and intimate relationships are never about fixing things and finding solutions. For most couples, this is difficult to understand. They see a problem in their relationship and want to find a solution to it, to fix what is wrong. The ‘fixing’ of your relationship lies in seeing and understanding each other’s most private experiences. Trying to fix each other and your relationship, rather than trying to see and understand each other’s experience of life, can often feel disrespectful.

Fixing your relationship involves truly showing interest in and an understanding of each other’s experiences of life.

To be seen and feel love, we need to accept each other’s very different experiences as true. What is true for me – my experience – does not have to be true for you. You have the right to your own, and often very different, experience of the same events.

Questions to ask about your relationship

•What is my intention for fixing and finding solutions for each other?

•If one or both of us slip into the old habit of trying to fix or find solutions for each other, how can we support each other in not doing so?

•What does it mean to try to understand each other, as opposed to fixing or finding solutions for our relationship?

•How can we support each other in our attempts to understand each other?