Become The Partner That You Want To Have

Marriage isn't rocket science.

By Steven Stosny

Everyone who enters an intimate relationship with some hope that it might last would do well to understand this general principle: To get what you most want from your partner, you must first become the partner you most want to have.

Two things happen when you focus too much on what you want from your partner (as in "Give me love."), and both are bad:

  1. You will likely violate your own core values. When focusing on your expectations from your spouse, you're really saying, "I will not be the compassionate and loving person I truly am until you do what I want." You condition your own good behavior on the behavior of someone else instead of behaving according to your own highest ideals.

  2. Your partner is likely to react negatively to your critical focus on him or her. Even if you were not behaving worse and worse to your partner, they would react negatively to your desire to change them and the unspoken judgment that they aren't acceptable the way they are.

Relationships fail when one party becomes the kind of partner they think the other partner deserves.

Your best chance of changing your partner's behavior is to change yourself so what he/she will be reacting to is a better you.

Your partner is likely to respond in kind to your behavior, whether it is loving, compassionate, and supportive or whether it is resentful, demanding, and critical.

But regardless of how your partner reacts or responds, you will feel more authentic and remain true to yourself if you behave like the partner you most want to be.

To paraphrase Gandhi, you have to become the change you want to see.

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God bless your family and your marriage.

Jim Stephens