A very common reason people give me for why their relationship no longer works is some version of, “My relationship isn’t working because my partner is….”
For instance, “My partner is inconsiderate. No matter what I do, they won’t treat me the way I need to be treated.”
“I’m a saver and my partner is not.”
“I’m an entrepreneur and my partner isn’t.” (or vise versa).
“I eat healthfully, and my partner loves their junk food.”
“I need it quiet, and my partner is really loud.” (This is me and Paul. He likes it quiet and I’m the loud one!)
It could be the way your partner sees the household responsibilities, their parenting, their views on money and spending, how much they work, differences on how to spend time – anything where you don’t see eye-to-eye that’s causing friction in your relationship.
When this “insurmountable difference” the two of you keep coming up against remains unsolved, what usually happens is that one (or both) of you starts feeling unsupported, incompatible or unloved.
Typically, what most people do in this situation is KEEP trying to get your partner to SEE your perspective. If they just UNDERSTOOD, they would “get it” and agree with you.
Most humans run through the list of ways to get “on the same page” with their committed love partner.
Typically that looks something like this:
Ask them for what you need, try to convince them, drop hint after hint, “suck it up” and compromise, barter, coerce, try to make them think that doing it your way is their idea or use guilt or shame so they see how wrong they are.
Most people will also tell anyone who will listen how wrong their partner is, and the people they tell are all too happy to agree with them and tell them that they “shouldn’t have to put up with that” or that they “deserve better.”
You’ve been in this situation, yes?
Two Common Tactics That Both Fail
When people reach their limit on trying to convince their partner, they usually wind up doing one of two outdated and broken relationship tactics:
Failed Tactic #1: Pleasing
Failed Tactic #2: Bulldozing
They either give up (please) or plow over (bulldoze) to move things forward. But both of those feel like crap. You already know that, because you hate it when you feel like the only way to get peace is to give in.
You also hate the feeling of having to bulldoze your partner just to move things forward, only to live in the “aftermath” of that (either fighting or silence).
Both of those old, broken tactics haven’t worked in long-term relationships in a very long time. Both Pleasing and Bulldozing BREAK DOWN a relationship.
You’ve experienced this too, correct? After you’ve pleased someone else, do you feel closer to them or more distant? Do you have more confidence in your partnership with them or less? (You already know the answers to these questions.)
It’s the same with bulldozing. Whether you are the bulldozer or you have been bulldozed, afterwards do you feel closer or farther apart? More confident in your partnership with them or less? (Same answers.)
So if both of those tactics are such garbage, WHY do people keep doing them, day after day, hoping for better results?
They Haven’t Known What Else to Do (Until Now)
How do we have a rock-solid relationship with a long-term committed partner, without pleasing, without compromise, without bulldozing? Start with these two steps.
Step One: Perspective Shift
The first step is to experience a SHIFT in your perspective. There are nearly eight billion people on the planet, and every single one of them has their own unique blueprint that is different from yours. Having differences between you and your partner is NOT the problem.
Humans are wired differently. At times, these differences cause kerfuffles. Those kerfuffles are real. Trying to make people “the same” is not the answer. For decades, people have been trying to either make the other person more like them, convince them to see it their way or seek a partner that is MORE like them, all to avoid the real kerfuffles caused by differences.
Step Two: Skill Sets for Solving Kerfuffles
Building a long-term love relationship with someone who is wired differently than you is NOT the problem. The problem is running to the end of your skill set to solve the kerfuffles that are caused by those differences.
There IS a way to SOLVE (not settle) the kerfuffles caused WITHOUT making someone wrong, without making someone change, and without breaking down the relationship.
For instance, my husband Paul talks very little. It’s part of his wiring. He THINKS a great deal, but says very little.
I, on the other hand, am a giant talker. In the beginning of our relationship this difference in our wiring caused a lot of kerfuffles. Because I didn’t understand the difference in our wiring, I would try to find ways to get him to talk more.
I would run through the scale of nicely trying to engage him in conversation, then hinting that I would love to hear more. Then I would tell him that I needed him to share with me. Eventually I would start making snide comments about how “if he would just SAY something”. Until finally we were either arguing or silent about it.
All those old broken tactics break down a relationship.
The solution is not to try to get him to be more like me. Nor is it for me to try to be more like him. The solution is to use a skill set to interact with him for how he is wired, to create more harmony.
First, it’s understanding that there is a genuine difference in how we are wired.
Second, it’s about accepting that this difference is real and that doesn’t mean that one is better and one is worse. Just because we are different doesn’t mean that one is superior and the other inferior.
Third is about taking personal responsibility for my own discomfort and solving it, instead of trying to get someone or something outside of me to solve something INSIDE of me.
The truth is that I was the one who used the vehicle of “talking” to meet my need for connection. That’s a choice. There are a million ways to FEEL connected. Talking wasn’t the only way.
Fourth, instead of interacting with my husband trying to get something from him that I wanted, I started focusing on how I could build up our relationship with my interactions with him.
Fifth, I started conversations with him to understand the different ways that he felt connected, since they were different from mine. And in those conversations, I explained that “talking” was a big way for me, but I was also working on cultivating other ways, so that I felt connected more often.
Naturally, Paul started to react to me differently because I was showing up differently. I wasn’t pretending to show up differently, I was truly shifting from my shift in perspective and using Skill Sets to build up our relationship instead of breaking it down.
Through the changes I was making, I felt more connected to Paul than I even did when we were first dating.
I didn’t have to become someone who talked less, and Paul didn’t have to become someone who talked more. One of us was not right and the other one was not wrong.
In our Relationship Development Method™, we have hundreds of tools like these and lots of training to identify and navigate the many differences in how humans are wired.
Relationship is just a skill set, and it can be learned and used to solve kerfuffles caused by our very real differences, while also building up our relationships in the process (instead of tearing them down with pleasing or bulldozing).
To start learning the proven skill sets it takes to navigate real life with people who are wired differently than you, and do it while still being authentically you without compromise or settling, check out our training at www.RelationshipBreakthroughSecrets.com.
