How Remembering Your Goodness Helps You and Your Partner

Sometimes when we fight with the person we love we might feel bad about ourselves. On other occasions we might feel angry at them. It just depends on the way we are wired.

Some of us believe others hurt us and therefore we have to react. That’s how I grew up. Others believe they are at fault for the difficulty and blame themselves or just hold things inside. This is how the other half live.

But as I explain this to you, maybe you can see that both people are trying to make sense of something that went wrong: a problem, an argument, a disagreement, or a misunderstanding. It doesn’t matter what gets in the way, we all know when it’s something that keeps us apart it feels terrible.

We all come to our relationships with the way we navigated our life before we met our beloveds. Every one of us has a habit of how we handle difficulties, problems or our need for change.

This is just how humans work. So, when we meet the one we love and they love us and we are mad about them, it is very hard to believe in that moment that they will not understand everything about us.

Often in relationships there are two different kinds of people. I have noticed this in the many years I have been counseling couples. One is very clear about how they got their feelings hurt, and the other is likely to keep everything inside.

I see this play out in every couple I have ever counseled. It is very common. The one who emotes, (that’s me), often feels alone in the relationship because their partner doesn’t communicate with them on a deep level.

All of us have habits we bring into our relationships. Some of them are very good, but some of them can bring about pain and hardship to our partners. And if we have those bad habits, what can we do about them?

Plenty! But the first thing we have to do is understand what it is we are doing.

All of us in a relationship savor when we get along with our mates. We love the times when we are connected and when nothing pulls us away from that connection.

But when our feelings get hurt… well, that is usually another story altogether. We often just stew in our own discomfort and stay isolated from the one we love. This is very common with couples. I have even experienced it in my own relationship.

We all make interpretations about our lives. Something happens to us and then our mind tells us a story about what happened. And if you are in a relationship with someone you love, you may be constantly interpreting what your partner does to you and why.

This is just something to look at. And if this article helps, great. But when I learned about my own interpretations, I thought it was very useful, and maybe these thoughts will be useful to you as well.

I often do this, where my husband will do or say something, I will feel something and then I will wonder why he said or did what he did. Maybe when I explain it this way you can understand it too.

All of us are good people. We all intend to do well with people we love. Sometimes we are not our best and that is when difficulty can arise.

Here is a way to remember your goodness and it is a practice that might work for you. Let’s say you got into an argument with your partner. You might start to tell yourself something about your behavior, or their behavior and stay angry for a time.

This is suffering. Yes, an argument did happen. That’s what occurred. But the difficulty is inside your mind where you might be rehashing what happened, why it happened, and how you could do better or how your partner could do better.

Sometimes in a relationship there is a difficulty where one of the partners might be attracted to someone other than the mate. This can also lead to some flirtation, some exchange of emotion, and even even more.

When this happens, there is a big rift between partners. The one who was cheated on often feels betrayed and can’t believe their mate would do that to them. Their heart feels torn and they might even wonder, “How in the world can I heal from this?”

One of the hardest things to teach someone in a relationship is to stop getting angry at their mate. I know because this is how I grew up and this is the response I used every time I got my feelings hurt.

I know there are many, many people who suffer from this and it is a big problem for those of us who get mad. But there are ways of understanding what we do and helping ourselves do something different.

It’s funny how we couple with our partner. Some of us are fixers in the world. If there is a problem, we always in our mind look for solutions to help out. Other times we get our feelings hurt and we are the ones who need their service.

But these two roles are very delicate in a relationship with two very different people. If you are coupled with someone who is always trying to fix or help or give you suggestions, sometimes this might be great, but other times you might just need something else.

I'm retired.

Author Archives: Linda Nusbaum

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